"Handbreadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were told off to draw the veil (of the Temple) aside; for it is taught that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel declared in the name of Rabbi Shimon the Sagan (or high priest's substitute), that the thickness of the veil was a handbreadth. It was woven of seventy-two cords, and each cord consisted of twenty-four strands. It was forty cubits long and twenty wide. Eighty-two myriads of damsels worked at it, and two such veils were made every year. When it became soiled, it took three hundred ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... the lovely unfoldings of luminous Science, All that Logic can prove or disprove be avowed: Is there room for no faith — though such Evil intrude — In the dominance still of a Spirit of Good? Is there room for no hope — such a handbreadth we scan — In the permanence yet of the Spirit of Man? — May we bless the far seeker, nor blame the fine dreamer? Leave Reason her radiance — Doubt her due cloud; Nor their Rainbows ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves, under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching within a handbreadth of the knee. The rest of his muscular limbs, both legs and arms, were bare, excepting that he had sandals on his feet, and wore a collar and bracelets of silver. A straight broadsword, with a handle of box-wood and a sheath covered with snakeskin, was suspended ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... table, with the bloody heads of the squire's former wives ranged upon it. The lady dropped the key in her horror, and on picking it up found it covered with blood-stains, which nothing could remove, while the door stood a handbreadth open, as if an invisible wedge had fallen between the ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin disappear with the gratification of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley |
