"Dwarfish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entered their houses, did we become satisfied of the fact of their existence that till then we had considered a myth. Kankun, where the ruins of numerous houses cover a great extent of ground, must have been the real site of Ekab. The dwarfish inhabitants of these cities must have been a very tolerant sort of people in religious matters, since in the same temple, nay on the very same altar, we have found side by side the phallic emblems with the image ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... As he sat there, he looked, to the people below, like some great castle tower; for he was a giant in size, and his coat of mail was so huge that twenty men of common mould might have found shelter, or hidden themselves, within it. As the smith Mimer, so dwarfish in stature, tolled up the steep hillside, Amilias smiled to see him; for he felt no fear of the slender, gleaming blade that was to try the metal of his war coat. And already a shout or expectant triumph went up from the throats ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... find out. I daresay the astute reader has already guessed the name of the gentleman who caused this distinct and sudden interest and flung consternation and activity into two separate groups. As James Darlington followed the glance of the young girl, he had recognized the dwarfish figure of the Mexican who had robbed him of his treasure and who had previously led him and his party into dire trouble—hence his excitement, but why the interest of the Senorita da Cordova?—Ah! that is another ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... of mellow bronze, irregular yet graceful.' Ombos regarded it smilingly, yet with one of his queer, sinister looks. It would have been hard to know what he was thinking. He was one of those tall, emaciated chaps, that make us men of ordinary stature feel dwarfish; and as I looked at his skull-like face I wondered at first where his eyes were hidden ... they seemed so far back in the dark hollows on each side of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any time after mid-summer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple on which vines ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... unroofed ant-hill, for the road was alive with men who seemed from this distance very small. Duke Alessandro's attendants had found him and were clustered in a hubbub about their reviving master. Dwarfish Lorenzino de Medici was ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... love, looks on him with a smile, Saying—"He pineth for the sweet-faced Moon;"— Thus had he just receded, when the pair Stood peering shuddering in, hearing afar The painful sighs, which shook his savage breast. The dwarfish elves, with waning lamps in hand, Creeping like worms along the slimy floor, Pursued the ebbing tide collecting spoils. The lovers saw from what exhaustless mines Were gathered up the overwhelming wealth— The jewels and the curious costly toys Which ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... Braddock household was not included in the general staff, being a mere appendage of the Professor himself. This was a dwarfish, misshapen Kanaka, a pigmy in height, but a giant in breadth, with short, thick legs, and long, powerful arms. He had a large head, and a somewhat handsome face, with melancholy black eyes and a fine set of white teeth. Like most Polynesians, his skin was of a pale ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... sitting patiently on her chair, raising her eyes at intervals in mute appeal to the compassion and clemency of her lord, and gently reminding him by an occasion cough that she was still unpardoned and that her penance had been of long duration. But her dwarfish spouse still smoked his cigar and drank his rum without heeding her; and it was not until the sun had some time risen, and the activity and noise of city day were rife in the street, that he deigned to recognize ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... confined space; its segments are more or less amalgamated with each other; the feet are stunted, and the appendages of the abdomen transformed from natatory feet with long setae into foliaceous or tongue-shaped and sometimes ramified branchiae. In the dwarfish males the eyes, antennae, and feet, are usually better preserved than in the females; but on the other hand all the appendages of the abdomen have not unfrequently disappeared, and sometimes every trace of segmentation. In the females of Entoniscus, which are found in the body-cavity ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... scattered forests. Our people pretend, however, that the tholukh does not occur in Soudan, its place being filled up by various thorny trees, much resembling the mimosa. We have around us some other stunted shrubs. All trees are dwarfish ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... of Little Muck, who is properly called Mukrah, lived here in Nicea, a respectable, but poor man. He kept himself almost as retired as his son does now. The latter he could not endure, because he was ashamed of his dwarfish figure, and let him therefore grow up in perfect ignorance. When the Little Muck was still in his seventeenth year, a merry child, his father, a grave man, kept continually reproaching him, that he, who ought long before to have trodden down the ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... larger rocky islands, and the huge, grey, broken rocks of the main land, where dwarfish pine woods grow in a continual combat with the blast; the Skjaergaards sometimes become only a narrow canal, sometimes an extensive lake strewed with small islets, all of stone, and often only a mere block of ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... flesh of game, but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the Desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the Desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion and of severe privations. Many are of low stature, though not dwarfish; the specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like costermongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; consequently, English ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way as if the ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa as characteristic of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... His secret murders sticking on his hands; Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach; Those he commands move only in command, Nothing in love: now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe Upon a dwarfish thief. ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... presence. His dress was snow-white, as beseemed a priest, but there were patches and rents to be seen here and there. His figure might perhaps once have been tall and slender, but it was now so bent and shrunk by age, privation and suffering, as to look unnatural and dwarfish, in comparison with the size of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and his getting out of the way. While the division was at Sandersville it gave the country around a healthy forage. A certain wealthy planter living near had five or six score of French or Spanish negroes, with a dwarfish stature and a gabble like so many geese. This planter lived in Savannah in high life, as most wealthy planters do. His possessions would seem changed when next he saw them; his cotton and out-houses, ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... city fool, on Lord Mayor's day, was to jump clothes and all into a large bowl of custard. To a certain extent he generally corresponded with his name in having some mental weakness or eccentricity, and it was a recommendation if he were dwarfish or deformed. He wore a "motley" suit of discordant colours to make him ridiculous, and correspond with the incongruity of his mind and actions—a dress similar to the hundred patched paniculus centunculus of the Roman mimes. Sometimes he wore a petticoat or calf-skin to resemble ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the dwarfish race, And Durin too Were then created. And like to men Dwarfs in the earth Were formed in numbers As ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... has mixed with the small brunette Iberian race, producing the endless varieties in stature and complexion which may be seen in any drawing-room in London or New York. In Africa south of Sahara, on the other hand, we find, interspersed among negro tribes but kept perfectly distinct, that primitive dwarfish race with yellow skin and tufted hair to which belong the Hottentots and Bushmen, the Wambatti lately discovered by Mr. Stanley, and other tribes.