"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the supposition a monstrous and a deadly fallacy, to be combated, to be struck down to the dust. Even now he was chiefly conscious of a mental weakness in himself which had caused him to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Walpole; was the friend of Pope and Swift, and the author of "Letters" bearing upon politics and literature. "Bolingbroke," says Prof. Saintsbury, "is a rhetorician pure and simple, but the subjects of his rhetoric were not the great and perennial subjects, but puny ephemeral forms of them—the partisan and personal politics of his day, the singularly shallow form of infidelity called Deism and the like; and his time deprived him of many, if not most, of the rhetorician's most telling weapons. The 'Letter to Windham,' a sort of apologia, and the 'Ideal of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... powerful laws were held in check by others. The flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were brought about by the operation of existing laws, and may it not be that in His illimitable universe there are more important laws than those which surround our puny life—moral and not merely physical forces? Is it inconceivable that the day will come when these royal and ultimate laws shall wreck the natural order of things which seems so stable and so fair? ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his perfections with only ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... 'ain't said nothin' 'bout yo' ma an' de ole black 'oman's baby bein' borned de same day, is yer? An' how de ole 'oman nussed 'em bofe des like twins? An'—an' how folks 'cused 'er o' starvin' 'er own baby on de 'count o' yo' ma bein' puny? (But dat warn't true.) Maybe yer better leave all dat out, 'caze hit mought spile ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... three, and only three requests to the officials during my prison career, and all these had been denied, and I resolved to prefer no more. I gave my mind healthy exercise in the composition of verses, when I was not otherwise employed, and to a great extent forgot my troubles in my puny flight to obtain a sight ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... bore him; but, compelled Too quickly after childbirth to return To the old wash-tub, all her sufferings Reacted on the children, and they died, Haply in infancy the most of them,— Until but one was left,—a little boy, Puny and pale, gentle and uncomplaining, With all the mother staring from his eyes In hollow, anxious, pitiful appeal. In this one relic all her love and hope And all that made her life endurable At length were centred. She had saved a dollar To buy for ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... of Todos Santos—the impenetrable and unassailable fog! Corroding its brass and iron with saline breath, rotting its wood with unending shadow, sapping its adobe walls with perpetual moisture, and nourishing the obliterating vegetation with its quickening blood, as if laughing to scorn the puny embattlements of men—it still bent around the crumbling ruins the tender grace of an invisible but ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... elephant's back in her best picture-book! True, little one! To be in the arms of love, be they ever so weak, is better than to ride the grandest horse in all the stables of God—and God would have you know it! Never mind your pale little face and your puny nose! While your heart is ready to die for love-sake, you are blessed among women! Only remember that to die of disappointment is not to die either of or ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Christmas week, some dozen years ago, between the two neighbours, the two compositors. And with wives, it was a very pretty, a very complete quarrel. To make the opposing parties still more equal, still more well-matched, if the Hodgsons had a baby ("such a baby!—a poor, puny little thing"), Mrs. Jenkins had a cat ("such a cat! a great, nasty, miowling tom-cat, that was always stealing the milk put by for little Angel's supper"). And now, having matched Greek with Greek, I must proceed to the ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... enough to say that the Lady Peveril did undertake the duties of a mother to the little orphan, and the puny infant gradually improved in strength and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Our efforts to escape the pier were of no avail. I made a puny effort to break the impact with a pole, but was sent sprawling on the deck. Al tumbled headlong on top of the engine, which he had stopped at last, our passenger rolled over and over, but we all stayed with the ship. Each grabbing a board, we began to paddle and ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... destroy his own soul but those of many others. Alack, and woe is me! The sins that he and his friends will commit this very night will cry to Heaven against us for our shameful delay! When shall our great work of cleansing the sanctuary be finished, if we proceed at this puny rate?" ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... saved my life. We both lay over the yard for a few seconds, beating our hands upon the sail, until we started the blood into our fingers' ends, and at the next moment our hands were in a burning heat. My companion on the yard was a lad, who came out in the ship a weak, puny boy, from one of the Boston schools,—"no larger than a spritsail sheet knot," nor "heavier than a paper of lamp-black," and "not strong enough to haul a shad off a gridiron," but who was now "as long as a spare topmast, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... ease with which, nowadays, every puny whipster gets the sword of Sir Walter has already been remarked. If any Tom o' Bedlam chooses to tell the world that all the New Scottish novelists are Sir Walter's masters, what does it matter to anybody? ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... puny lad, and not strong enough to work. He did not care to play with the other boys of the town. But he liked to go with his grandfather to the stone-yard. While the old man was busy, cutting and trimming the great blocks of stone, the lad would play among the chips. Sometimes ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... his beginning and growth. "Satan finds something for idle hands to do." Hence the necessity of vigilance on the part of those who hold the young. But "all work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy." This rule is good whether "Jack" be a puny girl, a feeble grandfather, a hustling, responsible father, a busy mother, or even a mischievous lad. Every person who rises each morning, dresses himself and goes about his work as if he knew what he were about; who has some useful work to do, and does it, sooner or ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... out at last. Instead of arguing, "Ma" looked at him as witheringly as she could and replied; "I speak with men and people worthy of me, and not with a puny bush-boy such as you have shown ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... flat Sahara appears, these cities crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... have got to?" exclaimed Jerry at last; "I am certain that we are up to the spot where we left him." I thought so likewise. We shouted at the top of our voices, but the puny sounds seemed lost in the vast solitudes which encompassed us. "I think it must have been further on," said I, after I had taken another survey of the country. So on we rushed, keeping our eyes about us ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... epidemics; but they just fall like flies. Well, you know, these Jewish boys are so puny and delicate. They can't stand mixing dirt for ten hours, with dry biscuits to live on. Again everywhere strange folks, no father, no mother, no caresses. Well then, you just hear a cough and the youngster is dead. Hello, corporal, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my puny arm felt half ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... enjoyed the upstream trip, and, watching her husband drive the heavy boat against wind and current with graceful ease, contrasted him with the puny, if charming, Augustus—to the latter's detriment. He was so safe, so sound, so strong, reliable and true. But then he never needed any protection, care and help. It was impossible to "mother" John. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... first my casement is wide open thrown At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest; Sometimes, and most in winter—on its crest A gray baboon sits statue-like alone Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs His puny offspring leap about and play; And far and near kokilas hail the day; And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows; And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast, The water-lilies ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... suffering. The worst of it is that Mercury does not seem exempt from the general curse of nothingness which seems to brood over all physical existence. There is no stability even in solar systems. Even we puny creatures can divine something of their birth and death. Out of whirling nebulae suns and planets are born; souls slowly evolve on worlds which were once balls of fire. There are endless diversity and specialization, myriads ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... dern, forsooth, his'n, an invite, entre nous, tote, hadn't oughter, yclept, a combine, ain't, dole, a try, nouveau riche, puny, grub, twain, a boom, alter ego, a poke, cuss, eld, enthused, mesalliance, tollable, disremember, locomote, a right smart ways, chink, afeard, orate, nary a one, yore, pluralized, distingue, ruination, ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... he sprang on the strapping servant like a wild-cat, and began to beat, cuff, and belabor him with all the strength of his puny limbs. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... fancy this puny game amuses me? Do I not know that you could buy a principality like this for a souvenir of Europe if it happened to please you? The one time I have been allowed to feel a man was in your country, where we met as equal rivals.... No, not equal ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... respect he is every way deserving of praise. Twice he has pourtrayed downright villains; and the masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature, may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... destroyed, and that they were all throwing their lives away to no purpose whatever. Above all, my heart was wrung for the Kohen, who was there in the midst of his people, lifting his frail and puny arm against the monster. I could endure inaction no longer. I had brought my arms with me, as usual; and now, as the monster raised his head, I took aim at his eye and fired. The report rang out in thunder. Almah gave a shriek, and amid the smoke I saw the long, snake-like neck of ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... very poor, and their seven children incommoded them greatly, because not one of them was able to earn his bread. That which gave them yet more uneasiness was that the youngest was of a very puny constitution, and scarce ever spoke a word, which made them take that for stupidity which was a sign of good sense. He was very little, and when born no bigger than one's thumb, which made him ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... through a speaking trumpet from his quarter-deck aft, which was on a level with our bridge, the vessel, a splendid cruiser of the first-class, towering over the comparatively puny dimensions of the poor, broken-down Star of the North. "Shall I send a boat aboard ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... The child was puny, and did not make a very sturdy fight for life. Still he weathered along, season after season, and survived two stronger children, Margaret and Benjamin. By 1839 Judge Clemens had lost faith in Florida. He removed his family to Hannibal, and in this Mississippi River town ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... masses. Indeed, there were so many of them, that their blind and unkind mother, Nature, had driven away before her this surplus, as unmoved as if they had been superabundant men. On the scorching funnels and ironwork of the ship they died away; the deck was strewn with their puny forms, only yesterday so full of life, songs, and love. Now, poor little black dots, Sylvestre and the others picked them up, spreading out their delicate blue wings, with a look of pity, and swept them overboard into ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... in that region. There are mountains, mountains everywhere, and then more mountains, not the puny mountains they have east of the Missip, a mile, or at best, a mile and a half high, but crests shooting up so far that they hit right against the stars, and dozens and dozens of 'em, with snow fields and glaciers, and ice cold lakes here and there in the valleys. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... here, to obviate infiltration from the ooze of the Chott, sturdy walls must enclose them. Ages pass, and still the groves descend, while the defences grow so stout and high that, viewed from above, the palms down there, in that deep funnel, look like puny vegetables, and men like ants. And still they descend.... One day the pale population engaged in tilling this shadowy paradise will be horrified to perceive, in their encircling bulwarks, rents and crevices that ooze forth ominous jets of mud. The damage is hastily repaired, but the ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... inky spots on the nut-brown soil, and Jude enjoyed their appetite. A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his own life with theirs. Puny and sorry as those lives were, they much ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... certain, steady and fatal in its progress, than this cancer on the political body of Virginia. It is eating into her very vitals. And shall we admit that the evil is past remedy? Shall we act the part of a puny patient, suffering under the ravages of a fatal disease, who would say the remedy is too painful? Pass as severe laws as you will to keep these unfortunate creatures in ignorance, it is in vain, unless you can extinguish that spark of intellect which God has given them. ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... their nourishment from the body, it is obvious that any cause profoundly affecting the latter might in that way exercise an influence on the germ-cells; that if the parent was starved, the germ-cells might be ill-nourished and the resulting offspring might be weak and puny. There is experimental evidence that this is the case; but that is not the inheritance of an acquired character. If, however, a white man tanned by long exposure to the tropical sun should have children who were brunettes, when the family stock was all blond; or if men whose legs ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... time the Spaniards had to recoil before their puny adversaries. The terrible loss of life entailed by the capture of Haarlem had struck a profound blow at the haughty confidence of the Spaniards, and had vastly encouraged the people of Holland. The successful defence of Alkmaar did even more. It showed the people that resistance did not ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... consisted of her brother and herself, a cook, a coachman, a nurse, and her brother's little son Albert. The child, with a fine instinct, had put out his puny arms to Rena at first sight, and she had clasped the little man to her bosom with a motherly caress. She had always loved weak creatures. Kittens and puppies had ever found a welcome and a meal at Rena's hands, only to be chased away by Mis' Molly, who had had a wider experience. No shiftless poor ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole, a laboured quarry above ground; Two Cupids squirt before; a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind. His gardens next your ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Travaileth with fruitless pain, a dreadful sound Forever in his ears; the mustering tramp Of hostile legions on the distant cloud, A far-off echo from the woe to come? Such is his lot who sinfully contends Against the just will of the Judging One, Lifting his puny arm in rebel pride And rushing like a madman on his doom. The wealth he may have gathered shall dissolve And turn to ashes mid devouring flame. His branch shall not be green, but as the vine Casteth her unripe grapes, as thro' the leaves Of rich and lustrous hue, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... traveller. He could find nothing. He thought to call out, to burst his lungs in a series of shouts on the chance of being heard in the chaos of the storm. But he realised the uselessness of it all, and abandoned the impulse. No puny human voice could hope to make impression on the din of the elemental battle being fought out on the plain. No. His only service must be to stand there beating life into his numbing hands, ready to act on the instant ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Crimple neglects his meals, or fails to take his proper quantity of rest, that oil wanes, and becomes exhausted. What is the consequence? Mr Crimple's bones sink down into their sockets, sir, and Mr Crimple becomes a weazen, puny, stunted, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... recall, had ever been produced in America which was fit to sparkle upon the "stretched forefinger" of Time. Berkeley's "Westward the course of Empire" ought to have been written here; but the curse of sterility was on the Western Muse, or her offspring were too puny to live. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... have stated, in person the lad was tall and strongly-built; and I, poor puny wretch! so reverenced physical strength. Everything in him seemed to indicate that which I had not: his muscular limbs, his square, broad shoulders, his healthy cheek, though it was sharp and thin—even to his crisp curls ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... higher rights of humanity, and is the first to wage war on the rabble. As soon as the plebeian forces himself into a place he is not fit for he begins to ail, to go into consumption, to go out of his mind, and to degenerate, and nowhere do we find so many puny, neurotic wrecks, consumptives, and starvelings of all sorts as among these darlings. They die like flies in autumn. If it were not for this providential degeneration there would not have been a stone left standing of our civilization, the rabble would have demolished everything. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Behold this puny fellow, this meek and humble chap! No doubt he'd show up yellow if he got in a scrap. His face is pale and sickly, he's weak of arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. No hale man ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... early morning, and all the kinks and quirks and hobgoblins which the rush and irritation of yesterday had generated seemed to have vanished, and I could not suppress a smile at the thought of the night before, when this battle—this puny, insignificant battle for a few dirty dollars—had almost raised feelings I now knew too well should only be aroused by real battles, battles in which noble principles were involved, and I felt better able to fight what I had thought, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... possible for more than an hour. There was but one peculiarity or symptom upon which to base a prescription. It was this: It would lie a few moments apparently asleep, then it would give a start and begin to scream with all its puny power. This would last one or two minutes, when it would as suddenly fall asleep again. This, they assured me, was the way it had performed all through its illness, except when opiated. 'Pains come and go suddenly.' That was all I had to go on. I could not locate ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... has chosen him is to trust that he will do his best. I do not know that this matters much with reference to the legislature or governments of the different States, for their State legislatures and governments are but puny powers; but in the legislature and government at Washington it does matter very much. But I shall have another opportunity ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... soon made, and as the boats left the shore, beneath the same cold and stormy sky that had led them forth, and feebly breasted the hissing waves which seemed to sneer at their puny efforts, the eighteen men who remained on shore ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... this day was one not soon forgotten in London. In the still darkness came an earthquake—that most terrible of phenomena held in God's hand, whereby He saith to poor, puny, arrogant man, "Be still, and know that I am God." Isoult awoke to hear sounds on all sides of her—the bed creaking, and below the dishes and pans dancing with a noisy clatter. In the next chamber she heard Walter ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... diet of the one than that of the other. Or take the case of mankind. Australians, Bushmen, and others of the lowest savages who live on roots and berries, varied by larvae of insects and the like meagre fare, are comparatively puny in stature, have large abdomens, soft and undeveloped muscles, and are quite unable to cope with Europeans, either in a struggle or in prolonged exertion. Count up the wild races who are well grown, strong and active, as the Kaffirs, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... structure had been confided were less successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. The ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive surfaces of the walls, resisted the most vigorous of their puny efforts, and forced them to remain contented with mutilating that which they could not destroy—with tearing off roofs, defacing marbles, and demolishing capitals. The rest of the buildings remained uninjured, and grander even now in the wildness ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... arrow and started to steal the beans; and one by one subsequently received each an arrow and started on his errand. There only remained the scented taros, so that picking again a mandatory arrow, he ascertained who would go and carry away the taros: whereupon a very puny and very delicate rat was heard to assent. 'I would like,' he said, 'to go and steal the scented taros.' The old rat and all the swarm of rats, upon noticing his state, feared that he would not be sufficiently ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... be hardened, to give them strong constitutions. Am I and my brother the worse for it?" said Sylvie. "You'll make Pierrette a peakling"; this was a word in the Rogron vocabulary which meant a puny and suffering little being. ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... understand the meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event—the abandonment and burning of Moscow—and tried with his puny hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... near us lay the huge city, so full of life, its busy hum rising to the height where I stood; and 200 feet below, the beautiful cemetery, where its dead await the morning of the resurrection. Yet, while contrasting the trees and atmosphere here with the comparatively stunted, puny foliage of England, and the chilly skies of a northern clime, I thought with Cowper respecting my own dear, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... mock Sonnets, in ridicule of my own Poems, and Charles Lloyd's, and Lamb's, &c. &c. exposing that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent, in common-place epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics, (signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them) puny pathos, &c. &c. the instances were almost all taken from myself, and Lloyd, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... time the strong afternoon wind[29] has set in from the sea, and we notice with surprise that the seasoned Friscans, still clad in the muslins and linens that seemed suitable enough at high noon, seek by preference the open seats of the locomotive car, while we, puny visitors, turn up our coat-collars and flee to the shelter of the "trailer" or covered car. As we come over "Nob Hill" we take in the size of the houses of the Californian millionaires, note that they are of wood (on account of the earthquakes?), and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... awfulness of it, the unbelievable rapidity with which event piled on event. Why, Diana, I feel as if I'd lived a lifetime since I first put foot on the Ida! And the glory of the battle! Diana, we were so puny, so insignificant, so stupid, and the Canyon was so colossal and so diabolically quick and clever! ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the time—my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels on your little bootees and all—and Your Father was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said 'Major'—so many of the neighbors used to call Your Father 'Major;' of course ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of sacred writ illustrative of Almighty wrath and the just man's recompense? Who can gaze upon the majesty of this mount, towering above the 'high places' and the hills, and turn without repining to the plains beneath, where puny man has pitched his tent and wars upon his fellow, mocking the sublimity of Nature with his paltry tyranny? I felt as if I lived in other times, and my eye eagerly but vainly sought for some traces of that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... terrified—and especially at night. Supposing the man were to lose his way? Or he might be drunk? I wish I had asked Jim to come down for me. There's Miss Constance's mother never misses a single night; I wonder who she thinks is going to run away with that puny-faced creature!" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... my daughter, she Prize of heroic worth shall be.