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Dwarf   Listen
verb
Dwarf  v. i.  To become small; to diminish in size. "Strange power of the world that, the moment we enter it, our great conceptions dwarf."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dwarf" Quotes from Famous Books



... problems may be found than in the development of a successful farming enterprise. In the instance cited, the father may have been unable to pay his son the wage he might have obtained elsewhere, but he did not need to dwarf his son's development by treating him merely as a hired hand. His willingness to do so was probably due to his failure to appreciate that his son had ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... disposal of useless and encumbering impedimenta. It was true that the locality offered little choice in the way of beauty. An outcrop of brown granite—a portent of higher altitudes—extended a quarter of a mile from the nearest fringe of dwarf laurel and "brush" in one direction; in the other an advanced file of Bradley's woods had suffered from some long-forgotten fire, and still raised its blackened masts and broken stumps over the scorched and arid soil, swept of older underbrush and verdure. On the other side of the road a ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... 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 sense ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... that such a figure should not to a certain extent dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself, the campaign against the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... loose ballast impossible. A large increase in capital was necessary for these improvements, the elimination of curves being the most laborious part, requiring bridges, cuttings, and embankments that dwarf the Pyramids and would have made the ancient Pharaohs open their eyes; but with the low rate of interest on bonds, the slight cost of power, and great increase in business, the venture was a success, and we are now in sight of further advances that will enable a traveller in a high latitude ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... before me spreads the scene familiar to Pepperrell from childhood. Here the river Piscataqua widens to join the sea, holding in its gaping mouth the large island of Newcastle, with attendant groups of islets and island rocks, battered with the rack of ages, studded with dwarf savins, or half clad with patches of whortleberry bushes, sumac, and the shining wax-myrtle, green in summer, red with the touch of October. The flood tide pours strong and full around them, only to ebb away and lay bare a desolation of rocks and stones buried in a shock ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... prepossessing in the sheikh. She received her visitors seated on an earthen throne covered with a Turkey carpet, and surrounded by twenty of her favourite slaves, all dressed alike in fine white shirts which reached to their feet; their necks, ears, and noses thickly ornamented with coral. A negro dwarf, measuring scarcely three feet, the keeper of her keys, sat before her, richly-dressed in ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... King and of the whole country, by the most execrable calumnies. How could he defend himself? shut up as the King was, how oppose them? how interfere with their dark designs? M. du Maine wished not only to be made prince of the blood, but to be made guardian of the heir to the throne, so as to dwarf the power of the Regent as much as possible. He flattered himself that the feeling he had excited against M. d'Orleans in the Court, in Paris, and in the provinces would be powerfully strengthened by dispositions ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... volcanoes are of such height and dimensions as to overlook and dwarf the mountain-ranges by the side of which they lie. Some of the volcanoes lying parallel to the great American axis appear to be quite extinct, while others are in full activity. In the Eastern continent we find still more striking examples ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... again, reaching at last a sun-and-wind-burnt common which forms the top of one of the highest mountains in the region. The forest was left below us and only a belt of dwarf firs ran along the edge of the great grassy shoulder. We dismounted, the mules were tethered among the trees, and our guide led us to an insignificant looking stone in the grass. On one face of the stone was cut the letter F., on the other was a D.; we stood on what, till a year ago, was ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... say: "Il faut trois mois de Valognes pour achever un homme de cour." One can quite imagine "la grande vie d'autrefois" in the hotel of the Florians. Their garden is enchanting—quantities of flowers, roses particularly. They have made two great borders of tall pink rose-bushes, with dwarf palms from Bordighera planted between, just giving the note of stiffness which one would expect to find in an old-fashioned garden. On one side is a large terrace with marble steps and balustrade, and beyond that, half hidden by a row of ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... preserver, is a great favorite; because it is supposed that he bestows all manner of gifts. The Hindoos say he has been nine times upon the earth; first as a fish, then as a tortoise, a man, a lion, a boar, a dwarf, a giant; twice as a warrior, named Ram, and once as a thief, named Krishna. They say he will come again as a conquering king, riding on a white horse. Is it not wonderful they should say that? It reminds one of the prophecy in Rev. xix. about Christ's second coming. ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... 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 forward ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... brother will not refuse you a bit o' land. Why not build some of these new-fangled cottages, with fancy gardens, and dwarf palaces for a cow and a pig? Rhoda, child, if I was a poor woman, I could graze a cow in the lanes hereabouts, and feed a pig in the woods. Now you do that for the poor, Miss Vizard, and don't let my girl think for you. Breed your ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... spiritual Environment there can be no Religion. To refuse to cultivate the religious relation is to deny to the soul its highest right—the right to a further evolution.[64] We have already admitted that he who knows not God may not be a monster; we cannot say he will not be a dwarf. This precisely, and on perfectly natural principles, is what he must be. You can dwarf a soul just as you can dwarf a plant, by depriving it of a full environment. Such a soul for a time may have "a name to live." Its character may betray no sign of ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the country, the birds flying,—that one making for the sea; the abandoned boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... beautiful, too, the wood-side. There were wood anemones and hyacinths by the thousand, spangling the bright green grass here with delicate white, and there with the dark blue bells; while the brionies and honeysuckle clustered in every direction along the dwarf bushes by the ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... was for five years in a castle in the Alps with an Englishman, as jealous as a tiger, a nabob; I called him a nabot, a dwarf, for he was not so big ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... journey,— That story of Kearny who knew not to yield! 'Twas the day when with Jameson, fierce Berry, and Birney, Against twenty thousand he rallied the field, Where the red volleys poured, where the clamor rose highest, Where the dead lay in clumps through the dwarf oak and pine, Where the aim from the thicket was surest and nighest,— No charge like Phil Kearny's along the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... still before. Even his breathing had grown quiet, and the rise and fall of the broad breast was the only sign of life in the otherwise motionless figure. All around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees, the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small watcher seemed ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... testimony and argument, uses this laconic simile, "Testimony is like the shot of a long-bow, which owes its efficacy to the force of the shooter; argument is like the shot of the cross-bow, equally forcible, whether discharged by a dwarf or a giant." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... law is no perfect structure, that it is simply the result of human labor and human genius, and that whatever laws human ingenuity can create for the protection of men, those same laws human ingenuity can evade. The Spirit of Evil is no dwarf; he has developed equally with the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... in these columns and elsewhere. I did not expect to find ogres nor any thing hideous, but, among all similar exhibitions, remembering with pleasure only Tom Thumb, I could not hope to find gratification in the sight of two dwarf Indians. But I was disappointed. These children are simply abridgements or pocket editions of Humanity—bright-eyed, delicate-featured, olive-complexioned little elves, with dark, straight, glossy hair, well-proportioned heads, and animated, pleasing countenances. That their ages are honestly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... stepped from December to June, and this morning is sunny and dewy, with a fresh sea-breeze giving life to the air. I have just been out to cut a great bunch of roses and lilies, though the garden is grown into such a jungle that I could hardly get about in it. The cannas, and dwarf bananas, and roses are all tangled together, so that I can hardly thread my way among them. I never in my life saw anything range and run rampant over the ground as cannas do. The ground is littered with fallen oranges, and the place looks shockingly untidy, but so beautiful ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... dark, and the driving snow scarcely permitted him to open his eyes, but by feeling about a little he found that one side of the dip was covered with a growth of dwarf bushes. He led the horse into the lower edge of these, where some protection was secured, and, crouching once more in the lee of the animal, he unfolded the two blankets, which he wrapped closely about himself to ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, a damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs; and all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers burning, amidst knights and ladies, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... visit flowers are unable to gather pollen from it and so to bring about cross fertilisation. At the same time it exists in a number of strains presenting well-marked and fixed differences. The flowers may be purple, or red, or white; the plants may be tall or dwarf; the ripe seeds may be yellow or green, round or wrinkled—such are a few of the characters in which the various races of peas ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett

... steady trot for a long hour, Helen's roving eyes were everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far—the scant sage that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two and three together, and then a straggling clump of yellow aspens, and up beyond the fringed border ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... imperial prestige of this country is concerned there is no room for hesitation. In the present instance our prestige is at stake: the matter involves our reputation in the eyes of the surrounding natives, the Bantu Hottentots, the Negritos, the Dwarf Men of East Abyssinia, and the Dog Men of Darfur. What will they think of us? If we fail in this crisis their notion of us will fall fifty per cent. In our opinion this country cannot stand a fifty per cent drop in the estimation of the Dog Men. The ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... Giant that once of a Dwarf made a friend, (And their friendship the Dwarf took care shouldn't be hid), Would now and then, out of his glooms, condescend To laugh at his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... noble heroine. I remember that the small motive is only to be seen by being borne into the range of my vision by a powerful microscope; and if I do more than see—if I carry on my reflections by the aid of the glass, I arrive at conclusions that must be false. Men who dwarf human nature do this. The gods are juster. The Countess, though she wished to remain for the pic-nic, and felt warm in anticipation of the homage to her new dress, was still a gallant general and a devoted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... country from there to the roots of the mountains; great pines stood wide apart, with here and there a dwarf cedar steeping in the strong sun. We hunted all the morning and lay up under a dark oak watching the young winds stalk one another among the lupins. Lifting myself to catch the upper scent, I winded a man that was not ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... dwarf whom I had seen at work in the Spa Road Elevator, and who once was taken about the country to be exhibited as a side show at fairs and there fell a victim to ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... chambers contained anything. Seven steles were found, the inscriptions of which are marked in the chambers of the plan; and other steles were also found here, scattered so that they could not be identified with the tombs. The most interesting are two steles of dwarfs, which show the dwarf type clearly; with one were found bones of a dwarf. In a chamber on the east was a jar and a copper bowl, which shows the hammer marks, and is roughly finished, with the edge turned over to leave it smooth. The small compartments in the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... back in his seat, and sang away, as if he had taken a contract to do it, using, from time to time, an enormous red handkerchief, with which and his nose he produced a trumpet obligato. As I stood there, a poor dwarf bobbled in and knelt on the bare stones, and was the only worshiper, until, at length, a half-dozen priests swept in from the sacristy, and two processions of young school-girls entered from either side. They ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... first the French Garrison. Nothing could look stranger than this latter: a column of Marseillese, slight, swarthy, party-coloured, in patched clothes, came tripping on;—as if King Edwin had opened the Dwarf Hill, and sent out his nimble Host of Dwarfs. Next followed regular troops; serious, sullen; not as if downcast or ashamed. But the remarkablest appearance, which struck every one, was that of the Chasers (Chasseurs) coming out mounted: they ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... deeply hacked, perhaps with the weapon that had slain him, though its solidity was too stubborn for the patience of a man with blood upon his hand. The corpse therefore reclined on the earth, but was separated from the road by a thick growth of dwarf pines. There had been a slight fall of snow during the night, and as if nature were shocked at the deed, and strove to hide it with her frozen tears, a little drifted heap had partly buried the body, and lay deepest ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... yet, for it was June. And as for water, who can find that on the top of a limestone rock? Now and then he passed by a deep dark swallow-hole, going down into the earth, as if it was the chimney of some dwarf's house underground; and more than once, as he passed, he could hear water falling, trickling, tinkling, many many feet below. How he longed to get down to it, and cool his poor baked lips! But, brave little chimney-sweep as he was, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... Bonaparte saw very little happiness for Josephine was her lawyer, the advocate Ragideau, who for many years had been her family's agent, whose distinguished talent for pleading and whose small figure had made him known through all Paris, and of whom it was said that as a man he was but a dwarf; but as a lawyer, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... third side of the triad. Unless she has the help of a well developed spiritual nature how the littlenesses, the routine, the difficulties, the jealousies and envyings, the gossiping and petty dishonesties of life dwarf her. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... to us, the appearance of the houses, the markets and dress of the Chinese, the small feet of the women, and many other particulars to which we need not refer. We will only allude to the account of the method employed by them in cultivating dwarf trees. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... wisely. Force must have nerves and sinews; cunning wants neither. The dwarf that has it, shall trip the ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... of experiments with the screw were made on board the Dwarf in 1845, and on board the Minx in 1847 and 1848, but the results did not materially differ from those previously obtained. In the Rattler, Dwarf, and Minx twenty-nine different propellers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Bologna, Florence, Open us out the wider way! Dwarf in that chapel of old Saint Lawrence Your Michel Angelo's giant Day, With the grandeur of ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... to give an account of the Introduction, the commencement of "The Black Dwarf," the first of the tales, and the general nature of the story, to the end of the fourth chapter. His letter is of great length, and extends to nine quarto pages. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... investigated with minuteness, diligence, and patience."—His protuberant eyes were now fixed on Brown's rifle again.—"For many years I haff bred this Apollo butterfly from the egg, from the caterpillar, from the chrysalis. I have the negroid forms, the albino forms, the dwarf forms, the hybrid forms investigated under effery climatic condition. Notes sufficient for three volumes of quarto already exist as a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... the lounge grew pale before the blood reacted in a purple flush. His very bulk emphasized the shabbiness of the stained and almost buttonless Prince Albert coat he wore, the dinginess of the little room he seemed to dwarf. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... of the continent on the move, driven by the ceaseless powers of the air? By a humble plant or two. The movement of the sand hills that threaten to destroy the marvelous beauty of the grounds of the Hotel del Monte at Monterey is stopped by planting dwarf pines. The sand dunes that prevent much of Holland from being reconquered by the sea are protected with great care by willows, etc., and the coast sands of parts of eastern France have been sown with sea pine ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren

... Fijian, in cannibal days, often lost his one means of subsistence from this cause, and was compelled to satisfy the pangs of hunger on the plump persons of his immediate relatives. But since the introduction of Christianity, and of a dwarf stout wind-proof variety of banana, his condition in this respect, I am glad to say, has been ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... day, on the morrow he would be fit for the grueling work possibly in store for him. Slone unsaddled the horse and turned him loose, and with a snort he made down the gentle slope for the grass. Then Slone carried his saddle to a shady spot afforded by a slab of rock and a dwarf cedar, and here he composed himself to rest and watch and think ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... the Black Sea dolmens made of four upright stones surmounted by a slab, 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 whom ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... then, with eyes unveiled to what you loathe— To sins that with sweet charity you'd clothe— Back to your self-walled tenements you'll go With tolerance for all who dwell below. The faults of others then will dwarf and shrink, Love's chain grow stronger by one mighty link— When you, with "he" as substitute for "I," Have stood aside ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... a couple of hours the sledges drew near to the island, which proved to be a large but comparatively low one, rising not more than a hundred feet in any part. It was barren and ragged, with patches of reindeer moss growing in some parts, and dwarf willows in others. Myriads of sea-birds made it their home, and these received the invaders with clamorous cries, as if they knew that white men were a dangerous novelty, ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... the temple gardens are of very great beauty and interest. There can be seen many of the marvels of Japanese gardening—tiny dwarf trees, hundreds of years old, and yet only a few inches high, or tall shrubberies cut and trained to represent a great junk in full sail, or the figure of a god ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... some 'standwiches,'" shouted Cologne, who was already making her way through the thickets that carpeted the path. "If you find any dwarf cherries ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... the Revolution" and the "History of Ten Years,"—that is, from 1830 to 1840. He bitterly hated Louis Philippe and the bourgeoisie, and yet his book is fair and honest, and the work of a gentleman. He was almost a dwarf, but his face was very handsome, clean-shaved, with bright eyes and brown hair. I may remark en passant that not one of the members of the Provisional Government wore either ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... counterfet Who sooth maie fill, but never can begett. But, if revenge enraged with dispaire, That such a dwarf his ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... hid, came glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height, whose bald grey summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one of those glorious surprises in scenery which make one feel as if one must bow down and worship. The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the tangle ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... was not called a small steamboat without reason. I omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across the lower panes; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... front door; I did not hear him re-enter, and in the morning I found he was still away. We were in April then, the weather was sweet and warm, the grass as green as showers and sun could make it, and the two dwarf apple-trees near the southern wall in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... pleasant odour of Russia leather and camphor-wood came from the dwarf bookcases that dadoed the walls. The room was quite dark; the two high windows, screened by clear muslin blinds running on gilded rods, showed pale parallelograms of cold twilight. The coachhouse and stable building at the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... of the pilot coat he had acquired from the ship's stores. The sudden touch of cold steel gave him new courage. He had sworn to protect the girl. If Lund, seeming more like a pirate than ever, with his cold eyes sweeping the horizon, his bulk casting Rainey's into a dwarf's by comparison, attempted to harm Peggy Simms, Rainey resolved to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... 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; ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... 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 knife ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... the north and eastward. Now she rose and journeyed again. Rare hours were those for Alice. They came at length into a low, barren land, of dwarfed and scrawny pines, with here and there a marshy flat; thence through a narrow strip of hickories, oaks, cypresses, and dwarf palmetto, and so on into beds of white sand and oyster-shells, and then into one of the villages on the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character than their predecessors, and no longer formed the prominent trait or feature of the creation to which they belonged. The period had also its corals, its crustaceans, its molluscs, its fishes, and in some one or two exceptional instances its dwarf mammals. But the grand existences of the age,—the existences in which it excelled every other creation, earlier or later, were its huge creeping things,—its enormous monsters of the deep,—and, as shown by the impressions ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... him ready, and followed the knight who rode away with the hound. And as he went, there suddenly met him in the road a dwarf, who struck his horse so viciously upon the head with a great staff, that he leaped backwards ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... the sword-swallower and the fat lady, the giant and the dwarf, and so many other things that Jerry couldn't remember them all. When the last of them had passed out at the other side of the tent, he became aware of a smell that was most enticing, quite different from the smell of the circus,—the sawdust and the animals and the crowd. He had just identified ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... sting Brock and to endeavour to prevent the manufacture of the magic ring Draupnir, which is merely a counterpart of Sif's tresses, as it also represents the fruits of the earth. The fly continues to torment the dwarf during the manufacture of Frey's golden-bristled boar, a prototype of Apollo's golden sun chariot, and it prevents the perfect formation of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... presaged my loss Of sight, in future, by Ulysses' hand. I therefore watch'd for the arrival here, Always, of some great Chief, for stature, bulk And beauty prais'd, and cloath'd with wond'rous might. But now—a dwarf, a thing impalpable, A shadow, overcame me first by wine, 610 Then quench'd my sight. Come hither, O my guest! Return, Ulysses! hospitable cheer Awaits thee, and my pray'rs I will prefer To glorious Neptune for thy prosp'rous course; For I am Neptune's offspring, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... days last week, he slopped down town with his cubs, and visited a poor little beggarly shed where were a dwarf, a fat woman, and a giant of honest eight feet, on exhibition behind tawdry show-canvases, but with nobody to exhibit to. The giant had a broom, and was cleaning up and fixing around, diligently. Joe conceived the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... That with his name the mothers still their babes? I see report is fabulous and false: I thought I should have seen some Hercules, A second Hector, for his grim aspect, And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf! It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... and the other a huge hammer; and it had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet holes, that I could see. And its two hind claws became strong crooked legs, with feet bent inwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, in glossy black armour, ribbed and embossed like a beetle's back, leaning on his hammer. And I could not speak for wonder; but he spoke with a murmur like the dying away of a beat upon a bell. He said, 'I will make Neith's great ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... clothed in the magnificent robes of the native-born sovereign. Time and times again the beautiful giant has gone through the slavish round of his mechanical tricks, obedient to the fragile creature of intelligence, to the little dwarf, man, whose power is in his eyes and heart only. He is accustomed to the lights, to the spectators, to the laughter, to the applause, to the frightened scream of the hysterical women in the audience, to the close air and to the narrow stage behind the bars. The ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... Of that I am not so certain. The practice, if it did no more, gave wings to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of ceilidh and buaile-mhart I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... my last waking thought, how it could be That thou, sweet friend, such anguish should'st endure; When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure. Methought he fronted me with peering look Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game The loves and griefs therein, as from a book: And uttered praise like one who ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... a little way—the water was very shallow on that side—but we could see nothing for the scum of weed, little spangles of dirty green, and a mass of some other plant that had borne a little white flower in the earlier part of the year—stuff like dwarf hemlock. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... surrounded by its walls. A portion of life which is ours exclusively, although we do occasionally lend its key to a few intimates; ours to cultivate just as we please, growing therein either pistachios and dwarf lemons for preserving, like Voltaire's immortal hero, or more spiritual flowers, "sweet basil and mignonette," such as the Lady of Epipsychidion sent to Shelley; kindly rosemary and balm; or, as may happen, a fine assortment of witch's herbs, infallible ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... invulnerable to shot and shell. Divided and sub-divided, slashed into ribbons, blown to fragments by bombs, each of the pieces simply became the nucleus of a new organism, able, within a few hours, to assume the outlines of a dwarf man, and to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... the great sweep of moor-like country on our right, appeared to be very far away. Where we rode there were no habitations, not even a shepherd's hovel; the dry, stony soil was thinly covered with a forest of dwarf thorn-trees, and a scanty pasturage burnt to a rust-brown colour by the summer heats; and out of this arid region rose the hills, their brown, woodless sides looking strangely gaunt and desolate ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... a lily-seed is treated makes a vast difference to the plant which arises. If sown in poor soil, and neglected, a dwarf, sickly plant will result; if sown in rich soil, and given every care that enthusiasm, money and skill can suggest or procure, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... orange flowers; the corsage bouquet was of orange flowers and lilacs mixed; the lace over-dress was caught up with lilac sprays; the hand bouquet wholly of lilacs; The gardener's success in producing these dwarf bushes covered with white lilacs has given us the beautiful flower in great perfection. Cowslips are to be used as corsage and hand bouquets for bridesmaids' dresses, the dresses being of pale blue surah, with yellow satin Gainsborough hats, and yellow plumes. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... of sand and masses of sandstone, and halted to dine close to the northward of them. Those parts of the land which were clear of snow appeared to be more productive than those in the immediate neighbourhood of Winter Harbour, the dwarf-willow, sorrel, and poppy being more abundant, and the moss more luxuriant; we, could not, however, collect a sufficient quantity of the slender wood of the willow, in a dry state, for the purpose of dissolving snow for water, and were therefore ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... stop, Malezieux," said the duchess, "but the cardinal enrages me with his half-measures. Mon Dieu! are these eternal waverings worthy of a man? For myself, I do not ask a sword, I do not ask a dagger; give me but a nail, and I, a woman, and almost a dwarf, will go, like a new Jael, and drive it into the temple of this other Sisera. Then all will be finished; and, if I fail, no one but myself will ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... courage and address of a single man. On his proper element, Yawkins was equally successful. one occasion, he was landing his cargo at the Manxman's lake, near Kirkcudbright, when two revenue cutters (the Pigmy and the Dwarf) hove in sight at once on different tacks, the coming round by the Isles of Fleet, the other between the point of Rueberry and the Muckle Ron. The dauntless free-trader instantly weighed anchor, and bore down right between the luggers, so close that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... of the soil of the country in which it takes it's rise, and that through which it passes, is similar to the country through which the Missouri passes after leaving the woody country, or such as we are now in.- on the side of a hill not distant from our camp I found some of the dwarf cedar of which I preserved a specimen (See No. 2). this plant spreads it's limbs alonge the surface of the earth, where they are sometimes covered, and always put forth a number of roots on the under side, while on the upper there are a great number of small ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... a castle, with its four turrets, and pinnacles of shining silver, together with its drawbridge, deep moat, and all the appurtenances with which such castles are visually described. When he had advanced within a short distance of it, he checked Rozinante, expecting some dwarf would mount the battlements, to announce by sound of trumpet the arrival of a knight-errant at the castle; but, finding them tardy, and Rozinante impatient for the stable, he approached the inn-door, and there saw the two girls, who to him appeared to be beautiful damsels or lovely dames enjoying ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... a little greyhound, but it sickened and died. Remembering that a comrade-in-arms possessed a Turkish dwarf with an abnormally large head, he cast about to procure some such monstrosity for her amusement. He sent her jewellery—necklaces torn by his soldiers from the breasts of ladies in surrendered towns, rings wrested from fingers raised ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... not diminish so completely as in matters dependent upon the corporal powers; but even the intellectual differences do not justify the colossal inequality suggested to the mind by the words "a large fortune." The man who drives a steam-plough may be either a giant or a dwarf, but he gets through the same amount of work. Quick-wittedness and discretion in conducting the process of production will considerably increase the result; but in the present day an achievement which shall exceed the average ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... who have thus survived themselves most completely, left a sort of personal seduction behind them in the world, and retained, after death, the art of making friends, Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly stand first. But we have portraits of all sorts of men, from august Caesar to the king's dwarf; and all sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in the Louvre to a profile over the grocer's chimney shelf. And so in a less degree, but no less truly, than the spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful Essays, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... made to the Laird by the butler, who stated the miraculous capacity of the tiny can, and received instant orders to fill it if all the ale in the cellar would suffice. Obedient to this command, he broached another cask, but had scarcely drawn a drop when the can was full, and the dwarf departed with expressions ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... half rose, and seeing the dwarf so near, and on the other side of her a repulsive looking woman staring at her, sprung to her feet and fled. The same instant the mad laird, catching sight of Mrs Catanach, gave a cry of misery, thrust his fingers in his ears, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... line 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 Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... as he was by the apparition of the dwarf among the Little Bethelites, and not free from a misgiving that it was the forerunner of some trouble or annoyance, he was compelled to subdue his wonder and to take active measures for the withdrawal of his parent, as the evening was now creeping on, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... and but rarely mentions. The dwarf Miming, who lives in the desert, has a precious sword of sharpness (Mistletoe?) that could even pierce skin-hard Balder, and a ring (Draupnir) that multiplied itself for its possessor. He is trapped by the hero and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... Psyche is a seedling from the dwarf Polyantha Rose Golden Fairy, crossed with the pollen of the Crimson Rambler. Its growth and habit, though more delicate, much resembles the Rambler. It is apparently quite hardy, and is very free flowering, but we fear not perpetual. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... other Russian ladies, has a dwarf in her house, who remains constantly with the company. He is less ugly and disagreeable than others of his species. La Princesse Serge Gallitzin has a little fellow of this sort; the Lisianskis have also one in constant attendance. The pretty Mademoiselle Rosetti, two evenings ago, kept ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various

... it seems to me, is my point of departure for the estimate of my possible resources. I cannot expect less of the good things of the universe than God would naturally bestow on His son. To expect less is to get less, since it is to dwarf my own power of receiving. If I close the opening through which abundance flows it cannot be strange ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... morning to put Zadig to death by the bowstring. The orders were given to a merciless eunuch, who commonly executed his acts of vengeance. There happened at that time to be in the king's chamber a little dwarf, who, though dumb, was not deaf. He was allowed, on account of his insignificance, to go wherever he pleased, and, as a domestic animal, was a witness of what passed in the most profound secrecy. This little mute was strongly ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... reaching down to the floor and extending clear across the stage. The children are behind the sheets. The line is about three and one-half feet high. The table sets obliquely in front of the door at R. It is covered with a sheet or long cloth reaching to the ground. PATSY and TEDDY form the dwarf. PATSY, coatless, has a long pair of striped stockings on over his arms, and a pair of shoes on his hands, ornamented on insteps with large rosettes. TEDDY stands behind him and thrusts his arms as far as they will go under PATSY'S armpits. A kind of a tunic covers both. Wear a large crimped ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... the soul of a boy longs was naturally not part of the official bill of fare. The bullying was of a reasonable nature, or at all events I could hold my own with the best of them, being indifferent to punishment so long as I could hit out effectively from the shoulder. One of the ushers, a dwarf of malignant disposition, was an awful tyrant, and we always had an ardent desire to tar and feather him, only we did not know how to set about the operation even if we had ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... year's supply of food by a magician, who lulls every one to sleep and who is captured by Lludd. Though the Coranians appear in the Triads as a hostile tribe,[412] they may have been a supernatural folk, since their name is perhaps derived from cor, "dwarf," and they are now regarded as mischievous fairies.[413] They may thus be analogous to the Fomorians, and their story, like that of the dragon and the magician who produce blight and loss of food, may be based on older myth or ritual embodying the belief in powers hostile ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... so that the road is nearly open. The deep part, which is like a very deep, broad, natural trench, was known to our men as the Sunken Road. The banks of this sunken part are perpendicular. Until recently, they were grown over with a scrub of dwarf beech, ash, and sturdy saplings, now mostly razed by fire. In the road itself our men built up walls of sandbags to limit the effects of enemy shell fire. From these defences steps cut in the chalk of the bank lead to the field above, ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield

... Christian creeds, but which were left behind, through natural and necessary human frailty, by our great Reformers? Wise they were,—good and great,—as giants on the earth, while we are but as dwarfs; but, as the hackneyed proverb tells us, the dwarf on the giant's shoulders may see ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... me. On that side, also to the north and south, there was open forest, but to the west a different prospect met the eye. Beyond the stream and the strip of verdure that fringed it, and the few scattered dwarf trees growing near its banks, spread a brown savannah sloping upwards to a long, low, rocky ridge, beyond which rose a great solitary hill, or rather mountain, conical in form, and clothed in forest almost to the summit. This was the mountain Ytaioa, the chief landmark in ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... half turned, gave Doug a look of anguished surprise, leaped sideways and disappeared up a crevice in a canyon wall. Douglas spurred the Moose in after her. They were in a little valley, thick grown with dwarf willow. The mare was not to ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... great French flagship, the Orient, by this time had added her mighty voice to the tumult, and the Bellerophon, who was engaged with her, had a bad time of it. It was the story of Tom Sayers and Heenan over again—a dwarf fighting a giant. Her mizzen-mast and mainmast were shot away, and after maintaining the dreadful duel for more than an hour, and having 200 of her crew struck down, at 8.20 P.M. the Bellerophon cut her cable and drifted, a disabled ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... my motor-bus, I thrill with their grandeur and glow with their condescension. Yes, they condescend; and although their tall white flanks climb in the distance, they seem to sink on nearer approach, and amiably decline to disfigure the line of progress, or to dwarf the adjacent edifices. Down-town, in the heart of New York, poor old Trinity looks driven into the ground by the surrounding heights and bulks; but along my sublime upper Fifth Avenue there is spire after spire that does ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the Odeon was the leading lyric theatre, and the great star of that company was Nicholas Tacchinardi, a tenor in whom nature had combined the most opposing characteristics. The figure of a dwarf, a head sunk beneath the shoulders, hunchbacked, and repulsive, he was hardly a man fitted by nature for a stage hero. Yet his exquisite voice and irreproachable taste as a musician gave him a long reign in the very front rank of his profession. He was so morbidly conscious ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... full toned as an organ, issuing, likewise as out of a reed, from a swart dwarf scarcely higher than my waist. The word "bath," with the promise of "individual towels," won me over. Something must be done, anyway, to get rid of these importunate runners. Thereupon I acquiesced, "All right, my man. The Queen," and surrendering my bag to his ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... decent limits, we can at least provoke the appetite of readers of all ages by the mere displaying of such titles as these:—"The History of Caliph Stork"; "The Story of the Severed Hand"; "The Story of Little Muck"; "Nosey the Dwarf"; "The Young Englishman"; "The Prophecy of the Silver Florin"; "The Cold Heart," etc. What prospects for winter evenings are here! And while we can assure the adult reader that the promise which these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... suddenly appeared and looked at La Briere. La Briere checked his anger when, by the light of the moon, he saw the dwarf, and he made a few steps ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac



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