[20] Now in America south of Hudson's Bay the case seems to have been quite otherwise, and more as it would have been in Europe ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... sharp. He was averse to telling us any thing about his tribe, but turned our questions with an equivocal repartee and a laugh. The Cashibos, on the Pachitea, is another cannibal tribe. They are light colored and bearded. The dwarfish, filthy Rimos alone of the Ucayali Indians tattoo, though not so perfectly as the Mundurucus, using black and blue colors. The other tribes simply paint. It was among these wild Indians on the Ucayali that the Franciscan ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political refugee, dependent for the bread he ate, on the money he received for teaching languages. He might have been a beggar from the streets; and still my father ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... without the moral and physical strength necessary to perfect development, but with this erratic mischief we have nothing to do. Mary, the reader well knows was plain in person, and as a child almost dwarfish, but wholesome food, fresh mountain air and household kindness, had modified and changed ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... making an obscure name celebrated. The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... 25th, at dawn of day, we inspanned, and trekked about five hours in a northeasterly course, through a boundless open country sparingly adorned with dwarfish old trees. In the distance the long-sought mountains of Bamangwato at length loomed blue before me. We halted beside a glorious fountain, which at once made me forget all the cares and difficulties I had encountered in reaching it. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Colonel John J. Hardin—was his future antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas. Neither seemed to have any presentiment of the future greatness of the other. Douglas thought little of the raw youth from the Sangamon timber, and Lincoln said the dwarfish Vermonter was "the least man he had ever seen." To all appearance, Vandalia was full of better men than either of them—clever lawyers, men of wit and standing, some of them the sons of provident early settlers, but ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... what are called Tuaricks of Fezzan. They are a dwarfish, slim race; and the Fezzanees call them their Arabs. They cover up their faces like their kindred of Ghat, but have for the most part white thelems instead of black. A few sport a red fotah, or turban. They speak Arabic commonly, but some know also ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place, and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly, dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of nature or of the world of the human heart. He was lacking, apparently, in noble feeling, and instinctively chose a lie when the truth had manifestly more advantages. Yet this jealous, peevish, waspish little man became the most famous poet ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and pacing slowly up and down in front of it was a tall slave in white tunic and turban, who, turning his gleaming eyeballs on Sah-luma, nodded by way of salutation, and then uttered a sharp, peculiar whistle. This summons brought out two curious, dwarfish figures of men, whose awkward misshapen limbs resembled the contorted branches of wind-blown trees, and whose coarse and repulsive countenances betokened that malignant delight in evil-doing which only demons are supposed to know. These ungainly servitors possessed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... yonder rocky cape, which braves The stormy challenge of the waves, Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, Planting upon the topmost crag The staff of England's battle-flag; And, while from out its heavy fold Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, And weapons brandishing in air, He ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... there was a sudden commotion from the opposite side of the room. A quaint dwarfish figure, crippled but full of vigour, stumped ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... of Philadelphia begins to fade and her ancient influences to hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... identifies these mysterious beings with the Picts of Scotland, the Feinne of the Scottish Highlands and of Ireland, and the Finns and Lapps of Scandinavia. And he suggests that the Eskimo, the Ainos, and I know not what other dwarfish races, are relics of the same people; while Santa Klaus, the patron saint of children, is only a tradition of the wealthy and beneficent character borne by this ill-used folk. Primarily his arguments are concerned with Scotland and Ireland. He builds much on the howes or barrows, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... hygiene, revealed the strain of his soul by striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... northernmost parts of Europe, by a most surprising and insuperable wall, made of iron and copper, of great thickness and height; and that to the present time they are confined there; that, notwithstanding they are a dwarfish race,—viz. from two to three feet in height only—they will one day come out and desolate the world. As Lord Mayor's Day is just approaching, perhaps some of the visiters of Gog and Magog on that occasion may decide this matter. It is almost akin to our nursery quibble of the giants hearing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... composed the fabric, were strongly contrasted by large Venetian windows newly inserted in frames of the most ostentatious white. A smart, green veranda, scarcely finished, ran along the low portico, and formed the termination to two thin rows of meagre and dwarfish sycamores, which did duty for an avenue, and were bounded, on the roadside, by a spruce white gate, and a sprucer lodge, so moderate in its dimensions, that it would scarcely have boiled a turnip: if a rat had got into ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights, And maybe he is thinking of his claim And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights, (Thank God, he'll never see the place again!) Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread, On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould; His stomach's out of kilter and his ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... god: for the image of Hephaistos very nearly resembles the Phenician Pataicoi, which the Phenicians carry about on the prows of their triremes; and for him who has not seen these, I will indicate its nature,—it is the likeness of a dwarfish man. He entered also into the temple of the Cabeiroi, into which it is not lawful for any one to enter except the priest only, and the images there he even set on fire, after much mockery of them. Now these also are like the images of Hephaistos, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... of the lagoon, and the mole of the barrier reef on which the breakers whitened. The moon shone too, with bull's-eye sweeps, on his companions; on the stalwart frame of the American who called himself Brown, and was known to be a master-mariner in some disgrace; and on the dwarfish person, the pale eyes and toothless smile of a vulgar and bad-hearted cockney clerk. Here was society for Robert Herrick! The Yankee skipper was a man at least: he had sterling qualities of tenderness and resolution: he was one whose hand you could take without a blush. But there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little sparrow, Beautiful for a ring, Long but lazy fellow, Froward, insolent thing, Dumpy, dwarfish one." ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... are of a different character. The French settled near a lake or a river, apparently in the most unhealthy places, and yet their constitutions are little affected, and they usually enjoy good health, though dwarfish and shrivelled in their ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... palustre which provided a beverage in smell much resembling rhubarb, notwithstanding which we found it refreshing and were gratified to see this plant flourishing abundantly on the sea shore though of dwarfish growth. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... our very greatness makes us debtors; they claim the land we stand upon; they tax our ampler need of food and shelter, and for all these things we must toil with the tools these dwarfs can make us—and to satisfy their dwarfish fancies ... ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... accept the proposal, or not," she consequently said, "you can anyhow speak nicely. It isn't worth the while dragging this one in and involving that one! The proverb adequately says: 'In the presence of a dwarf one mustn't speak of dwarfish things!' Here you've been heaping insult upon me, but I didn't presume to retaliate. These two young ladies have however given you no provocation whatever; and yet by referring, as you've done, in this way and that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that you have so many readers in the West. Yet, I own, I shake a little at the thought of the bookseller's account. Whenever I have seen that species of document, it was strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away to a dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my constitution, and multiply and divide like ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... man, with a red face and a powdered poll, who appears in black breeches and coat, but who says himself that his size has marred his fortune. He is cockney born, about fifty; quality and splendor act forcibly on his imagination, and he is much condemned in the houses where I visit on account of his dwarfish stature"; and we are told that the English favor pretty faces for their maids and fine figures ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Dwarfish, compared with this gigantic figure, appeared the proportions of the other Indian, who, within twelve inches of my face, was stooping over the thing he was dragging in a position that lent to his person ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Tephrosia Virginiana, Lithospermum canescens; between which the immigrated Mullein (Verbuscum thapsus) may be found. The pebbly fragments of the entire slope, which during spring-time were sparingly covered with dwarfish herbs, such as the Androsace occidentalis, Draba Caroliniana, Plantago Virginica, Scutellaria parvula, are now crowded with plants of taller growth and variegated blossoms. Rudbeckia hirta, with its numerous radiating blossoms of a lively ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... retreating concourse, I perceived a figure running towards me, lifting his hands and crying out in a voice sonorous and inhuman. He was of a stature much above my own, yet so gross in shape and immense of head he seemed at first almost dwarfish. He came to a stand twenty paces or so from me, on the ridge of a gentle inclination, and gazed down on me with wild, bright eyes. Even at this distance I could perceive the almost colourless lustre of his eyes beneath his thick locks of yellow hair. When he had taken his fill of me, he lifted ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... between this beautiful town and Mantua, presents one continued grove of dwarfish mulberries, among which start up innumerable barren hills. Now and then a knot of poplars diversify their craggy summits, and sometimes a miserable shed. Mantua itself rises out of a morass formed by the Mincio, whose course, in most places, is so choked up with reeds as to be scarcely discernible. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... we found a couple of native families living on the shore in rude huts, composed of the branches of trees, and with mud and stones heaped over them. The people were the ugliest I had ever seen, being more like baboons than men and women. They were dwarfish in stature, the tallest of the party not exceeding five feet in height, and the majority of the others quite a foot shorter. I noticed also, as the skipper had told me, that their apparel was of the very scantiest possible, consisting only of a piece of sealskin, which was movable, so that ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... no more, and she had acquired an expression, so suffering, so concentrated, so thoughtful, that, together with her heavy black eyebrows, large face, profuse black hair, and unlustrous eyes, it gave her almost a dwarfish air, increased by her awkward deportment, which concealed that she was in reality tall, and on a large scale. She looked to so little advantage in bright delicate colours, that Albinia was often incurring her displeasure, and risking that of Lucy, by the deep ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... At one of their first meetings with the delegates of the Great Powers a storm burst which scattered their expectations to the winds. When the sky cleared it was discovered that from indispensable fellow-workers they had shrunk to dwarfish protegees, mere units of an inferior category, who were to be told what to do and would be constrained to do ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... running down among the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnomelike man whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause in his ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... her husband deny that he had ever sought her in marriage, and to see him married to two different wives; and he scrupled not to represent the unfortunate Lady Lovat as the last possible object of his regard—as a "widow, old enough to be his mother, dwarfish in her person, and deformed in her shape."[150] This, as far as related to disparity of years, was untrue; the Dowager was only four years older than the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... hence! get hence! there's dwarfish Hildebrand; 100 He had a fever late, and in the fit He cursed thee and thine, both house and land: Then there's that old Lord Maurice, not a whit More tame for his gray hairs—Alas me! flit! Flit like a ghost away."—"Ah, Gossip dear, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... hour elapsed, and he returned not. Mistress Nutter became fearfully impatient. Three-quarters, and even the old hag was uneasy. An hour, and he stood before them—dwarfish, fiendish, monstrous. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hundred pounds for a paltry little tale that would scarcely swell out to a volume. Markland told me himself. You know that I've scraped an acquaintance with him? Oh! I suppose I haven't seen you since then. He's a dwarfish fellow with only one eye. Mrs Boston Wright cries ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... turning somersaults, and costermongers hawking their wares. They were jostling, pelting, and applauding a figure which at first Gemma could not see for the pushing and swaying of the crowd. The next moment, however, she saw plainly what it was—a hunchback, dwarfish and ugly, grotesquely attired in a fool's dress, with paper cap and bells. He evidently belonged to the strolling company, and was amusing the crowd ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... approaching her with step almost as noiseless as that with which she had herself made her escape from Miss Horn's house. At a few yards' distance from her it stood, and gazed up at her countenance as intently as she seemed to be gazing on the sea. It was a man of dwarfish height and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... this way the whole world, and above all my glorious mountains, with their glittering subterraneous chambers, will be hocus-pocust into mere store-houses, wretcheder ones than if they were made of wood, into miserable wareshops and stalls. What then would the dwarfish sprites, and the mighty mountain-spirit, and all the goblins and elvish imps, and the swarm of gnomes there below have to do? and yet they are always, some of them cleverly, some of them clumsily, putting ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... addressed as Kini o ke Akua, the multitude of the little gods, and who were the counterparts in old Hawaii of our brownies, elfins, sprites, kobolds, gnomes, and other woodland imps. These creatures, though dwarfish and insignificant in person, were in such numbers—four thousand, forty thousand, four hundred thousand—and were so impatient of any invasion of their territory, so jealous of their prerogatives, so spiteful and revengeful when injured, that ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... been three years in this way; but the moment I find myself within two miles of my fair one, as the towers of my home rise upon my sight, so rises the passion in my bosom; and what I supposed I had reasoned away to a mere dwarfish penchant, becomes at ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... and taller by half a head, dwindled, seen in juxtaposition with this man of the iron will and the leader's temperament, to a flabby, dwarfish, and petty being. The fierce grey eyes took him in, and read him, and dropped him, and fastened on the little Englishwoman, as the great boots tramped heavily across the floor, and the great voice roared, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Tropics, and carries thither the strength and the energetic habits acquired in regions more propitious to the constitution. He differs as widely from princes nursed in the purple of imperial cradles, as the companions of Gama from their dwarfish and imbecile progeny, which, born in a climate unfavourable to its growth and beauty, degenerates more and more, at every descent, from the qualities of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that formed the basis of the country over which I was travelling, from the kind of tree or herbage that flourished in the soil above it. The eucalyptus pulv., a species of eucalyptus having a glaucus-coloured leaf, of dwarfish habits and growing mostly in scrub, betrayed the sandstone formation, wherever it existed, This was the case in many parts of the County of Cumberland, in some parts of Wombat Brush, at the two passes on the great south road, over a great extent of country to the N.W. of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... century, their type forced a peaceful and neutral Power into war because they refused to yield their fleet to them; always seeing things that do not exist, and foreboding perils that would never have come but for their dwarfish interference. They discovered in their flights of frenzy and fancy that Napoleon intended to take possession by force of the Danish fleet, when, as a matter of fact, he had never shown any indication, by word or thought, of committing an act so unjust and hostile to his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... on the floor, at which Lieutenant Splinter, in his shirt and trousers, drenched, unshorn, and death-like, was roasting a joint of meat, whilst a dwarfish Indian sat opposite to him fanning the flame with a palm-leaf. I had been nourished during my delirium; for the fierceness of my sufferings were assuaged, and I was comparatively strong. I anxiously inquired of the lieutenant the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... that they cannot be too short; and that if not dwarfish, they must be wild—or at ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... constitution, with vigorous and with steady pulse; temperate, wise, and of good repute; and by perseverance it has become a very giant. Birmingham is, in my mind and in the minds of most men, associated with many giants; and I no more believe that this young institution will turn out sickly, dwarfish, or of stunted growth, than I do that when the glass-slipper of my chairmanship shall fall off, and the clock strike twelve to-night, this hall will be turned into a pumpkin. I found that strong belief upon the splendid array of grace and beauty by ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... one between eight o'clock and a quarter past. The quarter had already struck, and no one had appeared. He turned and gazed at the bronze portal. Only one wing of it was open, and he could see lights beyond. From time to time small groups of dwarfish figures passed into it, as tiny, heedless moths might fly into the yawning jaws of a lion. At last a priest approached the portal from within and beckoned. Benedetto drew ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... more civilisation in articles from the other islands, especially from the eastern, nearer the African continent. In 1834 Fuerteventura yielded, from a depth of six feet, a dwarfish image of a woman with prominent bosom and dressed in the native way: it appeared almost Chinese. A pot of black clay from Palmas showed superior construction. Here, too, in 1762 a cavern produced a basalt plate, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... struggles of the more resolute and enterprising members of the race on every hand. While these endeavors are in many instances healthy and promising in character, the greater multitude are skeleton-like in shape and dwarfish in proportion, indicating to a pitiful degree the lack of blood to supply and brain to conduct the enterprise, it matters little whether it be of the professional or business type. The medical practitioner and undertaker are striking exceptions to the non-prosperous and unsuccessful ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... superior power of reasoning, love for truth, a spirit of inquiry, the capacity of making money by clever trading, an artistic turn of mind, success in life, even in the Church, were only so many proofs that the soul had been sold to some dwarfish or giant messenger from Lucifer, who could appear in a thousand different forms. Man was, since his assumed Fall, the exclusive property of the coarse and vulgar conception of the Evil Spirit. Luther was full of these ideas, he was brought up in this belief, and though ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... hills, many are common to the Mediterranean and the Indian oceans. But while those in the fossil slate and the recent specimens from the tropics correspond in size, individuals of the same species from the Mediterranean are dwarfish and degenerate. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of the thoughts from his own immortal works, for which he was near being thrashed and even stabbed. He still has a craze for singing arias, and accompanies his hideous squalling on a wretched jarring, jangling guitar, all out of tune. His faithful Pylades is an ill-bred dwarfish eunuch, whom the Romans call Pitichinaccio. There is a third member of the company—guess who it is?