(247) To Mithila the suitors pressed Their power and might to manifest. To all who came with hearts aglow I offered Siva's wondrous bow. Not one of all the royal band Could raise or take the bow in hand. The suitors' puny might I spurned, And back the feeble princes turned. Enraged thereat, the warriors met, With force combined my town beset. Stung to the heart with scorn and shame, With war and threats they madly came, Besieged my peaceful walls, and long To Mithila did grievous wrong. There, wasting all, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... every one of thy whimsies hath been picked up somewhere by thee in thy travels; and each of them hath been rendered more weak and puny by its place of concealment in thy closet. What thou hast written on the immortality of the soul goes rather to prove the immortality of the body; and applies as well to the body of a weasel or an eel as to the fairer one of Agathon or of Aster. Why not at once introduce a ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... than that of drowning which sometimes whelmed him in dreams and on ships—was the dread of empty space; a touch of vertigo seized him; the enemy gathered round the torch beneath suddenly seemed elves, puny impossible things far off, and he almost slipped into their midst. But he dragged back his senses. "We must all die," he gasped, "but we need not be precipitate about the business," and shut his eyes as he ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... cursing his impotence to help. Hemmy had no weapon; he was trying to hold them back by the weight of his body; he reached out and grasped a tentacle and hugged it to him, shoving forward with all his puny strength. But all his effort was as nothing. One of the octopi writhed past him and darted onto the depth charge. Its tentacles tugged at ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... in 1719, four years after the accession of Louis XV., a puny infant, to the French throne, and in the midst of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans. The scene was a broad walk in the Tuileries gardens, beneath a closely-clipped wall of greenery, along which were disposed alternately busts ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last, was in favor of the plan, and a firm ally to the lovers. He had grown extremely Western in his ideas, and was persuaded in his mind that "this old East," as he termed it, with its puny possibilities, did not amount to much, and that as soon as he was old enough to shape his own destinies, he should return to the only section of the country worthy the attention of a young man of parts. Meanwhile, he was perfectly well again, and willing to comply with his ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... lips, and am afraid to indulge hopes. She is very low. The stomach is so weak it will scarce bear to receive the slightest nourishment; in short, if I were to tell you all her complaints you would not wonder at my fears. The child, though a puny one, is well. I have got a wet-nurse for it. The packet does not sail till the latter end of next week, and I send this by a ship. I shall write by every opportunity. We arrived last Monday. We were only thirteen days at sea. The wind was so high and the sea so boisterous ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... I see no reason against it! That's how I should deal with a man who talked about me in this way, and none the less if he were a puny creature quite unable to protect himself. In that furious scene before we got Tom away I felt most terribly tempted to beat her. There's a great deal to be said for woman-beating. I am quite sure that many a labouring man who pommels ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... owned and farmed the land they now leased at the hands of the Sylvesters—there in the old hall they were assembled, a mighty host. And apart from the others, standing as though in irony beneath the frown of one of those steel-clad warriors who held the door, was little M'Adam, puny always, paltry ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... thigh was smaller than the left and showed signs of curvature, a curious hereditary result of the brutality which her mother had to endure during her fierce drunken brawls with Macquart. Gervaise remained puny, and Fine, observing her pallor and weakness, put her on a course of aniseed, under the pretext that she required something to strengthen her. But the poor child became still more emaciated. She was a tall, lank girl, whose frocks, invariably too large, hung round her as if they had ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Towsley's age would have been puzzled how to escape from the well-locked and bolted mansion; but the keen-witted gamin of the city's streets had little difficulty. True, the great front door did open rather slowly to his puny grasp, but that was on account of ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... an athlete, and now, contrasted with the burly policeman, a colossus in strength, he seemed like a puny boy. His cringing, frightened attitude, as he looked up in the captain's bulldog face, was pathetic. The crowd of bystanders could hardly contain their eagerness to take in every detail of the dramatic situation. The prisoner was sober by this time, ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... The puny flame showed him a curving passage hewn smoothly through the heart of bedrock. Before the flare died he walked twenty feet, and as another match burned to his fingers, he found the right hand curve of the passage giving way to a left hand twist. After that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... ignorance of this trait of his official: who had never felt the faintest scratch beneath the velvet of his favorite cat's-paw. Thus it was that Michael's momentary defeat had come about. Czar Nicholas crossed him openly; put upon him an affront unbearable; lowered him in the eyes of three hundred puny men and women over whom he had no power for revenge. It was, then, as a result of this, that treason had begun to surge through the mind of a brilliantly wicked man. And had he been able to read certain ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the shells exploded. The monster stopped, with a great hole torn in its body. Then, dying on its feet, it thrust its great head up and its huge jaws crunched over the branch to which its two puny destroyers were clinging. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... shrunken limbs. "Good," said he, laughing low; "these hands were too large and rude for handling the delicate webs of my own mechanism, and these strong limbs ran away with me. If I had been a sickly, puny fellow, perhaps my mind would have had fair play. There was too much of brute body here! Look at this hand now! You can see the light ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle; when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... doubters, with a puny joy, Accept amusement for their little while And feed upon some nourishing employ But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile— Protesting that one man can no more move the mass For good or ill Than could the ancients kindle the sun By tying torches to a wheel and rolling it downhill. ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... was dejected, and there was a helpless patience in his voice and movements, which I have often seen in women, but never before in a man. "Henpecked in the first degree," was the verdict I gave, without leaving my seat. The silence, shyness, and puny appearance of the boy might be accounted for by the loneliness of his life, and the usual "shakes"; but there was a wild, frightened look in his eye, a nervous restlessness about his limbs, which excited ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... man did not require either condolences or revenge. He was well pleased at an opportunity to measure his hardihood against a worthy opponent. He had found that his courage exceeded his strength, as it always should, for how could we face the gods and demons of existence if our puny arms were not backed up by our invincible eyes? and he displayed his contentment at the issue as one does a banner emblazoned with merits. Mrs. Makebelieve understood also that the big man's action was merely his ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... thin and glairy fluid, having few or none of the characteristics of Vital Fluid. Should the individual suffering this way—and either careless or unfortunate enough to go uncured—have offspring, they will assuredly be puny in body and weakly in mind, and will lead a miserable existence through the neglect and indiscretion ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... man that could be weighed with this? Lady Ongar was very rich. Florence had already heard all this from Harry—was very rich, was clever, and was beautiful; and moreover, she had been Harry's first love. Was it reasonable that she, with her little claims, her puny attractions, should stand in Harry's way when such a prize as that came across him! And as for his weakness; might it not be strength, rather than weakness; the strength of an old love which he could not quell, now that the woman was free to take him? For herself—had ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... love hath a very different effect from what it causes in the puny part of the species. In the latter it generally destroys all that appetite which tends towards the conservation of the individual; but in the former, though it often induces forgetfulness, and a neglect of food, as well as of everything ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... too well skilled in the philosophy of consolation to need my humble tribute of advice; in pain and in sickness, and in all manner of disappointments, I trust you have that within you which shall speak peace to your mind. Make it, I entreat you, one of your puny comforts, that I feel for you, and share all your griefs with you. I feel as if I were troubling you about little things; now I am going to resume the subject of our last two letters, but it may ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... lordly mastiff's port, Bearing in calm, contemptuous sort The snarls of some o'erpetted pup Who grudges him his 'bit and sup:' So stands the bard of Locksley Hall, While puny darts around him fall, Tipp'd with what TIMON takes for venom; He is ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... pictured the waves of avarice and intrigue and discontent which he thought he saw beating against the feet of this towering figure, unheeded and unrecognized because so far beneath it; he told of his own puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm which he thought he saw approaching, but in doing this he had betrayed his own ignorance, and had prepared the pit into which he himself ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... remarkable every day—I mean, that under him we attained not only our highest elevation, but the most solid authority in Europe. When the names of Marlborough and Chatham are still pronounced with awe in France, our little cavils make a puny sound. Nations that are beaten cannot ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the afternoons with football. That struck a responsive chord and Mr. Brady harked back to his school and college days when he, too, had fondled the pigskin. "I wasn't much of a player, though," he acknowledged. "I was sort of tall and puny-looking and not very strong. Still, I did get into my school team in my senior year and played on my freshman team in college. The next year I had to give it up, though. I'd like to come over some day and see you ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... years beyond sixty, but had that tremendous vigor of frame and constitution that distinguished the pioneers—an attribute strangely lacking in their puny and degenerate sons. This short and chunky old man, with his round, thick head, bristling hair and beard, and huge red neck, had still a fiber as tough as oak. He looked coarse, uncouth, and stupid, but in his small gray eyes shone the alert and unconquerable ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... institutions have been surrounded strike awe by their magnificence and mystery into the hearts of the governed. We contemplate natural objects, such as mountains, mighty rivers and the oceans, with awe because we feel so little and puny in comparison, and we do not "enjoy" contemplating them because we hate to feel little. Or else we grow familiar with them, and the awe disappears. The popular and the familiar are never awe-full, and even death loses in dignity when one has dissected a few bodies. So objects viewed by ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... 