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Widen   /wˈaɪdən/   Listen
Widen

verb
(past & past part. widened; pres. part. widening)
1.
Become broader or wider or more extensive.
2.
Make (clothes) larger.  Synonym: let out.
3.
Make wider.
4.
Extend in scope or range or area.  Synonyms: broaden, extend.  "Widen the range of applications" , "Broaden your horizon" , "Extend your backyard"



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"Widen" Quotes from Famous Books



... And may the circlet that your arms have twined In this first joyful moment widen out Further and further to a perfect ring Within which you may wander, side by side, Sharing your joys in harmony complete! Yours is a privilege that I had not, For what I might not say unto my lord I had to bear in silence; but at least I could not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... 1710, personal jealousies drove the Godolphin-Marlborough interest farther and farther away from the Junto. Robert Harley and the Dukes of Somerset and Shrewsbury, in their determination to overthrow the Administration, exploited every chance to widen the rifts between Anne and her Ministers and between the two ministerial factions. Abigail Hill Masham, who soon became an agent of Harley, replaced the Duchess ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... citizens. It is by intelligence and not by brute force that the world is now being ruled, and with the growth of intelligence and a better understanding of the principles of government, it is in order not only on the grounds of justice but for the best interests of the state to widen the foundations of representative government, so as to make available for voting and for official responsibilities all the intelligence that is comprised within the community. This is in my judgment the most conclusive reply to the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... with a carpet-bag, walking before me rapidly on the way to the lodge. He was a little man, dressed in shabby black, and wearing a remarkably large hat. I set him down (as well as it was possible to judge) for a lawyer's clerk, and stopped at once to widen the distance between us. He had not heard me, and he walked on out of sight, without looking back. When I passed through the gates myself, a little while afterwards, he was not visible—he had evidently ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... them to get means to work the rest. We had plenty of chances to buy for a few hundred dollars in money or trade mines partly opened, showing narrow streaks of good ore, which, according to the prevailing belief, would widen out and pay richly as soon as they were down through ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton

... different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true school of history should widen instead of narrowing our ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Schools, the Preparatory Schools, the Civil Service Commissioners, the Professional Societies, and (to make a general statement) with all the "Boards" and "Bodies" that controlled, directly or indirectly, the education of the youth of England. We must, therefore, widen the scope of our inquiry, and carry our search for cause a step farther back. How did the belief that a formal examination is a worthy end for teacher and child to aim at, and an adequate test of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... who builds his house by injustice, XXII. 13 His storeys by wrong, Who forces his fellows to serve for nothing, And pays not their wage. Who saith,(311) 14 I will build me an ampler house And airier storeys, Widen my windows, panel with cedar, And paint with vermilion, Wilt thou thus play the king, 15 Fussing with cedar? Thy sire, did not he eat and drink, And do justice and right, And judge for the poor and the needy? 16 Then was it well!(312) Was not this how to know Me?— ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... the ripple widen and draw near. One woman he could not understand, but two simplified everything. The drivers and ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... a burst of speed, as if attempting to outrace their pursuer. But he was careful to gauge his knots by reports from the sonarscope, in order not to widen the gap between the two craft. There seemed no danger that this would happen, although the Swiftsure raced ahead faster and faster. Still the enemy sub continued to close in like a marauding shark, ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... Here the high land widen from five to Eight miles and much lower than below, Saw Several of the big horn animals this evening. The Wolves distroy great numbers of the antilopes by decoying those animals Singularly out in the plains and prosueing them ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... was just about to turn his steed's head directly to the southward when a sound came to his ears—a cry that made his eyes widen with horror. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... the hymns he wrote for others to sing, although himself could not sing at all, (he and I monopolizing the musical incapacity of a family in which all the rest could sing well), the missionary stations he planted, the life he lived, will widen out, and deepen and intensify through all time ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... sidewalk about them knots of people were eagerly talking, all looking northward as though drawn by the same magnetic force. And as Smith and his companion raised their eyes, they saw in the northern sky an ugly crimson glare that seemed to widen and grow brighter even in the moment as they watched it. From far up Tremont Street, carried by the wind, came an odd murmur of confused noises, and nearer by the sharper sounds of clanging bells and the clatter of galloping horses' feet on the pavement. The crowds ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... to intonate surely, when the voice is "placed," and the secrets of the registers are known to him, he will do well to experiment a little, cautiously, with his own resonance-chambers, so as to widen his practical knowledge of the principles underlying the modification of tones. Why should the student of the voice remain a mere imitator, when the one who works in any other direction is, or should be, encouraged to be an original investigator? The inability ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... he had of anything wrong was a cry from the girl, and he saw a strip of water widen between the canoe and the bank. He ran his hardest, but made little headway, for thorny bushes and fern formed thickets along the bank, while when he reached the boulders he felt that he had come too late, because no swimmer could then overtake the canoe, even if he escaped ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... breach with an element that had previously furnished his staunchest supporters. As a politician of great native shrewdness, as well as the head of the Government, he could not afford to let the quarrel go on and widen. There was need of conciliation. Something had to be done. We know what he did. He issued his ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... almost wintry air ruffling them and John's arm lying along the rail under the window behind them, so as to clasp her instantly if she should lurch, they watched the slender bridge lengthen away and the cold river widen under it between ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... similar to it. As we ran along the coast, the mouth of a broad river opened before us, and, with the lead going to ascertain the depth of water we stood in towards it. On drawing near, it seemed to widen still more; and our captain being anxious to explore it, the wind also being fair, we crossed the bar, which had a considerable depth over it. The river, at the mouth, was nearly four miles wide, but it narrowed shortly ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... replace the need for a higher theoretical training. Generally, their attention is absorbed by the smallest of details, which, though each is of immense importance to the efficiency of the whole Arm, are not calculated to widen their intellectual horizon, and in the few great manoeuvres in which an Officer might find an opportunity of enlarging his knowledge, he finds himself lacking in the foundation necessary to make full ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... Appears to me no other than a trick Of Illo's own device. These underhand Traders in great men's interests ever use To urge and hurry all things to the extreme. They see the duke at variance with the court, And fondly think to serve him, when they widen The breach irreparably. Trust me, father, The duke knows ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... has demonstrated that platforms adopted by the partisan Conventions of the Country have had the effect to mislead and deceive the People, and at the same time to widen the political divisions of the Country, by the creation and encouragement of geographical and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... to press the subject again upon his notice, to propose further concessions, or further recognition of its existence. She couldn't ask that of him—ten thousand times no, she couldn't ask it—though not to ask it was to let the breach in sympathy and confidence widen silently and grow. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... review and criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that divided me from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... condition, and are longing for clearer light. They look in vain for the image of Christ in the churches with which they are connected. As these bodies depart farther and farther from the truth, and ally themselves more closely with the world, the difference between the two classes will widen, and it will finally result in separation. The time will come when those who love God supremely can no longer remain in connection with such as are "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... perspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and the minutest details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds and clusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared the details would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the view widen, the people cease to be significant. At the highest the effect was that of a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded land everywhere intersected by shining waters, saw the Hudson River like a spear of silver, and Lower Island Sound like a shield. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... for France. You conquered for her, as well as for yourselves, and for the honor and the joy of it. Why not do the same here? Why not widen the scope of the fight? Don't go haggling over differences in politics and religion. These things are utterly futile. What does it matter whether your nation is the eldest daughter of the Church or the eldest daughter of Reason? The only thing that does matter is that it should live! Everything ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... to which a residue of superstition lends respect, are only pompous ways of upholding ruins. The domes of those Institutes which look so grand when they tower above you are as ridiculous as extinguishers. You must widen and internationalize, without pause or limit, all which permits of it. With its barriers collapsed, you must fill society with broad daylight and magnificent spaces; with patience and heroism must you clear the ways which lead from the individual ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... streaks point away from the latter. (7.) There are no very long streaks; they vary from ten to fifty miles in length, and are rarely more than a quarter of a mile broad at the crater. From this point they gradually widen out and become fainter. Their width, however, at the end farthest from the crater, seldom ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... controversies—of Catholics and Protestants, Christians and Deists, Orthodox and Unitarians? They have plainly a twofold duty to themselves as well as to their opponents. They ought to increase their insight, and to improve their statements; to deepen and widen their hold of the substance; to correct and improve their expression of the form. The first is the work of religion; the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be; Only the little brook has widen'd ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... fully alive and awake. A transition line has been passed, and the study of history, like everything else, enters upon a new phase. The elementary teaching which has been sufficient up to this, which has in fact been the only possible teaching, must widen out in the third period, and the relative importance of aims is the line on which the change to more ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... much of the time. In that way—well, samples taken from our south drift assay more than we had dared to hope a ton, but not till we got well in. The vein may pinch out, of course, but there are no signs of it. I expect it to widen instead, and grow richer in quality. So—if you'll forgive the miner's analogy—with another vein I know ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... succession of rounding promontories, walling the mouths of canons, down many of which small streams make to the sea. These canons are green and rich at bottom, and filled with trees, chiefly oak. Beginning as little more than rifts in the ground, they deepen and widen, till at their mouths they have a beautiful crescent of shining beach from an eighth to a quarter of a mile long, The one which Alessandro hoped to reach before morning was not a dozen miles from the old town of San Diego, and commanded a fine view of the outer harbor. When he was last in it, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... we must master our materials, reason upon them, and, by determined study, attain to clearness of conception. Facts thus dealt with exercise an expansive force upon the intellect; they widen the mind to generalisation. We soon recognise a brotherhood between the larger phenomena of Nature and the minute effects which we have observed in our private chambers. Why, we enquire, does the magnetic needle set north and south? Evidently ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... and dignified vindication of the proceedings of the House of Lords (that is, of his own), and had abstained from any attack on the Government, and especially from any language reflecting on the Commons, perhaps it would have been a wise measure, but it cannot be wise to widen the differences which already exist between the two Houses, and to render all the animosities of public men more bitter and irreconcilable than they were before. The Tories are convinced that they are becoming more and more popular, and that the country approves of the daring behaviour ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... this school may enable you to fancy that you understand Lady Jane somewhat more, by the simple expedient of putting on her religious experiences an arbitrary interpretation of your own, which she would indignantly and justly deny, it will enable her to understand you all the less, and widen the gulf between ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... upon the soil and gets its food entirely from the alfalfa plants, which it ultimately destroys. But since the seeds of the dodder remain at least for a time in the soil, and the adjacent soil becomes infected with them, the circles in which the dodder feeds continually widen. In certain parts of New York State some fields have become so seriously affected as to lead to investigations conducted through officials from the State experiment station. Pending these investigations, the exercise ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... graceful and clear, and her fascinating narrative cannot fail to widen the horizon of her readers in more ways ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman

... such a heinous crime. He tried one day to reason with Kajsa, and to make her understand the injustice and cruelty of such a prejudice, but she would not even deign to listen to him. Then as they both grew older, the abyss which separated them seemed to widen. At eighteen Kajsa made her debut in society. She was flattered and noticed as the rich heiress, and this homage only confirmed her in the opinion that she was superior ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... tenderly? Did you not tell me that you had thought on the sorrows of every house in this village? Courage, my child! that is a good sign. Once, as you read the papers, you thought nothing of those who lost friends; now you notice and feel. Take the sorrows of others to your heart; they shall widen and deepen it. Ours is a religion of sorrow. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering; our Father is the God of all consolation; our Teacher is named the Comforter; and all other mysteries are swallowed up in the mystery of the Divine sorrow. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... against God with the perpetuity that belongs to those which are in harmony with Him. The truth goes further than she probably knew; certainly further than she was thinking when she chanted these words. Let us widen them by other words which use the same metaphor, and say, 'they that be wise'—that is a shallower word than 'them that love Thee'—'they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... possessed. Only length of time and variety of experience could fully test this power or fully display it; but the signs of it had not been absent from even his earliest life. He loved fewer people in youth than in advancing age: nature and circumstance combined to widen the range, and vary the character of his human interests; but where once love or friendship had struck a root, only a moral convulsion could avail to dislodge it. I make no deduction from this statement ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... but in vain; and Draupadi, with her hair still dishevelled, and pining over her ignominious treatment, comes to inflame his resentment. She complains also of a recent affront offered by Bhanumati, the queen of Duryodhana, in an injurious comment upon her former exposure, which serves to widen the breach. ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... controlled by its conception of God and, in the main, three different conceptions of God give colour and character to the outstanding historic religions. Pantheistic religions have thought of God as just the whole of all that is; they widen the universe to the measure of the Divine, or narrow the Divine to the operations of the universe. Pantheism saturates its whole vague content with a mystical quality of thought, and colours what it sees with its ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... moved as far as she could, shrinking as the very poor and miserable shrink when they are expected to make way before the rich and the strong. A lad of fifteen stood upon tiptoe to make himself even slighter than he was and thus to widen the way, and the Wanderer found himself, after repeated efforts, as much as two steps distant from his former position. He was still trying to divide the crowd when the music suddenly ceased, and the tones of the organ died away far up under the western window. It was the moment of the Elevation, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... beginning to be followed by admiring observation. Society recognized her claims, and she was gaining even more attention than she desired. As her strength increased she accepted invitations, and permitted the circle of her acquaintance to widen. It was part of her plan to become as much at home in the social world as Graydon himself. Nor was she long in overcoming a diffidence that had been almost painful. In one sense these people were to her simply a means ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... Stornham Court the Atlantic Ocean seemed to Rosalie Anstruthers to widen endlessly, and gay, happy, noisy New York to recede until it was as far away as some memory of heaven. The girl had been born in the midst of the rattling, rumbling bustle, and it had never struck her as assuming the character of noise; she had only thought of it as being ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... at all seasons, even with the happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen, and it flows on more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... our eyes traveled up the well-nigh vertical walls to the ragged edge of the chasm a thousand feet above us. The mightiness of it all was vaguely depressing, and it was with a distinct feeling of relief that we saw the canyon widen suddenly into a gigantic amphitheater. In its very center, rising from a ragged granite pedestal, a pinnacle of rock, crowned by a tiny temple, shot into the air. It was three hundred feet, at least, from the stream bed to the summit of ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... easily ran through the dry brushwood; it was kept within bounds by cutting down the shrubs where it might spread farther than was desirable. Soon a broad blackened belt lay beside the creek, containing nothing upon which the fire could fasten. Axes were at work to widen it still further. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... done to satisfy these needs, that showed Him what remained for the final Revealer and Mediator to accomplish. The Law and the Prophets had told men that God is holy, and men's blessedness, even as God's blessedness, lies in holiness. But this very teaching seemed to widen the breach between men and God, and to make union between them truly hopeless. By the law came not union with God, but the knowledge of sin. To put it shortly, fellowship or union with God, which ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods

... not meant to take down a fortress. Scratching around on the surface with them would just mark the thing up. We can widen that opening by quite a bit, and once it's widened, I can flip in the bomb. But it would be just blind luck if we nailed the one we're after that way. With a dozen bombs we could break up the station. But ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... No one gathers keys without a prospect of having doors to unlock. Man does not acquire knowledge without the hope to make it useful and productive; the highest motives only can call out the greatest exertion. There is a vast field of action open to man, and therefore, he is prepared to enter it; widen the sphere of action for woman, throw open to her all the avenues of industry, emolument, usefulness, moral ambition, and true greatness, and you will give her the same noble motives, the same incentives for exertion, application, and perseverance that man possesses—and this can be done only by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... not that a cunning and determined man might with impunity so far widen any one of the inferior breaches in the lower part of the wall as to make a cavity (large enough to admit a human figure) that should pierce to its outer surface, and afford that liberty of departing from the city and penetrating the Gothic camp which the closed gates now denied to all the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... driving her from her husband's house with all its might, blowing her skirts before her and her thick veil. She passed the square, keeping close to the shutters of the shops under the Palazzo Piombino—gone now, to widen the open space. A gust, stronger than any she had felt yet, swept down the pavement. She paused a moment, leaning against the closed shutters of the clockmaker Ricci, whose shop used to be a sort of landmark in the Corso. Just then a clock within struck eight strokes. She heard them ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... a small portion of non-OECD countries have succeeded in rapidly adjusting to these technological forces, and the technological gap between the industrial nations and the less-developed countries continues to widen; the rapid development of new industrial (and agricultural) technology is complicating ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... good enough. But he's like all the other young fools, nowadays; he ain't content to bet on a sure thing and grow with his capital. He wants to widen out and build and put in new machinery and cut a bigger dash generally. Thinks he's been too ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... 24, in which A represents the point-leg and B the pen-leg. The point-leg must be the longest because it requires to enter the drawing paper before the pen meets the surface. The point should be sharp and round, for any edges or angles on it will cause it to widen the hole in the paper when it is rotated. To shape the points to prevent the enlargement of the centre in the paper is one of the most important considerations in the use of this instrument, especially when several circles require to be drawn from the same centre. To accomplish this end the inside ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... sense it will not be an experiment at all. You have tried your powers, gained self-possession and command of your natural resources; developed your ingenuity, learned the technicalities of your art, so to speak, already. You propose now, as I understand, to extend your usefulness, widen your sphere of action, address yourself to a larger public, and make a profession out of what was before only a side issue in your life. It's a new field, and it 's a noble one, taken in its highest aspect, as you have always taken it. My motto for ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... more peculiar than the first. For while Hood hoped to close the breach in Georgia by drawing Sherman back, and Sherman expected that when he went on to widen the breach he would draw Hood back, what really happened was that each advanced on his own new line in opposite directions, Hood north through Tennessee, Sherman southeast through Georgia. So firm was the grip of the Union ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... see Mark flush, and his gaze widen to a piercing fixity. She thought her plain speaking had offended him ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... son-in-law. And now was to come the reward of his long years of labour. Now were to come repose, enjoyment, and the calm delights of which he had so often dreamed. But it so happened, that the current of thought and affection which had flowed on so long and steadily, was little disposed to widen into a placid lake. The retired merchant must yet have some occupation. His had been a life of purposes, and plans for their accomplishment: and he could not change the nature of this life. His heart was still the seat ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... narrow gauge, involving a liability on various baronies which have guaranteed interest on capital to the amount of L36,000 per annum. To bring these light railways up to a proper standard and equipment; to widen the gauge in many cases; to provide new sheds, stations, and rolling stock, and redeem the guarantees, a sum of about L5,000,000 would probably be necessary. In addition, projects for no less than eighty-three new railways were brought before the Commission;[95] and it is admitted on ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... of his audience. He adjusts his cravat, and strikes various attitudes for the benefit of the women in the first galleries at the Opera-Comique. As he passes through all these successive initiations, and breaks out of his sheath, the horizons of life widen around him, and at length he grasps the plan of society with the different human strata of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... scepticism grew only deeper and deeper. The study of W.R. Greg's "Creed of Christendom", of Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma", helped to widen the mental horizon, while making a return to the old faith more and more impossible. The church services were a weekly torture, but feeling as I did that I was only a doubter, I spoke to none of my doubts. It was possible, I felt, that all my difficulties might be cleared up, and I had no right ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... it. I changed the subject, therefore, and this was easily enough done, by beginning again to talk about the potatoes. I was far from being easy, nevertheless; for I could not avoid seeing that the good divine's restlessness might readily widen the little breach which had opened ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... surrounding wilds. It was the aim of Champlain, as of his successors, to persuade the threatened and endangered hordes to live at peace with each other, and to form against the common foe a virtual league, of which the French colony would be the heart and the head, and which would continually widen with the widening area of discovery. With French soldiers to fight their battles, French priests to baptize them, and French traders to supply their increasing wants, their dependence would be complete. They would become assured tributaries ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... great river on which they were voyaging. There might be such a strait as that through which the galatea was gliding. The channel might widen below; and, after all, he might have steered in the proper direction. With such conjectures, strengthened by such hopes, he permitted ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... disappear. The forests, which but now seemed black and bottomless gulfs, from whence no ray was reflected to show their form or colours, appear a new creation rising to the sight, catching life and beauty from every increasing beam. The scene still enlarges, and the horizon seems to widen and expand itself on all sides; till the sun appears in the east, and with his plastic ray completes the mighty scene. All appears enchantment; and it is with difficulty we can believe we are still on earth. The senses, unaccustomed to such objects, are bewildered and confounded; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... as a piece of religious folly. The world will never be converted by Christian palaces and temples. Every dollar used in its construction will be wasted. It will have no tendency to unite the various sects; on the contrary, it will excite the envy and jealousy of every other sect. It will widen the gulf between the Episcopalian and the Methodist, between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, and this hatred will continue until the other sects build a cathedral just a little larger, and then the envy and the hatred will be on ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... 15, 1917, the British captured Villeret, southeast of Hargicourt, which served to further widen the second gap in the Hindenburg line north of St. Quentin. The British were successful in all these minor struggles in making prisoners, and owing to the Germans' hurried retreat vast quantities of military stores fell into their hands. Since ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... you, and watching the snow slide off the twigs and the tear-drops swell on the points of pendant icicles. Brain counts for a good deal more to-day than heart does. It will win more applause and earn a larger salary. Thought is driven with a curb-bit lest it quicken into a pace and widen out into a swing that transcends the dictates of good form. Exuberance is in bad odor. Appeals to the heart are not thought to be quite in good taste. The current demand is for ideas—not taste. I asked a member of my church the other day whether he thought a certain friend of ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... and servile life afforded us; for it is true of armies that the compensation of their drudgery and miserable subjection is the continual opportunity of these large emotions; and not only by their vastness and arrangement, but by the very fact that they merge us into themselves, do armies widen the spirit of a man and give it communion with the majesty of great numbers. One becomes ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." Scarce had they spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose ev'ry beam and rafter; The heavy wall went clambering after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below: In vain; for a superior force Applied at bottom stops its course: Doom'd ever in suspense to ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... al Kolzum, and those who go by land from al Tur to Hejaz must go round by way of Aylah. Al Tur joins the continent on the north, but its other three sides are washed by the sea. The sea of al Kolzum, after passing some way to the south-east from al Tur begins to widen on either side, till it becomes seventy[345] miles broad. This wider part is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton

... continually. To the casual observer, the difference in the advancement of the two classes may not in early life be apparent. The forth-putting pretension of egoism may indeed cause it to seem the more rapidly advancing character of the two; but the progress of years will widen the separation between their paths, till it shall be seen as a great gulf, of which the opposite sides have naught in common. Advancing age will show the egoist narrow-minded and overbearing, peevish and fault-finding; while he who pursues his even course, walking in Christian ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... tended in an especial manner to widen the irreparable breach between Sir Francis Head and the Reform party. On the 25th of March a meeting was held in the City Hall, Toronto, at which an Address to his Excellency of exceptional significance was passed. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... that such bread contains about 1 per cent more protein than that made with water. Ordinarily there is no gain from a nutritive point of view in adding an excessive amount of lard or other shortening, as it tends to widen the nutritive ratio. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... is best worth seeking, a man can not go wrong by "falling in love" with the works of a relatively limited number of authors who kindle him personally. It is all right to widen the field occasionally, for diversion, for contrast, for sharpening style, and for balancing of ideas, but strength comes of finding a main line and holding to it. No man can read a book with sympathetic understanding without taking from it something that ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... few incidents that come under the first heading. A Mason-bee has finished the initial layer of the covering of the cell. She has gone in search of a second pellet of mortar wherewith to strengthen her work. In her absence, I prick the lid with a needle and widen the hole thus made, until it is half the size of the opening. The insect returns and repairs the damage. It was originally engaged on the lid and is merely continuing its work in ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... I don't see why we all should not camp out aloft. We could easily widen the platform, rig up the waterproof sheets as a tent, and haul up some mould to ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... pace regulated by the middle of the column, where teams of men panted and dragged at the six guns which were to batter down the hill fortress of Gawul Ghur: for roads in this country there were none, and all the long day ahead of the guns gangs laboured with pick and shovel to widen the foot-tracks leading up ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... with two Scotch Archbishops at its head, thinking that the Presbyterians would consent to so humiliating a condition! An interchange of pulpits is desirable; it might increase our intelligence, or at least it should widen our sympathy. He holds a high opinion of the Quakers. "Practical mystics: perhaps they are the best Christians, I mean the best ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... that if we continued our walk we should widen the distance between ourselves and the stream, the noise of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... one thing it amazed her to hear Thackeray called second-rate; and then she could not widen her point of view to believe that there could be great writers in existence at the present day, or if there were, that any one she knew could be a great writer, and his self-confidence astounded her, and he became ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... Tiber in conformity with a scheme of his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden without effecting a too-difficult piece of engineering. The less passionate Murray says merely that "a large slice of this garden was cut off to widen the river for the Tiber embankment," and let us hope that it was no worse. I suppose we must have seen the villa in its glory when we went, in 1864, to see the Raphael frescos in the casino there, but in the touching melancholy of the wasted and neglected ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... for any further attempts at concealment, and he had now only his speed to rely on. But he had already run nearly three miles, while many of those behind him were fresh, and he soon found that he could not again widen the space between them. For another two miles he still kept ahead, at first leaping the ditches lightly and without a pause, but at last often landing in the middle, and scrambling out with difficulty. He was becoming completely ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... the wind would widen the channel, and thus let us into open water. But, to our disappointment, when we had got along a mile or so in this narrow open space, we found the ice was quietly but surely closing in upon us. As it was from four to six feet ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... the loose particles of ground at the bottom of the Lion's Den, still continue to sink gradually through the narrow, slanting passage into the cave already formed; and it is expected that in no very long time the lower extremity of the chasm will widen so far, as to make the sea plainly visible through it from above. At present, the effect of the two streams of light pouring into Daw's Hugo from two opposite directions—one from the Lion's Den, the other from the seaward opening in the rocks—and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... "Is that the one you love?" Her voice sounded tremulous: her eyes, fixed on Doolga, seemed to widen with increasing pain. ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... he was now living under very different conditions from those to which presumably he was accustomed, reached down and began to rub the tops of his toes but without any desire apparently to widen the operation. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... the Garonne. The capital of this territory, which was the celebrated province of Guienne, was Bordeaux,[11] a large and important city in those days as now. It stands on the bank of the river where it begins to widen toward the sea, and thus it was accessible to the English in their ships as well as when coming with their armies by land. It was a place of great strength as well as of commanding position, being provided with castles and towers to defend it from the landward side, and thick walls and powerful ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the next morning they were again on the bosom of the river, the engine having again been cleaned and "nursed" as the engineer described it for the day. The river had begun to widen and the bank to fall to almost a dead level just before reaching Circle the night before, and they now entered upon a dreary expanse of tundra or flat marsh land covered with a meager growth of willow and stunted birch. The river ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... was to feel that only the poor mother cared. For Primrose was not old enough nor suspicious enough to imagine the hundred little ways Rachel found to blame Andrew and widen the breach ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Wellington resigned. Lord Bathurst immediately wrote to Canning, saying that, finding they had resigned, he could not avoid sending in his resignation also; that it was unnecessary to enter into explanations, which could only tend to widen the breach such a separation must make. Afterwards Lord Melville resigned, although well with Canning and a friend to the Catholics; he said he could not desert the men with whom he had acted for so many years. The Whigs seem greatly elated at the breaking up of this Administration. The ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... that lies like a confusing mist over the problem of life, and the soul has sudden glimpses of things unutterable which lie beyond. Then the narrow straits, that look so full of rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage, and one after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing silver bells of gladness, the isles of the blessed lift themselves up on the horizon, and the soul is flooded with an atmosphere of light and joy. As the burden of Christian fell off at the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... first breach in his solitary life of his own free will, but it was fated to widen. The parson's daughter soon heard that he had got a lad from the workhouse, the very boy who sang so well and had climbed the walnut-tree to look at Daddy Darwin's pigeons. The most obvious parish questions at once presented themselves to the young ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... was no information he could gather except by his eyes. And chiefly, the face of Elizabeth. He knew her like a book in which he had often read. Twice he read the danger signals. When the great roast was being removed, he saw her eyes widen and her lips contract a trifle, and he knew that someone had come very close to the danger line indeed. Again when dessert was coming in bright shoals on the trays of the Chinese servants, the glance of his sister fixed on him down the length of the table with a grim appeal. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... an ideal friend, ready to sacrifice to the uttermost on the altar of friendship. It was this trait of character which made him throw himself with enthusiasm into Freemasonry, whose affiliations he sought to widen by drafting the constitution of a community which he called "The Grotto." He probably hated only one man in the world,—the Archbishop ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army—he had been an expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago—and hammer out fame upon the anvils of fortune in England or in France; but he had stayed here that he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... are to be found in "The Pickwick Papers," as they have come to be called for brevity's sake. But the assertion is misleading, if it be taken to mean that in the fifteen books of fiction which Dickens was to produce, he added nothing, failed to grow in his art or to widen and deepen in his hold upon life. So far is this from the truth, that one who only knows Charles Dickens in this first great book of fun, knows a phase of him, not the whole man: more, hardly knows the novelist at all. He was to become, and to remain, not only a great humorist, but ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... and weakness; and the noble, which is the unassuaged thirst for perfection. The present result of the last forty years in Oxford is a discontent which is constantly trying to improve the working, and to widen the intellectual influence, of the University. There are more ways than one in which this feeling gets vent. The simplest, and perhaps the most honest and worthy impulse, is that which makes the best of the present ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made her, if such a thing were possible—which a minute ago it manifestly was not,—more ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... and week followed week, the companionship of these men became forced. The old tacit understanding was replaced by a feverish desire to talk; and this forced conversation only helped to widen the rift which was ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... posted, and in the meantime the troops stationed around Lutzen were employed in preparing obstacles to hinder the advance of the Swedes. On either side of the roads was a low swampy country intersected with ditches, and Wallenstein at once set his men to work to widen and deepen these ditches, which the troops as they arrived on the ground were to occupy. All night the troops ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... variety, to the luxury and stir of life in Paris; it was only when I had overcome my first repugnance that I saw the advantages of this existence; how it lent itself to continuity of thought and to involuntary meditation; how a life in which the heart has undisturbed sway seems to widen and grow vast as the sea. It is like the life of the cloister, where the outward surroundings never vary, and thought is thus compelled to detach itself from outward things and to turn to the infinite that lies ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... called my husband, in an oddly authoritative and barking voice, "and you on the roan there, swing twenty paces out from one another and circle the shack. Then widen the circle, each turn. There's no use calling, for the boy'll be down. He'll be done out. But don't speak until you see something. And for the love of God, watch close. He's not three yet, remember. He couldn't have got ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... desire, it is obvious that one of the necessary means is to extend to all desirable classes that range of choice which is now possessed only by those near the top of the social ladder. It is hardly necessary to urge young people to widen the range of their acquaintance, for they will do it without urging if the opportunity is presented to them. It is highly necessary for parents, and for organizations and municipalities, deliberately to seek to further every means which will bring unmarried young people together under proper ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... sacrifice the whole dignity of the Tibbetses to his passion. He had lately, however, had a violent quarrel with his mistress, in consequence of some coquetry on her part, and at present stood aloof. The politic mother was exerting all her ingenuity to widen this accidental breach; but, as is most commonly the case, the more she meddled with this perverse inclination of her son, the stronger it grew. In the meantime Old Ready-Money was kept completely in the dark; both parties were in awe and uncertainty as to what ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... possession of God; and from the consideration of an Infinite Spirit that imparts Himself, and of finite but indefinitely expansible spirits that receive, the certainty arises of an endless life for us of growing glory; a heaven of ceaseless advance, where in constant alternation desire shall widen capacity, and capacity increase fruition, and fruition lead in, not satiety, but quickened appetite ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... one. They all want to teach school,—and schoolteaching, consequently, is an overcrowded profession,—and, failing that, there is only millinery and dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts have been made in various directions to widen their sphere. Typesetting and bookkeeping are in some instances beginning ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... England: will it pay To fear thet meaner bully, old "They'll say"? Suppose they du say: words are dreffle bores, But they ain't quite so bad ez seventy-fours. Wut England wants is jest a wedge to fit Where it'll help to widen out our split: She's found her wedge, an' 't ain't for us to come An' lend the beetle thet's to drive it home. For growed-up folks like us 't would be a scandle, When we git sarsed, to fly right off the handle. England ain't all bad, coz she thinks us blind: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... thought only of himself, he now thought only of Hilma. The time when this thought of another should broaden and widen into thought of OTHERS, was yet to come; but already it had expanded to include the unborn child—already, as in the case of Mrs. Dyke, it had broadened to enfold another child and another mother bound to him by no ties other than those of humanity and pity. In time, starting from ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... be able to see all those bodies very plainly transparent, which we now are fain onely to ghess at by circumstances. Nay, the Object Glasses we yet make use of are such, that they make many transparent bodies to the eye, seem opacous through them, which if we widen the Aperture a little, and cast more light on the objects, and not charge the Glasses so deep, will ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... you avoid the temptation, and remembering that the Spirit has no limitations, and that you can draw and draw and draw on the love within you and never find the bottom of the source of love; if you are strong enough to do that, then the love of the family, of the community, of the State, will widen out into the love of humanity, and you shall know yourself as one with all, and not only with your family, or your community, or your nation. All these local loves are schoolmasters to bring us to the wider love of man. But do not blunder in the idea that you can have the ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... and West the tendency of the new fundamental laws was to widen the suffrage, rendering it, for males over twenty-one years of age, practically universal. Woman suffrage, especially on local and educational matters, spread more and more, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah women voted upon exactly the same terms as men, In Idaho ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... others requiring answers. Dear man, my friends must pardon me, my nisus forwards is so strong that I can seldom force myself to take breath, and cast a look backwards."[100] In the opening of the year, 1772 (February 3rd), he is in the same sanguine temper: "Prospects daily widen out before me, and obstacles give way, so that I may confidently lay the blame on my own feet if I ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... rod moves, the broader become the bands, but not in like proportions; broad bands widen relatively more than narrow ones; equal bands widen equally. As the bands widen out it necessarily follows that the alternate bands ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... Elisabeth was concerned, for it left her with the impression that he was less appreciative of her and more wrapped up in himself and his own opinions than ever; while it conveyed to his mind the idea that her success had only served to widen the gulf between them, and that she was more indifferent to and independent of his friendship than she had ever ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... flattest contradiction. Civil war is here the very instrument of progress; it brings about the survival of the fittest. Original differences in the cell-colonies, however slight, will bring about differences of life and action; the latter, continued through successive generations, will widen the original differences of structure; innumerable species will thus spring up, branching forth in every direction from the original stock; and the competition of these species among each other for the ground they occupy, or the food ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... placer would be found; or, on a mountainside where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be pay ore almost from the grass-roots—rich, yellow, free-milling gold, so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... widen out for a few minutes, and fill a large portion of the sky; then they close up again, and look like one long banner of red ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh



Words linked to "Widen" :   extend, expand, stretch, let out, widening, take in, flare, distend, vary, dilate, increase, alter, white out, globalize, globalise, territorialize, modify, flare out, narrow, change, territorialise, broaden



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