—Why, none other than the Pyramid Doctor, who kicks up a noise like a melancholy ass and yet fancies he's singing an excellent bass, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... It can be shown," he continues, "that these statements are derived from the writings of a learned scholar of Bonn on the condition of savage nations, the facts of which are based either on the depositions of an African slave of the Doko tribe, a dwarfish people in the south of Shoa, or on the assertions of Bengalese planters, or perhaps on the observations of a sporting adventurer, that a mother and daughter, and at another time a man and woman, were found in India in a semi-animal condition. On the other ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... enthusiasm of indignation.... It was all a dream, the dream of a prosperous comfortable man who had never come to the cutting edge of life. Everywhere cunning, everywhere small feuds and hatreds, distrusts, dishonesties, timidities, feebleness of purpose, dwarfish imaginations, swarm over the great and simple issues.... It is a war now like any other of the mobbing, many-aimed cataclysms that have shattered empires and devastated the world; it is a war without point, a war that has lost its soul, it has become mere incoherent ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... deliberately preferred, steadfastly chosen, and so built into the race, is a blow at real human progress in every particular. In our upward journey we should and do grow larger, leaving far behind us our dwarfish progenitors. Yet the male, in his unnatural position as selector, preferring for reasons both practical and sentimental, to have "his woman" smaller than himself, has deliberately striven to lower the standard of size in the race. We used to read in the novels of the last generation, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... thing. Though suppliants flock from every side The suit of none is e'er denied. Whate'er, where'er howe'er the call, He hears the suit and gives to all. Now with thine own illusive art Perform, O Lord, the helper's part: Assume a dwarfish form, and thus From fear ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in our course, travelling over sandy ridges covered with Eugenia, Exocarpus, and a very pretty Eucalyptus, with rose-coloured flowers and obcordate leaves, and yellow soft bark, also a dwarfish tree with dark green leaves, and axillary racemes of round monospermons, fruit of a purple colour, with a thin rind of a bitter flavour; also a great many trees of moderate size, from fifteen to twenty feet high, of rather pendulous habit, oval lanceolate exstipulate ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... circumstance which struck Grigory particularly, and confirmed a very unpleasant and revolting suspicion. This Lizaveta was a dwarfish creature, "not five foot within a wee bit," as many of the pious old women said pathetically about her, after her death. Her broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She wandered about, summer and winter ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, when the little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in the dwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on one particular evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which the auburn-haired poet was the hero. It was not by any means the only evening of which he was the hero. On many nights those ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... issued a dense smoke spireing high in air and spreading all about the palace; and a few moments after, Peri-Banu who had ceased her conjurations cried, "Lookye my brother Shabbar cometh! canst thou distinguish his form?" The Prince looked up and saw a mannikin in stature dwarfish and no more than three feet high, and with a boss on breast and a hump on back; withal he carried himself with stately mien and majestic air. On his right shoulder was borne his quarter staff of steel thirteen score pounds in weight. His beard was thick and twenty ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... an alphabet or an arithmetic, and whose theology never passes beyond the stage of sorcery. They cause the Tartars to delight in a diet of milk, and the American Indian to abominate it. They make the dwarfish races of Europe instinctive miners and metallurgists. An artificial control over temperature by dwellings, warm for the winter and cool for the summer; variations of clothing to suit the season of the year, and especially the management of fire, have enabled man to maintain ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... land in meadow, whose grass having been lately cut, now lay dotting the slope in cocks; a sinuous line of creamy vapor meandered through the lowlands at the base of the hill; while beyond was a dense grove of dwarfish trees, with here and there a tall tapering dead trunk, peeled of the bark, and overpeering the rest. The vapor wore the semblance of a deep stream of water, imperfectly descried; the grove looked like some closely-clustering town on its ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... sinks down upon the deep. Here Vennachar in silver flows, There, ridge on ridge, Benledi rose; Ever the hollow path twined on, Beneath steep hank and threatening stone; A hundred men might hold the post With hardihood against a host. The rugged mountain's scanty cloak Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak With shingles bare, and cliffs between And patches bright of bracken green, And heather black, that waved so high, It held the copse in rivalry. But where the lake slept ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and jealous eyes. Into this house many comely Abigails had come and gone; but Babet Blais remained in spite of him, having, as she deemed, acquired a wife's settlement and privileges, by virtue of the presence of a dwarfish, swarthy creature, half oaf, half imp, their mutual offspring. This strange being, as if in mockery, for he was ugly from the womb, was named Narcisse, and flitted about the house rather than made it his home; rarely entering it, except in ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... patiently at the rebuff and stole a timid glance at the thinker. Espalin was a lean little, dried-up manikin, with legs, arms, and mustaches disproportionately long for his dwarfish body. His black, wiry hair hung in ragged witchlocks; his black pin-point eyes were glittering, cold, and venomous. He looked, thought Pringle, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... development, and for the most perfect moral maturity? If what is imperfect constitutes the exception in the physical world, why should it be otherwise in the world of mind and of morals? Is it a thing to be preferred, to be stunted, and little, and dwarfish, in our intellectual and moral stature? Or do we prefer a state of childhood to that of a perfect man? If the mind is the measure of the man, and if uprightness constitutes the noblest aspect of life, then our advancement in knowledge and in righteousness should ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Montepulci,—which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's Memoires, under the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... other plants, as I have already had occasion to mention, for taking its place among both the productions of our Alpine heights and of our sea-shores, it will be found that in proportion as its habitat proves ungenial, and its stems and leaves become dwarfish and thin, its little white cruciform flowers increase, till, in localities where it barely exists, as if on the edge of extinction, we find the entire plant forming a dense bundle of seed-vessels, each charged to the full with seed. And in the gay meadows of Orkney, crowded ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... a bridge across the Garigliano which was in the hands of the French, and one day a certain Don Pedro de Pas, a Spanish captain, small and dwarfish in body but great in soul, conceived a plan for obtaining possession of it. With about a hundred horsemen he set off to cross the river by a ford which he knew of, and behind each horseman he had placed a foot-soldier, armed with an "arquebuse." Don Pedro did this ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... in the country, merely by turning the handle of the lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands, to meet the intruder. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... three white beds, And nightcaps, one and nine, On moonlit pillows lay three heads Bemused with dwarfish wine. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... independence of the individual, as to interfere with the great object of all social reform, namely, the development of humanity, the substitution of a race of free, noble, holy men and women, instead of the dwarfish and mutilated specimens ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... end of the inlet, its low, cliffy lining sinks, at both sides, into a beach. A copra warehouse stands in the shadow of the shoreside trees, flitted about for ever by a clan of dwarfish swallows; and a line of rails on a high wooden staging bends back into the mouth of the valley. Walking on this, the new- landed traveller becomes aware of a broad fresh-water lagoon (one arm of which he crosses), and beyond, of a grove of noble palms, sheltering the house of the trader, Mr. Keane. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... because they have had abundance, and variety of food. In all moor becks, plenty of small Trout are found; such waters are excellent for breeding, but as very little nutriment comes from peat or waste lands, they are generally dwarfish in size, and moderate in flavour. On the contrary, in small streams running through a fertile soil, fish are frequently killed of a most satisfactory size and weight. In rapid rivers the beds of which are formed ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... lumber, An elephant of stone? Perhaps the artist may have done His work in such a way, that one Might lug it twice its length; But then to reach yon mountain top, And that without a breathing stop, Were surely past a mortal's strength— Unless, indeed, it be no bigger Than some wee, pigmy, dwarfish figure, Which one would head a cane withal;— And if to this the case should fall, The adventurer's honour would be small! This posting seems to me a trap, Or riddle for some greenish chap; I therefore leave the whole to you.' The doubtful reasoner onward hies. With ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... vine, whose straggling branches spread All o'er the arch; the swelling grapes were red; This Art had made of rubies, clustered so, To the quick'st eye they more than seemed to grow; About the wall lascivious pictures hung, Such as were of loose Ovid sometimes sung. On either side a crew of dwarfish elves Held waxen tapers, taller than themselves: Yet so well shaped unto their little stature, So angel-like in face, so sweet in feature; Their rich attire so differing; yet so well Becoming her that wore it, none could tell Which was the fairest, which ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the low tombs, laden with garlands and crowns of beads, assumed soft tints of charming delicacy. There were some quite white, and others all black, according to the colour of the beads. But the contrast lost much of its force amid the pale green foliage of the dwarfish trees. Poor families exhausted their affection for the dear departed in decking those five-year grants; there were piles of crowns and blooming flowers—freshly brought there on the recent Day of the Dead. Only the cut flowers ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... hall a man of dwarfish stature came towards them. Under the dome of his tiny hat his unshaven face began to smile with pleasure and he was heard to murmur. The eyes were melancholy as ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... it bee but one Cutwolfe, a wearish dwarfish writhen fac'd cobler, brother to Bartoll the Italian, that was confederate with Esdras of Granado, and at that time stole away my curtizan, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... unless there was very good reason for leaving a few inches (never more than six), and I turned my back on him and walked away as I said these cruel words. It seemed a shame to cut these bushy, long-legged, handsome fellows back to dwarfish insignificance and brutish ugliness, but it had to be done. I wanted stocky, thrifty, low-headed business trees, and there was no other way to get them. The trees in the lower, or ten-acre, orchard, were not treated so severely. Their long legs were left, and their bushy tops were only moderately ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... marl, evidently formed originally at the bottom of the Baltic, by the slow growth of the mussel, cockle, and other marine shells of living species, intermixed with some proper to fresh water. The marine shells are all of dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the brackish waters of the Baltic; and the marl, in which many of them are imbedded, is now raised more than 100 feet above the level of the Gulf of Bothnia. Upon the top of this ridge repose several huge erratics, consisting of gneiss for the most part ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... in the mead,— Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom,— And pluck the blossom where the wild bees hum; Then through the broomy bound with ease they pass, And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, Whore dwarfish flowers among the grass are spread, And the lamb browses by the linnet's bed; Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their way O'er its rough bridge—'and there behold the bay!— The ocean smiling to the fervid ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... a white heat—of the Parisian populace. Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would fain have closed his ears. But for his life he dared not. And presently a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature with matted hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... produce the same effects as among animals. Some division of labour takes place; the swiftest hunt, the less active fish, or gather fruits; food is, to some extent, exchanged or divided. The action of natural selection is therefore checked; the weaker, the dwarfish, those of less active limbs, or less piercing eyesight, do not suffer the extreme penalty which falls upon animals ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... this Horde of dwarfish, blue, warty, misformed little horrors woke to the presence of the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... for it does not often fall to the lot of mortal man to find in one little, insignificant figure, dwarfish alike in soul and body, such a compound of selfishness, duplicity, meanness, and vulgarity, as was centered in the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... tin. Then they built great roaring fires, to smelt the ore into ingots. They would show the teachers that the Dutch kabouters could make bells, as well as the men in the lands of the South. These dwarfish people are jealous of men and very proud of ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... much anxiety and trouble of mind by this satisfactory arrangement. Nous avons change tout cela. Modern refinement requires that the chief character shall be made interesting in spite of his being dwarfish, plain-featured, and a victim to pulmonary or some more prosaic disease. Clearly we are right. What is the use of advancing civilization if it does not correct our taste? What have we to do with the "manners and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the Pyrenean Alps; in its wild state it is more dwarfish than our figure represents it, its foliage more woolly, and enriched with various tints, which the plant loses on cultivation; such specimens I saw in the possession of Dr. R. HALIFAX, of Albemarle-Street, who gathered ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... a king in Scotland, A fell man to his foes, He smote the Picts in battle, He hunted them like roes. Over miles of the red mountain He hunted as they fled, And strewed the dwarfish bodies Of the dying ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... species has been confused with the Persian walnut, although the two are quite unlike. This is a dwarfish species with dull green rough leaflets often as many as 15 or 17 per leaf, which often bears nuts in clusters of a dozen or more. While green the outer hulls of the nuts are rough, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... name of d'Artagnan in the legends I already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year before in a work of Miss Yonge's. My first perusal was in one of those pirated editions that swarmed at that time out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish volumes. I understood but little of the merits of the book; my strongest memory is of the execution of d'Eymeric and Lyodot—a strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the side hair; the eye-brows joined in a beautiful curve over the dilated, densely black pupils, full but steady. The eyes of the dark woman in the dream were not so enchanting. Then Surja Mukhi's features were not similar. The dream figure was dwarfish; Surja Mukhi rather tall, her figure swaying with the beauty of the honeysuckle creeper. The dream figure was beautiful, but Surja Mukhi was a hundredfold more so. The dream figure was not more than twenty years of age; Surja Mukhi was nearly twenty-six. Kunda ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... Kamon no Kami, one of the great actors in recent historic events, who was assassinated not far off, outside the Sakaruda gate of the castle. Besides these, barracks, parade-grounds, policemen, kurumas, carts pulled and pushed by coolies, pack-horses in straw sandals, and dwarfish, slatternly-looking soldiers in European dress, made up the Tokiyo that I saw between Shinbashi ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... thy contracted home, A sterile rock round which the billows foam! How well consorts it with thy dwarfish soul, That owns ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... "Innovation" cabin-box reared itself on end like a dwarfish obelisk; a fat hold-all adorned each mud-guard, where it lay like an underdone suet pudding; the two huge dressing-bags had been pushed under the corner seats of the tonneau, which fortunately was of generous dimensions, while the third and smallest one (no doubt Miss Destrey's) was so ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... flourish as a grand passion for any length of time. It must reach its outlet quickly and attain to its ambition without overmuch delay, else it shrivels and withers to a mere stubborn, perhaps lifelong, enmity—a dwarfish, mulish thing, devoid of any tragic splendour. But up to the point that John Grimbal had reached as yet, his character, though commonplace in most affairs, had unexpectedly quickened to a condition quite profound ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... day amongst my people, and I found two precious things: one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough, and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... fiery energy in his look, a ring of half-desperate hope in his deep voice, which moved her to strange thoughts. His face, too, was changed and ennobled, his gestures larger, even his small stature ceased, for once, to seem dwarfish and gnome-like. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Mign'on, a beautiful, dwarfish, fairy-like Italian girl, in love with Wilhelm, her protector. She glides before us in the mazy dance, or whirls her tambourine like an Ariel. Full of fervor, full of love, full of rapture, she is overwhelmed with the torrent of despair at finding her ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to Nancy's dwarfish plainness was what peculiarly provoked James Cheshire. He might have laughed at the criticisms on his wife, though the envious neighbors' wives did say that it was the old servant and not Mrs. Cheshire who produced ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... little later when my own present came, and I heard my one pig and eight miserable pine-apples being counted out like guineas. In the four corners of the yard and along one wall, there are make-shift, dwarfish, Samoan houses or huts, which have been run up since Captain Wurmbrand came to accommodate the chiefs. Before that they were all crammed into the six cells, and locked in for the night, some of them with dysentery. They are wretched constructions enough, but sanctified ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chestnut trees are dwarfish in habit, come into bearing early, the nuts are generally large and some of them of pretty good quality. They may be planted as fillers between the trees of larger growth. The nuts may be bought of importers. (See circular on "Seedsmen and Nurserymen".) ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... perceiue that she hath made compare Betweene our statures, she hath vrg'd her height, And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height (forsooth) she hath preuail'd with him. And are you growne so high in his esteeme, Because I am so dwarfish, and so low? How low am I, thou painted May-pole? Speake, How low am I? I am not yet so low, But that my nailes can reach vnto ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... discolored potato-vines. As we went on the scene grew more and more gloomy. The tillage is in cleared spots not so large as the heaps of stones that surround them, or on bits of practicable soil left by land-slides in the midst of their hideous debris. The only trees are dwarfish pollards, reduced to bare trunks with thin tufts of green atop by the practice of stripping off the sprouts every two or three years to make fodder for the goats. Midway up the valley we passed the village of Violins. It seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... awe-struck as I gazed at the shrivelled and dwarfish bodies, the long, ape-like arms, and huge disproportioned heads, from which fell their hair in snaky tangles, black ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... figured from the eighteenth dynasty to Roman times, yet retained a foreign character. He is a dwarfish, clumsy figure, wearing a feline skin on his back, with the tail hanging down to his heels. A female figure wearing the feline skin similarly is known from the twelfth dynasty. Rarely female forms ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... young lamb or kid? And even the young plant—what think you would be the effect, if its leaves and branches could not move gently with the soft breezes? Would the fluids circulate, and health be promoted: or would they stagnate, and a morbid, sickly and dwarfish state ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... oak is left behind, and the pine grows stunted and dwarfish. The wind blows colder and colder. A wintry aspect is ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the notable trio was the dwarfish fool with his shaggy black head, twisted mouth, and watchful, wandering eye, whose foolishness was but the flaunting cover of shrewd observation and trenchant vision. Going where he would, and saying what he listed, now in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... far surpassed. The water spouted upwards with indescribable force and bulk; one pillar rose higher than the other; each seemed to emulate the other. When I had in some measure recovered from the surprise, and regained composure, I looked at the tent. How little, how dwarfish it seemed as compared to the height of these pillars of water! And yet it was about twenty feet high. It did, indeed, lie ten feet lower than the basin of the Geyser; but if tent had been raised above tent, these ten feet could only be deducted once, and I calculated, though my calculation may not ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... their religion, which they apprehended was in danger. The truth is, that the Basques cared nothing for Carlos or Rome, and merely took up arms to defend certain rights and privileges of their own. For the dwarfish brother of Ferdinand they always exhibited supreme contempt, which his character, a compound of imbecility, cowardice, and cruelty, well merited. If they made use of his name, it was merely as a cri de guerre. Much the same may be said with respect to his Spanish partisans, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Capt. Stephen Spike, of the brigantine Molly Swash?" called out the little, dumpling-looking person, in a cracked, dwarfish sort of a voice, that was admirably adapted to his appearance. Our captain fairly started; turned full toward the speaker; regarded him intently for a moment; and gulped the words he was about to utter, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... him, "O thou refuse of brokers, meseemeth thou art mad, in that thou showest me this hour past, first to a pair of greybeards, in each of whom are two faults, and then thou proferrest me to my lord Shihab al-Din wherein be three defects; and thirdly, he is dwarfish, secondly, he hath a nose which is big, and thirdly, he hath a beard which is long. Of him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... don't know when. If I did but know when, I should be so wonderfully clear about it all! At present I can't see even so much as the Simplon in consequence of certain farewell readings and a certain new book (just begun) interposing their dwarfish shadow. But whenever (if ever) I change 'going' into 'coming,' I ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... scarcely larger than swallows' nests? these green canopies, overgrown with moss? He pinched himself, and gazed again. Countless flowers nodded to him, and seemed, like himself, on tiptoe with curiosity, he thought. He beckoned one of the busy, dwarfish little brownies toward him. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... complex structure of sentence was perhaps a pleasant contrast to an ear saturated with the Gallicised neatness of Addison and Pope. Unluckily, the secret of the old majestic cadence was hopelessly lost. Johnson, though spiritually akin to the giants, was the firmest ally and subject of the dwarfish dynasty which supplanted them. The very faculty of hearing seems to change in obedience to some mysterious law at different stages of intellectual development; and that which to one generation is delicious music is to another ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... stripes of yellow and red and blue and green: his face was dark as a raincloud, he had one large round eye, white tusks protruded from his lips, and he carried a gaily painted urn. His unspeakable attendants leaped like frogs. The jolliest looking of all the warriors came thereafter, with a dwarfish body and very short legs; he had a huge black-bearded head, a flat nose, and his tongue hung from his mouth and waggled as he moved. He wore a belt and a necklace, and nothing else whatever except the plumes ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... rush of the sunshine,—the constant loom of the mystery. One understands then why the early men feared the plains when it was dark, and huddled themselves together in the hills. Who could say what ugly, dwarfish things, what evil fairies, what dangerous dead men might climb up over the rim of the world? A man was not afraid of the grey wolf, or even the huge beast that trumpeted in the morass by the great water when the light was at his ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... mean to accept the proposal, or not," she consequently said, "you can anyhow speak nicely. It isn't worth the while dragging this one in and involving that one! The proverb adequately says: 'In the presence of a dwarf one mustn't speak of dwarfish things!' Here you've been heaping insult upon me, but I didn't presume to retaliate. These two young ladies have however given you no provocation whatever; and yet by referring, as you've done, in this way and that way to secondary wives how can ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... suddenly spread out below us the vale of Monteith, with "far Loch Ard and Aberfoil" in the center and the huge front of Ben Venue filling up the picture. Taking courage from this, we hurried on. The heather had become stunted and dwarfish, and the ground was covered with short brown grass. The mountain-sheep which we saw looking at us from the rock above had worn so many paths along the side that we could not tell which to take, but pushed on in the direction of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Burghley, then twenty-five years of age.—He had no official capacity, but was sent by his father, that he might improve his diplomatic talents, and obtain some information as to the condition of the Netherlands. A slight, crooked, hump-backed young gentleman, dwarfish in stature, but with a face not irregular in feature, and thoughtful and subtle in expression, with reddish hair, a thin tawny beard, and large, pathetic, greenish-coloured eyes, with a mind and manners already trained to courts and cabinets, and with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... touched me sorrowfully. You remember my speaking of a Miss Kavanagh, a young authoress, who supported her mother by her writings. Hearing from Mr. Williams that she had a longing to see me, I called on her yesterday. I found a little, almost dwarfish figure, to which even I had to look down; not deformed—that is, not hunch-backed, but long-armed and with a large head, and (at first sight) a strange face. She met me half-frankly, half-tremblingly; we sat down together, and when I had talked with her five minutes, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... complexion, he came ashore, exhausted and unshaved, from a long boat passage, and lay down to sleep in the home of the parish schoolmaster. But he had been seen landing. The inhabitants had identified him for a Pict, as, by some singular confusion of name, they called the dark and dwarfish aboriginal people of the land. Immediately the obscure ferment of a race-hatred, grown into a superstition, began to work in their bosoms, and they crowded about the house and the room-door with fearful ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glories of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed! Oh! what are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of this altered and humbled world—the world of meaner and dwarfish men—to him whose realms are peopled with ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stone, whereas the stone of the imperial gage is "oval and pointed at both ends." These trees also differ in their manner of growth: "the greengage is a very short- jointed, slow-growing tree, of spreading and rather dwarfish habit;" whilst its offspring, the imperial gage, "grows freely and rises rapidly, and has long dark shoots." The famous Washington plum bears a globular fruit, but its offspring, the emerald drop, is nearly as much ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... by a master's hand, disposing well The gay diversities of leaf and flower, Must lend its aid to illustrate all their charms, And dress the regular yet various scene. Plant behind plant aspiring, in the van The dwarfish, in the rear retired, but still Sublime above the rest, the statelier stand. So once were ranged the sons of ancient Rome, A noble show, while Roscius trod the stage; And so, while Garrick, as ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... was otherwise that Fate would have it. For the dwarf parried with his little arms the grip of those monstrous hands, and gradually working along the enormous limbs came at length to the giant's body where by dwarfish cunning he obtained a grip; and turning Plash-Goo about, as a spider does some great fly, till his little grip was suitable to his purpose, he suddenly lifted the giant over his head. Slowly at first, by the edge of that precipice whose base ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany |
