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Dwarf   Listen
noun
Dwarf  n.  (pl. dwarfs)  
1.
An animal or plant which is much below the ordinary size of its species or kind.
2.
Especially: A diminutive human being, small in stature due to a pathological condition which causes a distortion of the proportions of body parts to each other, such as the limbs, torso, and head. A person of unusually small height who has normal body proportions is usually called a midget. Note: During the Middle Ages dwarfs as well as fools shared the favor of courts and the nobility.
3.
(Folklore) A small, usually misshapen person, typically a man, who may have magical powers; mythical dwarves were often depicted as living underground in caves. Note: Dwarf is used adjectively in reference to anything much below the usual or normal size; as, a dwarf pear tree; dwarf honeysuckle.
Dwarf elder (Bot.), danewort.
Dwarf wall (Arch.), a low wall, not as high as the story of a building, often used as a garden wall or fence.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dwarf" Quotes from Famous Books



... why? Because Taste (GOUT, inclination) sets no limits to its recompenses. The King of Prussia overloads men of talent with his benefits for precisely the reasons which induce a little German Prince to overload with benefits a buffoon or a dwarf." [—OEuvres de Voltaire,—xxvii. 220 n.] Could there be a phenomenon more indisputably ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... that I was in a great market-place going from stall to stall, trying to buy something, but I had forgotten what it was I wanted. A horrid grinning little dwarf, with great fangs in his jaw, like a boar's tusks, followed me everywhere, carrying my purse. I'd stand awhile in front of every stall, trying to remember what it was I'd come for, and when I'd thought awhile I'd cry out, 'Now I know what ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the maple leaf meant, and there was no doubt about it, he saw a dwarf sitting in the ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... the end of the finger-board, which softens it; in a continuous manner (legato), or detached (staccato). Weird effects in dramatic music are sometimes produced by striking the strings with the wood of the bow, Wagner resorting to this means to delineate the wicked glee of his dwarf Mime, and Meyerbeer to heighten the uncanniness of Nelusko's wild song in the third act of "L'Africaine." Another class of effects results from the manner in which the strings are "stopped" by the fingers of the left hand. When ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... itself, about half a mile from the edge next us, was to be seen the "Island," with two or three slated houses on it, naked and un-plastered, as desolate-looking almost as the mountains. A little range of exceeding low hovels, which a dwarf could scarcely enter without stooping, appeared to the left; and the eye could rest on nothing more, except a living mass of human beings crawling slowly about. The first thing the pilgrim does when he gets a sight of the lake, is to prostrate himself, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... exercising her warm sympathies for the good of others, is to deprive her of the greatest happiness of which she is capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... of this, Wattie and Mattie not only continued to be liked by their neighbours, but in time grew to be highly respected by all who knew them. Wattie could talk a great deal, and could give a reason for everything; and his dwarf figure might be seen of an evening sitting on the edge of the bridge wall, surrounded by a group of village worthies, whilst his shrill little voice rose high above theirs, discussing the affairs of Langaffer. And little Mattie was the very echo of little Wattie. What he said ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... in primitive or aboriginal force. Absence of standards, absence of amusements, the lack of contrast, these are a few of the causes that contribute towards the self-centred existence led by most inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the city? He is passed by without ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... against what he always made a great point of,—that nobody whatever should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and humility allow the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all imitation tended to dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the seed to germinate at all. So, if I do write like him, it will be because I cannot ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... course. He led the way through the gap to a patch of turf on the heathy ground, screened by bushes and dwarf trees on the side nearest to the road, and commanding in the opposite direction a grandly desolate view over the broad brown wilderness of the moor. The clouds had gathered, within the last half hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... human speech, although far-reaching in scope, and marvellous in delicacy, can embody them after all but approximately and suggestively. Spirit and Truth are like the Lady Una and the Red Cross Knight; Speech like the dwarf that lags behind with the lady's ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... the nations of the earth are to become partakers in the blessing resting on Abraham. In the view of such a task, a prophet of ordinary dimensions, as well as the collective body of such, would dwindle down to the appearance of a dwarf. They would have been less than Moses. In Deut. xxxiv. 10, it is said, "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face;"—a passage which not only plainly refers to the experience acquired at that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... as ten thousand pilgrims on the 15th of last August. It is astonishing how living the statues are to these people, and how the wicked are upbraided and the good applauded. At Varallo, since I took the photographs I published in my book Ex Voto, an angry pilgrim has smashed the nose of the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for no other reason than inability to restrain his indignation against one who was helping to inflict pain on Christ. It is the real hair and the painting up to nature that does this. Here at Oropa I ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... officers and men altogether some two hundred strong, was flabbergasted as he gaily marched in front of the column on our being received by a hail of bullets and buckshot, which decimated our ranks as we suddenly debouched from a rough, tangled undergrowth of scrub and dwarf plantain trees. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... to a dwarf will not prevent your standing erect again. "I have forgotten thy name" is better than "I ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... and other musical instruments, made on a small scale to suit the capacity of children, materials for drawing, painting, modelling, and sculpture; maps, in relief, of cities and other parts of our world, and all kinds of small birds and dwarf animals. I should not omit to state that we have living horses and deer in miniature: they are about the size of an ordinary lap-dog, though in many other respects resembling the larger species. These ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... American colonies which had been formerly granted by Spain to France. Holland got nothing out of the war as affecting her interests at sea,—not even a trading post. Her alliance with Great Britain had become as some one has called it, that of "the giant and the dwarf." At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, to quote the words of Mahan, "England was the sea power; ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for nought. What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?" "Set thy own price," quoth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... west front may very probably have been similar to that of Lincoln Cathedral, "unornamental," says a writer in Architecture, "save for some interlacing arches and dwarf blind arcades, and with no windows to reflect the setting sun, or to light the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... Royal Circus, all the horses standing in a line, with men and women standing on their backs, waving flags, while the trumpeters blew their trumpets. And the largest giant in the world, and Mr. Paap, the smallest dwarf in the world, and a female dwarf, who was smaller still, and Miss Biffin, who did every thing without legs or arms. There was also the learned pig, and the Herefordshire ox, and a hundred other sights which I cannot now remember. We walked about for an hour or two, seeing the outside ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... her stood the least little man I had ever seen; of such admirable proportions no one could call him a dwarf, because with that word we usually associate something of deformity; but yet with an elfin look of shrewd, hard, worldly wisdom in his face that marred the impression which his delicate regular little ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... caused by a hardening or an effeminate life; those of the mind, by education, which not only divides men into the rude and the cultivated, but increases the natural differences which nature has allowed among the latter; for if a giant and a dwarf walk in the same road, every step they take will separate them more widely. And if there are no relations among men, their inequalities will trouble them very little. Where there is no love, what is the use of beauty? ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... contending hardily with a strong beating wind; whilst the Europe, with yards pointed and sails closely furled, steadily and swiftly followed in the wake of the George the Fourth, looking like a noble giant led captive by some sooty dwarf. The Black Rock was soon gained, Crosby and its pretty cottages showed dimly distant; the mountains of Wales opened grandly forth before us; and, after one last long look, I dived to my state-room, partly to busy myself with seeing all my traps arranged and set ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... minutes he slunk in again, and three loafers came slouching down the street, eager for mischief or beastliness of some sort. They chose a house that seemed rather smarter than the rest, and, irritated by the neat curtains, the little grass plot with its dwarf shrub, one of the ruffians drew out a piece of chalk and wrote some words on the front door. His friends kept watch for him, and the adventure achieved, all three bolted, bellowing yahoo laughter. Then a bell began, tang, tang, tang, and here and there children ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... just then, to wonder how such a weak-minded, malicious old dwarf as had been painted to him, could have managed to get and keep so high a position in so remarkably beautiful a place as Grantley. He said something about the village being so pretty; but Dick Lee had been staring eagerly in all ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... dull rustics by the dawning genius of the youth whom they but dimly comprehended. He went amongst them under the nickname of Columbus, and they would say, "Well, if you won't play, preach us a sermon," which he would do. Mounting on an old dwarf witch-elm about seven feet high, where several could sit, he would hold forth. This seems to have been a resort of his for reading, his favourite occupation. The same authority tells how, when suffering toothache, he allowed his companions to drag the tooth from his head with a violent jerk, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... wide, approached by a flight of steps opposite the entrance; they consist of oblong buildings, usually divided by a wall into two chambers, and surrounded on all sides by a colonnade composed of circular columns or square piers placed at intervals, and the whole is roofed in. A dwarf wall is frequently found between the piers and columns, about half the height of the shaft. These temples differ from the larger ones in having their outer walls perpendicular. Fig. 20 is a plan of one of these small temples, and no one can fail to remark the ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... hours my visitors depart, and we lose no time—for we must rise at cockcrow—in spreading our mats round the common room. You would admire the Somali pillow [29], a dwarf pedestal of carved wood, with a curve upon which the greasy poll and its elaborate frisure repose. Like the Abyssinian article, it resembles the head-rest of ancient Egypt in all points, except that it is not worked with Typhons and other horrors to drive away dreadful ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... joined what the land had kept asunder. At this last hour of Durant's last day they were drifting rather than sailing past a sunken shore, a fringe of gray slate, battered by the tide and broken into thin layers, with edges keen as knives; above it, low woods of dwarf oaks stretched northward, gray and phantasmal as the shore, stunted and tortured into writhing, unearthly shapes by the violence of storms. For here and now the sea had its way; it had taken on reality; and earth was the phantom, the vanishing, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... tutors and governesses are never cruelly punished, but retire to the country on ample pensions. I hate cruelty: I never put a wicked stepmother in a barrel and send her tobogganing down a hill. It is true that Prince Ricardo did kill the Yellow Dwarf; but that was in fair fight, sword in hand, and the dwarf, peace to ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... gave me a variety of information uncommonly valuable. He has made the greatest improvements I have anywhere met with. The whole country twenty-two years ago was a waste sheep-walk, covered chiefly with heath, with some dwarf furze and fern. The cabins and people as miserable as can be conceived; not a Protestant in the country, nor a road passable for a carriage. In a word, perfectly resembling other mountainous tracts, and the whole ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must—he cannot help himself—become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... they came to the point Dick had meant. It looked bad enough, in all conscience, but from the rocks there jutted halfway down a dwarf oak that had found rooting ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... (it was about two o'clock in the afternoon) through a little greenhouse, on the other side of a door of plate-glass, made to slide into the thickness of the wall, by means of a groove. A Chinese shade was arranged so as to hide or replace this glass at pleasure. Some dwarf palm tress, plantains, and other Indian productions, with thick leaves of a metallic green, arranged in clusters in this conservatory, formed, as it were, the background to two large variegated bushes of exotic flowers, which were separated ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... the Odeon, across the street from the Luitpold, a place lavish and luxurious, but with a certain touch of dogginess, a taste of salt. The piccolo who lights your cigar and accepts your five pfennigs at the Odeon is an Ethiopian dwarf. Do you sense the romance, the exotic diablerie, the suggestion of Levantine mystery? And somewhat Levantine, too, are the ladies who sit upon the plush benches along the wall and take Russian cigarettes ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... My hosts opened a window and pointed to a far-away, high-up light. It was like the flicker of a match in a vast cave of darkness. They told me wonderful things of the rooms in the monastery, which were cut in the solid rock of the mountain-side, and the strange dwarf priest who kept it. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... have, in every case, one of the uprights pierced with an artificial opening about six inches in diameter. These dolmens are said by the country people to have been set up by a race of giants who built them as shelters for a dwarf people on ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... patches of forest behind at this point, and were tramping slowly over a bare sterile region of the most forbidding character, low down by the river. Higher up where we could not climb the tall trees again appeared, and every ledge and slope was crowned with dwarf pine, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... a dwarf. The head of a Titan, the body of a whisky barrel, rolling ludicrously on the tiny limbs of a bug, presented so startling a sight that even Hot Joy, appearing around the corner, cackled shrilly. His laughter rose to a shriek of dismay, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... The Dwarf Cow, 7 years old, 2 feet 4 inches in height, and is handsomely proportioned. This most extraordinary and wonderful production of nature has been visited by a large number of persons, in different cities, and is pronounced a complete model in miniature of her kind; she is so short that ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... and lived but one life between the two. This state of things lasted till Dorlange had won the Grand Prix, and started for Rome. Henceforth community of interests was no longer possible. But Dorlange, still receiving an ample income through his mysterious dwarf, bethought himself of making over to Gaston the fifteen hundred francs paid to him by the government for the "prix de Rome." But a good heart in receiving is more rare than the good heart that gives. His mind being ulcerated by constant misfortune Marie-Gaston refused, peremptorily, what ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... rather surprised me, but I was too full of Raoul to pay much attention to his servant. Still, I noticed he was a small, weazened, mean-looking fellow, quite a dwarf, in fact, with sharp, keen eyes and ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... pines, and the laurus cerasus, the fruit of which being now ripe, made a most romantic appearance through the snow that lay upon the branches. The cherries were so large that I at first mistook them for dwarf oranges. I think they are counted poisonous in England, but here the people eat them without hesitation. In the middle of the mountain is the post-house, where we dined in a room so cold, that the bare remembrance of it makes my teeth chatter. After dinner I chanced to look into another ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... and among the bushes." A strange instinct in a creature so preeminently social in its habits; a dweller all its life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides! What a subject for a painter! The grey wilderness of dwarf thorn trees, aged and grotesque and scanty-leaved, nourished for a thousand years on the bones that whiten the stony ground at their roots; the interior lit faintly with the rays of the departing sun, chill and grey, and silent and motionless—the huanacos' Golgotha. In the long centuries, stretching ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... shall bring back to my mind the many scenes we have enacted in this conservatory. I see what I should prize very much. That dwarf myrtle tree in the pot, which you have ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... five beautiful verses from George Herbert's "Poem on Man." Presently he is himself taken off his feet into the air of song, and finishes his Essay with "some traditions of man and nature which a certain poet sang to me."—"A man is a god in ruins."—"Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents. Out from him sprang the sun and moon; from man the sun, from woman the moon."—But he no longer fills the mere shell he had made for himself; "he is shrunk to a drop." Still something ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... edge of one of the plateaus the view is very effective. On the top to the left of the road track is a slightly undulating grass field, of which I have a little less than an acre. To the right of the fence, and coming down to the wood, is very rough ground densely covered with heather and dwarf gorse, a great contrast to the field. The wood on the right is mixed but chiefly oak, I think, with some large firs, one quite grand; while the wood on the left is quite different, having some very tall Spanish chestnuts loaded with fruit, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... incident in quite as serious a manner as the Russo-Japanese war. What a bunch of miserable pups! It is because they are raised in this fashion from their boyhood that there are many punies who, like the dwarf maple tree in the flower pot, mature gnarled and twisted. I have no objection to laugh myself with others over innocent jokes. But how's this? Boys as they are, they showed a "poisonous temper." Silently erasing off "tempura" ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... scattered ourselves over the ground in the vicinity, in search of our fruit. The appearance of things around was quite characteristic of the region generally. The principal growth were a dwarf species of oak, called in the language of the country "scrub-oak"—low shaggy spruces—stunted gnarled pines, and here and there, particularly in low places, tall hemlocks. The earth was perfectly bestrewed with loose stones, between which, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... colossal cupolas seem to have been planted there by the sure hand of a giant; whereas the innumerable features, the rosettes and arabesques that are spread over it everywhere like a lacework of stone, witness to the indefatigable patience of a dwarf." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... now exhausted our Indian bears. Some have spoken of a dwarf bear supposed to inhabit the Lower Himalayas, but as yet it is unknown—possibly it may be the Ailuropus. We now come to the Bear-like animals, the next in order, being the Racoons (Procyon), Coatis (Nasua), Kinkajous (Cercoleptes), ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... where the Point of Honour is strained to Madness, the whole Story runs on Chastity and Courage. The Damsel is mounted on a white Palfrey, as an Emblem of her Innocence; and, to avoid Scandal, must have a Dwarf for her Page. She is not to think of a Man, 'till some Misfortune has brought a Knight-Errant to her Relief. The Knight falls in Love, and did not Gratitude restrain her from murdering her Deliverer, would die at her Feet by her Disdain. However he must wait some Years in the Desart, before her ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... as good as that from which we believe in the sterility of a multitude of species. The evidence is also derived from hostile witnesses, who in all other cases consider fertility and sterility as safe criterions of specific distinction. Gartner kept, during several years, a dwarf kind of maize with yellow seeds, and a tall variety with red seeds growing near each other in his garden; and although these plants have separated sexes, they never naturally crossed. He then fertilised thirteen flowers of the one kind with pollen of the other; but only a single head ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... sat with their faces toward the main entrance and the third man faced them. Carnes bit his lip as he looked at the man at the head of the table. He was twisted and misshapen in body, a grotesque dwarf with a hunched back, not over four feet in height. His massive head, sunken between his hunched shoulders, showed a tremendous dome of cranium and a brow wider and even higher than Dr. Bird's. The rest of his face was lined and drawn as though ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... Cadurcis. 'I made out a list the other day of all the persons and things I have been compared to. It begins well, with Alcibiades, but it ends with the Swiss giantess or the Polish dwarf, I forget which. Here is your book. You see it has been well thumbed. In fact, to tell the truth, it was my cribbing book, and I always kept it by me when I was writing at Athens, like a gradus, a gradus ad Parnassum, you know. But although I crib, I am candid, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... tiny golden cups, exhale a perfume like that of the heliotrope and fill the air with sweetness, and cover the woods with perfect curtains of bloom; while underneath all this, spread the spears and fans of the dwarf palmetto, and innumerable tufts of a little shrub whose delicate leaves are pale green underneath and a polished dark brown above, while close to the earth clings a perfect carpet of thick-growing green, almost ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... a boy whose name was Siegfried, and though he lived with an Earth-dwarf in the deep forest, he knew nothing of the magic gold or the world. He had never seen a man, and he had not known his mother, even, though he often thought of her when he stood still at evening and the birds came home. There ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee

... which I can flee to your far-distant universe, where not even the powers of the Council of Three can follow me. That way lies through the door of inter-dimensional Space. In Space as you know it, the almost unthinkable distance of a million light years separates Xollar from the dwarf star you call your Sun. Yet, traveling between Space, the two planets nearly touch each other. The same situation of being near neighbors in inter-dimensional Space holds true with Xollar and at least seven other ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... and being the lighter man was swept aside and dashed into the arms of Alain de Karanais, the left-handed swordsman, with such a crash that the two rolled upon the ground together. Light footed as a cat, Nigel had sprung up first, and was stooping over the Breton Squire when the powerful dwarf Raguenel brought his mace thudding down upon the exposed back of his helmet. With a groan Nigel fell upon his face, blood gushing from his mouth, nose, and ears. There he lay, trampled over by either party, while that great fight for which his fiery soul had panted was swaying back and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sit on, or perhaps something better; so I think they will not refuse this time. We must have all the old demons of the first class, with tails, and the hobgoblins and imps; and then I think we ought not to leave out the death-horse, or the grave-pig, or even the church dwarf, although they do belong to the clergy, and are not reckoned among our people; but that is merely their office, they are nearly related to us, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... richly-brocaded frock with a sash tied round his shoulder. His hair has only just begun to grow, but he has the same look of determination upon his face that we see four years later in the equestrian portrait. A dwarf about his own height stands a step lower than he does, so as again to give him prominence. Another picture of Don Balthazar a little older is in the Wallace Collection ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... quite different in kind.[34] The Waverley Novels, twenty-nine in number, appeared in the years 1814-31. The earlier numbers of the series, "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality," "The Black Dwarf," "Rob Roy," "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," "The Bride of Lammermoor," and "A Legend of Montrose," were Scotch romances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In "Ivanhoe" (1819) the author went to England for his scene, and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... has appropriately illustrated these old favorites: The Golden Goose, The Story of the Three Bears, The Story of the Three Little Pigs, and Tom Thumb. Of the four, the most popular is the tale of the adventures of little Tom, the favorite dwarf of ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... this world are monsters, with some part of our being bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will—mighty, full-blown passions; and therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us, a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have done ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... was hideous, though his ugliness was not unpleasant, being due chiefly to a great development of his tribal feature, the nose, and in body he was misshapen to the verge of monstrosity. In fact Otter was a dwarf, measuring little more than four feet in height. But what he lacked in height he made up in breadth; it almost seemed as though, intended by nature to be a man of many inches, he had been compressed to his present dimensions by art. His vast chest and limbs, indicating strength ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... rose-red brick perched on a ledge of rock midway between earth and heaven, the cliff falling almost sheer to the valley two hundred feet and more, the mountain rising behind straight towards the sky; all the rocks covered with cactus and dwarf fig-trees, the convent draped in smothering roses, and in front a terrace with a fountain in the midst; and then—nothing—between you and the sapphire sea, six miles away. Below stretches the Eden valley, the Concha d'Oro, gold-green fig orchards alternating with smoke-blue olives, ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... an honor to be one of Goude's pupils, but it had its drawbacks. His criticisms were severe and bitter; and he fell into violent passions when, as Leroux once observed, he looked like the yellow dwarf in a rage. Cuthbert had heard of him from Terrier, who said that Goude had the reputation of being by far the best master in Paris. He had presented himself to him as soon as he arrived there; his reception had not ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... imagination of Don Quixote, this appeared to be a castle with four towers, and the girls who stood in front of the door seemed ladies of noble birth and peerless beauty. He seemed to see behind them a drawbridge and a moat, and waited for some dwarf to appear upon the castle battlements and by sound of a trumpet announce that a knight was ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... particular time, seemed to have made a sort of agreement to support some of Bismarck's measures, went to the tribune and began a long and very earnest speech. Windthorst was a man of diminutive stature, smaller even than Thiers,—almost a dwarf,—and his first words on this occasion had a comical effect. He said, in substance, "I am told that if we enter into a combination with the chancellor in this matter, we are sure to come out second best.'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... She spent all her weak breath in blowing that laudatory trumpet, as if she expected the defenses of the best guarded heart to fall prostrate before it, like the walls of Jericho. And yet, if all the truth were known, I think she had as much reason to complain as the dwarf in the story who swore fellowship ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... with its groups of ancient Spanish and modern European furniture making as if different centres under the high white spread of the ceiling, the silver and porcelain of the tea-service gleamed among a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady's boudoir, putting in a note of feminine ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... giant Hun, There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth. His lifted eyes seemed asking: 'Why, in sooth, Was I not fashioned like this mighty one? Would God show favour to an older son Like earthly kings, and beggar without ruth Another, who sinned only by his youth? Why should two ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... despair, Her tears falling like rain; She could not spin a single thread, She could not reel a skein. But the door swung back, and through the chink, With the same droll smile and merry wink, The dwarf peered, saying, "What will you do If I'll spin the straw once more for you?" "Ah me, I can give not a single thing," She cried, "except my finger-ring." He took the slender toy, And slipped it over his thumb; Then down he sat and whirled the wheel, Hum, and hum-m, and hum-m-m; Round ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... guide us. However, I explored the ground on my hands and knees, and soon found marks of footsteps on the boggy patches, with scratches on the rock where he had leapt from point to point, or planted his stick to steady himself. I tried to help Elsie along among the littered boulders and the dwarf growth of wind-swept daphne: but, poor child, it was too much for her: she sat down after a few minutes upon the flat juniper scrub and began to cry. What was I to do? My anxiety was breathless. I couldn't leave her there ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... some years there was a period of depression, which perhaps was at the lowest between 1830 and 1850, but the desire to acquire rare books appears never to have been greater than at the present day, and for the choicest examples collectors are willing to give sums which dwarf into insignificance the prices which excited the astonishment of our fathers. These high prices may possibly be somewhat due to the spirited bidding of the great bookseller we have recently lost, and to the competition of our American cousins; but they ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... taverns of Spain may reeds come. A bird in the hand is worth more than a hundred flying. To God (be) praying and with the flail plying. It is worth more to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion. To see and to believe, as Saint Thomas says. The extreme (100) of a dwarf is to spit largely. Houses well managed:- at mid-day the stew-pan, (101) and at night salad. Although thou seest me dressed in wool I am no sheep. Truth with falsehood-Breeches of silk and stockings of Wool. (102) The dog who walks finds a bone. The ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... dwarf, but a boy," answered the Magician. "You have never seen a boy before. He is now small because he is young. With more years he will grow big and become ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... had seen symptoms that the desert was drawing to a close. To-day we fairly got out of it, and entered upon a wilderness of small trees. The vegetation has not, however, yet improved in proportion to our nearness to Soudan; for this dwarf forest of tholukh and various other trees cannot be compared to the splendid desert vegetation in the Aheer valleys; these are pigmy mimosas in comparison with those of Aheer. The surface of the ground is now undulating sand and ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... must not forget the others,' she said at last, and began to transform the fishes to their proper shapes. There were so many of them that it took quite a long time. Just as she had finished there arrived the little dwarf from the Deer's Leap in a car drawn by six cockchafers, which once had been the six ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... hanging, with one shoulder up like a great red peering dwarf, on the far side of a long hillock of stunted pines, when the three arrived at the Fort. The yard was still as Parfaite had described it— full of rank grass, through which one path trailed to the open door. On the stockade ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great as to dwarf his individuality and his private life. What he taught with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the Continental monarchies a source of eminent danger. He was driven from country to country. Kings and emperors were leagued together against him. Soldiers were ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... called at the hour of the siesta. Shall I show your worship to your own room, or will you await the ladies in the library?" His hand was on the little fan, and he was striving to frame some question whose answer would enlighten him as to the giver, but the dwarf's last word caught his ear, and acted like the scent of spirits upon a ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... slippery clay earth and the tough network of plants; but the last five hundred feet were unexpectedly easy, the very steep summit being covered with a very thick growth of thinly leaved, knotted, mossy thibaudia, rhododendra, and other dwarf woods, whose innumerable tough branches, running at a very small height along the ground and parallel to it, form a compact and secure lattice-work, by which one mounted upwards as on a slightly inclined ladder. The point which we reached * * * was evidently the highest spur of the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... expansions rest with material man. If he entertains gross desires to the exclusion of spiritual germs, he will dwarf and degrade higher aspirations, and thus deprive subjective spirituality of her ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... was out in his kayak saw another kayak far off, and rowed up to it. When he came up with it, he saw that the man in it was a very little man, a dwarf. ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... an explanation. He warned us to keep away from the Indians, as this was the time of the "Black Tamahnous," when they call up all their hostility to the whites. He pointed to some Indian children, who had a white elk-horn, like a dwarf white man, stuck up in the sand to throw stones at. I had noticed for the last few days, when I met them in the narrow paths in the woods, that they stopped straight before me, obliging me to turn aside ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... broken rudders, rusty anchors, coils of rope, bales of sail-cloth, heaps of blocks, piles of chain-cable, great iron tar-kettles like antique helmets, strange machines for steaming planks, inexplicable little chimneys, engines that seem like dwarf-locomotives, windlasses that apparently turn nothing, and incipient canals that lead nowhere. For in these yards there seems no particular difference between land and water; the tide comes and goes anywhere, and nobody minds ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... the unknown king of Spor, who had never yet been seen by any one except his subjects; and some thought he must be one of the huge giants of Spor; and others claimed he was a dwarf, like his tiny but ferocious dart-slingers; and still others imagined him one of the barbarian tribe, or a fellow to the terrible Gray Men. But, of course, no one knew positively, and all these guesses ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... gleamed on the broken pathway, and on the projecting cliffs of rock round which it winded, its light intercepted here and there by the branches of bushes and dwarf-trees, which, finding nourishment in the crevices of the rocks, in some places overshadowed the brow and ledge of the precipice. Below, a thick copse-wood lay in deep and dark shadow, somewhat resembling ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... palace of Miramon Lluagor. Gongs, slowly struck, were sounding as if in languid dispute among themselves, when the two lads came across a small level plain where grass was interspersed with white clover. Here and there stood wicked looking dwarf trees with violet and yellow foliage. The doubtful palace before the circumspectly advancing boys appeared to be constructed of black and gold lacquer, and it was decorated with the figures of ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... "It is dwarf-worked; elves did it!" he cried. And for a like reason many a sword and suit of armour has been thought to be made by magic by men who did not know of ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... Cobbett, the great literary champion of the Radical Reformers, had deserted and fled to America, yet others sprung up. About this period Mr. Wooler began to publish his Black Dwarf, and Mr. Sherwin published his Weekly Register. These were two bold and powerful advocates of Reform, and Mr. Wooler, as well as Mr. White, of the Independent Whig, lasbed Mr. Cobbett most unmercifully for his cowardice in flying his country, and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... of dwarf bushes, and was soon certain that the stranger was doing this. He caught a glimpse of the man's form through a thin patch, then lost it as the hidden figure ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... severe spring comes on, and day after day the field-ice goes floating by,—now gray in shadow, now bright in the sun. At length vegetation, long repressed, bursts forth, but in no profuse luxuriance. A few dwarf birches unfold their leaves amid the rocks; a few sub-arctic willows hang out their catkins beside the swampy runnels; the golden potentilla opens its bright flowers on slopes where the evergreen Empetrum nigrum slowly ripens its glossy crow-berries; and from where ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... banks are scattered over with them. Ascending the very loftiest pinnacle by the roots of trees and the profuse bushes, the scene was wild, picturesque, and romantic in the extreme. A little below, bristled the points of the rocks with cedars, dwarf pines, and towering hemlocks shooting from the interstices. At one side, through its deep gully, flashed the "Bounding Deer"—the waters pouring in its first deep dark basin, cut in the granite like a goblet, thence twisting ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... saloons, into a small apartment on the ground floor fitted up in the English style, which, although it offered the appearance of the library of an English gentleman, was, in fact, the consular office. Dwarf bookcases encircled the room, occasionally crowned by a marble bust, or bronze group. The ample table was covered with papers, and a vacant easy-chair was evidently the consular throne. A portrait of his Britannic majesty figured on the walls of one part of the chamber; ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... matter of extraordinary interest, and would be out of the province of this work, but a citation of anomalous cases will be given. Baldwin reports a case of Cesarean section on a typical rachitic dwarf of twenty-four, who weighed 100 pounds and was only 47 1/2 inches tall. It was the ninth American case, according to the calculation of Harris, only the third successful one, and the first successful one in Ohio. The woman had a uniformly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... was still in her hand, and Jeanie began to wish for nothing so much in the world as to gather some of these roses. She put out her hand and she plucked one, and there before her stood a strange creature—a dwarf, dressed in yellow and red, with a ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... the sand heaps. As I stood beside the lonely little mound, it seemed that never was seen a more affecting type of orphanage. Around, wiry and stiff, were scanty spires of beach-grass; near by, dwarf-cedars, blown flat by wintry winds, stood like grim guardians; only at the grave-head a stunted wild-rose, wilted and scraggy, was struggling for existence. Thoughts came of the desolate childhood of many ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... wealth under our present system—or rather no system—of failure to exercise any adequate control at all. Some persons speak as if the exercise of such governmental control would do away with the freedom of individual initiative and dwarf individual effort. This is not a fact. It would be a veritable calamity to fail to put a premium upon individual initiative, individual capacity and effort; upon the energy, character, and foresight which it is so important to encourage in the individual. But as a matter ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... advanced in age, being repulsive in person, ignorant, quarrelsome, and given to drink), that was as magnificent as the loves of Cleopatra and Antony, or Lancelot and Guinever. The passion which Count Borulawski, the Polish dwarf, inspired in the bosom of the most beautiful Baroness at the Court of Dresden, is a matter with which we are all of us acquainted: the flame which burned in the heart of young Cornet Tozer but the other day, and caused him to run off and espouse Mrs. Battersby, who was old enough to be ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the slopes had been increasing fast, and the assailants found much shelter there among the dwarf pines and cedars. Bullets were pattering all over the valley. Several of the Winchesters had been slain in the early firing, and they lay where they had fallen. Others were wounded, but they bound up their own hurts and used their rifles, ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... wave of his strong arm, the speaker indicated the wealth of blossoms which arose from all sides of the room. There were flowers everywhere. The luxuriant blooms seemed to overpower and dwarf the handsome furnishings of the room. At the far end, folding doors opened into the conservatory, which was a veritable mass of brilliant colors. The cripple smiled upon his blossoms, as a mother ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... across them. She opened a low door in the side of this cavern, and beckoned her companions to follow. In the middle of a still larger vault stood a great arm-chair, fashioned from beryl and jasper, with knobs of amethyst and topaz, in which sat a dwarf no taller than little Zitza. He was dressed in robes of velvet, green and soft as forest moss, and a ring of rough gold lay on his grizzled hair; his little eyes were keen and fiery, his hands withered and brown, but covered ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... all was! Boom, boom went the drums. "Walk in, ladies and gentlemen. Here you will see the performing seal, the Circassian beauty, the Chinese giant, and the smallest dwarf in the world." Next to those attractions came the circus, outside of which, on a raised platform, stood harlequin, clown, and columbine, all in a ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... pistes—the old caravan-trails from the south—are more available to motors in Morocco than in southern Algeria and Tunisia, since they run mostly over soil which, though sandy in part, is bound together by a tough dwarf vegetation, and not over pure desert sand. This, however, is the utmost that can be said of the Spanish pistes. In the French protectorate constant efforts are made to keep the trails fit for wheeled traffic, but Spain shows no ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... came by the Dwarf; and a good fellow he was. Joan picked him out on sight, but it wasn't a mistake; no one could be faithfuler than he was, and he was a devil and the son of a devil when he turned himself loose with ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... and at three miles further we traversed the southern skirts of a plain, and finally made a bend of the Lachlan on which we encamped in latitude 33 degrees 24 minutes 28 seconds South. In the course of this day's journey we discovered a bush resembling the European dwarf elder but with yellow flowers, and fruit with ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... extraordinary occasions. Any levity manifested either by the teacher or the pupils will be fatal to the effect. But to illustrate it, I will state a fact. In the play-ground of an Infant School there was an early dwarf cherry-tree, which, from its situation, had fruit, while other trees had only flowers. It became, therefore, an object of general attention, and ordinarily called forth a variety of important observations. Now it happened that two children, one five years ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... them to go about the palace, and they had been relegated, poor displeasing toys, to the servants' regions. Here they were kicked and cuffed and made cruel sport of. During the foregoing winter one dwarf had died, and the other roamed around like some miserable outcast cur, lurking in dark corners, hiding from all living things, which he accounted rightly as his tormentors. He cowered before the Landhofmeisterin, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... was gratified when they agreed to make an exact copy for me, to be ready on my return from up country. When one of the men consented to pose before the camera his wife fled with ludicrous precipitation. A dwarf was photographed, forty years old and unmarried, whose height was ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... up some flights of marble steps, following these gentle sounds, and walked along a broad terrace adorned with fantastically curved dwarf-trees, set in rich porcelain pots, and made stately with enormous bronze braziers. The Russian officer, and even the Russian sergeant, were agreeably stroked by the contact with all this quiet and seclusion and this old-world air, and they murmured ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... be forgotten. In those barren sands, where no grass grows, there are frequently tufts of a prickly bush, which tortures the horses, and tears to pieces the clothes of the men about their ankles, if they are walking. This bush, called the prickly grass, and a dwarf tree, the Eucalyptus dumosa, grows only where the soil appears too barren and loose for anything else; indeed, were it not for these, the sand would probably drift away, and cover the vegetation of neighbouring spots less ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... rose Mount Hottam, its imposing peak towering 7,500 feet high. Long avenues of green trees were visible on all sides. Here and there was a thick clump of "grass trees," tall bushes ten feet high, like the dwarf palm, quite lost in their crown of long narrow leaves. The air was balmy and odorous with the perfume of scented laurels, whose white blossoms, now in full bloom, distilled on the breeze the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys: and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him the words of Virgil, "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Our great poet ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... downhill without regard for direction. I was becoming numb, but in half an hour I safely reached the dwarf trees at timberline and plunged through them to a dense grove of spruce. Occasionally there was a dead tree, and nearly all trees had dead limbs low down. With such limbs or small trunks as I could find I constructed a rude lean-to, with closed ends. With my pocket ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... Truly, Mr Sownds the Beadle has good reason to feel himself in office, as he suns his portly figure on the church steps, waiting for the marriage hour. Truly, Mrs Miff has cause to pounce on an unlucky dwarf child, with a giant baby, who peeps in at the porch, and drive her forth ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens



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