'Don't never pay if go bookin' fer trouble—it stew easy if find. There ain' no sech thing 's trouble 'n this world 'less ye look for it. Happiness won't hey nuthin if dew with a man thet likes trouble. Minnit a man stops lookin' fer trouble happiness 'II look fer him. Things came puny nigh's ye like 'em here 'n this world—hot er cold er only middlin'. Ye can either laugh er cry er fight er fish er go if meetin'. If ye don't like erry one you can fin fault. I'm on the lookout fer happiness—suits me best, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... would be the best. But yet it made him wretched when he reflected that some man would assuredly marry Mary Masters. He had heard of that excellent but empty-head young man Mr. Surtees. When the idea occurred to him he found himself reviling Mr. Surtees as being of all men the most puny, the most unmanly, and the least worthy of marrying Mary Masters. Now that Mr. Twentyman was certainly disposed of, he almost became jealous of ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... by the child? Not invariably; if the mother is fretful, irritable, cross, repining, etc., her child may be puny, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... softly, and busied herself with walking baby up and down the room, hushing it on her shoulder. If in the dim light tears fell on its puny face, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... did not, to her, convey the thought of strength—and manhood, there among the mountains, is thought to find its first and last expression through its muscle; yet, for some reason, although her first glance made her think he was a puny creature, she neither scorned nor pitied him. He was, perhaps, too smoothly dressed, too carefully shaved; the gun he had laid down so carelessly had too much "bright work" on it—but on the whole, she liked him. A ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his puny chest savagely. "What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... of defeat, but of how glorious a defeat! The escape from Elba, the landing in France and the march to Paris, conquering, where he passed, by the sheer magnetism of his personality! His spirit bounded as he read of this and of the frightened exit of that puny usurper before the mere rumour of his approach. Then that audacious staking of all on a throw of the dice—Waterloo and a deathless ignominy. He heard the sob-choked voices of the Old Guard as they bade their leader ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... begins to cast its glamour over the old Italian regimes. It is forgotten how low the Italian race had fallen under puny autocrats whose influence was soporific when not vicious. The vigorous if turbulent life of the Middle Ages was extinct; proof abounded that the role of small states was played out. Goldsmith's description, severe as it is, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... them received his first impression that women were small of soul and narrow of mind. As they stood by the gate now, this last hour grudged to them, neither dreamed that this was the final canto in the poem of boyhood. They had been fast friends since the first day pale, puny Fred made his appearance in school, and was both laughed at and bullied by some boys larger in size, but ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... fight left in them, but when they collided with each other they snapped and struck with the instinct of self-preservation, their sharp claws and teeth cutting gashes in the sleek striped coats. It was evident that all training had been forgotten, that fear of anything so puny as man had departed from the minds of the tigers, and a groan went up from the audience when the door was opened and quickly closed behind Miller, the trainer, who stood, whip and training rod in hand, in the cage with ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... adulation cowering low. All now is joy. With cheeks full-blown they wind Her solemn dirge, while the loud-opening pack The concert swell, and hills and dales return The sadly-pleasing sounds. Thus the poor hare, A puny, dastard animal, but versed In subtle wiles, diverts the youthful train. But if thy proud, aspiring soul disdains So mean a prey, delighted with the pomp, Magnificence and grandeur of the chase; 300 Hear what the Muse ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the howl of a blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravined more eagerly for slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three hundred ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... their business it was carefully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance; but if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... pangs. Oh! my sweet jealous soul, how you will relish a delight which exists only for ourselves, the child, and God! For this tiny creature all knowledge is summed up in its mother's breast. This is the one bright spot in its world, towards which its puny strength goes forth. Its thoughts cluster round this spring of life, which it leaves only to sleep, and whither it returns on waking. Its lips have a sweetness beyond words, and their pressure is at once a pain and a delight, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... grumble if the master comes to him and says, 'This little bit of ground that I have given you to grow a few sugar-canes and melons on, I am going to take back again.' What reason have we to set up our puny wills against Him, if He exercises His authority over us and demands that we should regard ourselves not only as sons but also as slaves to whom the owner of it and us has given a talent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... scornfully. "And her so big and him so puny! She'd ought to lift him off the earth with one arm and lam him with a baste or two with the other, and ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... cultivated plantations. I had previously visited many portions of the island, and saw wherever I went, the same evidences of misrule and indolence; but, the negroes, who hold the western portion of it or Hayti, are physically, at least, a finer race of people than the degenerate, puny hybrids of the eastern part, who have "miscegenated" to an extent that would satisfy the most enthusiastic admirer of our sable "friends and fellow-citizens." I have never seen finer specimens of stalwart manhood than in "Solouque's" ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy and ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... of us. Three of the brethren are Egyptians, and two are natives of Damascus. The rest are, like myself, descendants of a race supposed to have perished from off the face of the earth, yet still powerful to a degree undreamed of by the men of this puny age." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... infants. Garibaldi wrote off an address to the ladies of Palermo, in which he implored them to interest themselves in the wretched little beings created in the image of God, at the sight of whose wasted and puny bodies he, an old soldier, had wept. He had money and food distributed every morning to the most destitute, at the gates of the royal palace, where he lived with a frugality that scandalised the aged servants of royalty whom he kept, out of kindness, at their posts. Theoretically, he disapproved ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and because he has been so slow in making the necessary changes, he is to-day very scarce, and able only by the greatest caution to drag out a dull existence as a nocturnal and burrowing animal. It would seem that with such powerful protection as he originally had, he would have outlived the puny armadillos, but his fast disappearance proves that the race is not always to the swift, nor the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... puny, unprepossessing, and dirty. Worse tragedy than this, Burton knew it. The woman who presently appeared to gaze at him with open-mouthed wonder, was pretentiously and untidily dressed, with some measure of good looks ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nearer vision it discerns What in the distance like ripe roses seemed Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks Are the red lights of wreckers! Just as well The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose His puny shoulder to the icy slip Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life; Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave, And think to rise as from the bridal bed. But let the soul resolve its course shall be Onward and upward, and the walls of pain May build themselves about it ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... same regiment with the little orphan, which she had observed in the case of her own boy; and it was equally successful. By a more sparing use of medicine, by a bolder admission of fresh air, by a firm, yet cautious attention to encourage rather than to supersede the exertions of nature, the puny infant, under the care of an excellent nurse, gradually improved in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... "lay aside my 'Orpheus' for one of Hasse's puny operas? Never! My opera is almost complete. It needs but one last aria to stand out before the world in all its fulness of perfection, and shall I suffer it to be laid aside to give place to one of his tooting, jingling ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... on the 16th of December 1787. She was the only child of her parents, who were well connected; her mother was an heiress. Her father belonged to the Mitfords of the North. She describes herself as 'a puny child, with an affluence of curls which made her look as if she were twin sister to her own great doll.' She could read at three years old; she learnt the Percy ballads by heart almost before she could read. Long after, she used to describe how she first studied her beloved ballads ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... so well introduced, and outspokenly disappointed that we would not take a seat in the game that was in progress. However, Garrick passed that over by promising to come around soon. Excise laws were apparently held in puny respect in this luxurious atmosphere, and while the hospitable Miss Lottie went to summon a servant to bring refreshments—at our expense—we had ample opportunity to glance about at the large room in which ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... as its throttle rammed down. The gleaming, thousand-foot shell of the ZX-1 roared by it at equal altitude, making it a puny fly-speck in the sky. But the fly-speck was faster. It turned in a screaming bank; it straightened; it lunged back after the swaying, retreating mammoth like a whippet, lower, now, than its quarry. It maneuvered expertly as it gained, for one of the best pilots of the service was at its controls, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... most truly ambitious," I retorted; "their dreams are so vast, so infinite, so far beyond all puny human strength and capacity that they, perforce, must remain ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... then he set to work, in a sort of blind fury, to annihilate himself. It seemed as if he discerned Satan in those graces which God had so liberally bestowed upon him. He boiled with inward anger at the sight of his own comeliness; he was like a shell within which a puny evil genius was ever busy in crushing the inner pearl. In the heroic ages of Christianity, he would have sought out the keen agony of martyrdom, but failing that he paid such constant court to death that she, whom ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... simplicity. The English are more rarely given to a similar failing. The cause of this may be pointed out without much difficulty. In democratic communities each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then perceives nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either extremely minute and clear, or extremely general and vague: what lies between ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... result of this announcement, but she knew not the greatness of the old woman's soul. It was long ere her voice was heard again. Presently, raising herself, she said, "I would it had been otherwise; but I have erred, I have misjudged. I thought that your Gods were false; puny creations of a nerveless brain; but they are strong, I own their power! It may be that the great ones of old have wearied of our spiritless race, and abandoned us. So perchance you may be wise to turn to the new-comers!" ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... born in 1798, probably at Paris; related slightly to the Baudoyers through Mitral. Stunted and puny; fifer in the National Guard; "crank" collector of curios; a virtuous bachelor living with his sister, a florist on rue Richelieu. Between 1824 and 1825 a possible assistant in the Department of Finance in the bureau managed by Isidore ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... was only one left at last of all the brave race that had fought round the gallant Count:—only one, and but a boy, a fair-haired boy, a blue-eyed boy! he had been gathering pansies in the fields but yesterday—it was but a few years, and he was a baby in his mother's arms! What could his puny sword do against the most redoubted blade in Christendom?—and yet Bohemond faced the great champion of England, and met him foot to foot! Turn away, turn away, my dear young friends and kind-hearted ladies! Do not look ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray |
