"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tops of their frowning walls, appear piled from both sides to the center of the street. It seems that a touch would now send the shattered masses left standing, down upon the people below, who look up to them and shrink together as the tremor of the earthquake again passes under them, and the mysterious reverberations swell and roll along, like some infernal drumbeat summoning them to die. It passes away, and again is experienced ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... larger view which later events gradually forced upon her vision. The words above quoted are strong, perhaps too strong, but if we are true lovers of our country and race and of our fellow creatures everywhere, we shall not shrink from any such warnings, though their wording may seem exaggerated. For we have a debt to pay back to South Africa; and if we cannot resume our solemn responsibilities towards her and her millions of native peoples, in a chastened, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... With what wistful look did be eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet, and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast howling among ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Eustace had walked to the lodge with him, and she had rushed after and joined him after he was in the town. And at luncheon Eustace fell on me with entreaties that I would come with him and help him meet "this parson," whom he seemed to dread unreasonably, as, in fact, he always did shrink from doing anything alone when he could get a helper. I thought this would be, at least, as queer as Dora's nursing of the other brother; but it seemed so hard for the poor man, coming down in his anxiety, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had stood up, expressed the utmost amazement, and this gradually, under the lion glance, became more and more of dismay, quailing, collapsing visibly under the passionless gravity of that look. Even the tall form seemed to shrink, the eyes dilated, the brows drew closer together, and the chest seemed to pant, as the relic was held forth. There was a dead silence throughout the court as the King ceased to speak; only he continued to bend that searching ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gatherings there was a simple petition offered to the Giver of all good that He should guard them during the night from the crimeful visitations of wicked men who coveted that which did not belong to them, and who did not shrink from murder in order to get it. Captain Wilkins had a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer, and was therefore staggered when he realized about two o'clock one morning that a giant of coppery colour stood over him with a revolver, while his compatriots helped themselves to all that was ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... not shrink from the trouble of transcribing the whole letter, if a complete copy were only to be found in the short-lived columns of a newspaper, as inserted in the Record of May 15, 1843, by Merle d'Aubigne; but the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... setting sun cast film-like webs of yellow and gold through the forest as he turned in the direction of camp. It was that hour in which a wonderful quiet falls upon the wilderness, the last minutes between night and day, when all wild life seems to shrink in suspensive waiting for the change. Seven months had taught Roscoe a quiet of his own. His moccasined feet made no sound. His head was bent, his shoulders had a tired droop, and his eyes searched for nothing in the mystery about him. His heart seemed weighted ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... builded out of helpers and aids. And though here and now the honors and successes all go to the one giant, and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the great man's position shrink and shrivel! ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... more comprehensive view of the whole subject, with a more thorough investigation into the original purposes and objects of that Constitution, and especially after a more thorough exposition of those objects and purposes by those who framed it, and have been trusted to administer it, I should not shrink even from that imputation. I hope I know more of the Constitution of my country than I did when I was twenty years old. I hope I have contemplated its great objects more broadly. I hope I have read with deeper interest the sentiments of the great men who framed it. I hope ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... carrack, laden with pearls and spices, brocades and precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an attack. It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple of the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two. But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an encounter—whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from leading a forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a Portuguese armada. The carrack, more than one thousand ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... shore. He too returns, after a long period, but he brings with him the fatal gift of his Northern bride—a hand of ice. He may be strong and brave still, as he was when he went away; but he is no longer the peerless and envied warrior. Men look upon him with a ghostly shudder, and women shrink back from his chilling presence. Not even Freja can thaw away all the ice that has gathered in his veins. He may chastise the robber Ruric from the hills, and sleep once more in the warm embrace ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... fixed on Orion; she saw how pale he turned at seeing the young widow, she saw him start as though suddenly overcome by some emotion—what, she could not guess—and shrink back from the sunlit vision in the window. These were effects which the worthy matron ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I think. I hope you take Spedding into your Counsel; he might be induced to look over one Play at a time though he might shrink from all in a Body; and I scarce ever heard him conning a page of Shakespeare but he suggested something which was an improvement—on Shakespeare himself, if not on his Editors—though don't [tell] Spedding that I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... He was tempted to make the try, anyway, and find out for himself if Jim Weston was as desperate a character as he had been painted. He could do no more than kill him, and he did not fear death. Had he not often faced it on the field of battle, and why should he shrink now? ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... communication to make that afternoon, to one of their class, and now that the time had come were inclined to shrink ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... should take the deepest interest in the goings-on of his time is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the morning's new And the air is gold and the distance blue, There's a pull at the heart! But best of all Is to see the sun shrink, red and small, While the fog steals in (more surely fleet Than the smacks that run from her white-shod feet) And clamours of startled calls arise From bewildered ships that have lost their eyes; ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... So, when the war has raised a storm, I've seen a snake in human form, All stain'd with infamy and vice, Leap from the dunghill in a trice, Burnish and make a gaudy show, Become a general, peer, and beau, Till peace has made the sky serene, Then shrink into its hole again. "All this we grant—why then, look yonder, Sure that must be a Salamander!" Further, we are by Pliny told, This serpent is extremely cold; So cold, that, put it in the fire, 'Twill make the very flames expire: Besides, it spues a filthy froth (Whether thro' ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... name can I tender you? How else can I love you? Yet you may well shrink from the name: have I not said we are but poor things? Yet there is a power that ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... 16. "He lies him down by the rivers side."—Walker's Particles, p. 99. "My desire has been for some years past, to retire myself to some of our American plantations."—Cowley's Pref. to his Poems, p. vii. "I fear me thou wilt shrink from the payment of it."—Zenobia, i, 76. "We never recur an idea, without acquiring some combination."—Rippingham's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of it; your Karma is inextricably interwoven with the great Karma. And before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it, when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... the quarter strikes! Call loud Rip up all my bleeding wounds, and shrink not! Yet think 'tis I that answer, God that hears! To every wretch in chains sleep is permitted: I, I alone, am robb'd of this last refuge Of sinking nature! Hark! Again they thunder! Again they iterate yells of Trenck ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Sheffield and Birmingham. And every man who knows where he was educated knows his creed, knows every argument of his creed, every book that he reads, and just what he amounts to intellectually, and knows he will shrink and shrivel, and become solemnly stupid day after day until he meets with death. It is all wrong; it is cruel. Those men should be allowed to grow. They should have the air of liberty and the sunshine ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... for my late friend, Lady Alvanley, the arrangement of whose funeral devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, where, and with respect to whom I should next hear those solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which is my duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this day over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that men seem to be doing and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... ourselves in matters too high for us? not content with knowing that our Father wills it, but presumptuously seeking to know how it is, and why it is. If it be unfair to pronounce on the unfinished and incompleted works of man; if the painter, or sculptor, or artificer, would shrink from having his labours judged of when in a rough, unpolished, immatured state; how much more so with the works of God? How we should honour Him by a simple, confiding, unreserved submission to His will,—contented patiently to wait the fulfilment ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... of great strength belonging to the son of Subala. Scorching thy army, the son of Pandu then destroyed a century of foremost cars and several hundreds of foot-soldiers in that battle. Scorched by the Sun as also by the high-souled Bhima, thy army began to shrink like a piece of leather spread over a fire. Those troops of thine, O bull of Bharata's race, filled with anxiety through fear of Bhimasena, avoided Bhima in that battle and fled away in all directions. Then five hundred car-warriors, cased in excellent mail, rushed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... appeal; but it sufficed. There seemed to be expressed in it the knowledge bred by immemorial experience and immemorial time: This law before which we stand was not made by us! As dogs, when they hear the crack of a far whip, will shrink, and in their whole bearing show wary quietude, so Hughs and Mrs. Hughs, confronted by the questionings of Law, made only such answers as could be dragged from them. In a voice hardly above a whisper Mrs. Hughs told her tale. They had fallen out. What about? She did not know. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the same fearlessness of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... fell short of the test of manhood which she believed that the times demanded. If underneath all his apparent changes for the better there was an innate lack of courage to meet danger and hardship, or else a cold, calculating purpose not to take these risks, she would shrink from him in strong repulsion. She knew that the war had developed not a few constitutional cowards,—men to be pitied, it is true, but with a commiseration that, in her case, would be mingled with contempt. On the other hand, if he reasoned, "I will win her if I can; I will do all and more than ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... eye To where his sacred relics lie, Nor can the weeping Burmans come To shed their tears around his tomb. And when their work on earth is done, No mourning daughter, wife, or son Can rest from toil the weary head, Beside him in his ocean bed. But while we shrink from such a grave, He rests as sweetly 'neath the wave As though in Auburn's bowers he lay, Where sunbeams through green branches play, And roses, wet with tear drops, bloom Around th' unconscious sleeper's tomb. Let no rude ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... The phantom Prince vanished suddenly from before him, and his own Veil that Blinds rose in darkening folds across his eyes. The Veil that Chokes swept across his mouth, and his turbulent voice was stilled. He began to shrink upward, to waver and fade, and presently he drifted helplessly into the great smoke dome and was swallowed ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... unsteadily, "night, all of you. You may say that I've been drinking. Nothing of the kind. The man who says I've been drinking lies. Experiment. Nothing in the world but a lot of experiments which a braver man than I would shrink from. Sartoris, if you say I am drunk, then I say that you ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... some horrid monster, of which the child had dreamed, With nodding head, and waving arms, the angry creature seemed; It threatened her, it mocked at her, with gestures and grimace That made her shrink with terror, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... who fired the fatal shot; and though it was shown that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the crowd now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... readjusted things for Edith; she forgot that strange consciousness which had made her shrink from his careless touch; she had no impulse to say "sir"; she was back again at the point at which the red-cheeked lady had broken in upon their lives. She said, frowning: "My! I did want some ice cream. I wish you hadn't given the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... for my want of caution, for I have been in bondage ever since. My tacit admission that I cared for Mr. Cunliffe has given Etta a cruel hold over me; my thoughts do not seem my own. She knows how to wound me: one word from her makes me shrink into myself. Sometimes I think she takes a pleasure in my secret misery,—that she was only acting a part when she pretended to sympathise with me. Oh, what a weak fool I have been, Ursula, to put myself in the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her mind could not disentangle itself from the load which had been flung upon it—could not recover its healthiness of action amid the phantom sights and sounds which beset imagination. Again and again she must ask him for details—and shrink from the answers; must hide her eyes with the little moan that wrung his heart; and break out in ejaculations, as though of bewilderment, under a revelation so singular ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stranger caught sight of the blood. He did not shrink, but an interested look at once came to ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... have known several of his heroes who were very little men. Dr. Mead had nothing but pretensions; and Philip Carteret Webb was a sorry knave, with still less foundation. To what a slender total do those shrink who are the idols of their own age! How very few are known at all at the end of the next century! But there is a chapter in Voltaire that would cure any body of being a great man even in his own eyes. It is a chapter in which a Chinese goes into ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... (going up to him). Oswald, what is the matter with you? (OSWALD seems to shrink up in the chair; all his muscles relax; his face loses its expression, and his eyes stare stupidly. MRS. ALVING is trembling with terror.) What is it! (Screams.) Oswald! What is the matter with you! (Throws herself on her knees ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... the few young officers you had been pleased to send me," (Elliott, the second in command, did not arrive till the squadron was over the bar), "with the few seamen I had, and as many volunteers as I could muster from the militia. I did not shrink from this responsibility; but, Sir, at that very moment I surely did not anticipate the receipt of a letter in every line of which is an insult." He then renewed his request. "I am willing to forego that reward which I have considered for two months past almost within my grasp." ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Please us or pain, according to the thought We take of them. Some smile at their own death, Which most do shrink from, as beast of prey It kills to look upon. But you, who take Such pity of the deer, whence follows it You hunt more costly game?—the comely maid, To wit, that ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... couldn't keep on here. I couldn't. What we call civilization is too sickening to me. I should simply go off my nut. And when you come to that, it's an awful complication, besides the suffering of it. That I shrink from, too. I'm talking a good deal, but actually it's the thing I least want to do. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... roughly formed with their own axes, and fastened together with wooden pins and leather thongs, not a nail being used. The tires of the wheels are made of buffalo hide, and put on wet. When they become dry, they shrink, and are so tight that they never fall off, and last as long as the cart holds together. The carts contain the women and children, and provisions, and are intended to bring back the spoils of the chase. Each is decorated with some ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... If ye suffer in this manner, be ye not ashamed, but glorify God. Here he makes the suffering and anguish the more welcome, because it is great, insomuch that we praise God through it, and because we are not worthy of it. Yet now all will shrink therefrom. Of what advantage is it to embrace the cross in monasteries? The cross of Christ does not save me. I must, indeed, believe in His cross, but I must myself bear my own cross. His suffering must I experience inwardly, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... strawberries, those which are of medium size and rather dark in color are best for canning; in fact, very large, light-colored strawberries will shrink more than any other kind. The berries are washed in the same way as other berries, but they should not be allowed to stand in water for any length of time, because this will tend to make them soft and mushy. Strawberries must be stemmed after they are washed, and for this purpose a strawberry ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... to be expected that a ruler like Nicholas would shrink from war. On July 7, he despatched Prince Michael Gortschakov, together with two army divisions of 40,000 men each, respectively commanded by Generals Lueders and Danneberg, across the Pruth, with orders to hold the Danube principalities ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... great Britain, and wandered from one place to another, there and on the continent. At length they found their way to Syria. One day they saw an Eastern shepherd come down to a stream, and call his flock to cross. The sheep came down to the brink, and looked at the water; but they seemed to shrink from it, and he could not get them to respond to his call. He then took a little lamb, put it under one arm; he took another lamb and put it under the other arm, and thus passed into the stream. The old sheep no longer stood looking at the water: they ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... than an earthquake, or a battery of cannon, to change the position of a single stone. A large and solid bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc, appears by comparison to shrink into insignificance, and shelter itself behind the old Roman arches, the lower tier of which, eleven in number, overtop it in height by about three-fifths. The span of the largest arch is about 78 feet; ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... heart that will firmly stand, When the storm of affliction shall lower— A hand that will never shrink, if grasped, In ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... of poetry about this—a new sort of poetry about a new sort of war. And it might possibly be proved that such poetry could only come from a people so bred to arms that they do not shrink, even in imagination, from the uses to which arms must be put—a people in love with war, having a mystical feeling for its instruments, such as their remote ancestors had for ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what he was ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recover all his diseased and maimed obligations. Every term he sets up a tenters in Westminster Hall, upon which he racks and stretches gentlemen like English broadcloth, beyond the staple of the wool, till the threads crack, and that causeth them with the least wet to shrink, and presently to wear bars. Marry, he handles a citizen (at least if himself be one) like a piece of Spanish cloth, gives him only a twitch, and strains him not too hard, knowing how apt he is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... me through the body for impertinence before he has time to appreciate the delicacy of my mission, I may be able to convince him that a well-to-do wife is worth the respectable consideration of a hard-up captain of Chasseurs. I say I may be able to convince him; but I shrink from the impudence of the encounter. I am to accost a total stranger in a foreign army and tell him to return to his wife. This is the pretty little mission I have undertaken. It sounded glorious and eumoirous and quixotic and deucedly funny, during the noble moment of inspiration, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... taxation, contracted a new debt of a hundred millions of dollars, to give freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African. I know not that history records an act so disinterested, so sublime. In the progress of ages, England's naval triumphs will shrink into a more and more narrow space in the records of our race—this moral triumph will fill a broader—brighter page." "Take care!" emphatically added Sir Robert Peel, "that this brighter page be not sullied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... as much as heart can think, Welcome again, as much as tongue can tell, Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink. God thee preserve, we pray, and wish ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as, for instance, Squaw Valley, which lies between the spurs of Squaw Peak and Granite Chief. This was undoubtedly scooped out by a glacier that came down from Squaw Peak and Granite Chief. The course of the ice-sheet was down to the Truckee River. When the glacier began to shrink it left its terminal moraine as a dam between the basin above and the river below. In due time, as the glacier finally receded to a mere bank of half-glacierized snow on the upper portions of the two peaks, the basin filled up with water and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... enlargement of concentric curves. The lines start at the center and expand until they disappear in the periphery. If we look for a minute or two into this play of the expanding curves and then turn our eyes to the face of a neighbor, we see at once how the features of the face begin to shrink. It looks as if the whole face were elastically drawn toward its center. If we revolve the disk in the opposite direction, the curves seem to move from the edge of the disk toward the center, becoming smaller and smaller, and if then we look toward ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... life that we should cling to it so? It is not the pleasures, for those whose hours are one long pain shrink away screaming when they see merciful Death holding his soothing arms out for them. It is not the associations, for we will change all of them before we walk of our own free wills down that broad road which every son and daughter of man must tread. Is it the fear of losing ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... respect. And he had been good to his father and mother, regarding with something of true veneration the nest from which he had sprung. The Vicar did not like the task before him, dreading the disappointment which failure would produce; but he was not the man to shrink from any work which he had resolved to undertake, and drove gallantly into the farmyard, though he saw both the farmer and his wife standing at ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... establishing a romance, with a compulsory bride for the heroine. Yet to me it seemed as if there was something strange about her. A vague terror appeared to beset her. Even in her most loving moments, when resting in my arms, she would shrink away from me, and shudder as if some cold wind had suddenly struck upon her. That it was caused by no aversion to me was evident, for she would the moment after, as if to make amends, give me one of those voluntary kisses that ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... on thee, and think That thou has ceased to hold me dear; I cannot break the loosened link: When thou, my only one, art near, How can I shrink? ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... especially in England, where great paleontologists and geologists arose whose work culminated in that of Lyell. Specialists throughout all the world now became more vigorous than ever, gathering facts and thinking upon them in a way which caused the special creation theory to shrink more and more. Broader and more full became these various rivulets, soon to unite in one great ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... state of nutrition. This may have resulted from a severe and long-continued disease or from lack of proper feed and care. When an animal is emaciated—that is, becomes thin—there is first a loss of fat and later the muscles shrink. By observing the amount of shrinkage in the muscles one has some indication as to the duration of the unfavorable conditions under ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... this to be one reason why I shrink from society; why I have so often refused kind invitations; why, though I love my personal friends as strongly and as truly as any man's friends are ever loved, I have so steadily withdrawn from social parties, dinners, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... not of Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a cafe on the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... society—is seen in the lack of that depth and strength of tone, and that heartiness and robustness of temper, which characterize a mind into which the personality of God, and the responsibility of man cut sharply, and which does not cowardly shrink from a severe and salutary moral consciousness.... The intensely theistic character of the philosophy of Coleridge is rooted and grounded in the Personal and the Spiritual, and not in the least in the Impersonal and the Natural. Drawing in the outset, as we have remarked above, a distinct and broad ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... should embrace; Behold it, love, and thy keen eyes may trace Faint figures wrought upon the ruddy gold; My father dying gave it me, nor told The manner of its making, but I know That it can make thee e'en as thou art now Despite the laws of God—shrink not from me Because I give an impious gift to thee— Has not God made me also, who do this? But I, who longed to share with thee my bliss, Am of the fays, and live their changeless life, And, like the gods ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... and there was a threat in his face. She did not shrink from him for a moment. She laid her white hands upon my shoulders, and she looked ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saying that he must pick and choose his customers, and he did so, excising the names of such as he did not think would add to his reputation. Rank and wealth disputed the honor of being his customers. The haughtiest dames did not shrink from entrusting to him secrets of form and figure, which they even hid from their husbands. They endured without shrinking the touch of his coarse hands as he measured them. He was the rage, and his showrooms were a species of neutral ground, where women of all circles of ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... with feelings ill suppressed, beheld her shrink from the contact. She appeared to push her cousin off with small effort to disguise her loathing, and fled to Garrison as ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... host of his comrades, avoiding death. And even as a man that hath seen a serpent in a mountain glade starteth backward and trembling seizeth his feet beneath him, and he retreateth back again, and paleness hath hold of his cheeks, even so did godlike Alexandros for fear of Atreus' son shrink back into the throng of lordly Trojans. But Hector beheld and upbraided him with scornful words: "Ill Paris, most fair in semblance, thou deceiver woman-mad, would thou hadst been unborn and died unwed. Yea, that were my desire, and it were far better than thus to be our shame and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... possesses most of the information of his age will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. Such is the case with a large portion of the European peasantry. The multitude of objects that surround ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... miles. It seemed that there remained no way of settling the dispute except an appeal to arms; and from such an appeal Hastings, confident of his influence over his countrymen in India, was not inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of the garrison at Fort William and of all the neighbouring stations to obey no orders but his. At the same time, with admirable judgment, he offered to submit the case to the Supreme Court, and to abide by its decision. By making this proposition ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the supreme power, through the puppet queen whom he had ready at hand to place upon the throne. An Italian of the sixteenth century, steeped in the traditions of the bloody and insidious state-craft of Milan and the Lombard cities, Cardan would naturally shrink from committing himself to any such perilous utterance: all the more for the reason that he had already formed an estimate of the English as a fierce and cruel people. With his character as a magician to maintain he could scarcely keep entire ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... touched his, and he whirled to his right to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had been unable to successfully shield his thoughts. Tebron dropped to the ground and sent a quick, cool order to his own guards: "Kill him." The heavy, dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to shrink back further into the shadows. He ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... good intention toward him, and did wait for him in the street." It appears that Mountford had already heard of the attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, and hearing that Lord Mohun and Captain Hill were in the street, did not shrink from approaching them." ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... conforms to the type of the species, as do also the phenomena which it exhibits, and it can assimilate food, grow and multiply. If, during the observation, a small crystal of salt be placed in the fluid, changes almost instantly take place. Motion ceases, the amoebae appear to shrink into smaller compass, and they become more granular and opaque. If they remain a sufficiently long time in this fluid, they do not regain their usual condition when placed again in fresh water. None of the phenomena which characterized the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... claimed his presence in various quarters. Spain was already revolted to the younger Pompey; Rome was unaccustomed to the bridle, and impatient of it, and would therefore be ready to rise in insurrection upon any turn of affairs. As for themselves, they ought not to shrink from the danger; and in this might take example from their enemy, who so freely exposes his life to effect the most unrighteous designs, yet never can hope for so happy a conclusion, as they may promise themselves; for notwithstanding the uncertainty of war, they will be sure ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hotel is rebuilt by this time, or rather has grown somewhat old. Probably you are there indeed. Just tell us exactly. Pen is trying his best to entice us his way, which means to Primiero and Venice; but the laziness of age is subduing me, and how I shrink from the 'middle passage,'—all that day and night whirling from London to Basle, with the eleven or twelve hours to Milan. Milan opens on Paradise, but the getting to Milan! Perhaps I shall turn northward and go to Scotland after all. Still, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtually confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his affection, such a treasure of indulgence ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... caress, far from waking in Eleanor a responsive feeling, caused her to shrink further away from ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... will not shrink from the danger and toil of penetrating the polar basin, will shrink from the trouble of doing their own thinking, and put themselves, like Captain Poke, under the convoy ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beloved. My tendency is to beat up against it like a crying child. Not that this emotional impulse is the best for turning the key and obtaining safe conclusions,—no. I did not write before because I always do shrink from touching my own griefs, one feels at first so sore that nothing but stillness is borne. It is only after, when one is better, that one can express one's self at all. This is so with me, at least, though perhaps it ought not to be ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... lowered our strength standards as it is, and presently labour will be called to do no more than press buttons in the midst of a roaring hell of machines. The people won't want no more strength than a daddy-long-legs; they that do the work will shrink away till they're gristle and bones, like grasshoppers. And the next thing will be that they'll not be wanted either, but all will be done by just a handful of skilled creatures, that can work the machines from ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... to look at the man she had stabbed. "O Jupiter, no blood!" is apt to be the instinct, I suspect, even in very villainous feminine natures, and those who are and those who are not cowards alike shrink from sights ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... gallopade along the line, we plunge into a plantation. Long vistas of straggling trees—and leaf-strewn pathways winding in among them—give way to scattered clumps of firs and tangled masses of fern and brushwood, while broken fences come dancing up between, and then shrink down again behind rising knolls covered with a sudden growth of gorse and heather. A pit yawns into a pond; the pond squeezes itself longways into a thin ditch, which turns off sharply at a corner, and leaves a dreamy-looking cow occupying its place. Then a gate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... walls will tend to yield and be pressed inwards; and the yielding will be greater in the deeper parts (supposing the whole to be equally moistened) from the greater weight of the superincumbent soil which has to be raised, than in the parts near the surface. When the ground dries, the walls will shrink a little and the burrows will be a little enlarged. Their enlargement, however, through the lateral contraction of the ground, will not be favoured, but rather opposed, by the ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... buoyancy and force of his mood that seemed to make Catherine shrink into herself. She would not pursue the subject of Westmoreland. She asked with a little stiffness whether he had good news from ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in. This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... well shrink from the task facing them. Work in the provincial capital had been of so totally different an order, and life in a large community of foreigners had limited their sphere to the oversight of a small school for girls, and the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... that intruding hand fell on the peaceful brow of her over whose fate, to his own surprise, he had been able to shed tears. Some personal prejudice lay back of this or some secret knowledge of the man from whose touch even the dead appeared to shrink. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Temple. Love is confidential; it has no fear of ridicule. Ferdinand entered with freedom and yet with grace into family details, from which, at another time and to another person, he would have been the first to shrink. The imagination of Miss Temple was greatly interested by his simple, and, to her, affecting account of this ancient line living in their hereditary solitude, with all their noble pride and haughty poverty. The scene, the circumstances, were all such as please a maiden's fancy; ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... proud of its history as a bulwark of civil liberty? Was it any fault of his that "all that she (the wife) can acquire by her labor-service or act during coverture, belongs to her husband?" Certainly not. Yet that law made me shrink and think of mother's warning, given so long ago. But marriage was a life-contract, and God required me to keep it to the end, and said, "When thou passeth through the fire I will be with thee, and the floods shall not overflow thee." I could not bear to have ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... to define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them every now ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... white peacock," I said; "I, and I alone, know where it is!"—and I strove not to shrink from the face so ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... quantity of bark and timber, which was all they could find on the island; but they had killed two elk: these were valuable, as we are desirous of procuring the skins of that animal in order to cover the boat, as they are more strong and durable than those of the buffaloe, and do not shrink so much in drying. The party that went to the lower camp had one canoe and the baggage carried into the high plain to be ready in the morning, and then all who could make use of their feet had ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... Beyond these considerations came the social influences in the richest capital of the world—all favorable to England, all hostile to the United States. Apparently believing that the United States would shrink from presenting the case of the fisheries to a commission in which Great Britain had so manifest an advantage, that Government proposed (before the Commission could sit) to open negotiations looking to a renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty between Canada and the United States. The British ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and talents and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank and birth and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance, even there. This, however, we have no right to meddle with. It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such short periods as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... formed to minister to the sick. And you will not shrink from loathsome offices—from the application of cataplasms, from cleansing foul sores? Those blains and boils upon that poor body will need care for many days ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... for it was clear that all the household authority was against him, and that Katy was hopelessly in love. If he should succeed in breaking the engagement, it would cost her untold suffering, and Albert was tender-hearted enough to shrink from inflicting suffering on any one, and especially on Kate. But when that heartless "he! he!" returned to his memory, and he thought of all the consequences of such a marriage, he nerved himself for a sharp and strong interference. It was his habit to plunge into every conflict with a radical's ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... he said, in quick, hard tones, "because the Abbot of Nervessa hath committed crimes so atrocious that thou would'st shrink at the bare naming of them. And for Saraceni—the Canon of Vicenza—there came one day to the Senate a noble lady of Vicenza, young, and very beautiful, and in great trouble, casting herself at the feet of the Serenissimo, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of the morning were duly discussed with Mrs. Fremont when they arrived at the house, and she assured them that no thought of inconvenience need cause them to shrink from accepting Mr. McDonald's invitation. Their visit would bring pleasure to all the members of ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... She went less often to her friend Margaret Van Eyck, and was ill at her ease when there. Instead of meeting her warm old friend's caresses, she used to receive them passive and trembling, and sometimes almost shrink from them. But the most extraordinary thing was, she never would go outside her own house in daylight. When she went to Tergou it was after dusk, and she returned before daybreak. She would not even go to matins. At last Peter, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to shrink from this sin as the Jews did from the fiery serpents. Hate it. Loathe it as you would the leprosy. Make a solemn vow before the Saviour, who loves the slave and slave children as truly as he does you, that you will never hold slaves, never apologize for those who do. As little Hannibal ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... And brandish't blade rush on him, break his glass, And shed the lushious liquor on the ground, But sease his wand, though he and his curst crew Feirce signe of battail make, and menace high, Or like the sons of Vulcan vomit smoak, Yet will they soon retire, if he but shrink. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... help believing it. It is that which makes good men and women of us, which keeps us as children to the end. It isn't honour or nobility of character that makes us righteous, but the fear of God. It isn't death that we dread. We shrink from the answer to the question we've asked all through life. Can you answer ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... fatherly instinct he had so bitterly struggled against, and he felt that he would like, with his first words, to put his hand reassuringly on the crumpled shoulder. But the night had left his nerves still raw—in his sensitivity he could not bear the thought that the trembling figure would shrink from his touch, and he kept his hand ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to all the natural powers of the heathen moralist the freely-offered grace of God to work with them and in them, should still walk so unworthy of the high vocation wherewith they are called, as to shrink hopelessly from a moral competition with the ignorant ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... alternative, he did not shrink, after every other method had failed, from vindicating both Union and freedom by the terrible instrument of war. Nor after the die for war had been cast did he hesitate to call upon his countrymen to make sacrifice upon ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... The heart may shrink, the spirit fail, But Spaniards must be free; And pride and duty shall prevail O'er all ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... convinced that the death of this regret was the best thing for him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. He closed his chambers, suspended his connection with editors, and left London for the Continent. Here we will leave him to wander without purpose, beyond the nominal one of encouraging obliviousness ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to upbraid myself, that soon after our return to the main land, I allowed indolence to prevail over me so much, as to shrink from the labour of continuing my journal with the same minuteness as before; sheltering myself in the thought, that we had done with the Hebrides; and not considering, that Dr. Johnson's Memorabilia were likely to be more valuable when ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... plentiful occasion To wish myself the rock I view, Or such another dolt as you. For many a grave and learned clerk, And many a gay unlettered spark, With curious touch examines me If I can feel as well as he; And when I bend, retire, and shrink, Says, 'Well—'tis more than one would think.' Thus life is spent! oh fie upon't, In being touched, and crying—'Don't'!" A poet, in his evening walk, Overheard and checked this idle talk. "And your fine sense," he said, "and yours, Whatever evil it endures, Deserves not, if so soon offended, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... some can rise superior to the pain, And in their breasts the charmer Hope retain; While others, dead to feeling, can survey, Unmoved, their fairest prospects fade away: But yet a few there be,—too soon o'ercast! Who shrink unhappy from the adverse blast, And woo the first bright gleam, which breaks the gloom, To gild the silent slumbers of the tomb. So in these shades the early primrose blows, Too soon deceived by suns and melting snows: So falls untimely on the desert ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... hour of locking-up, when, at the suggestion of the gaoler, they departed. I must confess their "good night," and the sound of the heavy door, which the gaoler locked after him, when he went to accompany them to the outer-gate of the gaol, sounded heavily on my heart. I felt a sudden shrink within me, as their steps quickly ceased to be heard upon the stone stairs—and when the distant prison door was finally closed, I watched the last echo. I had for a moment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... plug would make them any required length by inserting or withdrawing the screws a little. Then he went away. As it would have been much cheaper not to use this device, his assistants tried for hours to shrink the tubing by ice applications, and thus to get the arches closed; and there is a popular tradition in Saint Louis that they succeeded; but it was excessively hot weather, and they did not succeed. The screw-plug tubes, of course, were easily put in. Any part of this steel work can be at any ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... to say, "Whatever a man shrinks from let him not do to another. Dost thou shrink if any man detracts from thee? Speak not ill of another. Dost thou shrink if any man slanders thee, or if any man takes aught from thee? Do not that or the like to another man. For he that shall have kept this saying, will find it ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the most cheery manner. The contrast between the great, cold, tossing ocean, and that little comfortable creature, making the best of her circumstances, so impressed me, that I felt ashamed to shrink from the voyage, if she was willing to undertake it. So I unpacked my bundles, and settled down for a rough time. There were only two of us as passengers, lumber-vessels not making it a part of their business to provide specially for ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name! For why, I find her breath a bitter blighter! And suffer from her BLOWS as if they ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... question, Mr. Iglesias sat waiting, in the quaint irregularly shaped drawing-room of the old house in Holland Street, himself the centre of that peopled stillness, that alert tranquillity, which so strangely and sensibly filled it. Looking out of the low window, he could see the shadow of the houses shrink and the light broaden in the little garden below, as the sun travelled westward. Looking into the room itself, the many familiar objects and rich sober colours of it, quickened by a flickering of fire-light, were pleasant to his sense. The images ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... they were as strong as wire ropes. At any rate, when they both stood, axe in hand, invested in the brown mail, which clung to their mighty forms like a web garment, showing the swell of every muscle and the curve of every line, they formed a pair that any ten men might shrink from meeting. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... No, it was chiefly the matter of his discourse which had been distasteful to me. The sight of that glorious firmament had filled me with a sentiment of awe and reverence to which his dry and brutal facts were a kind of desecration. Why should our sentiment so often shrink from knowledge? Are we afraid its purity may be contaminated and defiled? Why should science be so inimical to poetry? Is it because the reality is never equal to our dreams? There is more in this antipathy than the fear of disillusion and alloyment. Some of ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... christian country, my dear, who would be willing to be called infidels, or heathen," said Mrs. Lee, soberly; "and I doubt if there are any young people who have heard of Jesus, who would not shrink from the thought. Though this is quite true, there are many who are ashamed of Jesus—many ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... correct in that particular is the public taste, and so abstinent from every the slightest indelicacy are the authors of plays and even farces, that not a word is uttered upon the stage from which the most timid real modesty would shrink. In conformity to this happy state of the general taste and morals, all the old plays that retain possession of the stage, have been cleared of their pollution, and all the offensive passages in them have been expunged; some have been entirely thrown out ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... actual happening, that they had parted in anger. Sometimes there would rush over her soul the recollection of piercing green eyes that searched and searched and would not spare, and her heart would beat in a wild dismay and she would shrink in horror from the vision. But it was not often that this came to her now. She had learned to ward it off, to put away the past, to live ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... stand up to fast bowling and show good form after having been badly hit. For a time a great deal of determination, and the exercise of a considerable amount of will power, are necessary to conquer the natural inclination to shrink from a possible repetition of the injury; and those who watched the dogged manner in which Thurston continued to defend his wicket, being themselves practical cricketers, rewarded him with loud shouts of encouragement ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Captain Molyneux to Miss Pomeroy. Guy was thus forced to be an actor where his highest desire was to be passive. There was no alternative. In that moment all his future was involved. He saw it; he knew it; but he did not shrink. Honor bound him to this marriage, hateful as it was. The other actor in the scene detested it as much as he did, but there was no help for it. Could he sit passive and let the General die? The marriage, after all, he thought, had to come off; it ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... great authors (though the greatest shrink from ridicule) who still retain public favour, they must be patient, proud, and fearless—patient of that obloquy which still will stain their honour from literary echoers; proud, while they are sensible that their ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... thus you deceive me! Very well, since things are come to such a pass, I openly declare to you that I shall not give up my love for Marianne. No! understand that henceforth there is nothing from which I shall shrink in order to dispute her with you; and if you have on your side the consent of the mother, perhaps I shall have some other resources left to ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... the bliss of Heaven be won; Then will Hell shrink away, As I have seen night's terrors shun The conquering steps of day. 'Tis my religion thus to love, My creed thus fixed to be; Not Death shall shake, nor Priestcraft ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... friendship with foreign nations, and to demand and exact equal justice from all, but to do wrong to none; to eschew intermeddling with the national policy and the domestic repose of other governments, and to repel it from our own; never to shrink from war when the rights and the honor of the country call us to arms, but to cultivate in preference the arts of peace, seek enlargement of the rights of neutrality, and elevate and liberalize the intercourse ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... room? I should know my way from there. I fear it would not surprise any of the household to see me. They would say—'It is only Lady Alice.' Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink from being seen. No—I will try the way you brought me—if you do not mind going ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... species of food, but wherever these objects, in general, may come to be preferred to their character, to their country, or to mankind; they actually commit such error, wherever they admire paltry distinctions or frivolous advantages; wherever they shrink from small inconveniencies, and are incapable of discharging their duty with vigour. The use of morality on this subject, is not to limit men to any particular species of lodging, diet, or clothes; ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... against the Holy Ghost of Europe, in order to attempt belated vengeance against Germany! Do you know what the ancients, the very Greeks and Romans from whom you have drawn your blood and temperament, called that sin? Blood-guiltiness is the name of that horror. And do you know how it is atoned for? I shrink to ask further, yea, even to think further; for horror falls upon me, and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... beauty, don't shrink," he said, as the poor fox backed at his approach as far as the chain which fastened the trap to a log of wood, would permit, and then, standing at bay, showed a formidable row of teeth. That grin was its last; another moment, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the ball. And when Scylla stooped to seize her, they struck back her ravening heads, and foul Scylla whined, as a whelp whines, at the touch of their gentle hands. But she shrank into her cave affrighted; for all bad things shrink from good; and Argo leapt safe past her, while a fair breeze rose behind. Then Thetis and her nymphs sank down to their gardens of green and purple, where live flowers of bloom all the year round; while ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... one's responsibility of this or that trait is often very slight; but the book is an actual transcript of his mind, and is wise or foolish according as he made it so. Hence I trust my reader will pardon me if I shrink from any discussion of the merits or demerits of these intellectual children of mine, or indulge in any very confidential ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... dismayed at my landlady's expressions, which seemed to be ominous of some approaching danger. I did not, however, choose to shrink back after having declared my resolution, and accordingly I boldly entered the house; and after narrowly escaping breaking my shins over a turf back and a salting tub, which stood on either side of the narrow exterior passage, I opened a crazy half-decayed door, constructed not of plank, but ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of rest and peace, and yet one might justly dread lest the beauty which bound my eyes every moment in a stronger fascination should evoke an unrest from which there might be no haven. Young men, however, rarely shrink from such perils, and I was no more prudent than my fellows. Indeed, I was inclining toward the fancy that this June day was the day of destiny with me; and if such a creature were the remedy for my misshapen life it would be bliss ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... O God, make tolerable, Make tolerable the end that awaits for me, And give me courage to die when the time comes, When the time comes as it must, however it comes, That I shrink not nor scream, gripped by the jaws of the vice; For the thought of it turns me sick, and my heart stands still, Knocks and stands still. O fearful, fearful Shadow, Kill me, let me die to escape the terror ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... a serious struggle between the Government of the King, and the Republicans. But in that case such men as M. Odilon Barrot will shrink from the contest. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... you," stammered Esther, interested but uneasy. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable about Cousin Charlotte, and the anxiety she might be causing her; but she really did shrink from the long walk home in the gathering darkness, and, too, she did not know how to refuse the kind stranger's request. So she stepped in at the open gate, and put her hand in the one outstretched to ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... smile," quoth she, "thou wouldst be straight Like Semele when into ashes turn'd: For, mounting these eternal palace-stairs, My beauty, which the loftier it climbs, As thou hast noted, still doth kindle more, So shines, that, were no temp'ring interpos'd, Thy mortal puissance would from its rays Shrink, as the leaf doth from the thunderbolt. Into the seventh splendour are we wafted, That underneath the burning lion's breast Beams, in this hour, commingled with his might, Thy mind be with thine eyes: and in them mirror'd The shape, which in this ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... trusted has failed me In the fight, and my hope is departed: I speak what I know of; and note it, Ye nobles,—I tell ye no leasing. Lo, the raven is ready for carnage, But rare are the friends who should succour. Yet still let them scorn me and threaten, I shrink not, I am ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... square-shouldered man had alighted, but it was not until he was half-way up the gravel walk that Lloyd had recognised him. Bennett caught sight of her at the same moment, and strode swiftly across the lawn and came into the breakfast-room by one of the open French windows. At once the room seemed to shrink in size; his first step upon the floor—a step that was almost a stamp, so eager it was, so masterful and resolute—set the panes of glass jarring in their frames. Never had Bennett seemed more out of place than in this almost dainty breakfast-room, with its small, feminine ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... creatures who died of sheer bliss, were unable to rear a family and to found a species. Be it as it may, rapture must needs be rare, because it destroys a piece of us (makes our precious piece of chagrin skin, as in Balzac's story, shrink each time). And, as we have seen, it destroys (which is more important than destruction of mere life) our sensibility to those diffuse, long-drawn, gentle, restorative pleasures which are not merely durable, but, because they invigorate our spirit, are actually reproductive ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... into a verbal mess at this point, and my own experience with pragmatism' makes me shrink from the dangers that lie in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for that word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson, and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... her modest self-possession. Very quiet, very modest, as she invariably was, awkwardness could not fasten upon her; her colour might come and her timid eye fall it often did; but Fleda's wits were always in their place and within a call. She would shrink from a stranger's eye, and yet when spoken to her answers were as ready and acute as they were marked for simplicity and gentleness. She was kept to dinner; and though the arrangement and manner of the service must have been strange to little Fleda, it was impossible to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... depends upon the manner of cultivation, the character of the soil, the amount of moisture and sunshine and the age of the leaf at the time of picking. Young, tender leaves have the finest flavor, and bring the highest prices, but shrink enormously in curing, and many growers consider it more profitable to leave them until they are well matured. It requires about four pounds of fresh leaves to make one pound of dry leaves, and black tea and green tea are grown from the same bush. If the leaf is completely dried ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... by the furious multitude, while terror rent his youthful soul. Amid the horror of flames, cries of vengeance, and groans of the dying, a monk appeared before the trembling boy, and with menacing looks and upraised hand bade him shrink from the wrath of Heaven, which his ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the coming and going of Bridget Burns made both father and daughter shrink from trying another houseworker unless she appeared more than ordinarily promising. So for a day or two daddy went personally to the agencies and looked the prospective workers over. His reports ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... admitted that it was probably no more than that! And then, conversely, her fierce detestation of that particular form of weakness, inculcated in her from her childhood by Patrick Lovell, would spring up protestingly, and she would shrink with loathing from the thought that she had given her love to a man who had been convicted of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... determination only manifested on occasions of deep and vital concern to the welfare of the republic. However languidly certain elements of American society may perform what they deem the drudgery of politics, they do not shrink from it when they hear warning of real danger. The alarm of the nation on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was serious and startling. All ranks and occupations therefore joined with a new energy in the contest it ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... to have him for a disciple as much as he wished to have Jesus for a Teacher. The ring of fire and hate within which he had been imprisoned was broken, and there was One who cared to have him, and who would not shrink from his touch. In the light of that assurance, the call became, not a summons to give anything up, but an invitation to receive a better possession than all with which he was called to part. And if we saw things as they are, would it not always be so to us? 'Follow Me' does ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... forest more dark, more black; the trees of the valleys more barren and shriveled; the stones in the road rolled beneath his feet as if fleeing from his touch; the sky contained something repellant; even the air of the island would finally shrink away from his nostrils. In his desperation Febrer realized that he stood alone. Everyone was against him. Only Pep and his family were left to him, and even they would finally draw away under the necessity of living at ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "You needn't shrink; I shan't ask you to do anything vulgar, or even anything that, with your present prejudices, you might consider actively criminal. You can help me, you see, in your own profession as a journalist; and in other ways. And my enterprise ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... of this announcement may be imagined; my hand has not the cunning to reproduce it on paper; and if it had, it would shrink from the task. Mild men became brutes, brutal men, devils, women—God help them!—shrieking beldams for the most part. Never shall I forget them with their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths, and the cruel ascending fire ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude and throw its complexion over your ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the Gods. They, too, might be banished, if the feeling that they were unholy and abominable could sink into the minds of men. The legislator is to cry aloud, and spare not, 'Let not men fall below the level of the beasts.' Plato does not shrink, like some modern philosophers, from 'carrying on war against the mightiest lusts of mankind;' neither does he expect to extirpate them, but only to confine them to their natural use and purpose, by the enactments of law, and by the influence of public ...
— Laws • Plato
... was known to shrink from discussion, raised his eye-brows with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel behind the lattice. Nothing could be worse "form" the look reminded Archer, than any display of temper ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... reconstruction when it can find protection and security, or whether we must wait for a new generation to grow up, remains to be tried. Their leaders are subtle reasoners, and it has been shrewdly observed of them that "they never shrink from following their logic to its consequences because the conclusion is immoral." Perhaps they will find no more difficulty in accepting the arguments we shall address to them because the conclusion is a little humiliating. In their case, we shall have little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... shrink from striking her down, at a favorable moment," she answered calmly. "It will be easier in France than in New York—they perhaps have the necessary preparations already made—they may be only hesitating—a warning from Martigny may ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... cannot fly around it in any recordable eons of time. It has boundaries, to be sure, for we are finite, but we cannot measure them. Let it alone, now; leave it to itself. What follows? It is dowered simply with attraction. The vast mass begins to shrink, the outer portions are drawn inward. They rush and swirl in vast cyclones, thousands of miles in extent. The centre grows compact, heat is evolved by impact, as will be explained in Chapter II. Dull red light begins to look like coming dawn. Centuries ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... patients as tolerably comfortable couches. A further and still more important change he effected related to the article of diet. He suggested, and the suggestion was adopted—honour to the courageous humanity which did not shrink from so righteous an innovation!—that instead of his salt ration and spirits, which he could not consume, the sick soldier should be supplied with fresh meat, broth, &c.; and that, as the quantity required for the invalid would be necessarily small, the quarter-master should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... smoke, and one cannot fabricate gold any more than soldiers. We no longer know how to count; we no longer know anything. A billion—a million millions—the word appears to me printed on the emptiness of things. It sprang yesterday out of war, and I shrink in dismay from ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... river, he who swam her. But I will pinch and plague him for it, I will strew his couch with nettles, and all wholesome food shall be poison to him. His blood shall be as water, and his flesh shrink from his bones. He shall waste away slowly—slowly—slowly—till he drops like a skeleton into the grave ready digged for him. All connected with him shall feel my fury. I would kill thee now, if thou wert aught ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ground in order to provide for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of their muscles; they creep, twist about, squeeze, and hold fast the bodies they meet in their way; and easily slide everywhere. Their organs are almost independent one on the other; so that they ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... cowboy was circling his lasso. Madeline saw fires in the background, with a man in charge, evidently heating the irons. Then this same cowboy roped a heifer which bawled lustily when the hot iron seared its hide. Madeline saw the smoke rising from the touch of the iron, and the sight made her shrink and want to turn away, but she resolutely fought her sensitiveness. She had never been able to bear the sight of any animal suffering. The rough work in men's lives was as a sealed book to her; ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the sponge is observed to contract or shrink when torn from the rooks; but there is satisfactory evidence to prove that neither this nor any degree of laceration has a sensible effect on this nerveless though ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... to the floor and rolled over on his back, seeming to shrink as Sally widened her eyes upon him. He lay in a grotesque sprawl at her feet, his jaw hanging open on the gaping black orifice ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long |
