"Shrinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ever realize how much those words hurt him. He had been disciplined in far too severe a school ever to permit his face to index the feelings of his heart, yet the unconcealed shrinking of this uncouth child from slightest personal contact with him cut through his acquired reserve as perhaps nothing else could ever have done. Not until he had completely conquered his first unwise impulse to retort angrily, did ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... state of mind. But in most cases such counsels, given at such a time, involving, as they would, some covert though very gentle censure, would cause the heart of the boy to close itself in a greater or less degree against them, like the leaves of a sensitive-plant shrinking from the touch. The reply would very probably be, "Well, he had no business to be on the sidewalk, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the Riviera—the sun hot on the ruddy cliffs of granite, and on the terraces of figs and vines and spreading palms; nor the rattling through the narrow streets of the old walled towns, with the scarlet-capped men and swarthy-visaged women shrinking into the door-ways as the horses clatter by; nor the quiet evenings in the hotel garden, with the moon rising over the murmuring sea, and the air sweet with the perfumes of the south. No. They climbed a mountain, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... gone too far to recede, though she would willingly have delayed, in enjoyment of the present homage and shrinking from the future plunge away from all her protectors. Though the strong, manly will overpowered hers, and made her submit to the necessities of the case and fix a day early in July, she clung the more closely to her sisters, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swoon in the court-room, when I held your hand, you looked at me without shrinking, and called me Tiberius. Again, when for hours I sat beside your cot, watching the crisis of your first terrible illness, you opened your eyes and held out your hand, saying: 'Have you come for me, Tiberius?' Why have you told me you were ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... it steals from nature its glory and its exhilaration—not its tenderness. And what, perhaps, is better than all, to mourn deeply for the death of another, loosens from ourself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to, life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view, without shrinking, the coffin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... headache when Francis came to take possession of his new home, and scarcely made her appearance; but Jane, who felt none of her sister's shrinking from him, showed him over the house, and told him how it had been managed, hoped he would keep the present servants, and particularly recommended to his care the gardener, who, though rather superannuated ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the author of the screams; on the other, three men close-locked in grimmest combat, one defending himself against two with indifferent success; while in between stood a third woman with her back to and perilously near the chasm, shrinking from the threat of a pistol in the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on, crying, 'Senza Moccolo! Senza Moccolo!'; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back—delicate arms and bosoms—graceful figures—glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... integrity, but he cannot even dream of the ordeal to which he cannot fail to be exposed; of how much courage he must possess to resist the temptations which must daily beset him; of that sensitive shrinking from undeserved censure which he must learn to control; of the ever recurring contest between a natural desire for public approbation and a sense of public duty; of the load of injustice he must be content to bear even from those who should be his friends; the imputations on his motives; the sneers ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... arm round her, and assured her that no one could harm her, Colonel Keith let his fingers be very hard pinched, and her aunt came nearer, all telling her that she had only to make her answers distinctly; and though still shrinking, she could reply to Mr. Grey's question whom she ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a very general human shrinking from the thought of any operation on the eye—it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, but as a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operation upon the eye. If I did not think I could give you back your sight, you may be sure ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... pitiful if for pride's sake, if for fear of the sneers of men, he were to kill her joy and defile his own soul with her heart's blood. People would laugh at the converted celibate—was it that he feared? Had he fallen so low as that? or was the shrinking he felt not rather the dread that his fall would be a stone of stumbling to others? for in his infatuation he had assumed to be an example. Was there no distinguishing good and evil? Could every motive and every act change ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... case of Cactuses, very large specimens, when imported from their native haunts to be placed in our glass houses, soon perish. At Kew, there have been, at various times, very fine specimens of some of the largest-growing ones, but they have never lived longer than a year or so, always gradually shrinking in size till, finally, owing to the absence of proper nourishment, and to other untoward conditions, they have broken down and rotted. This rotting of the tissue, or flesh, of these plants is the great enemy to their cultivation in England. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... heir to all the Messianic ideas of his people. In these, glory, not rejection and death, was to be the Messiah's portion. That he was always superior to current expectations is no sign that he did not feel their force. They quite mistake who find the bitterness of Jesus' "cup" simply in his physical shrinking from suffering. The temptation was ever with him to find some other way to the goal of his work than that which led through death. What Peter said hid a force greater than any word of the disciple's. It voiced the crucial temptation of Jesus' life. The answer addressed to Peter showed ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... we are thinking, our fathers would think; From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink; To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling; But it speeds from the earth like a bird ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... that, although I should be utterly ashamed to come wittingly, I feel no confusion when I find myself here. When I feel myself coming awake, I lie for a little while with my eyes closed, wondering and hoping, and afraid to open them, lest I should find myself only in my own chamber; shrinking a little, too—just a little—from the first ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... ages as winds over the blue AEgean, and woman, shrinking from their blasts and the agitations that have followed them, has prayed to her gods, and been suspended between the depths of man's depravity and the heights of his achievements, around whose wintry peaks winds of ambition have roared, storms of vaulting self-love have gathered, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... across Friedrich's mental view his cabin, differing in no respect from those of the "mountain whites," his neighbors. Then a picture of a little figure with white neck and arms shining through the filmy blackness of her gown, shrinking into an arm-chair, and saying, "I always had enough ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... married her, to find her impatient of his grief, nor of the many times since when she had appeared almost wilfully blind to his ideals and purposes. His judgment held only this, that she had never understood him. For this he had seldom blamed her; but to-night he blamed himself. Instead of shrinking away sensitively, keeping the vital part of his life to himself and making what he could of it alone, he should have set himself steadily to create a place for it in her understanding and sympathy. Was not a perfect married love ...
— Different Girls • Various
... beneath him: clanged with a thundercrash His arms, as Peleus' son the princely fell. And still his foes with most exceeding dread Stared at him, even as, when some murderous beast Lies slain by shepherds, tremble still the sheep Eyeing him, as beside the fold he lies, And shrinking, as they pass him, far aloof And, even as he were living, fear him dead; So feared they him, Achilles now ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to take his arm, or perhaps to caress him, or at least to encourage him by her gentlest words and her prettiest smiles. The steady self-restraint which she now manifested was a sign, as he interpreted it, of suppressed resentment. Shrinking, honestly shrinking, from the bare possibility of another quarrel, he confronted the ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... therefore, of the faith of the Trinity it behoves me to distinguish without shrinking from danger, and to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, and, without fear, confidently to spread abroad the name of God everywhere, so that after my death I may leave it to my Gallican brethren ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... inflicted a good deal of pain upon the poor fellow, for the perspiration streamed down his face like rain. Yet all the time he sat motionless and impassive as a statue, never moving a muscle or shrinking ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Mr Gale exploded in tones low and fierce. "But I call it a swindle." And he walked, with an undecided, longing, shrinking air, in the wake of the shabby man who ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... eyes; her lips quivered; she leaned back feebly in her chair, breathing a name. The crisis lasted a few minutes, while the momentary vision faded and the sun-light crept on. The eyelids unclosed at last, slowly and painfully, as though shrinking from what might greet the eyes beneath them. But the farther wall was now in deep shade. Mrs. Verrier sat up; the emotion which had mastered her like a possession passed away; and rising hurriedly, she went back to the front drawing-room. She had hardly reached it when Miss Floyd's voice ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... separated and fell back, showing on each weak or wicked face the particular passion which had driven them into crime and made them the victims of this wholesale revenge. There had been some sort of bond between them till the vision of death rose before each shrinking soul. Shoulder to shoulder in crime, they fell apart as their doom approached; and rushing, shrieking, each man for himself, they one and all sought to escape by doors, windows or any outlet which promised ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... confronts the objection that he has deposed knowledge and degraded humanity to the rank of an ass whose highest attainment is to love—what? "Husked lupines, and belike the feeder's self." The Dervish declares without shrinking the faith that ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... dragged by constables, she entered the prisoner's dock. There she clutched the bar before her as if to keep herself from falling. Her head was bent down between her shrinking shoulders as if she were going through the agony ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... short wigs, black cloaths, or dark camblet trimmed black, with mourning gloves and hat-bands, who went on certain days at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club. Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain shrinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had the unique curiosity to inquire into their characters, being the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity of their dress; and I find upon due examination they are a knot of parish clerks, who have taken ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... prose, and that the Book contains no Oracles from him, beyond some sixty short poems in a uniform measure. These Duhm alleges—and this is all that he finds in them—reveal Jeremiah as a man of modest, tender, shrinking temper, "no ruler of spirits, a delicate observer, a sincere exhorter and counsellor, a hero only in suffering and not in attack."(51) Every passage of the Book, which presents him in any character beyond this—as an advocate for the Law or as a didactic prophet—is the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... he softly, scowling from one to other of the shrinking company. "You, Amos Penarth, and you, Richard Farnaby, aye and half a dozen others o' ye, you've sailed wi' me ere now and you know when I say a thing I mean it. And you'd fight, would ye, my last words to you being 'see to it there ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of St. Paul's, and the mean archway of Dean's Court, into a region of gorgeous blazonments, we come to that quiet and grave house, like an old nobleman's, that stands aside from the new street from the Embankment, like an aristocrat shrinking from a crowd. The original Heralds' College, Cold Harbour House, founded by Richard II., stood in Poultney Lane, but the heralds were turned out by Henry VII., who gave their mansion to Bishop Tunstal, whom he had driven from Durham ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... carriage who ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I should indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: but the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity is not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not that they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that they are unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... weakness and exhaustion, he succeeded in rising from his seat, and, with a countenance contracted by rage and despair, he seized a knife, before they had time to prevent him, and turned it upon Cephyse. But at the moment he was about to strike, shrinking from an act of murder, he hurled the knife far away from him, and falling back into the chair, covered his face ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... muttered, the mother-love, the honor and justice in her quailing heart shrinking back before the threat ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... across the square to an old house set back between its neighbors, as though it were modest and shrinking from observation, or desirous of keeping a secret. Its door was narrow and down a step from the roadway; its windows small, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... shrinking back from closer approach, her white face horror-stricken. I drew a quick breath, fairly quivering under the ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... we're settled;—I don't see any sense, you know, in your grey cloaks—I'm old, and you won't mind me saying so; but I know what Frank Wentworth is," said the indignant aunt, making a severe curtsy, accompanied by lightning glances at the shrinking background of female figures, as she went out of ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... child received a savage blow from the woman's hard hand full in the face without shrinking. It was Madge who winced. Tears rose to her eyes. She put her arms about the child and tried to ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... driven him into this comedy, as destiny had driven him to Heart's Desire. It was not comedy now, when Dan Anderson faced judge and jury here in Blackman's adobe. There came a swift, sudden chill, a gripping as of iron, a darkening, a shrinking of the heart of each man in that little room. It was the coming of the Law! Ah! Dan Anderson, you ruined our little paradise; and now its walls are down forever, even the walls of ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... the east side, in which, as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace—here were the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to humorists ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... is no way of keeping apples quite so good and practicable as packing in light barrels and storing in cool cellars; the barrel forms a room within a room, and prevents circulation of air and consequent drying and shrinking of the fruit, and also lessens the changes of temperature, and besides more fruit can be packed and stored in a given space than in any other way. The poorest of all ways is the large open bin, and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... attended her devotedly to the last, was inconsolable at her loss. "When he had deposited her remains in their last resting-place," relates his biographer, "he seemed as if left without an object on earth. Shrinking even from the affectionate attentions of his family, he went at once to Wiseton, where he passed several months in complete retirement ... his grief was too deeply seated to be otherwise than lasting; and for many years its poignancy ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... him like a man who looks through his window at the wide expanse of meadow and waving wood and distant hill which has met his eye every morning of his life and finds it—gone. It was incredible. He turned giddy. His reeling mind, shrinking back from the abyss, struck against a fixed point, and, clutching it, came violently to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... to the failure to treat more extensively the biographical material of the whole race the editor states that such accounts cannot be secured in many instances for the reason that, some are indifferent to fame, experience a shrinking from publicity, or are too busy to give attention to matters of this kind. The defects of this book, however, cannot be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... was, however, abundantly rich in personal treasures, such as flesh, firm, plump, and replete with the juices of youth, and robust well-knit limbs. My fingers too had now got within reach of the true, the genuine sensitive plant, which, instead of shrinking from the touch, joys to meet it, and swells and vegetates under it: mine pleasingly informed me that matters were so ripe for the discovery we meditated, that they were too mighty for the confinement they were ready to break. A waistband that I unskewered, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Olney!" Ethelyn gasped, thinking how near that was to her mother-in-law, and shrinking from the espionage to which ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... her hair, which waved softly around her forehead, was wound in a flat knot low in her neck, making her look very young, as she sat shrinking from the fire of eyes directed towards her and saw, if she did not hear, the low whispers of the people, many of whom had never seen her before, and were surprised at her extreme youth and beauty. Ruby Ann was at a distance, trying ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... asked, clinging to the others and shrinking back in alarm from its sheer edge and bottomless depth, for that this was enormous we could see by the shaft of light which flowed downwards farther than ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Soubise, and other Huguenot chiefs had incited him to murder the Duke of Guise, persecutor of the faithful, "as a meritorious deed in the eyes of God and men." Coligny repudiated this allegation point blank. Shrinking from the very appearance of hypocrisy, he abstained from any regret at the death of the Duke of Guise. "The greatest blessing," said he, "which could come to this realm and to the church of God, especially to myself and all my house;" and he referred to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... imagined at once more powerful or more pathetic than that picture of a "noble mind o'erthrown," alternating between crushed, hopeless misery and wild excitement—thirsting for the rest and peace that only death can bestow, yet shrinking from the fearful leap into the dim unknown beyond the grave. The scene with the Queen is inimitably grand. One feels that the entrance of the Ghost comes only in time to stay the frenzied hand, and then follows the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the human shrinking from the cup of pain. They saw the false friend, Judas, betray him with a kiss. (Alas! poor Judas! He loved Jesus, in a way, like the rest did. It was only his fear of poverty that made him betray his Master. He was so poor—he wanted the money so badly! ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... some private soldier straying out of bounds with a woman of the camp as companion, he had thrown himself from the saddle to investigate. Whatever was to be done must be accomplished quickly, or it would prove all too late. To think was to act. Stepping instantly in front of the shrinking girl and facing him, I ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... she knew not whither; for clouds and darkness were in the forward distance. At every step, she found a new strength and a new power of endurance growing up in her young spirit. Thought, too, was becoming clearer and stronger. The mature woman had suddenly taken the place of the shrinking girl. ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... as with smiling face but shrinking soul he made his way through that crowd of his fellow-creatures whose contact was defilement. He would have lost them all rather than a song of Hester's—and yet that he would on occasion have lost for a good rubber ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... bring the bottle—no room," he said, patting his shrinking pocket. "The tangle-foot all went down the pussyfoot's neck, so I left 'Robbie Burns' in the car. By the way, don't forget to ring up about that car. Old Mut-mut cut the cushions to ribbons; that bit of evidence might ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... well, and was to accompany her fortune-hunting in Ferrara for precisely opposite reasons. Was this fair? she wondered. She, Bellaroba, was to go because she was of a piece with the Ferrarese; Olimpia, because she could furnish a provoking contrast. She was an affectionate, docile creature, this shrinking Bellaroba, absurdly young, absurdly your servant; but tears smarted in her eyes as she stood adorned for sacrifice—in her tight crimson dress, lace at her neck and wrists, a jewel on her forehead, a chain in her hair, and a cold block of lead dragging at her heart. She had never ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... him full in the face while a great storm was surging in her mind. "I can't obey my father," she was saying to herself, I can't! It's too hard—too hard! The old man mistook her silence for the rejection of his prayer and slowly turned to go. The shrinking figure, the concentrated misery, the hopeless expression on his face, the tears in his eyes, the pathetic woebegone listlessness in his walk were too much for her; ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... to him and she yielded, not wholly, but with a shrinking of her small body, and a soft, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... fanciful and erroneous notion "led to serious errors in practice," [1] and was occasionally productive of the most fatal results. Although, indeed, Pliny spoke of the folly of the magicians in using the catanance (Greek: katanhankae, compulsion) for love-potions, on account of its shrinking "in drying into the shape of the claws of a dead kite," [2] and so holding the patient fast; yet this primitive idea, after the lapse of centuries, was as fully credited as in the early days when it was originally started. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... in his quality of Sage Emerson always haunted the perilous altitudes of Transcendentalism, 'seeing nothing under him but the everlasting snows of Himalaya, the Earth shrinking to a Planet, and the indigo Firmament sowing itself with daylight stars.' He never thinks it beneath his dignity to touch a point of minor morals, or to say a good word for what he somewhere calls subterranean prudence. Emerson values mundane circumspection as highly as Franklin, and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... saw nor heard any thing that indicated the approach of an enemy. Lily, though very much alarmed, was as resolute as her companions; for she knew and felt what slavery would be if its shackles were again fastened upon her. She was a gentle, timid, shrinking girl; but she was determined to die rather than be restored to the tyranny of her capricious mistress, and the more terrible fate ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... more exalted strategies. A woman who made less a point of sympathizing with their delicate organisms, might have sought to plunge these phosphorescent pieces into the tepid bath of domestic life; but Flavia's discernment was deeper. This must be a refuge where the shrinking soul, the sensitive brain, should be unconstrained; where the caprice of fancy should outweigh the civil code, if necessary. She considered that this much Arthur owed her; for she, in her turn, had made concessions. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... forty years of carnage the fighting propensities had glutted themselves. A reaction followed, and in the early years of Henry VIII. the statutes were growing obsolete, and the "unlawful games" rising again into favour. The younger nobles, or some among them, were shrinking from the tilt-yard, and were backward on occasions even when required for war. Lord Surrey, when waiting on the Border, expecting the Duke of Albany to invade the northern counties, in 1523, complained of the growing "slowness" of the young lords "to be at such journeys,"[67] and of their "inclination ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... till then, she had never envisaged. The Marchesino's madness had carried her one step further. She had not actually looked into the abyss. But she had felt herself near to something that she hated even more than she feared it. And she had returned to the hotel full of a shrinking delicacy, not to be explained, intense as snow, which had made the meeting with her mother and Artois a torture to her, which had sealed her lips to silence that night, which had made her half apology to Gaspare in the morning a secret agony, which had even set a flush on her face when she ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... had faced the task with all the splendid, impetuous courage that was hers. There was no shrinking. Her mind was swiftly and irrevocably made up. She would abandon the Skandinavia for ever. She would abandon everything and follow those dictates which had prompted her so often in the past. Father Adam's self-sacrificing example was always before her. The forests. Those submerged legions which ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... can't go togged out like that!" she ordered in quite a different tone. She flung off her own long coat and threw it around the shrinking little white figure, then knelt and deftly turned up the long satin draperies out of sight and fixed them firmly with a pin extracted from somewhere about her person. Quickly she stood up and pulled off her rubbers, her eye ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... poring over his books, in the hope that, despite his misfortune, he may one day minister to parental vanity. Finally he breaks away from Rita, for the first time "in all these ten years," goes up "into the infinite solitudes," looks Death in the face, and returns shrinking from passion, yearning towards selfless love, and filled with a profound and remorseful pity for the lot of poor maimed humanity. He will "help Eyolf to bring his desires into harmony with what lies attainable before him." He will "create a conscious happiness ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... pity and forgive. The principal said he thought I would be more apt to find my family if I joined a colored regiment in the West than if I joined one of the Maine companies. I confess at first I felt a shrinking from taking the step, but love for my mother overcame all repugnance on my part. Now that I have linked my fortunes to the race I intend to do all I ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... to haul the supplies for the North West Mounted Police this spring. I'll be in Fort Macleod 'most as soon as you, I reckon. What is it, Winnie?" he questioned, as the child drew shrinking ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... I crossed the interminable length of floor that separated me from the door I could feel that contemptuous smile rowelling my shrinking vertebrae. Halfway across, the Blue Himalyan guinea-pig could have given me three drachms and whipped me by sheer brute strength. As I sped towards the door an attendant opened it. It was unnecessary. I could easily have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... and scolded each other for a minute, then each returned to her own room. But I not to sleep. Listening acutely for every sound, yet shrinking from every sound as it came, I tossed and turned with wide-open, feverish eyes. Suspicious circumstances at which I had been disposed to laugh in the day, took on a sinister complexion in the watches of the night. The loneliness of the place, its distance from every habitation—details to ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... hurricane; hastening desperately to recover what it enjoyed before life was wrecked and pillaged by these blasts of death. Hearts, which now swell with pity and gratitude when our maimed soldiers pass the streets, will, from sheer familiarity, and through natural shrinking from reminder, be dried to a stony indifference. "Let the dead past bury its dead" is a saying terribly true, and perhaps essential to the preservation of mankind. The world of ten years hence will shrug its shoulders if it sees maimed and useless men crawling the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till of late unknown, her eye rested upon the gipsire which Alwyn had sent her by the old servant. The sight restored to her the holy recollection of her father, the sweet joy of having ministered to his wants. She put up the little ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meek, angelic monk dreaded the life of his days; dreaded to leave the cloister where the sunshine was tempered and the noise reduced to a mere faint hum, and where the flower-beds were tidy and prim; dreaded to soil or rumple his spotless white robe and his shining black cowl; a spiritual sybarite, shrinking from the sight of the crowd seething in the streets, shrinking from the idea of stripping the rags off the beggar in order to see his tanned and gnarled limbs; shuddering at the thought of seeking for muscles in the dead, cut-open body; fearful of every whiff of life that ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... farm, or at a show of beasts:- do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage? Do we not know that as he is a coward in his domestic life, stalking among his shrinking men and women slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward out of doors, and carrying cowards' weapons hidden in his breast, will shoot men down and stab them when he quarrels? And if our reason did not teach us this and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in deede, but namelie, for the greate abhominable sin of vn- // Contempt kindnesse: but what vnkindnesse? euen such // of Gods vnkindnesse as was in the Iewes, in contemninge // trewe Re- Goddes voice, in shrinking from his woorde, in // ligion. wishing backe againe for gypt, in committing aduoultrie and hordom, not with the women, but with the doctrine of Babylon, did bring all the plages, destructions, and Captiuities, that fell so ofte and horriblie, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... been gay, spirituette, and coquettish; gradually, she became quiet and reserved. The giddy school-girl had given place to the shrinking virgin. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... his voice fairly trembling with emotion; "why, look here! We was all shrinking away to nothing in that wanishing garden. Bob Scarlet himself was no bigger than an ant when we ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... acts, the exhaustion resulting from their accomplishment, renders them fearful to the patient who has the fear, the phobia of these acts, just as he has the terror of that depression which gives the feeling of the diminution of life. The shrinking of activity and conscience, phobias, negativisms, generally take their starting point in this fear of exhaustion caused by some difficult action. In other cases the patient feels incapable of accomplishing correctly the reflected acts necessary to social and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... perfect fright lest he should guess right too soon; shrinking away, as she held the basket towards him; curling up her pretty shoulders; stopping her ear with her hand, as if by so doing she could keep the right word out of Toby's lips; and laughing ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... and shrinking, was dressed in a queer, old-fashioned black silk that had evidently been taken up and made short for the occasion. Mrs. Harlowe's heart was touched to the quick and she bent and kissed the young ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... him. The same 'net was privily laid for him.' All that had seemed to him half an hour before as wellnigh desperate, continued utterly unaltered. But what had altered? God had come into the place, and that altered the whole aspect of matters. Instead of looking with shrinking and tremulous heart along the level of earth, where miseries were, he was looking up into the heavens, where God was; and so everything was beautiful. That will be our experience if we will commit the keeping of our souls ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her prison he rose and entered the hut, where he tried to engage in conversation with her. Groping across the interior he leaned his short spear against the wall and sat down beside her, and as he talked he edged closer and closer until at last he could reach out and touch her. Shrinking, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... immediately ceased to weep, and said "Yes," calmly and with firmness. Bending beside her brother, without faltering or shrinking, she gave her white fingers to the ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... them, and where did you find them,' Harold asked next, shrinking a little from the glittering stones which seemed ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... she had suspected as she had talked to her sister was, before the interview ended, made curiously clear. The first obstacle in her pathway would be the shrinking of a creature who had been so long under dominion that the mere thought of seeing any steps taken towards her rescue filled her with alarm. One might be prepared for her almost praying to be let alone, because she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... combination, ma foi!" said Merlin, with an oath, as he turned to the two other women, who sat pale and shrinking in a corner of the room, not understanding what was going on, not knowing what to think or what to believe. They had known nothing of Deroulede's plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... results in this as in other fields of activity. The task is a great one and underlies the task of dealing with the whole industrial problem. But the fact that it is a great problem does not warrant us in shrinking from the attempt to solve it. At present we face such utter lack of supervision, such freedom from the restraints of law, that excellent men have often been literally forced into doing what they ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... softly queried a tragic-faced youth, sensitive and shrinking, crowned with an abominably trimmed head of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... boys were present, and Mrs. Bertram, though shrinking at all times from their high spirits and love of fun, yet looked forward every day to their short visit. She was a confirmed invalid, and rarely left the house, and her daughter Julia in consequence took her place as ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... not well, and mother'll be alarmed about me—I ought not to have left father alone to tend store, and I feel that I've taken cold. I presume some of these folks will have a spare seat, and my boots have shrunk, and I don't care for picnics as a general thing, anyway. My clothes are shrinking all the time, and I think we're going to have a thunder-shower, and I guess ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... was dear to the Madigans. They seized upon each blunder she made, and held it up, shrinking and bare, under the light of their laughter-loving eyes. They ridiculed it interminably, and were unflaggingly entertained by it, repeating it for the edification of each new-comer so often and so faithfully that from conscious mimicry they turned to use of it without ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... meeting-house, a seat of gloom, still throws its darksome shadow down through the years,—the stool of repentance. "Barbarous and cruel punishments" were forbidden by the statutes of the new colony, but on this terrible soul-rack the shrinking, sullen, or defiant form of some painfully humiliated man or woman sat, crushed, stunned, stupefied by overwhelming disgrace, through the long Christian sermon; cowering before the hard, pitiless gaze of the assembled and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... round the helpless girl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before the eyes of the judges as before her own. No other thing could have been suggested by that piteous prayer. The stake, the scaffold, the fire—and the shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that dark background of prison wall. It was enough that it should be long—to hide her as much as was possible from those dreadful ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... nothing but my duty, sir," she said. "That is the myrrh and balsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like unto death over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest and quiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitching fire in the dog days. And what would you fancy for your ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... shuddered Gila, shrinking back into the depths of the chair. "But you know you mustn't believe a story like that! Poor people are always getting up such tales about rich people's automobiles. It isn't true at all. No chauffeur ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... was the dark, dank night that settled down upon Elizabeth as she sank under her burdens, her temptations, and cruel, wicked unbelief. In this dismal, hopeless "hell upon earth" she pined away for weeks and months, utterly shrinking from Bible reading, prayer, song, or religious conversation, and studiously guarding against religious reasoning, and even thought, as abominable for ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... have been more conscious of that feeling of relief than he was of its coming. It spoke to him in the swift glance she gave toward those distant, fog-blurred lights, in the white, drained face of her, in the shrinking backward movement of her body when he spoke again; and something within him ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... abbreviate, curtail, truncate, syncopate. Show (noun), display, ostentation, parade, pomp, splurge. Show, exhibit, display, expose, manifest, evince. Shrink, flinch, wince, blench, quail. Shun, avoid, eschew. Shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, timid, shrinking. Sign, omen, auspice, portent, prognostic, augury, foretoken, adumbration, presage, indication. Simple, innocent, artless, unsophisticated, naive. Skilful, skilled, expert, adept, apt, proficient, adroit, dexterous, deft, clever, ingenious. Skin, hide, pelt, fell. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... with much adroit delicacy concerning the shoes, and had elicited the story of the father's purchase. Though she read correctly the child's real shrinking from the thought of being the cynosure of many amused eyes, ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... times. I don't find that he is charged with any practices that the law deems dishonest, or that his wealth has made him arrogant and inaccessible; on the contrary, he takes great pains to appear affable and gracious. But, they say, he is remarkable for shrinking from his former friendships, which were generally too plain and home-spun to appear amidst his present brilliant connexions; and that he seems uneasy at sight of some old benefactors, whom a man of honour would take pleasure to acknowledge — Be that as it may, he had so effectually engaged ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... towards her. It was the worse for her. But, so long as thou art good daughter to me, thou shalt find me good father to thee;" and for a moment there was a kindliness in his eye which made it sufficiently like that of his brother to give some consolation to the shrinking heart that he was rending from all it loved; and she steadied her voice for another gentle profession of obedience, for which she felt ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... closed; then, smoke rose slowly from the chimneys, and sashes were thrown up to let in air, and doors were opened, and servant girls, looking lazily in all directions but their brooms, scattered brown clouds of dust into the eyes of shrinking passengers, or listened disconsolately to milkmen who spoke of country fairs, and told of waggons in the mews, with awnings and all things complete, and gallant swains to boot, which another hour would see upon ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... wanted,she did not seem to know how to get it. Those shining words lay up so high, above her reach: a mountain head lifting itself out of the fogs of the valley wherein she dwelt. As for the first verse of her psalm, it might as well have been a description of Gabriel, for any use to her,so she thought, shrinking back from the words. Then for the second verse,yes, there was human weakness thereor had been. Some time a refuge had been needed: but so long ago, that the years of calm security had wiped out even the thought of defencelessness. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... had all an Englishman's shrinking reluctance to discuss his belief, or his inner life; "yours is a nice easy path—too good to be true, I'm afraid. My creed is, to do our best, to help other people, and to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... shrinking farther back into her veil. "I was downstairs and heard her scream, then she fell and I ran up. It was just a minute or two ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... for himself at Suffolk. On the seventeenth, just two weeks before the supreme test came on Lee's weakened army at Chancellorsville, Longstreet reported to Seddon that Suffolk would cost three thousand men, if taken by assault, or three days' heavy firing if subdued by bombardment. Shrinking from such expenditure of life or ammunition, Davis, Seddon, and Longstreet fell back on a siege, which, preventing all junction with Lee, might well have cost the ruin of ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... where he a hero shines; The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred, Who owns a Bushby's heart without the head; Comes, 'mid a string of coxcombs to display That veni, vidi, vici, is his way; The shrinking bard adown the alley skulks, And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks; Though there, his heresies in church and state Might well award him Muir and Palmer's fate: Still she undaunted reels and rattles on, And dares the public like a noontide sun. (What scandal call'd Maria's janty ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... bonnie queen of Fay! Call thy sisters from the gloam, And, whilst I am on my way, Feast and frolic in my home,— Kiss the moonbeams, blanching white, Shrinking, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... lights,[162] appear with great brilliancy in the clear Canadian sky, especially during the winter nights. Starting from behind the distant horizon, they race up through the vault of heaven, spreading over all space one moment, shrinking to a quivering streak the next, shooting out again where least expected, then vanishing into darkness deeper than before; now they seem like vast floating banners of variegated flame, then as crescents, again as majestic columns of light, ever changing ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... ran to her father, and kissed him, and then shook hands with Marcus. He observed a shrinking in her touch. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... away from the pump, I saw in the doorway the station-master, of whom I had twice made complaints to his superiors, turning up the collar of his coat, shrinking from the wind and the snow. He came up to me, and putting two fingers to the peak of his cap, told me with an expression of helpless confusion, strained respectfulness, and hatred on his face, that the train was twenty minutes late, and asked ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... eyes of appeal the unhappy Iris called upon heaven to witness that she would die a thousand deaths rather than betray her solemn trust. But even as she spoke the fictitious flame of courage withered away in her shrinking frame; and at the mere touch of her brother's finger and thumb upon her wrist, the mere sight of his face bending masterfully over her with white teeth just gleaming between his twisting smile and half-veiled eyes of insolent determination, she allowed him, unresisting, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... England's sin, of England's modern wickedness. I believe they are the maggots bred out of the sore upon which our modern industrialism is based. When I looked upon the vilest of this city spawn, if my rising gorge permitted thought at all, I always had visions of little shrinking children whipped to work in English factories and mines and potteries; of souls ground out of anaemic bodies that Manchester might fatten. Free trade—licensed slaughter! The rights of the individual—the sacred liberty of the subject! ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the horrible quest, shrinking where others stared. For it was a pitiless time, and the squadron of the Queen-mother were as lost to womanhood as the fishwomen of two centuries later. But Diane saw no corpse at once so tall, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... landowners. Drought in 1998 further damaged the sugar industry, but its recovery in 1999 contributed to robust GDP growth. Long-term problems include low investment and uncertain property rights. The political turmoil in Fiji has had a severe impact with the economy shrinking by 8% in 1999 and over 7,000 people losing their jobs. The interim government's 2001 budget is an attempt to attract foreign investment and restart economic activity. The government's ability to manage the budget and fulfill predictions of 4% growth ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Davy; it's too big a job for a boy built like me, you understand, though sure I'd like to accommodate first rate," replied the scout with the red hair and mild blue eyes, shrinking back, ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter |
