"Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their foliage by degrees, So fade expressions which in season please; And we and ours, alas! are due to fate, And works and words but dwindle to a date. Though, as a monarch nods and commerce calls, Impetuous rivers stagnate in canals; Though swamps subdued, and marshes drain'd sustain The heavy ploughshare and the yellow grain; And rising ports along the busy shore Protect the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the wharves where ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... or disproved my faith. For, after all, these trees are guinea pigs—pioneering. They break some traditional rules. The land they stand on is grazed. They are not set the traditional 80 feet apart. Their nut crops may dwindle away. One never sees walnut trees growing in pure stands—always with other species which scatter their seeds and push in. They are not ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... December; and adds naively that he was just on the point of winning a reputation and a competence "when this execrable project was set on foot for my ruin as well as that of my country." Men who saw their incomes dwindle were easily disposed to think that the cessation of business was an admission of the legitimacy of the law, a kind of betrayal of the cause. And it was to counteract the influence of lukewarm conservatives, men who were content ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... still float back. Their shining green has changed to a less vivid hue; they are taking bluish tones here and there; but their outlines are still sharp, and along their high soft slopes there are white specklings, which are villages and towns. These white specks diminish swiftly,— dwindle to the dimensions of salt-grains,—finally vanish. Then the island grows uniformly bluish; it becomes cloudy, vague as a dream of mountains;—it turns at last gray as smoke, and then melts into the horizon-light like ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... WISE from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this wide world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the HELL from ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... that has made so many musicians recede from us and dwindle, has brought Berlioz the closer to us and shown him great. The age in which he lived, the decades that followed his death, found him unsubstantial enough. They recognized in him only the projector of gigantic ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... time and space quickly dwindle to their absolute minimum. If a body of troops is attacked in flank and rear by the enemy, it soon gets to a point where retreat no longer remains; such a position is very close to an absolute impossibility of continuing ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... couple. Estrangement grew thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet—for the Queen had still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown matrimonial—begin to dwindle. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may vanish in a moment, and leave the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... calculate the distance of that luminary have proved futile. Of its inconceivable remoteness some notion may be formed by the fact, that the diameter of the earth's annual orbit, if viewed from it, would dwindle into an invisible point. This is what is meant by the stars not having, like the planets, a parallax; that is, the earths' orbit, as seen from them, does not subtend a measurable angle. With two other stars, however, astronomers have unexpectedly and recently been more fortunate ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... your dogma in its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, exactly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity; from being the guide to millions of human lives, it will dwindle down to a chapter in a book. As History explains your dogma, so Science will dry it up; the conception of law will silently make the conception of the daily miracle of your altars seem impossible; the mental climate will gradually ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... was even now on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... shown to us in Pliny's Letters as diffused all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams of tradition which descended on this age, the schools of law and grammar alone kept their course; the rest dwindle away and disappear. Sixty years pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate; one or two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inconsiderable extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise out of the common herd of undistinguished ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... up to war, trade languishes, the population loses the habit of steady industry, government and administration become corrupt, abuses escape punishment, and the real sources of a people's strength and expansion dwindle. What has caused the relative failure and decline of Spanish, Portuguese, and French expansion in Asia and the New World, and the relative success of English expansion therein? Was it the mere hazards of war which gave to Great Britain the domination of ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... England clergy found their congregations dwindle away daily; and Penn being young, handsome, and of a graceful stature, the court as well as the city ladies flocked very devoutly to his meeting. The patriarch, George Fox, hearing of his great reputation, came to London (though the journey was very long) purely to see and converse ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... body of a squaw, and the jaguars are out to kill... with a blue-black night coming on and a painted cloud stalking the first star— I shall go alone into the Silence... the coiled Silence... where a cry can run only a little way and waver and dwindle and be lost. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid?[nq] She who was named Eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed,[nr] Until ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... one be struck,—yet these people have not a second, or so gross a body at all, to be so pierced; but as air which when divided unites again; or if they feel pain by a blow, they are better physicians than we, and quickly cure. They are not subject to sore sicknesses, but dwindle and decay at a certain period, all about an age. Some say their continual sadness is because of their pendulous state (like those men, Luke xiii. 2-6), as uncertain what at the last revolution will become of them, when they are locked up into an unchangeable condition; and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the midst of the rushing stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and a mist always ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... my good Lord of Douglas," answered the Prince; "I did but smile to think how your princely retinue would dwindle if every thief were dealt with as the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... who clung so tenaciously to that square mile of crags and cliffs. The great spirit of cheery optimism, the light-hearted, careless good fellowship, and the muscle and grit of the invaders looked lightly at all this. Regiments might dwindle sadly from dysentery and shrapnel, the water-supply might be short and brackish, the flies might be getting more persistent; but reinforcements would come some day soon, the British at Cape Helles would get Achi Baba, and soon all would ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Senor." They moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... reason, and even in that, the highest of them come very little short of the lowest of the human species. If they have not reason, they possess an instinct which nearly approaches it. These qualities dwindle down gradually thro the various orders and varieties of animated nature, to the lowest grade of animalculae, a multitude of which may inhabit a single drop of water; or to the zoophytes and lythophytes, which form the connecting link between the animal and vegetable ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... question on that subject," said Tom, "for how would the high ideas he entertained of the ingenuity of the age in which he had lived, dwindle into nothing! Nay, should he appear in the country first, what would he think of the various implements of husbandry, for ploughing, and preparing the land; the different machines for sowing the corn, for threshing, grinding, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... father of Sindbad was taken to Almighty Allah, much wealth came to the possession of his son; but soon did it dwindle in boon companionship, for the city of Baghdad is sweet to the youthful. Then did Sindbad bethink him how he might restore his fortune, saying to himself: "Three things are better than other three; the day of death is better than the day of birth, a live ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... agree with our Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... less frost-bitten, but merely the little nippings of nose, cheeks, and wrists that one soon gets accustomed to in this country. As Lieutenant Schwatka says, it is like almost all other dangers that you hear and read about, they seem to dwindle when you meet them boldly face to face. A battle always seems more terrible to those in the rear than to those in ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... thicket began to dwindle, and presently riding out of a little valley or long trench on to a ridge nearly bare of trees, they saw below them a fair green plain, and in the midst of it a great heap of grey rocks rising out of it like a reef out of the sea, and on the said ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired to govern them aright, and to be the channel through ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 10 And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me, in four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... perfections is expressible, we will say, by 20. Now, if they would always keep at that point, there might be some reason for your remaining unaltered, namely, your not being able to help it. But suppose that they dwindle down to 19-1/2, the person, that is, the whole sum of the qualities admired, no longer exists, and you, of course, are absolved from your engagement. But mind, I do not say that you are justified in changing only in case of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... who with mystic terror grinds Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free, And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven, Now rushing with wild joy around the belt Of whirling Saturn, then away through space Till he and all his radiant brotherhood Dwindle to fire-flies round the brow of Night. Thought is the great creator under God, Begotten of his breathing, that can raise Shapes from the dust and give them Beauty's soul; And though my empire be a continent, Squared down ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, God hates ye! Men speak of a murder—and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle into nothing." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... as wet and sad as any other, when Stewart and Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any one had ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... life inasmuch as all the pleasures belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are left, it may be, with the miseries of a ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... treatment has created the impression that they are unworthy to be ranked among the perennials. From seed, the plants are extremely robust. C. persicifolia grandiflora resents division, which frequently results in weakened growth and a tendency, especially in poor or badly drained soil, to dwindle away. The only satisfactory method of growing Campanulas is to raise plants annually from good strains of seed. If sown in gentle heat early in the year—February is the usual month—many of the varieties ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... hesitation; reserve and a desire to liberate his soul, the one fighting against the other. And at moments the whole man seemed to be wrapped in weakness like a garment, the soul and the body of him. Then, as a light may dwindle till it seems certain to go out, all that was Marcus Harding seemed to Malling to dwindle. The large body, the powerful head and face, meant little, almost nothing, because the spirit was surely fading. But these moments passed. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the damage our estate sustained by this traffic. He looked upon it as a mere misfortune that no person could avoid; but I, besides that, thought it was a judgment upon me, to punish me in the loss of all my ill-got gain. But when I found that his own fortune began to dwindle as well as mine, I was almost ready to think it was possible his lordship might have been as wicked a liver as I had, and the same vengeance as had been poured upon me for my repeated crimes might also ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the "father" of this DEBUTANTE, whose interest I should have considered better if I had arranged her first appearance in some piece by Verdi or Donizetti, or indeed anything but LOHENGRIN. But enough of such stuff, although I am grieved to see Herr A., the tenor of the future (if well prepared), dwindle into thin air also. May heaven grant that Caspari will keep on, or that a decent tenor may come to you ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... said to have ended with the surrender of the army under Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781, and little attempt at recruiting was made subsequently; consequently the regiments continued to dwindle until, at the evacuation of New-York, two years later, they were not more than one-third of their original strength. The New Jersey Volunteers, a year after their arrival in New-Brunswick, were mustered by Thomas Knox, under the supervision of Col. Edward Winslow. The return is dated ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... is considered as very ancient of its claims to any high antiquity. Certain portions of the Veda even, which, as far as our knowledge goes at present, we are perfectly justified in referring to the tenth or twelfth century before our era, may some day or other dwindle down from their high estate, and those who have believed in their extreme antiquity will then be held up to blame or ridicule, like Sir W. Jones or Colonel Wilford. This cannot be avoided, for science is progressive, and does not ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the cause of it, the Territorial divisions after they took the field seemed to be treated as veritable Cinderellas for a long time. They generally set out short of establishment, and they were apt to dwindle away painfully for want of reserves after they had spent a few weeks on the war-path. The Returns show this to have been the case. More than one of the divisional Generals concerned spoke to me, or wrote to me, on the subject in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... resurrection of the nation and in the establishment of its power within as well as without. That the object of emigration is not yet fully attained may be inferred from the fact that it still continues on so large a scale; that it must ultimately dwindle to much smaller proportions, if not cease utterly, is pretty certain. This is our wish and hope: for the home population of the island must be large enough to invest it with deserved importance in the eyes of foreigners. Our title-page ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... nature. Not to be penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of the world—she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that. How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine and dwindle in ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the mythical element of the Siegfried saga has almost entirely evaporated and the historical saga of the Burgundian kings and Attila has undergone a complete transformation. That the originally mythical and heathen Siegfried saga should dwindle away with the progress of civilization and under the influence of Christianity was but natural. The character of the valkyrie Brynhild who avenges upon Sigurd his infidelity to her, yet voluntarily unites herself with him in ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... pools that seemed to lie right and left. Once the faint track I was following headed straight towards one of these apparent sheets of water, and I was even meditating a bathe, but, lo! when I was a hundred yards or so off, it began to dwindle and disappear, and I found nothing but the same endless stretch of grass, burnt up ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... morning a little as if my experience of the previous night were a dream. But as I thought over all that had occurred, what may be called the romantic features seemed to dwindle in distinctness and importance, and I dwelt chiefly on the mental profit I had derived from these new associations. Once more I deplored the existence of the vain and coquettish notions that had led me to construe as devotion the enthusiasm of the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and heavy responsibility of their opportunities; how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious sentimentality instead of a hearty human sympathy; how many are not satisfied with having the fastest horses and the "crackest" carriages, and an unlimited wardrobe, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... did the same; if I was astonish'd at their Make, and at what other things I had observ'd, I was more so, when I saw one of the tallest, dwindle in the Twinkling of an Eye, to a Pigmy, fly into the Air without Wings, and carry off a Giant in each Hand by the Hair ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... and angels and mighty creatures, and things in the heights and things in the depths, to each of which have been entrusted some broken syllables of the divine character to make known to the world, dwindle and fade before the brightness, the lambent, gentle brightness that beams out from the Cross of Christ, which proclaims—God is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... impossible for the few hundreds of soldiers and police to arrest and keep in custody nearly twenty thousand men. If an attempt was made to take us all to gaol, digger-hunting would have to be suspended, the revenue would dwindle to nothing, and Government would be starved out. It was, in fact, no Government at all; it was a mere assemblage of armed men sent to rob us, not to protect us; each digger had to do that ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the ship and disappeared, but the noise of its engines did not dwindle more than a little. The blast of the siren seemed to summon it back again. Once more it came in sight, and this time it dived steeply, flashed across the forecastle deck amid a hideous uproar, desperately, horribly close to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... did you ever see a large Camellia plant in full blossom? If you have not, I will risk my reputation by saying that all other flowers within my knowledge, barring the rose, dwindle into insignificance when compared with it. It excels the finest rose in doubleness and form of its flowers, and puts the virgin lily to shame for spotless purity and whiteness; if it only possessed fragrance, it would be unquestionably the Queen of the floral world. What ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... and Chelsea elves, Men who had lost a limb themselves, Its interest did not dwindle— But Bill, and Ben, and Jack, and Tom Could hardly have spun more yarns therefrom, If the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... imagery. This is especially true of the prayers used to win the love of a woman or to destroy the life of an enemy, in which we find such expressions as—"Now your soul fades away—your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away, never to reappear;" "Let her be completely veiled in loneliness—O Black Spider, may you hold her soul in your web, so that it may never get through the meshes;" and the final declaration of the ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... is, for Egypt, a very modern place, on flat ground of course, containing the usual bazaars, mosques, barracks and pasha's residence or konak, with some substantial private buildings near the centre, from which the houses soon dwindle to the ordinary mud residence of the Fellah. The place was said to contain some fifty or sixty thousand people, while more than double that number was just now drawn to it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... And 'twill as easily be done: Love's power's too great to be withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 350 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring, kill-cow HERCULES; Transform'd his leager-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle 355 T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle. 'Twas he that made emperors gallants To their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd the House of many a burgess; Made those that represent the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... charge this smoothed-faced miscreant; and, d'ye hear me? see that his allowance be no more than one small ounce of mouldy bread and half a pint of standing water, for each day's support, till his now blooming skin be withered, his flesh be wasted from his bones, and he dwindle to a meagre skeleton.' So saying he left them, as he hoped, to bewail each other's sad condition. But the unhappy Fidus, bereft of his Amata, was not to be appalled by any of the most horrid threats; for now his only comfort was the hopes of a speedy end ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, at least, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or be reabsorbed into some form of {439} orthodoxy. In the eyes of the conservative, or the worldly-minded, or of the plain people who could not understand the enigmatic utterances of the reformers, the dangerous or ludicrous sides of transcendentalism were naturally uppermost. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. The fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. He was satisfied with his work. He had written a good story, and that was the end of it. No doubt he would send it East—to the Centennial ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... prisoner frequently, in conversation with me, mentioned the subject of speculations in western lands, opening a canal and building a bridge. Colonel Burr also said to me that the government was weak, and that he wished me to get the navy of the United States out of my head; that it would dwindle to nothing; and that he had something to propose to me that was both honourable and profitable; but I considered this nothing more than an interest in his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away the rest ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... he shouted to them, "more than the others are doing? Together and in order we might succeed, broken we should be useless. If this huge army cannot break their line, what could two hundred men do?" At last, as the storm of javelins began to dwindle, a mighty shout rose from the Romans, and shoulder to shoulder with levelled spears they advanced, while the flanks giving way, the cavalry burst out on both sides and fell upon the Britons. For those in front, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star specks before ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... creature! Just the seventh part of my mother joy! Who can deny that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... shrinking for many years, but the heart of the chief never shrank. His dwelling dwindled from a castle to a house, from a house to a cottage; but the hospitality did not dwindle. As the money vanished, the show diminished; the place of entertainment from a hall became a kitchen, from a kitchen changed to a barn; but the heart of the chief was the same; the entertainment was but ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... aspect of potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... courage and danger, that it is not to be broken in a day. We may come back soon from Montgomery, Julie, but I see war, a great and terrible war, a war, by the side of which those we have had, will dwindle to mere skirmishes. I shut my eyes, but it makes no difference. I see it close at hand, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... done. In came the architect, with whom he had played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... wax, and now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Academies, religious Monasteries and pious Seminaries, resorted to from all civilized Parts of Europe, our Metropolitical and Diocesan Cathedrals; on such impartial Review, surely, the foregoing Tribe of Sneerers and Flouters must dwindle into deserved Contempt. ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... all these stirring events were taking place and just before Magruder, with McLaw's and Walker's divisions, was either quietly lying in front of Richmond watching the army of McClellan dwindle away, leaving by transports down the James and up the Potomac, or was marching at a killing gait to overtake their comrades under Lee to share with them their trials, their battles and their victories in Maryland. Lee could not leave the Capital ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... about an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... enkindle,— In a tent I'm quick set down With a Bedouin, lean and brown, Plotting gain of merchandise, Or perchance of robber prize; Clumsy camel load upheaving, Woman deftly carpet-weaving, Meal of dates and bread and salt, While in azure heavenly vault Throbbing stars begin to dwindle. ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... your vegetarians are shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... for union with the Irish Nationalists who formed the branch of the confederacy regenerated under Colonel Roberts; and Kelly, who, for various reasons, was unwilling to accept the new regime, saw his adherents dwindle away, until at length he found himself all but discarded by the Fenian circles in Dublin. Then he crossed over to Manchester, where he arrived but a few weeks previous to the date of his accidental arrest ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... the roofs went thundering down! Oh, the prayers, the prayers and curses, that together winged their flight From the maddened hearts of many, through that long and woful night!— Till the fires began to dwindle, and the shots grew faint and few, And we heard the foeman's challenge only in a far halloo: Till the silence once more settled o'er the gorges of the glen, Broken only by the Cona plunging through its naked den. Slowly from the mountain summit was the drifting ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... he, adorable Delilah; and fear not, even though incited by the foe, by clipping my locks, to dwindle my strength. Give me your sword, man," turning to an officer:—"Ah! I'm fettered. Clip ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... to be ruled by authority, new popes would imprison new Galileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cords which were intended to keep it safe from harm, and, deprived of the free air on which its life depends, it would dwindle and die. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... in his composition. All the rest was weakness—sheer weakness; and it is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies, affections, confidences—all the qualities which in better constituted minds are virtues—dwindle into foibles, or turn into ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... is very complicated in the present case. It cannot be said, for instance, that you ran away from physical fear, after giving proof of such astonishing physical superiority. Your deeds this evening make the labours of Hercules dwindle to the proportions of mere ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... clime, For Death is there the awful nurse of Life: Death rocks the cot. Why meet we there no wolf Save those huge-limbed? Because weak wolf-cubs die. 'Tis thus with man; 'tis thus with all things strong:— Rise higher on thy northern hills, my Pine! That Southern Palm shall dwindle. House stone-walled— Ye shall not have it! Temples cedar-roofed— Ye shall not build them! Where the Temple stands The City gathers. Cities ye shall spurn: Live in the woods; live singly, winning each, Hunter or fisher by blue lakes, his prey: Abhor the gilded shrine: the God Unknown In such ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... their manifold sophisticated life—must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... spices, salt, seasoning, herbs, etc., dwindle down so low that some day, in the midst of preparing a large dinner, you find yourself minus a very important ingredient, thereby causing much confusion ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... from one thing to another I cannot say; but gradually my ideas seemed to dwindle away into nothingness, and it is easy to imagine that I slept. I do ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the first quarter of the year began to dwindle, and in those days I thought often with regret of ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... waterless bed or a mere line of green and perhaps unsavoury pools. The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times dwindle to feeble trickles of mud. In the interior there are, to be sure, rivers which, like the Orange River or the Limpopo, have courses hundreds of miles in length. But they contain so little water during three-fourths of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast! A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... gradually shorter, as the days of late October dwindle into golden noons. During the few hours when he was at his best he was wonderfully active, driving to his publisher's or to make an occasional visit, besides a daily walk. If to those who saw him continually ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... on the part of the seeker. Mrs. Sikes, whose work had chiefly been dressmaking and plain sewing, found the new field of labor quite irksome. The money realized from the sale of her property she must not let dwindle away too swiftly; her husband was helpless, and she must work, and the children must work. She found the North a place where a day's work meant a day's work in full; there was no let up; the pound of flesh was exacted. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... wound appreciative ones by neglect. Women domesticate themselves to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and occupy the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... character, fully resolved to carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his nephew ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in a manner, provide ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... big fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Brittany, and son of Louis XVI. The unhappy Prince, when a prisoner with his unfortunate parents in the Temple, was enabled to escape from that place of confinement, hidden (for the treatment of the ruffians who guarded him had caused the young Prince to dwindle down astonishingly) in the cocked-hat of the Representative, Roederer. It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were worn ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in one ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... her heart. Her life, she reflected, had held, until recently, but little of happiness. The long, weary days of poverty, when her husband, incapacitated by a paralytic stroke, had seen his savings slowly dwindle away; the death of her son, and then that of Mr. Morton himself passed before her mental vision. Only Ruth had been left to her, and in the girl's happiness and success lay Mrs. Morton's whole life and being. Now, that things had at last taken a turn, and the future ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, if I can rightly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the ordinary plan of management, they would be absolutely worthless, even if it were possible to form them with the common hives. If they were not fed, they would be unable to collect the means of building new comb, and would gradually dwindle away, just as third or fourth swarms which issue late in the season; nor could they be saved even by the most generous feeding, as they would only use their supplies to fill up the little comb they had; so that when the queen was ready to lay, there would be ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... but whose sensibility exceeds their strength of mind. In Schiller, its worst effects were resisted by the only availing antidote, a strenuous determination to neglect them. His spirit was too vigorous and ardent to yield even in this emergency: he disdained to dwindle into a pining valetudinarian; in the midst of his infirmities, he persevered with unabated zeal in the great business of his life. As he partially recovered, he returned as strenuously as ever to his intellectual occupations; and often, in the glow of poetical conception, he almost forgot ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... powerful and permanently established government. Nor does it seem possible, even in the event of Bombay taking the ascendance as the capital of British India, that the proud City of Palaces shall upon that account dwindle and sink into decay. Stranger things, and even more melancholy destinies, have befallen the mighty Babylons of the earth; but with all its faults of situation and of climate, I should at least, for one, regret the fate that would render the glories of a ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... coming up, bent to whisper a word in his ear, and the communication caused a sudden change in Mr. Lavington's expression. His face was naturally so colourless that it seemed not so much to pale as to fade, to dwindle and recede into something blurred and blotted-out. He half rose, sat down again and sent a rigid ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... be thought of, and the uncertain recruits who took its place were mostly undisciplined and unreliable. When the exigencies became pressing, a new method was resorted to, and then the usual erosion of life in the field, the losses by casualties and sickness, caused the numbers to dwindle. Long ago the paymaster had ceased to pretend to pay off the men regularly so that there was now a large amount of back pay due them. Largely through Washington's patriotic exhortations had they kept fighting to the end; and, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... interest of the subject for pointing it out—is curiously formed. His head is unusually large, and his broad shoulders and deep chest admirably match his quite noble head; but below the waist he appears to dwindle away, his legs seeming to bend under the weight of his body, so that he waddles rather than walks, moving with a rolling gait which is rather like a seaman's. He is, indeed, a giant mounted on a ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... because as the fulcrum of the lever it receives more pressure. Some organs (like the heart, which is always at work) would become inconveniently or unnecessarily large. Other absolutely indispensable organs, which are comparatively passive or are very seldom used, would dwindle until their weakness caused the ruin of the individual or the extinction of the species. In eliminating various evil results of use-inheritance, natural selection would be eliminating use-inheritance itself. The displacement of Lamarck's theory by Darwin's shows that the effects ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... the homes of the crowds. Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed. In the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic; the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand ticking away the years, and within ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c 596; squeezing &c v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation^. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c (be inferior) 34. render smaller, lessen, diminish, contract, draw in, narrow, coarctate^; boil down; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... newly discovered countries and the fear of piratical invasions had by 1591 decreased the total population of the colony to 15,000. This number remained almost stationary until about 1663 when it began to dwindle further until the low water mark was reached, about 1737, and the entire population of the Spanish portion of the island was estimated at but 6,000. Timely tariff concessions revived trade and encouraged immigration and new importations of slaves the number of inhabitants ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... husband! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... ossicles lodged in the auditory passage, and, raising them in fish to the greatest possible dimensions, forms from them these broad opercula...." (p. 85). Or you may take it the other way about, and start from the organisation of fishes; opercular bones are of no use to air-breathing animals, so they dwindle away, and are pressed into the service of the ear, although they are of little use in ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... vast firmament sprinkled with silver—silver dust scattered by the arrogant moon. The great silver disk, which, Mary murmured, looked like the tomb of dead gods, seemed to challenge mortals as well as planets to deny that he was lord of all, and that even human emotions must dwindle under his splendor. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
