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Shrink   Listen
noun
Shrink  n.  
1.
The act shrinking; shrinkage; contraction; also, recoil; withdrawal. "Yet almost wish, with sudden shrink, That I had less to praise."
2.
A psychiatrist. (Coll.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shrink" Quotes from Famous Books



... There, do as I say: go back and think over this meeting seriously, and believe me I shall be very glad to see you come to me to-morrow and say frankly, from man to man—I have been in the wrong. Don't shrink from doing so. It is an honour to anyone to avow that he ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... death in 1852 he wrote in a letter to the Prince a masterly analysis of the great commander's character, concluding with these words: "As the times we live in cannot fail to present your Royal Highness with great and worthy occasions to distinguish yourself, you should not shrink from turning them to account . . . as Wellington did, for the good of all, yet without detriment ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... moved slowly and surely carrying black death with it. This terrible and mysterious assassin has at last been unveiled. The shroud of concealment has been torn away and there the dire monster stands—naked, remorseless and hideous. It is of small size, though it makes us all shrink with horror and disgust. It has six claw-like legs and no wings. It is, in fact, neither more nor less than the clothes louse, the Pediculus vestimenti. The filthy, crowded condition in which the prisoners were kept, and (let us well remember and reflect ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... fervently I wish thou mightest inherit the word of that apostle whose episcopal seat thou hast acquired, of him who said, 'Thy gold perish with thee.' Oh that all the enemies of Zion might tremble before this dreadful word, and shrink back abashed! This, thy mother indeed expects and requires of thee, for this long and sigh the sons of thy mother, small and great, that every plant which our Father in heaven has not planted may be rooted up by thy hands." He then alluded to the sudden deaths of the last ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... the Lady Brandon upon her knees within a yard of me, saw her shrink before my gaze and the griping passion of my hands; for now, reading in her look all her scorn and loathing for the thing I was, I must needs turn my fury upon her and did that the which shames me to this day, for even as she fronted me, all defenceless but with head ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... better. He felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides, Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas not mirth. No wonder, then, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... instinctively feared him? Why had she turned from him to the Seer? Why, he asked himself bitterly, had she always feared him? Why did she still shrink from him? For Barbara did shrink from him, unconsciously—unintentionally—but, to Jefferson Worth, none the less plainly now than when he knelt before her that night in the desert. And it hurt him now as it had hurt him then; hurt the more, perhaps, because Barbara did not know—because ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... home late, Fenwick and Mrs. Nightingale had gone out in the back-garden to enjoy the sweet air of that rare phenomenon—a really fine spring night in England—leaving the Major indoors because of his bronchial tubes. The late seventies shrink from night air, even when one means to be a healthy octogenarian. Also, they go away to bed, secretively, when no one is looking—at least, the Major did in this case. Of course, he was staying ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... banished, if the feeling that they were unholy and abominable could sink into the minds of men. The legislator is to cry aloud, and spare not, 'Let not men fall below the level of the beasts.' Plato does not shrink, like some modern philosophers, from 'carrying on war against the mightiest lusts of mankind;' neither does he expect to extirpate them, but only to confine them to their natural use and purpose, by the enactments of law, and by the influence of public opinion. He will not feed them by an over-luxurious ...
— Laws • Plato

... her consideration of them and of my purposes. Sometimes she differed openly from me and sometimes greeted my work for truth and light with indifference! I had learned to bear this, and more; to save myself pain I had come to shrink from exposing my real self to her. Then, when this young girl came, for the first time in my life I found real sympathy and knew what I thought I never should know; a heart attuned to my own, a mind that sought my own ideals, a soul of the same aspirations—and a perfect faith in what ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... perfectly livid; a lightning flash seemed to dart from his eyes. Fouquet felt that he was lost, but he was not one to shrink when the voice of honor spoke loudly within him. He bore the king's wrathful gaze; the latter swallowed his rage, and after a few moments' silence, said, "Are we going to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... masticating his food with the keen relish of a man who had been hard at work the whole morning. All appeared unconscious of their critical condition; and to Raoul it seemed as if the entire responsibility rested on his own shoulders. Fortunately, he was not a man to shrink from his present duties; and he occupied the only leisure moment that would be likely to offer that day, in deliberating on his resources and in maturing ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... to it with reluctance. I shrink from attempting to say anything about it. If you knew that there was one spot on the earth where Nature kept her secret of secrets, the key to the action of her most gigantic and patient forces through the long eras, the marvel of constructive and destructive ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... to be driving in the dark, and probably through a storm, was responsibility enough, without the care of Betty added; and she felt, too, that though her father might be induced to let one of them go with him, he would, under such circumstances, shrink from the ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... allowed to dry before complete removal of foreign matter is effected. They are likely to shrink and crack, and subsequent additions of wash-water pass ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... The love of soul yields not to change of state; Heaven's life news the broken ties of earth; There is no death! all that has truly lived, Lives ever; feeling cannot die; it blooms Immortal as the soul from which it springs! Why do I shrink to own the bitter truth? I never ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... her two elder sisters were comfortably married to London tradesmen, but she did not see very much of them, for their ways were not hers, and Miss Shepperson had always been one of those singular persons who shrink into solitude the moment they feel ill at ease. The house which was her property had, until of late, given her no trouble at all; it stood in a quiet part of Hammersmith, and had long been occupied by good tenants, who paid their rent (fifty pounds) with exemplary punctuality; repairs, of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... went South, appeared now to have been waiting for him on his return, and while his plans, nicely arranged, seemed feasible the actual readjustment struck him as lurid and impossible. The fact was that his experience of life in Pine Cone made him now shrink from contact with the outside world as one of its loyal natives might have done. It could no more survive in the garish light of a city day than little Nella-Rose could have. That conclusion reached, Truedale was comforted. He could not ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... under which we all live and move and have our being. Though we approach these subjects with regretful hesitation, it is a duty from which the court has never shrunk, and from which I presume it never will shrink as long as that court has ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... are thinkers who, like Wallace, shrink from applying to man the ultimate consequences of the theory of descent. The idea that man is derived from ape-like forms is to ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... being inactive no longer. He thought, if he got up, he might perhaps see his misfortunes shrink to a more bearable, less hopeless scale, and besides, he judged it prudent, for many reasons, to finish his toilet before the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... village and its twinkling lights, to meet an attractive and a very good looking young man! What would the world say? Virginia did not care what the world would say. But now she began to question within herself, "What would Penn think?" and almost to shrink from meeting him. Strong, however, in her own conscious purity of heart, strong also in her confidence in him, she put behind her every unworthy thought, and sought the shelter of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... to Shakespeare and the stage, with which Mary Anderson was fain to confess but a very slight acquaintance, fearing the announcement of her profession would shock the prejudices of these simple country folk, who might shrink from having "a play actress" under their roof. Some months after the party had returned home there came a letter from these kind people saying how, to their delight and astonishment, they had accidentally discovered who had ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breast-bone would have split asunder.... Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me; which burden also did so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... humble, most devoted servants of Christ are fostering in their midst what will one day, not long hence, show itself to be the spawn of the dragon. They shrink from any rude word against creeds with the same sensitiveness with which those holy fathers would have shrunk from a rude word against the rising veneration of saints and martyrs which they were fostering.... The Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another's hands, and their ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... be admitted that the idea of a Cartesian vortex in connexion with the solar system applies, if at all, rather to an earlier—its nebulous—stage, when the whole thing was one great whirl, ready to split or shrink off planetary ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... are "clothed in soft raiment"! They shrink from the rough fustian, the labourer's cotton smock, the leather suit of George Fox. They are ultra-"finicky." They are afraid of the mire. They touch the sorrows of the world with a timid finger, not with the kindly, healing ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... much to the advantage of society, if an example could be made of some of these persistent agitators, who excite the ignorant and reckless to treasonable violence, from which they themselves shrink, but who are, not only in morals, but in law, equally guilty and equally amenable to punishment with the victims of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... smarting poverty? When banished by our miseries abroad, (As suddenly we shall be) to seek, out, In some far climate, where our names are strangers, For charitable succour; wilt thou then, When in a bed of straw we shrink together, And the bleak winds shall whistle round our heads; Wilt thou then talk thus to me? Wilt thou then Hush my cares thus, and shelter me ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... me long to meet him part way down the walk, nor did I shrink from the caress he gave me, nor know how much joy and pain that meeting evoked in him, even after he turned to Mr. Houghton saying fervently, "Do not be angry because I kiss your wife and put my arms around her, for she is my child come back to me. I helped raise her, and we learned ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... to a mild reproof from easy-going Diaper,—a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had reason to believe—could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Saint Hubert stopped abruptly, cursing himself for a tactless fool. She could not fail to realise the significance of those visits to the gay, vicious little towns. The inference was obvious. His thoughtless words would only add to her misery. Her sensitive mind would shrink from the contamination they implied. If Ahmed was going to die, she would be desolate enough without forcing on her knowledge the unworthiness of the man she loved. He pushed his chair back impatiently and went to the open doorway. He felt that she wanted to ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... all? In one way Rachel rather hoped it was the case; it would be something to have received so much kindness and attention, even though bought and paid for, from one of her own sex who knew all there was to know, and yet did not shrink from her. But the young woman's ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... huge bulk, this deep-drinking, gluttonous Bismarck, this world-defying voice, raged and stormed through his eighty-three years of life—making little men's souls shrink in fear—and ever the essence of his genius was for alignments with men, or against them, using this human clay ultimately for his own peculiar ends, as the potter molds the mud. He knew too that despite the old German family and tribal feuds, the Germans ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... They might well shrink from the task facing them. Work in the provincial capital had been of so totally different an order, and life in a large community of foreigners had limited their sphere to the oversight of a small school for girls, and the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... I should know my way from there. I fear it would not surprise any of the household to see me. They would say—'It is only Lady Alice.' Yet I cannot tell you how I shrink from being seen. No—I will try the way you brought me—if you do not mind going back ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... from plant ashes and not from soda, is much less liable to shrink and harden flannel; in fact, it is best ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... his own image and likeness. Today I came to Petrarch and Dante—the mystics of the supreme elements. To contrast their serenity with Blake's wrath shows the whiter heights. All height is inward through narrow circles to the Central Fire of Silent Love from which the angels shrink in spiral messages of inspiring flame, and toward which humanity aspires in narrowing and advancing circles of expiring flesh. But depth is outward to the hearts of men. Sirius sings to my living stars tonight its ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... however, that it will do so very often; especially when its influence works through the medium of custom, and thereby immediately makes a man shrink from the idea of committing a crime. Early impressions cling to him. As an illustration of what I mean, consider how many a man, and especially if he is of noble birth, will often, in order to fulfil some promise, make great sacrifices, which are instigated ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... means of supplanting the popular organisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid in its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In return for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not shrink from inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such as the Holy See had never even claimed in France. The whole of the existing French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and those of the Constitutional Church, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... a small glass box that lay on the floor. She looked in it and found a tiny cake on which were the words "Eat me," marked in grapes. "Well, I'll eat it," said Al-ice, "and if it makes me grow tall, I can reach the key, and if it makes me shrink up, I can creep un-der the door; so I'll get out ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham

... impossible to describe the horror that seized those multitudes. Many cried out with fear, and each seemed to shrink behind the other. Paleness sat upon every face. The priest paused as if struck by a power from above. Even the brazen Fronto was appalled. Aurelian leaped from his seat, and by his countenance, white and awe-struck, showed that ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... power, through the puppet queen whom he had ready at hand to place upon the throne. An Italian of the sixteenth century, steeped in the traditions of the bloody and insidious state-craft of Milan and the Lombard cities, Cardan would naturally shrink from committing himself to any such perilous utterance: all the more for the reason that he had already formed an estimate of the English as a fierce and cruel people. With his character as a magician to maintain he could scarcely keep entire silence, so he wrote down for ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... cared enough about the matter to mount it, and look after them. Frank and Maggie got great friends in these rides. Her fearlessness delighted and surprised him, she had seemed so cowed and timid at first. But she was only so with people, as he found out before holidays ended. He saw her shrink from particular looks and inflexions of voice of her mother's; and learnt to read them, and dislike Mrs. Browne accordingly, notwithstanding all her sugary manner toward himself. The result of his observations he communicated to his mother, and in consequence, he was the bearer of a most civil and ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the navy leagues in every country, playing upon the fears of the nations by startling tales of what the others are doing, and so on through an endless chain, manufacturing a demand for battleships in the name and under the guise of patriotism. We shrink from the contemplation of such greed and selfishness, and appeal for relief to ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... I wouldn't follow you to England because I should shrink from facing my mother, perhaps, and my wife's relatives, and all the people who know what I've done. I don't shrink from meeting any one, and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... had lost their purses likewise, & saw that so many complaine togither: they iump in opinion with the other fellow, & begin to tug & hale the ballad singers when one after one, the false knaves began to shrink away with the purses, by means of some officer then being there present, the two Roges were had before a iustice, and upon his discreete examination made, it was found, that they and the cut-purses were compacted together, and that by this unsuspected villanie, they had ...
— The Third And Last Part Of Conny-Catching. (1592) - With the new deuised knauish arte of Foole-taking • R. G.

... embraces us all, and is the foundation of all our hopes. But it had to reach its purpose by a bitter road which He did not shrink from travelling. He desires to save us, and to realise the desire He had to die. 'It became Him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.' What He had to do, we have to accept. Unless we accept the mercy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... I hold to be the truth were you fifty times a king. What care I for any man when I know that I speak for the King of kings? See; are these the limbs of one who would shrink from testifying to truth?" With a sudden movement he threw back the long sleeves of his gown and shot out his white fleshless arms. The bones were all knotted and bent and screwed into the most fantastic shapes. Even Louvois, the hardened man of the court, and ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to do with the case. It was then transmitted to me. There was quite enough doubt as to my power of acting, to have justified me in referring the case to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. But I felt that the delay, and, above all, the appearance of a desire to shrink from the responsibility of passing a decision on the case, which this step would involve, would be so mischievous, that, having obtained from the Advocate-General an opinion that I had the requisite authority, I determined ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... is no question as to the good intention of State legislation. The chief difficulty in the enforcement of the law is that officers appointed locally, and partly from political reasons, shrink from applying the penalties of the law to their own friends and neighbors, especially where the animals are apparently abundant and are sought for food. The honest enforcement of the law renders the officer unpopular, even if it ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... last were two great sliding shutters of weedy oak across the brook, which were prised up inch by inch with a crowbar along a notched strip of iron, and when Sidney opened them they at once let out half the water. Midmore watched it shrink between its aldered banks like some conjuring trick. This, too, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... me thy hand: I will be guide, and lead thee in the way. What, dost thou shrink, Philologus, where I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... to be struck with the incongruity with which wealth and squalor are blended. Here a dainty restaurant is elbowed by a cheap American gargote, there a plate-glass window blazing with diamonds seems to shrink from a neighbouring emporium stocked with second-hand wearing apparel. Even the exclusive Zero Club with its bow window generally crowded with fashionable loungers, is contaminated by the proximity of a shabby drinking-bar, which, however, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... stood beaded on the man's forehead. He realized that even his lenient and indulgent mother would shrink from him if she knew that he had abandoned his dying benefactor like a treacherous coward. He said nothing and they had strolled to the end of the terrace before ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider—he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "my heart is trembling now. Indeed, I could think but of one way—the moat. And though the order seems easy enough to give, I fear I should, when the moment came, shrink ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... to shrink to half its size, and resembled a death's-head. He did not, however, fall on his knees, but raised his head for the last time: "I ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... the Ha-ta great street, and were beginning to feel that by some strange chance we had half the city to ourselves, when a furious galloping gave us a timely signal, and made us shrink into a native house, the doorway of which had been beaten in by marauders. We were just in time, for no sooner had we disappeared than a body of Manchu cavalry came rapidly past, flogging their ponies, and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... doth dwell; Dull, hated, despised in the sunshine hour, But at dusk,—he's abroad and well: Not a bird of the forest e'er mates with him; All mock him outright by day; But at night, when the woods grow still and dim, The boldest will shrink away; O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl, Then, then is the reign of ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... the canyon walls; that mad river, gathering their united flow into one embrace, scurrying away with an irresistible energy that almost sweeps you off your feet as you look at it, all things human seem to shrink into the infinitesimal. You do not ask yourself, "How did all this get here?" You accept the situation as you find it. You leave it to the scientists to dispute whether the valley was formed wholly by glacial ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... wight the chamber traced; The lights extinguished; Eurilas, too, placed; The Gascon 'gan to tremble in a trice, And soon with terror grew as cold as ice; Durst neither spit nor cough; still less encroach; And seemed to shrink, least t'other should approach; Crept near the edge; would scarcely room afford, And could have passed the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... "you make the life ahead seem so sweet that I shrink from entering it, lest by so doing I escape the punishment for my sin I would ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast aside all restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose they took of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed. They rushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was in their path. They were already larger than ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings

... who shrink from notice because they are so badly off. It is simply stupid to be ashamed of being poor; and the little dwarf-willows are not a bit ashamed. But they know that the soil they grow in is so poor that they can never ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which even a few condemned slaves ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... so long over that May-day which Richard remembered through many, many future years, growing faint and sick as often as the spring brought back the apple-blossom perfume or the song of mated robins. It is, alas, that we shrink as Victor did from the task imposed, that, like him, we dread the blow which will strike at the root of Richard's very life, and we approach tearfully, pityingly, half remorsefully, as we stand sometimes by a sunken ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... dank and foul, By the smoky town in its murky cowl; Foul and dank, foul and dank, By wharf and sewer and slimy bank; Darker and darker the farther I go, Baser and baser the richer I grow; Who dare sport with the sin-defiled? Shrink from me, turn from ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... Clarence I found its society in a flutter of expectation and alarm not untinged with horror. Clarence, nay, the whole of Fernando Po, was about to become so rackety and dissipated as to put Paris and Monte Carlo to the blush. Clarence was going to have a cafe; and what was going to go on in that cafe I shrink from reciting. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... marquis, a lady to whom from her own position a marquis was just a man on the level, marry in him the man he was, and not the marquis he seemed? Most certainly, he answered: he must not be unfair.—Not the less however did he shrink from the thought of taking her prisoner under the shield of his marquisate, beclouding her nobility, and depriving her of the rare chance of shining forth as the sun in the splendour of womanly truth. No; he would choose the greater ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... oneself, but an ever-haunting image. To any other form one's eyes are blind. It may be that there is a shepherd in the village at whose voice, at the mention of whose name, you will blush; at the thought of whom you will sigh. Why, one knows not! To see him will be a burning desire, and yet you would shrink ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... at the mention of the will, and he wetted his dry lips with his tongue. But after a moment's hesitation he sat down upon the tree-trunk, and he seemed to shrink a little together, when his limbs and shoulders had relaxed, so that he looked small and feeble, like a very tired old man. He remained silent for a few moments, but at last he spoke without raising his eyes. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... Most men shrink from responsibility; study of gregarious animals: especially of the cattle of the Damaras; fore-oxen to waggon teams; conditions of safety of herds; cow and young calf when approached by lions; the most effective size of herd; corresponding production of leaders; similarly as regards ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... twinkling grove, Revealing all the tumult of the feast— Flush'd guests, and golden goblets foam'd with wine; While the deep-burnish'd foliage overhead Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon. It may be that sometimes his wondering soul From the loud joyful laughter of his lips Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale shape Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems, Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl, Whispering: A little space, and thou art mine! It may be on that ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... must be happiness itself; and when we are happy and feel joy in living, He must grow stronger. And when we are weak and bitter, when the world haunts us as I felt this afternoon on leaving the superintendent, when men strike and starve, and others are hard and grasping—then He must shrink and grow small and suffer. There is happiness," she ended, breathing her belief as a prayer into the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... thought of herself as insisting on standing beside him and sharing his peril. Had he been himself she must have don so, but this was a stranger, whose claiming her made her shrink apart till she could feel the identity which, though she believed, she could not realize. Her hand lay cold and tremulous within his warm pressure, but he was too much wrought up and too full of joy ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and crave and suffer, and all ye The many mansions of my house shall see In all content: cast shame and pride away, Let honour gild the world's eventless day, Shrink not from change, and shudder not at crime, Leave lies to rattle in the sieve of Time! Then, whatsoe'er your workday gear shall stain, Of me a wedding-garment shall ye gain No God shall dare cry out at, when at last Your time of ignorance is overpast; A wedding garment, and a glorious seat Within ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... Holland Street, himself the centre of that peopled stillness, that alert tranquillity, which so strangely and sensibly filled it. Looking out of the low window, he could see the shadow of the houses shrink and the light broaden in the little garden below, as the sun travelled westward. Looking into the room itself, the many familiar objects and rich sober colours of it, quickened by a flickering of fire-light, were pleasant to his sense. The images which passed before him, whether actually visible ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens—it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... cry, laying her face in her crossed arms, the tears gushing, her whole frame aquiver, and heaving great sobs. She seemed to shrink like a trodden flower. It touched ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... escape from the thraldom of Podsnappery; could throw off the bedclothes of the custard-coloured phaeton, and get up; could shrink out of the range of her mother's rocking, and (so to speak) rescue her poor little frosty toes from being rocked over; she repaired to her friend, Mrs Alfred Lammle. Mrs Podsnap by no means objected. As a consciously 'splendid woman,' accustomed to overhear herself so ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... worthy men, Shrink from public places, And in lurking-hole or den Hide their pallid faces; There they study, sweat, and woo Pallas and the Graces, But bring nothing forth to view Worth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... handful or spoonful of it, dry it thoroughly by some means,—evaporating, or driving off the water,—and then throw what is left into a fire and see how it will burn. A piece of beef, for instance, would shrink a good deal in drying; but about one-third of it would be left, and this dried beef would burn quite briskly and would last for some time in the fire. A piece of bread of the same size would not shrink so much, but would lose about ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... proof thereof he long to see, Say it still thirsts, and would his heart-blood drink; And if he haste not to encounter me, Say I will find him when he least doth think." The Christians at his words enraged be, But he to shun their ire doth safely shrink Under the shelter of the neighbor wall, Well guarded with his troops ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... overtake successively, with its huge shadow and dark, descending wall of rain, the vessels in the bay. Their bright sails were suddenly drooping and dark, like the sides of barns, and they seemed to shrink before the storm; while still far beyond them on the sea, through this dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which the storm had not yet reached. And at midnight, when all around and overhead was darkness, I have seen a field of trembling, silvery light ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... that, Aubrey! He would only be vexed to hear that you gave in, and were fickle to your undertaking. Indeed, if I were the volunteer, I should think it due to him, not to shrink as if I were ashamed of what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... anything were to be got by it; or from prosecuting his small spites with a patient and virulent industry; or from stripping a man of his possessions, and transferring them to himself by processes from which most men would shrink. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... be wary, lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... to Philo when he enters upon this path, in order to meet the Logos who, to him, is the Son of God. "I do not shrink from relating what has happened to me innumerable times. Often when I wished to put my philosophical thoughts in writing, in my accustomed way, and saw quite clearly what was to be set down, I nevertheless found my mind barren and rigid, so ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... of his life breaks upon him, even the first inevitable risings of resentment against Sir Hugo are softened and toned down by the old yearning affection; and the longings for the unknown mother, intense as they are, yet shrink from full discovery of what she may have been or may still be. He and he alone, in unconscious dignity, stands up uncowering before Grandcourt. His whole relations to Mordecai are characterised by a deep suppressed enthusiasm, that fully responds to the enthusiast's soul. Towards ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... Come on, Mary V; 'hop in, and we'll take a spin,' and all the rest of it. Venus'll have nothing on you. Here's my goggles; put 'em on. I'm going to borrow Bland's." It had occurred to Johnny that Mary V would probably shrink from wearing anything belonging to Bland Halliday; girls ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... plans was careless and languid, but it showed the woman naturally at home in the fashionable world, with connections in half the great families, and access to all doors. The effect of it was to make Lucy shrink into herself. Mrs. Burgoyne had spoken formerly of their meeting in London. She said nothing of it to-day, and Lucy felt that she could never ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... prepared to hold justice-court in the open air in front of his shop when the weather wag fine, and in any convenient place when the weather was foul. "Gentlemen," he would say, when a case came before him, "I'd a heap ruther shoe a horse or shrink a tire; yit if you will have the law, I'll try and temper it wi' jestice." This was the genuine Pinetucky spirit, and all true Pinetuckians tried to live up to it. When occasion warranted, they followed the example of larger communities, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... time to which she must submit. "This implacable weather!" she writes; "this east wind that seems to blow through the sun and the moon!... There will be a May and June if we live to see such things," and then she speaks of seeing him besides, and while she recognizes it is morbid to shrink and grow pale in the spirit, yet not all her fine philosophy about social duties quite carries her through. But "if he thinks she shall not like to see him, he is wrong, for all his learning." What pathos of revelation of this brave, celestial spirit, tenanting the most fragile ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... of thunder heavier than any preceding it made Rose and Anne shrink more closely together in the corner of the chaise. "He looks like ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... our brave Roman spirits Chase, and swim after death, with their choice deeds Shining on their white shoulders; and therein Shall Tyber, and our famous rivers fall With such attraction, that the ambitious line Of the round world shall to her centre shrink, To hear their music: and, for these high parts, Caesar shall reverence ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... for that poor girl's flight. I shall never mention it to a soul. I have already put it out of my mind, therefore it is as if it had never been done, and there is no reason whatever why you should shrink from companionship with your comrades. I shall think much better of you for doing your duty like a man, than if you went home again ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... system. Whereas, a man like Bottazzi is engaged merely with the facts; he lets the inferences fall where they may. He is not concerned with whether Eusapia's manifestations oppose Christian theology or not; he wants the phenomena. He is alert to note their effect on biologic science, but he does not shrink from any report of them. So far as I am concerned, my lot is cast with these men who put the clamps on the fact and wait for larger knowledge before constructing a system ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... yoke a whole nation. If Louis XVI. had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here! This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation. Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards—criminals: for when the public liberty is assailed, to pardon is to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... was he possessed of sufficient strength of character to choose a distinct path and steadily pursue it. Determined enough, as we have seen, under excitement he could fight with his back to the wall. Nor was he one to shrink from any duty that was plainly pointed out to him. He could not prepare himself de longue main for a definite and consistent conduct; still less had he the power—often wielded by natures otherwise inferior—of striking a balance between opposing motives. His duty as a militia-officer was at complete ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... jurisprudence which have been discussed in this treatise. Nine-tenths of the civil part of the law practised by civilised societies are made up of the Law of Persons, of the Law of Property and of Inheritance, and of the Law of Contract. But it is plain that all these provinces of jurisprudence must shrink within narrower boundaries, the nearer we make our approaches to the infancy of social brotherhood. The Law of Persons, which is nothing else than the Law of Status, will be restricted to the scantiest limits as long as all forms of status ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... upright, in his repugnance and dismay, when that intruding hand fell on the peaceful brow of her over whose fate, to his own surprise, he had been able to shed tears. Some personal prejudice lay back of this or some secret knowledge of the man from whose touch even the dead appeared to shrink. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... might have been allowed to pass. "I shall not pretend to be an admirer of old John Brown," he says, in a page worth quoting, "any further than sympathy with Whittier's excellent ballad about him may go; nor did I expect ever to shrink so unutterably from any apophthegm of a sage whose happy lips have uttered a hundred golden sentences"—the allusion here, I suppose, is to Mr. Emerson—"as from that saying (perhaps falsely attributed to so honoured a name), that the death of this blood-stained ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... do! I do think of her!" said the young man, in a voice of impassioned grief. "God bless her! God forever bless her! But not even for her dear sake must I shrink from duty. I honor her too much to live to offer her the dishonored hand of a craven. Tell her this, and tell her that my last earthly thought was hers. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... that last book of yours WE think You've double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink 485 You stood. From your black name will shrink The babe that ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... thinking of that, and it seemed not too incongruous that the devil should now and then walk abroad with a lantern of his own devising to make men shrink from his path. But Casey says, and I think he means it, that the light is a lure. He told me a weird adventure of his own to back his argument, but I thought he was inventing most of it as he went along. Until I saw that light on Tippipah ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... waters spring from an unknown source, or fall into an unknown abyss. In both cases there is a sense of having reached the limits of the knowable, combined with a sense of inexhaustible power. The beyond is vague and insubstantial, but it is instinct with life and purpose. Man's spirit may shrink before the unknown—but he fills the empty regions with forms and objects which rob them of much of their strangeness and aloofness, and bring them within the range of his hopes and fears. There, as here (he feels), there must be ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... best endeavors when and how he could, and although, as her defender, he was faced by obloquy as well as by the loss of that parliamentary position which was as dear to him as the breath of his nostrils, he did not flinch or shrink from supporting her material and spiritual interests in his own generous, manly, whole-hearted way. Trinity College, Dublin, has done well in placing his statue at her outer gates as representing the greatest Irishman ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... rather marsh, which is full of papyrus plants and reeds. Our ford was an elephant's path; and the roots of the papyrus, though a carpet to these animals, were sharp and sore to feet usually protected by shoes, and often made us shrink and flounder into holes chest deep. The Chisera forms a larger marsh west of this, and it gives off its water to the Kalongosi, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... was one of the principal owners of the Josefa's cargo, happened to be standing beside me in the lookout; at every shot, he would, with a face of the most intense anxiety, while the perspiration hailed off his brow, slap his hands on his thighs, and shrink down on his hams, cowering his head at the same time, as if the shot had been aimed at him, and he was trying to shun it, apostrophizing himself, with an agitated ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... who he thinks has it in him to get on, then he backs him. He believes that nothing succeeds like success, having tested the truth of the saying himself. When something disagreeable has to be done, he does it and damns the consequences but he does not shrink from them. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson

... later Greek philosophers, and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew it from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollect how Paul speaks of "the prince of the power off the air." And Shakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of death with horror, lest his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... tear: noise, sobbings, and wild gestures were their necessary concomitants. Not only was it customary to hire weeping women, who tore their hair, filled the air with their lamentations, and simulated by skilful actions the depths of despair, but the relatives and friends themselves did not shrink from making an outward show of their grief, nor from disturbing the equanimity of the passers-by by the immoderate expressions of their sorrow. One after another they raised their voices, and uttered some expression appropriate to the occasion: "To the West, the dwelling of Osiris, to the West, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... You march on first, as brave as can be, when there is no cause for fear; but when a test of your strength comes, you shrink. ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... are in great measure armed against the bolts of chance by the nature of their lives, the grey character of even their most cheerful experiences and the poverty of their highest ambitions. Their aspirations, becoming speedily cowed by ill-requited toil and eternal hardship, quickly dwarf and shrink, until even the most sanguine seldom extend hope ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... cell walls is termed the "fibre saturation point." This amount has been found to be from 25 to 30 per cent of the dry wood weight. Unlike Eucalyptus globulus and certain oaks, the gums do not begin to shrink until the moisture content has been reduced to about 30 per cent of the dry wood weight. These woods are not subject to collapse, although their fibres become very plastic ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... English Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is all that is meant. The early painters were thus naive and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... and somewhat crabbed rectitude may be found in every department of life, but they are most prominent and most efficient when they engage in the reform of abuses, whether those abuses be in manners, institutions, or religion; and here they never shrink from the rough, rude work of the cause they espouse. They are commonly adored by their followers, commonly execrated by their opponents; but they receive the execration as the most convincing proof that they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... upon which was a perfectly poached egg; and directly after the man came round behind Jack, and quietly placed before him, with a whisper of warning that the plate was very hot, another rasher of ham, and at the first sight of it the lad began to shrink, but at the second glance, consequent upon a brave desire not to show his repugnance, he saw that it was a different kind of rasher to the doctor's, and that there was no egg. It was small and crisp and thin, of a most beautiful brown, with ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... think you carry the matter a little too far and scrupulously. When we see patriots begging publicly, and know that Grattan received a fortune from his country, I really do not see why a man, in no whit inferior to any or all of them, should shrink from accepting that assistance from his private friends which every tradesman receives from his connections upon much less occasions. For, after all, it was not your debt—it was a piece of swindling against ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... astonishing how they sometimes deceive the sharpest calculation! I—listen to an old man—am speaking seriously, Rodion Romanovitch" (as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch, who was scarcely five-and-thirty, actually seemed to have grown old; even his voice changed and he seemed to shrink together) "Moreover, I'm a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What do you say? I fancy I really am: I tell you these things for nothing and don't even expect a reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... and she saw that he was grasping the chimney-piece with both hands as though to support himself by it. In another moment his broad shoulders seemed to heave and then shrink together. He staggered and almost fell to the ground, though Hilda did her best to hold him. With a great effort he gained the chair in which she had sat and fell back in it. His eyes were closed and the lids were blue, while his tightly compressed ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... are excellent seamen, and shrink from no danger. In the numberless fiords that extend from Christiansand to Cape North, among the dangerous reefs of Finland, and in the channels of the Loffoden Islands, opportunities to familiarize themselves with the perils of ocean are not wanting; and from time ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne

... If this were done, (which nobody can refuse without great disingenuity,) many of the books extant might be spared; many of the controversies in dispute would be at an end; several of those great volumes, swollen with ambiguous words, now used in one sense, and by and by in another, would shrink into a very narrow compass; and many of the philosophers (to mention no other) as well as poets works, might be contained in ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... that an English political campaign is fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual interests; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself—the large Idea—on which orators and party managers rely ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... of the public mind at this time is thus described by Gray:—"Grumble, indeed, every one does; but, since Wilkes's affair, they fall off their metal, and seem to shrink under the brazen hand of Norton and his colleagues. I hear there will be no Parliament till after Christmas. If the French should be so unwise as to suffer the Spanish court to go on in their present measures (for they refuse to pay the ransom of Manilla, and have ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... the farmer, had been revolting to her. To live within a few miles of where that dreadful tragedy had occurred; to live amongst the surroundings which must ever be reminding her of her dead lover; these things had made her shrink from the thought of the time when she would again turn westward to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... answered, gravely, "be it so. I take you at your word. Though, mind you, M. de Bazan, 'tis no light thing I ask. It is something," pausing, "from which I shrink myself." ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... far from waking in Eleanor a responsive feeling, caused her to shrink further away ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... his life. I maintain this man hath well served thee and is no traitor; but since that he hath ground the faces of the poor, hath made thee to be hated by bringing of false witness, hath made the thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the Church—since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... they went on a while; then turned sharp out of this thoroughfare into a narrow alley. It was hot and close and dank enough here to make Miss Frere shrink, though she would not betray it. But dead cats and decaying cabbage leaves, in a not very clean alley, where the sun rarely shines, and briefly then, with the thermometer well up, on a summer day, altogether make an atmosphere not suited to delicate senses. Pitt picked the way along ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... the religious world shrink from the theory of evolution? To know the path by which God has advanced is not ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... trusted has failed me In the fight, and my hope is departed: I speak what I know of; and note it, Ye nobles,—I tell ye no leasing. Lo, the raven is ready for carnage, But rare are the friends who should succour. Yet still let them scorn me and threaten, I shrink not, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... expectation could have been more unfounded or delusive, but the sense of disappointment and desertion so preyed on the health and nerves of Brougham that he forsook the house of lords for a whole session. Campbell does not shrink from saying that he was "atrociously ill-used" on this occasion,[134] and assuredly he should not have been left to learn from a newspaper that he was thrust aside in favour of a man of vastly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... of worlds and floating over, to me, bottomless waters, I feel so lost in space, such an infinitesimal atom, that the doctrine of the sparrow that falls seems a chimera, and a God inconceivable. I wonder if this is not so with others. I wonder if all of us do not shrink from this immensity and take refuge in our own hearts where alone we can hear the voice of God, and where, at any hour or in any scene, we can find an instant answer to all our doubts. There is but one spot on the ocean that leads me to a sort of a fanciful realization of ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... the ape-man's hand for an instant. He wondered why it was that he hesitated to make the kill; never before had he thus delayed. The old man seemed to wither and shrink to a bag of puny bones beneath his eyes. So weak and helpless and terror-stricken he appeared that the ape-man was filled with a great contempt; but another sensation also claimed him—something new to Tarzan of the Apes ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the music of the groves, the music of the heart, Would barter for the city's din, the frigid tones of art? The virtues flourish fresh and fair, where rural waters glide. They shrink and wither, droop and die, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... oddly blended with this. Among his topics of self-humiliation, sufficiently frequent, one was his excess of 'loquacity.' A very shy man, it is often remarked, may shrink from talking, but when he begins to talk he talks enormously. My father, at any rate, had a natural gift for conversation. He could pour out a stream of talk such as, to the best of my knowledge, I have never heard equalled. The gift was perhaps stimulated by accidents. The weakness of his eyes ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... merely to promulgate and diffuse principles of conduct, but to direct the detail of their application; to declare and inculcate, not duties, but each person's duty, as was attempted by the spiritual authority of the middle ages. From this extreme application of his principle M. Comte does not shrink. A function of this sort, no doubt, may often be very usefully discharged by individual members of the speculative class; but if entrusted to any organized body, would involve nothing less than a spiritual ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... into the flare of lanterns, a tall, slim, dark-faced youth, wearing dark sombrero, blouse and trousers. I collared him before any of the others could move, and I held the gun close enough to make him shrink. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... apparel: Lord of the crown high plumed: of the beautiful turban, of the tall white crown: the gods love thy presence: when the double crown is set upon thy head: thy love pervades the earth: thy beams arise ... men are cheered by thy rising: the beasts shrink from thy beams: thy love is over the southern heaven: thy heart is not (unmindful of) the northern heaven: thy goodness ... (all) hearts: love subdues (all) hands: thy creations are fair overcoming (all) the earth: (all) hearts ...
— Egyptian Literature



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