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Little by little   /lˈɪtəl baɪ lˈɪtəl/   Listen
Little by little

adverb
1.
A little bit at a time.  Synonyms: bit by bit, in stages, piecemeal.
2.
By a short distance.  Synonyms: by inches, by small degrees.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Little by little" Quotes from Famous Books



... poured the hot fat into, the tin mould, first fastening in the wicks, then shut up the mould and left it to grow cold as quickly as it would; all this, and many other particulars which I have long since forgotten, she told us; and little by little we learnt too ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... not talk—because he kept it a secret all to himself that this came upon him. They told me at the hospital that it was overwork and worry, and that he had only one chance in a hundred. But I sat by his side, Marjory, night and day, and coaxed him back. Little by little he grew stronger—all except his poor eyes. It was then he told me the truth: how he had tried to ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters. She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently listened to all the parties ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... character took place. As the Mongols and the Mandchus in China suffered themselves by degrees to be conquered by the superior civilization of the people whom they had overrun and subdued, so the Hyksos yielded little by little to the influences which surrounded them, and insensibly assimilated themselves to their Egyptian subjects. They adopted the Egyptian dress, titles, official language, art, mode of writing, architecture. In Tanis, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... of Edith, whom his gratitude for the life she had bestowed had made the mistress paramount of his soul, to give much heed to any one but herself; and it was only by dint of hard questioning that Roland drew from him, little by little, an account of the causes which had kept him in the vicinity of the travellers, and finally brought him to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... The world was not yet well formed, and the soil floated about like a fish in the water, but near the surface; and was called "The Floating Region." The sun, earth and moon were still attached to each other like a head to the neck, or arms to the body. They were little by little separating, the parts joining them growing thinner and thinner. This part, like an isthmus, was called "Heaven's Floating Bridge." It was on this bridge that Izanagi and Izanami were standing when they saw a pair of wagtails cooing and billing sweetly together. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... that Mathews is an Indian out of his place," the colonel resumed. "He returned here twenty years or so ago, and took up his work among his people. But as he advanced toward civilization, his wife began to slip back. Little by little she adopted the Indian ways and dress, until now you couldn't tell her from a squaw if you were to meet her for the first time. She presents a curious psychological study—or perhaps biological example ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... There is no spuriousness about it. And there is not often any more trouble about discipline after that. The question is decisively settled. It is not every child that manifests its rebellion so much all at once. They manifest it little by little, daily, as opportunity offers, and then they will appear more easily to yield. It is to be feared, there is but little genuine submission in many such instances. At least there is but one course for the parent—to keep up the discipline so long as ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... And, little by little, he dragged from her the story of her relations with Kittredge, going back to their first acquaintance. This was in New York about a year before, while she was there on business connected with some property deeded to her by her second husband, in regard to which there had been a lawsuit. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... smell of the flesh and blood of men, and they saw Shudendoji, a huge monster with the face of a little child. The six men offered him the wine which they had received from the mountain god, and he, laughing in his heart, drank and made merry, so that little by little the fumes of the wine got into his head, and he fell asleep. The heroes, themselves feigning sleep, watched for a moment when the devils were all off their guard to put on their armour and steal one by one into the demon's chamber. Then Yorimitsu, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... was continually trying to devise new ways of adding to his meagre income. He multiplied his duties: he worked far into the night when he could find a demand for his articles. But little by little his sources of revenue ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... Little by little she had won over all who had cause to love the dead woman,—all human creatures, that is to say: a dog was more faithful and had resisted her. Alison's dog was a terrier, old, shaggy and blear-eyed: he had been young with his dead mistress, and had seemed to grow old when she ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... bright order burned. From stars and seas was motion caught When flesh, blood, bone and skin were wrought Into swift lovely liveliness. Oh, but beauty less and less Than beauty grows. The cheeks fall in, Colour dies from the smooth skin, And muscles slack and bones are brittle; Veins and arteries little by little Delay the tides of the blood: That is a ditch that was a flood. Then all but dry bones disappears, White bones that lie a hundred years Cheated of resurrection.... Where is that beauty gone? Escaped even while we watched it so, And ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... get into it." When the charm of his conversation gave so much pleasure to the young sovereign "that he could not once in a month get leave to go home to his wife or children, whose company he much desired,... he began thereupon to dissemble his nature, and so, little by little, from his former mirth to dissemble himself." He shared to the full the disappointment of his friends at the sudden outbreak of Henry's warlike temper, but the Peace again brought him to Henry's side and he was soon in the king's confidence both as a counsellor and as a diplomatist. It was on ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men, has, little by little, spread to ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... were suddenly lifted to a national self-sacrifice. By one act of defiance Albert made Belgium a nation. It had been a mixed race of many tongues, selling itself little by little, all unconsciously, to the German bondage. I saw the marks of this spiritual invasion on the inner life of the Belgians—marks of a destruction more thorough than the shelling of a city. The ruins of Termonde are only the outward and visible sign ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... chicaner, to take advantage of slight variations in ground, suits this derivation), or from chic, meaning little or petty, from the Spanish chico, small, which appears in the phrase "chic a chic," little by little. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... slave-girls in attendance upon him and standing about his head, whereupon he laughed at himself and said, "By Allah, 'tis not as I were on wake, yet I am not asleep! And in his perplexity he bowed his chin upon his bosom and then opened his eyes, little by little, smiling and saying, "What is this state wherein I find myself?" then he arose and sat up, whilst the damsels laughed at him privily; and he was bewildered in his wit, and bit his finger; and as the bite pained him, he cried, "Oh!" and was vexed; and the Caliph ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... butter in a stewpan and set it on the fire; when hot, add a tea-spoonful of parsley chopped fine, and a little salt; five minutes after, put in it a quart of potatoes, prepared, cooked, peeled, and mashed, as directed; then pour on the whole, little by little, stirring continually with a wooden spoon, a pint of good milk; and when the whole is well mixed, and becoming rather thick, take from the fire, place on the dish, then set in a brisk oven for ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot

... remained praying as was his wont, and begged Our Lord to give him some understanding of that verse. Then there appeared to him a little bird which, singing most sweetly, flew this way and that, and so little by little drew him towards a wood which grew near the monastery, and there rested on a tree while the servant of God stood below to listen. After what seemed to the monk a short time it took flight, to the great sorrow of God's servant, who said, 'Bird of my Soul, ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... island sinks down, either a few feet at a time or quite insensibly, we may safely infer from what we know of the conditions favourable to the growth of coral, that the living masses bathed by the surf on the margin of the reef, will soon regain the surface. The water, however, will encroach, little by little, on the shore, the island becoming lower and smaller, and the space between the edge of the reef and the beach proportionately broader. A section of the reef and island in this state, after a subsidence of several hundred feet, is given by the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... severe, ensued. The Government withheld from the people the privileges of free speech and public meeting, so that the press and the platform found themselves in frequent collision with the police. Thus, little by little, the Liberals came to be regarded as victims of official tyranny, so that they constantly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... 110,000 muskets made by the end of the year, so that, in all, 400,000 would be ready. Letters about the Congress are conspicuous by their absence; and everything proves that, as he wrote to Clarke at the beginning of the armistice, he purposed striking his great blows in September. Little by little we see the emergence of his final plan—to overthrow Russia and Prussia, while, for a week or two, he amused Austria with ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... uninteresting for me to trace this movement briefly as it has developed with us. For it has been a development. Our system of education was not planned at the beginning from a careful theoretical study of our present or prospective educational needs, but has grown up, little by little, step by step, to meet and satisfy from time to time ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... not care how uncomfortably they lived, to seek out some distant hollow, or the farthest and most hidden side of a hillock, and there build themselves such a low, small hut, as should escape the notice of any passer-by, should they chance to go that way. Little by little, making low fences which looked like the surrounding gorse bushes, they enclosed small portions of the waste land, or, as it is called, encroached upon the common; and if they were able to keep their encroachment without having their hedges broken down, or if the lord of the manor ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... Little by little, each day, the brother slowly rebuilt in the stricken soul the will to live. Before he was able to walk, he lifted the frail form in his arms, carried him into his big library, and seated him in an arm-chair before a ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... Little by little Chippy crept on, until his head was thrust over the brink, and he was looking straight down on the concealed man, the latter now drawing lines on his sheet of paper. His head was bent low over his work, and Chippy craned out farther and farther to glance ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... unexpected, his voice so inspiring that she relaxed, sinking to the floor, as Shirley caught her limp girlish form in his arms. He placed her on the couch again, and she regained her composure under his calm urging. Little by little she visualized the details of the gruesome evening and narrated them under the magnetic cross-questions of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Abydos, where the head of the god was said to be buried. It spread north and south in the course of time, and several large cities claimed to possess one or other of the limbs of his body. The various episodes in the life of the god were made the subject of solemn representations in the temple, and little by little the performance of the obligatory and non-obligatory services in connection with them occupied, in certain temples, the greater part of the time of the priests. The original ideas concerning the god were forgotten and new ones grew up; from ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... effaced, bleached, indistinct, like a poor "impression"—as unnoticeable as one of his own early finds, yet, like them, with a quality, if one had an eye for it. He told me he still lived in Rome, and had contrived, by fierce self-denial, to get a few decent bits together—"piecemeal, little by little, with fasting and prayer; and I mean ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... and published the accession of Robert II., Duke of Urbania and Count of Montemurlo; the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Venetians secretly promised assistance, but only if Robert were able to assert his rights by main force. Little by little, one town after the other of the Duchy went over to Robert, and Medea da Carpi found herself surrounded in the mountain citadel of Urbania like a scorpion surrounded by flames. (This simile is not mine, but belongs to Raffaello Gualterio, historiographer to Robert II.) But, unlike ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... ten. At this time to-morrow! Her cheeks turned hot; in a mirror she could see them burning, her lips scornfully curved, her eyes strange. Standing there, she looked long at herself, till, little by little, her face lost every vestige of that disturbance, became solid and resolute again. She ceased to have the galloping wild feeling in her heart, and instead felt cold. Detached from herself she watched, with contentment, her own calm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of blue could be distinguished. A thin, white cloud would appear towards evening, stretch like a skein of white silk across the sky, to gather as the day declined into one white cloud, which would disappear, little by little, into the sunset. As Owen rode at the head of his cavalcade he watched this cloud, growing smaller, and its diminishing often inspired the thought of a ship entering into a harbour, sail dropping ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... distinguish his glazed hat—the provincial constabulary still wore hats in those days. Mr. Gall stood not fifteen yards from the cottage, failed to observe that a window was open on the lower floor, nodded to himself as though satisfied with his inspection and walked on. Little by little the sound of his steps grew fainter in the distance. Walter slowly raised himself again from the ground, and put his head ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford

... undecipherable letters of the tomb by which we sat, she told me how that once, near before dawn, she had awoke in the twilight to find their places empty where the children had lain at her side, and had sought on, at last to find them even here, weeping and quarrelling, and red with anger. Little by little, and with many tears, she had gleaned the cause of their quarrel—how that, like very children, they had run a race at cockcrow, and all these stones and the slender bones and ashes beneath to be the prize; and how that, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... in Jim's life need scarcely be dwelled upon in any detail. It was so amazing, so unexpectedly baffling, that it sent him clean off his pivot of balance. All that marvelous happiness in his heart was shattered little by little. The first night at the hotel at Nice left him pondering. It wasn't due to the fact that Angela occupied a separate room, but that he heard her turn the key in the lock! He sat up half the night "browsing" on that singular occurrence. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... not to bring all his charge at once to the inclosure of Stony Hill. He had it brought little by little carefully packed in sealed cases. The 400,000 lbs. of pyroxyle had been divided into packets of 500 lbs., which made 800 large cartridges made carefully by the cleverest artisans of Pensacola. Each case contained ten, and they arrived one after the other by the railroad of Tampa ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... it for us, to be happy in, I'm sure. And perhaps He rested Himself so that we might understand He had set apart that time of leisure in order to be everything to us on the day when we had most time for Him. I have read somewhere that God had to teach those early people little by little just as we teach babies, a few things each year; and over in the New Testament it says that all these things that happened in the Old Testament to those children of Israel happened and were written down for ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... bridges, roads, the maintenance of the children at school, etc., nothing useful is done. In this interest and zeal, the father must not relax one instant, for the very moment in which the vigilance of the father rests, little by little all the good that he has done in the village disappears. The greater number of the Ilocan plains are crossed by irrigation canals, brought to completion by the initiative of the fathers, and preserved until now by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... back to quarters you passed some of the new army men, "the Keetcheenaires," as the French call them, you were reminded that although the war was old the British army was young. There was a "Watch our city grow!" atmosphere about it. Little by little, some great force seemed steadily pushing up from the rear. It made that business institution at G.H.Q. feel like bankers with an enormous, increasing surplus. In this the British is like no other army. One has watched ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... she would liefer have gone back to the castle by the shortest way. So folk brought her her palfrey, and they rode their ways, the castellan ever by her side. And by fair ways indeed they went, and so joyous was all about them, that little by little Birdalone's gladness came back to her, and she made the most of it to be as merry of ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... made it one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to do so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I had I shouldn't in advance have had the heart to go on. As it was I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... in the works of "the great masters," as he calls them, who were trying to tell, often in confused language, the central secret of the universe. Instead of fading out, his "flash" of insight grew steadily clearer to him as he read and pondered, and little by little, as one comes to see in the dark, certain great ideas became defined. With his third "flash,"[26] which came to him in 1610, when he felt once more "overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and touched by God,"[27] ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... dead, has been again raised to life through Christ the Freestone (who calcines the black to a jasper brilliance and to a beautiful whiteness). This is the true theosophic medicine, which indeed gradually, or little by little, works out of itself, from itself, and into itself, even as a grain of wheat which when it is sown does, by the cooeperation of the sun and the outer planets, forms itself into a body. Only one has to watch and pay ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... And sinking, little by little, it disappears in the sand, while the Chimera, crawling, with its tongue out, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... have described: it was the period of promise. During the second—which extends from 1853 to 1860—there is still much to praise in the conduct of the Emperor, although many of his actions are unworthy of his early career. From 1860 to 1868 he seems little by little to have thrown off all restraint, until he became remarkable for reckless and wanton cruelty. His principal wars during the second period were with Dejatch Goscho Beru, governor of Godjam; with Dejatch Oubie, whom he conquered, as we have already stated, at the battle of ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... came to discuss the conditions it became a different matter. The fox, a born diplomat, had instructed them to put forward the hardest conditions first, and if they could not force these upon Choo Hoo to gradually slacken them, little by little, till they overcame his reluctance. At every step they sent couriers to the king-elect with precise information ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... slave-holding neighbor to a "raising," it grated on his sense of the fitness of things to have the guest appear with gloves, directing the gang of slaves which he contributed to the function. [Footnote: Smedes, A Southern Planter, 67.] Little by little, therefore, the old pioneer life tended to retreat to the less desirable lands, leaving the slave-holder in possession of the rich "buck-shot" soils that spread over central Alabama and Mississippi and the fat alluvium that lined the eastern ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... there in three minutes. I guided the tip of his hypodermic into a vein in her right arm, the one that still had blood coursing through it. He depressed the piston, pumping the antidote into her bloodstream. Little by little I let up on the clamp on her wounded left arm, dribbling the poisoned blood into her system, so that the antidote could react with it gradually. ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... king's authority had been shaken by Rizzio's influence, it was entirely upset by Bothwell's. The great nobles, following the favourite's example, no longer rose in the presence of Darnley, and ceased little by little to treat him as their equal: his retinue was cut down, his silver plate taken from him, and some officers who remained about him made him buy their services with the most bitter vexations. As for the queen, she no longer even took the trouble ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... forcibly than its immediate predecessor. This second variety of crescendo offers a means of dramatic effect which may be employed most strikingly, as e.g., when a long passage begins very softly and increases in power little by little until the utmost resources of the instrument or orchestra have been reached. A notable example of such an effect is found in the transition from the third to the fourth movements of the Beethoven ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... in order that they might safeguard Catholic principles. That was a great good—a very laudable object—but it was not the highest object. The great object was that out of the fulness of their Faith they might give to their fellow-countrymen the principles that flowed from that Faith, so that little by little there might be built up in the consciousness of the nation that belief in and use of those sound principles of the Catholic Faith which contained the only solution of the difficulties with which ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... Little by little she forced from the reluctant superintendent an explanation of the whole situation: how her father had been driven by the Company to build the new town of Republic in addition to the construction ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... where one tiny lamp still twinkled. "Now sit right down here by me, Sylvia. My heart feels for you. You miss your father, I know, and I wish I could be the comfort to you I'd like to be; but we must all at last find comfort in the great Father of all. We learn little by little that we can't lean ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... Little by little, the water receded. So slowly did it fall that the eye could not mark it. Over the mud-colored waters, the sun shone brightly and made of the spray a million ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... stopped my breath. I thought for a moment how delightful it would be to find myself carried suddenly into the arctic regions, with a cold 30 below the freezing point. My overheated brain conjured up visions of white plains of cool snow, where I might roll and allay my feverish heat. Little by little my brain, weakened by so many constantly repeated shocks, seemed to be giving way altogether. But for the strong arm of Hans I should more than once have had my head broken against the granite ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... it natural. Look at a man who's growing old; notice how very gracefully and gradually he does it. Take my hair—your aunt says she can't tell the difference from month to month. And there it is, or rather isn't—little by little." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the Incas spread itself little by little from the central portion of the Empire to the far north and south; for during the comparatively short imperial status of the race their rule had extended itself steadily. They were in many respects a people ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... plot succeeded admirably. After a little time, I took occasion to fortify one of my arguments by a slight allusion to the peculiar virtues of the American people. She was too well-bred to controvert this sort of reasoning at first, until, pushing the point, little by little, she was so far provoked as to exclaim, "You lay great stress on the exclusive virtues of your countrymen, Monsieur, but I have yet to learn that they are so much better than the rest of the world!" "I beg a thousand pardons, Madame, if I have been led into an indiscretion on this delicate subject; ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... arranged with them that while they should reinstitute it here he would go live in France, close to the producers of the finest goods possible. You see? And he did that many years with a kind of success; but smaller and smaller, because little by little the taste for those refinements was passing, while those department stores and all that kind of ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... by Mr Caldwell that first afternoon. It came to David's knowledge, little by little, as it was found out. The matter was not, at first, discussed by the clerks in the office. Mr Caldwell had asked David not to speak of it to ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... modest foundation the curriculum slowly grew; new professorships were added from time to time as they became imperatively necessary, so that little by little opportunities developed for the leaven of the new spirit in education to work. In 1843 the Rev. Edward Thomson, afterwards President of Ohio Wesleyan University, was appointed Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... technical execution is purely intellectual, whereas art reaches the emotions. At the theatre a critic sits unmoved; dispassionately he looks upon the personages of the drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, little by little yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human motives. From the heights of his knowledge the critic surveys the spectacle; with an insight born of his learning, he penetrates the mysteries of the playwright's craft. He knows what thought and skill have gone ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... gradually passed into the low wood on the left. It conceals them little by little, until they are quite lost to sight. The house and the open space disappear. The landscape, consisting of wooded slopes and ridges, slowly changes ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen

... to good genuine fresh milk, yet I have found, in cases of great debility, more especially where a child is much exhausted by some inflammatory disease, such as inflammation of the lungs, the following food most serviceable:—Beat up, by means of a fork, the yolk of an egg, then mix, little by little, half a tea-cupful of very weak black tea, sweeten with one lump of sugar, and add a table-spoonful of cream. Let the above, by tea-spoonfuls at a time be frequently given. The above food is only to be administered until the exhaustion be removed, and is not to supersede the milk diet, which ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... of his fall began to wear off. He could feel himself growing stronger. Little by little his head cleared, and he began once more to take a personal interest in the battle. It is astonishing what a power a boxer, who has learnt the art carefully, has of automatic fighting. The expert ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... legal recognition or manly responsibility! It was a proud hour and a proud fact for the race which had so long been bowed in thralldom and forbidden even the most common though the holiest of God's ordinances. What the law had taken little by little, as the science of Christian slavery grew up under the brutality of our legal progress, the law returned in bulk. It was the first seal which was put on the slave's manhood—the first step upward from the brutishness of another's possession to the glory ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... the sands; with a curious indifference I saw that the tide was on the turn and the child was unable to remove the insensible form beyond its reach; I saw her sit down beside it and place the head upon her lap; she sat there quietly waiting, while all about her little by little the wave of the Indian sea began to ripple inwards, and overhead the early stars ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... that I learned was not to believe too firmly anything of which I had learnt merely by example and custom; and thus little by little was delivered from many errors which are liable to obscure the light of nature, and to diminish our capacity of hearing reason. Finally, I resolved one day to study myself in the same way, and in this it seems to me I succeeded much better ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... said I to myself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by little, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Turks, shall once more become a Christian cathedral. In the same way the Greeks have passionately desired to see Constantinople, which was for over a thousand years the capital of their empire, freed from the control of the Turk. Little by little, from the time when the Greeks first won their independence from Turkey in 1829, the boundary of their kingdom has been pushed northward, freeing more and more of their people from the rule of the Ottomans. Venizelos, ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... and on the ninth day of that sickness, and the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the three and thirtieth of mine, was that religious and holy soul set free from the body. Being thus forsaken of so great comfort in her, my soul was wounded. Little by little the wound was healed as I recovered my former thoughts of her holy conversation towards Thee and her holy tenderness and observance towards us. May she rest in peace with her sometime husband Patricius, whom she obeyed, "with patience bringing forth ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... followed a rutted cart-track that wound downhill in a slow arc between an orchard hedge and an open meadow dotted with cattle. High beyond the orchard rose a cluster of elms, around which many rooks were cawing, and between the elms a blue smoke drifted. There too the grey roof of the farmhouse crept little by little into sight; and so they came to a second gate and the rick-yard; and beyond the ricks was a whitewashed doorway, where a smiling elderly woman stood to welcome them. This was Mrs. Tossell, forewarned many ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... magnificence, why had she driven him off? For all her selfishness and her insolent pride, she had a vehement desire, a part perhaps of her very pride in her womanhood, to owe him nothing, to play him fair, to give him all that a man could ask. Little by little she forced herself to believe that she had failed of that. After all, he had offered her nothing but himself, poor, friendless, of no repute, indolent, careless of all the world—and she had professed content. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... Little by little Emperor appeared to come out of his fright, until the lad felt almost certain that the big beast would take ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... to free himself, but the hair rope held. Mere bear strength was not equal to breaking a woven hair rope, and, when Hippy threw his weight on the end of it with Grace, they hauled the animal up towards the tree little by little, Bruin fighting every ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... glimpse of a possibility of money in hand," the lynx had said, when Petit-Claud brought the news of the arrest; "once let them grow accustomed to that idea, and they are ours; we will drive a bargain, and little by little we shall bring them down to ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... streams trickling from the heart of some grim old mountain, growing in size and strength as they advanced, until at last they became a mighty river, whose course nothing could impede, Such, Edith, is my love for that singing bird. Little by little, inch by inch, it has grown in its intensity until there is not a pulsation of my being which does not bear with it thoughts of her. But my bird is young while I am old. Her mate should be one on whose head the summer dews are resting, one more like Arthur ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... practical side of anything. Ollie is old enough to begin to think how he will earn his bread. I see now how hopeless it is for us to try and make a lawyer of him—his heart is not in it. I have come little by little to the conclusion that what he wants most is hard work, and he wants it right away, just as soon as we can find something for him to do—something with his hands, if necessary, not something full of dreams and imaginings," and her voice rose in its earnestness. "I am getting more ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... with his little hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed determined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in her arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering, unconscious face; and gradually she seemed, and little by little, to grow calmer, and busied herself with ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... living at Harrowden, close to the spot which popular tradition names as John Bunyan's birthplace, and was the owner of property there. We have no further notices of the Bunyans of Elstow till the sixteenth century. We then find them greatly fallen. Their ancestral property seems little by little to have passed into other hands, until in 1542 nothing was left but "a messuage and pightell {1} with the appurtenances, and nine acres of land." This small residue other entries on the Court Rolls show to have been still further diminished ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... the Moluccas, in quest of fresh glories, instead of concentrating their efforts in opening up this Colony and fostering a Philippine export trade, as yet almost unknown, if we exclude merchandise from China, etc., in transit to Mexico. From this period restrictions were, little by little, placed on the introduction of Chinese; they were treated with arrogance by the Europeans and Mexicans, and the jealous hatred which the native to this day feels for the Chinaman now began to be more openly manifested. The Chinaman had, for a long time past, been regarded by the European as ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... out, still drawing in his breath and Honor smiled. "Merry from much comedy" the house had been in the old gay days; dark from much tragedy it seemed to-day. What would it be to her when she came back again? But, little by little, the old room soothed and stilled her. There were the sedate four-poster bed and the demure dresser and the little writing desk, good mahogany all of them; come by devious paths from a Virginia plantation; the cool blue of walls and rugs ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... great effects do not necessarily presuppose vast forces, but rather the steady operation of small ones. It is often assumed that the world was peopled by a series of migrations; whereas everything indicates that humanity spread over the earth little by little, much as the imported gypsy moth is gradually occupying New England or the water hyacinth the rivers of Florida. Louis Agassiz observed in 1853 that "the boundaries within which the different natural combinations of animals are known to be circumscribed upon the surface ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... attention to the difference of tint. He seized them at once with a kind of thirstiness, and learned five different colors in a single lesson; during the following days he took nearly all the objects of the series which he had at first despised, and little by little mastered them all. ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... art from this point of view, I entered the old "Trippenhuis" with pleasure. Little by little the beauty and truth of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. I perceived that their simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in which they were treated. The artists were geniuses, and the world around them either ignored the ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... to come to life again, rousing themselves out of the spell and shaking it off as one drives away little by little a clinging drowsiness or intoxication. Now they fixed their attention upon Joan with a strong new interest of another sort; they were full of curiosity to see what she would do—they having a secret and particular reason for this curiosity. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Lydy Treffinger never has nothink to do with dealers." MacMaster quietly repented his rash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellen annoyance from this merciless speculator, and he recalled with chagrin that Lichtenstein had extorted from him, little by little, pretty much the entire plan of his book, and especially the place in it which the Marriage ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... say he will try to undermine your faith, but how can he do otherwise if he believe in what he writes? However careful he may be to avoid blasphemy in your presence, the fact remains that you are living in an essentially unchristian atmosphere, and little by little the poison which you are taking in will accumulate, and you will find that you have been influenced without knowing ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... contrast with his habits of thought on every other subject) would be ruled by her emotions, and that part of her nature would be wholly under his governance. Religious fanaticism could not exist in her, for in that case she would never have attracted him. Little by little she would learn to think as he did, and her devotedness must lead her to pardon his deliberate insincerities. Godwin had absolute faith in his power of dominating the woman whom he should inspire with tenderness. This was a feature of his egoism, the explanation of those ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... soon became a ball—a globe such as he had used at school, showing clearly the outline of the continents and oceans. And little by little it dwindled, until it was only a ghostly shape far ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... smokes incessantly while he gambles. Putting the cigarette or cigar to his mouth he draws in the smoke in long, deep breaths, until he has filled his lungs completely, when he begins slowly to emit the smoke from his nose, little by little, until it is all gone. The object of this with the Indian is to steep his senses more deeply with the narcotizing soporific. The tobacco they smoke ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... am as happy as a man has a right to be in these fierce times in England. Love is all around me. I must tell you little by little. Various things have happened during the last ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... the whole species, the spirit of fire and dew, alive and leaping in a thousand vines, as the higher intelligence, brooding more deeply over things, pursues, in thought, the generation of sweetness and strength in the veins of the tree, the transformation of water into wine, little by little; noting all the influences upon it of the heaven above and the earth beneath; and shadowing forth, in each pause of the process, an intervening person—what is to us but the secret chemistry of nature being to them the mediation of living spirits. So they passed on to think of Dionysus ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... time his intention was well known is proved by the group that little by little gathered on the opposite side of the street. It is a matter of record that a small boy passing by was commandeered and sent with a message for Peter Wrightman, a deputy sheriff. Pete, out of breath, soon joined the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... is prima facie evidence of worth in a belief as in a person; while to be descended from a discreditable stock is, in the one case as in the other, an unfavourable index. The analogy is not a mere fancy. Beliefs, together with those who hold them, are modified little by little in successive generations; and as the modifications which successive generations of the holders undergo do not destroy the original type, but only disguise and refine it, so the accompanying alterations ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... he was not even conscious what street they were walking on, nor how far they went. He had no destination consciously in mind or any avowed plan or hope for what should happen when they reached it. Yet he walked purposefully and, little by little, faster. He looked about him in a sort of dazed bewilderment when she disengaged her hand and stopped, at last, at the corner of the delicatessen shop, beside the entrance to her ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... turned at last very red; I dare say he had begun by thinking I had lost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my own side I stared with a livelier surprise. Then he spoke. "I don't know what you're ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... it into an angel of victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and Leontium, it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the so-called 'Victory' of later times; which, little by little, loses its truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of victory itself,—not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a wide difference between these two ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Little by little Clarence Vaughan extracted from the old man the details of the plausible scheme by which Davlin and Cora had succeeded in transferring a very considerable amount of cash from his pockets to their own. He felt elated at the result of this interview. It placed a weapon in his hands that ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... warn him; so that it has happened to me that, by finding myself confused and with my hands almost tied by so many outcries in the pulpits, so many declarations, and so many acclamations and persuasions, I have been temporizing. And, little by little, this has increased, with that which the troubles and dangers were demanding in the procuring of repairs and remedies, until now when it is evident—by reason of the information that I have received of Xaponese enemies, which can have only a sure and certain foundation—that there will be no need ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... little by little, the wolf began creeping towards their door, for Sara, in the large liberality of her nature, did not well know how to deny the eager wants of the children, so long as she had any means to gratify them; and was not so wise in hoarding against ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... without any theory whatever. She did it very much on the taking-for-granted system. She took for granted that her children were born with the same natural perceptions as herself; that they could recognize, little by little, as they grew into it, the principles of the moral world,—reason, right, propriety,—as they recognized, growing into them, the conditions of their outward living. She made her own life a consistent recognition of these, and she lived openly before them. There ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... and criticism advance and we are enabled, little by little, more intimately to apprehend the personality of Shakespeare and to construct a more definite chronology of his doings, the shifting lights of evidence in the form of tradition and legend, which in the past have dazed, or misled, searchers, either disappear or take on new values. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... who had written denouncing slavery in his "American Notes," returned to England in the spring of 1863 to predict the overwhelming victory of the South, and to characterize the hopes of Lincoln as "a harmless hallucination." But little by little, English sentiment began to change. Goldwin Smith, of Oxford University, consented to speak at a meeting in Manchester to protest against the building and sending out of piratical ships in support of the Southern ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... student, stood by his window, and little by little the veil lifted. His slow blood stirred first. The beating of drums, the shrieks of the crowd, the fires, all played their part. Another patient joined him, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Little by little Griet gave up all hopes of ever marrying, and had to look out for a living to keep her in her old age from starving. Therefore she started a fruit stall at one of the large ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... a very heavy weight let somewhat gradually, but irresistibly, down upon young and tender shoulders, then gently lifted again, little by little, by a sympathizing and unlooked-for helper, and lastly tossed by him unexpectedly into the air, only to fall back with redoubled weight, and crush the frame that was but bowed before, you can form some idea of what had just happened to me. My mother's death, our embarrassments, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... quickly learned the trick and plodded with bent knees, limber ankles, and wide-apart feet through the winter miracle of the woods. It was another revelation of pure beauty, but her heart was too sore to hold the splendor as it had held the gentler beauty of summer and autumn. Besides, little by little she was aware of a vague, encompassing uneasiness. Since the winter jaws had snapped them in, setting its teeth between them and all other life, Miss Blake had subtly and gradually changed. It was as though her stature had increased, her color deepened. Sometimes to Sheila that square, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... that the ladies paused in their talk to look at her. Some few admired Kitty's governess with generous interest; the greater number doubted Mrs. Linley's prudence in engaging a girl so very pretty and so very young. Little by little, Sydney's manner—simple, modest, shrinking from observation—pleaded in her favor even with the ladies who had been prejudiced against her at the outset. When Mrs. Linley presented her to the guests, the most beautiful woman among them (Mrs. MacEdwin) ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... gale increased, the fleet was scattered over the North Sea, and next morning from Estein's ship only two other black hulls could be seen running before the tempest. Another wild day passed, and it was not till the evening that the weather moderated. Little by little the great seas began to calm, and the drifts of stinging rain ceased. In their wake the stars struggled through the cloud wrack, and towards morning ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... watching, as if it were a mere idle spectacle, instead of the very bridge of life, that was forming before his eyes. Little by little the structure welded itself, the masses of drift surging against the barrier, piling up and diving under, till it was compacted and knit to the very bottom,—and the roar of the falls dwindled with the diminishing of the stream. This was the moment for which the man was waiting. Now, if ever, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... lashing the helm an inch or two less a-weather, she erred to about the same extent in the other direction by gradually coming-to until her sail was all shaking, and I had to jump hurriedly to my feet and jam the helm hard up to prevent her from coming round upon the other tack. Little by little, however, I remedied both these defects, so that by sunset I had her going along just "full and by," almost as steadily as though I had been standing at the tiller and ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... long consultation which evidently referred to it; at last they seemed to decide that it was in too good order to fall an easy prey; there was some wild capering along its flanks, at a safe distance; and then, little by little, the gang resettled in its bivouac. It was like a swarm of hornets, which should sally out to reconnoitre an enemy, buzz about threateningly for a while, and sail back to ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... ceased. His head turned and remained fixed to listen, while the cigar grew cold between his fingers. For ten minutes or so his attitude of concentrated harkening to the two voices, a girl's and a man's, remained unchanged. Little by little he was piecing out the thread of the confidential dialogue—and of the little drama being enacted ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... manufacture this glycogen and to store it up from the food brought by the portal blood. It is also thought the glycogen thus deposited and stored up in the liver is little by little changed into sugar. Then, as it is wanted, the liver disposes of this stored-up material, by pouring it, in a state of solution, into the hepatic vein. It is thus steadily carried to the tissues, as their needs demand, to supply them with material ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... clouds move in the sky. The king's hungry eye roved over the tossing waters before him, but he saw nothing, yet he could not banish the hope that somewhere behind that moving curtain he would find his refuge. Little by little the horizon came into view; light wreaths of mist, like smoke, still floated about the surface of the water, and in each of them the king thought he recognised the white sails of his vessel. The last gradually vanished, the sea was revealed in all its immensity, it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers, into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow colouring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb, which, little by little, gather a feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade, and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... of feudal society rather than of the nation which was forming itself little by little around the lords, convoked at Amiens all his vassals great and small, laic or cleric, placing all his strength in their cooperation, and not caring at all to associate the country itself in the affairs of his government. Edward, on the contrary, while equipping his fleet and amassing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the International Congresses the Mutualists were forced by the logic of facts to vote for the Communist resolutions. This was the case, e.g., at Brussels in the discussion on landed property.[32] Little by little the left wing of the Proudhonian army left the domain of Individualism to intrench ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... their seats. At first they leisurely replenished their glasses, and quietly sipped their wine; but as, little by little, they entered into conversation, their good cheer grew more genial, and unawares the glasses began to fly round, and the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... fair way to recovery, and he and Charlotte set out for Haworth. It was a happy home-coming, for things had prospered better than Charlotte had dared to hope during the latter weeks of her absence. Every day the old man grew stronger, and little by little his sight came back. He could see the glorious purple of the moors, Emily's moors, no less beloved in her sorrowing womanhood than in her happy hoyden time of youth. He could see his children's faces, and the miserable change in Branwell's features. He began to be able to ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... But little by little there came a change. The hood was left behind at Fort O'Glory, where it provoked the derision of the Methodist missionary who followed him; the sermon-case stayed at Fort O'Battle; and at last the surplice itself was put by at the Company's post at Yellow Quill. He was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "So? Little by little the drop of water the granite wears away. I give you the little leaflet, the little pamphlet, und by and by comes the little hole ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... his rock. The ships were in darkness for a moment after that first great flare, and then, before another shot could be fired, little tongues of flame began to spread along the hull and rigging of the larger craft. Little by little the fire gained headway till the whole upper works were a single great torch. By its light the victorious vessel was plainly visible. She was a schooner-rigged sloop-of-war, of eighty or ninety tons' burden, tall-masted and with a great sweep of mainsail. Below ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... increased, then subsided, then went up again like the noise of the sea (you know the strength of my voice). I imitated the calf, the whipped child, the cat in the night, the wind under the door. Little by little I grew enraptured with my own song, so that long after She had finished soiling me with cold water I continued wailing, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then She laughed tactlessly and cried out, "You're as untruthful as ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... say, the social positions of the hearers. The wine merchant, Jean Picot, the principal personage in the late event, recognizing at first sight by his dress, weapons, mask, one of the men who had stopped the coach on the preceding day, was at first sight stupefied, then little by little, as he grasped the purport of this mysterious brigand's visit to him, he had passed from stupefaction to joy, through the intermediate phases separating these two emotions. His bag of gold was beside him, yet he seemingly dared not touch it; perhaps he feared that the instant his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... survived succumbed to the cold. Lacking proper artillery support, the British used to cheer when the Germans charged, as that meant the end of shell fire, and they could come to close quarters with the bayonet. Little by little, but grudgingly, they had to yield against that persistent foe. The German staff was at its best in its organized offensive, and the British at their best "sticking," as they call it—and the prize was an arm of salt water, to be all Ally or part ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... vegetation and rain increase simultaneously. It may be, therefore, that, in the course of very many years, a portion of the American deserts will disappear, for where the soil has any vitality in it, and water is procurable, artificial means will bring vegetation, which again, little by little, will increase the rainfall; until at last (it may take centuries) the now said desert tracts will thrive with the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... exhausting hours in Commandant Dumoulin's office. He found the commandant detestable. Dumoulin was hot-blooded, noisy, unmethodical, always in a state of fuss and fume! He would begin his interrogations calmly, would weigh his words, would be logical, but little by little, his real nature—a tempestuous one—would get the ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... certainly have seemed unspeakably confused and bombastic, indeed like the products of musical insanity and, moreover, swarming with the worst kind of stylistic and grammatical blunders, as they did indeed appear at times even to the older contemporaries of the master. Little by little, however, it has grown to be rather risky to assert this fact, for every musical ass now argues that because his works please nobody, therefore he must ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... out, and bade meat to be made ready. This she carried in, giving to each a little, and to each a little drink. When they had eaten, they had yet greater hunger than before. In this manner she fed them, little by little, ten times a day, for she deemed that should they eat to their desire, they would die of repletion. For this reason she caused them to break their fast temperately. Thus the good lady dealt with them for the first seven days, and at nights, by her grace, they lay softly at their ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... doctor together could only prevent his leaving the house, by threatening to throw up the responsibility of preparing him for the race, unless he instantly controlled himself, and behaved like a man instead of a child. Since that time, he has become reconciled, little by little, to his new abode—partly through Hester Dethridge's caution in keeping herself always out of his way; and partly through his own appreciation of the change in his diet, which Hester's skill in cookery has enabled the doctor to ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... spoken) behaved under these trying circumstances extremely well, in some cases showing the most affectionate solicitude and sympathy. They could not, however, in all cases be trusted to withstand the bribes sure to be offered for information as to hiding-places of valuables. So, little by little, silver and jewelry were made up into small packages to be ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... only preserved thousands from want but furnished leisure for others to study. It had a tendency to distribute the luxuries of manufactured {363} articles, and to quicken the activity of the mind by giving exchange of ideas. Little by little the mariners, plying their trade, pushed farther and farther into unknown seas, and at last brought the products of every clime in exchange for ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... made it a rule to consult her husband on every subject of importance; but it had speedily proved to be a formality. Tom tried manfully to show a deep interest which he did not feel, and his wife gave up, little by little, telling him much about her affairs. She said that she liked to drop business when she came home in the evening; and at last she fell into the habit of taking a nap on the library sofa, while Tom, who could not use his eyes much by lamp-light, sat smoking or in utter ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... all the time, which the heathen, instigated by the devil, promised to give him. He went through their thickets and along their shores, crying out and endeavoring to conquer the coldness of those men. By virtue of the cross, he was finally able, little by little, to soften the insolence of their fierce breasts, and to render them more tractable, although they seemed like rocks in the hardness ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... in Boston and Lynn, and perhaps in other towns. Their permission to own property and to live in their own house instead of in the houses of native merchants, as was the usual custom, was derived, like most privileges of foreigners, from the gift of the king. Little by little they had purchased property surrounding their original grants until they had a great group of buildings, including a meeting and dining hall, tower, kitchen, storage house, offices and other warehouses, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... she could not call him back. If she could have done so she would. She had never known before what it was to hunger for the sight of a beloved face, to think of the words that she might have said, and long to say them. She did not as yet know by what name to call her misery. Only, little by little she woke up to the fact that it was what people meant when they spoke of love. Then she began to understand her position. She had promised to marry Percival Heron, but her heart was given to the penniless tutor who ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... matters, I can tell that you are a stranger, and must come from a place very unlike England. But also it is clear that it won't do to overdose you with information about this place, and that you had best suck it in little by little. Further, I should take it as very kind in you if you would allow me to be the showman of our new world to you, since you have stumbled on me first. Though indeed it will be a mere kindness on your part, for almost anybody would make as ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... For little by little the heart is wearing, Like the wheel of the mill, as the tide goes tearing And plunging hurriedly through my breast, In a network of veins on a nameless quest, From and forth, unto unknown oceans, Bringing its cargoes of fierce emotions, With never ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... before a quarter to eleven she expected him to meet her at the stage-door of the Prince's. On this point she was very particular; if he were a few moments late she questioned him minutely as to where he had been, what he had been doing, and little by little the jealousies and suspicions which her marriage had appeased returned, and tortured her night and day. At first the approach of pain was manifested by a nervous anxiety for her husband's presence. She seemed dissatisfied and restless when he was not ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... escaped it, obliged as they were by their very office to submit the leper to actual handling and closest examination?... Leprosy was nothing short of a living death, a corrupting of all the humors, a poisoning of the very springs, of life; a dissolution, little by little, of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly describes the appearance which the leper presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, pleading for Miriam, he says, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage



Words linked to "Little by little" :   in stages, by inches, by small degrees, bit by bit



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