"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell a story of Fitzgibbon respecting a client who brought his own brief, and fee, that he might personally apologize for the smallness of the latter. Fitzgibbon, on receiving the fee, looked rather discontented. "I assure you, counsellor," said the client (mournfully) "I am ashamed of its smallness; but in fact it is all I have in the world." "Oh! then," said Fitzgibbon, "you can do no more:—as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... Leopold endeavoured to reawaken interest in their doings by announcing private exhibitions of the children's skill 'every day from twelve to three—admittance two shillings and sixpence each person,' but despite the smallness of the fee, and the fact that it included the privilege of testing the powers of the performers by the audience, the number of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... The smallness of the population and the great distances between the settlements offer serious obstacles to the establishment of the usual Territorial form of government. Perhaps the organization of several sub-districts with a small municipal council of limited powers ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... venom'd worm] The serpent, which we, from the smallness of his eyes, call the blind worm, and the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... closely pressed together in consequence of the havoc which time had made among his teeth. He was tall, but had lost something of his height from stooping,—was slight in his form, but well made, and vain of the smallness of his feet and the whiteness of his hands. He was generous, quick tempered, and opinionated; generally very mild to those who would agree with him and submit to him, but intolerant of contradiction, and conceited ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... he demurred as to the smallness of his head, and he enjoyed the quotation immensely. With the same opponent he once tried a competition in verse-making. Both showed considerable skill, but the umpire decided that Louis had won, so he bore off in triumph the ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... your heart upon the knees of God, Losing yourself, your smallness and your darkness In His great light, who fills and moves the world, Who hath alone the quiet of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... quietly and subsided into a reverie which, undisturbed by De Morbihan, endured throughout the brief remainder of their drive; for, thanks to the smallness of the hour, the streets were practically deserted and offered no obstacle to speed; while the chauffeur was ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... He gestured toward himself as though he were ashamed of his brawn, and the heart of Tod warmed and expanded. He himself would never be large, and his heart had ached because of his smallness many ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... believe, noted for the smallness and precision of their ruffs, which were termed in print from the exactness of the folds. So in Mynshul's Essays, 4to. 1618. "I vndertooke a warre when I adventured to speake in print, (not in print as Puritan's ruffes ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the scale of virtue the brain is developed above the level of the face, and in proportion as they incline to gross brutality the development falls behind the face; and there is no exception to this law, either in quadrupeds, birds, or reptiles. Indeed, notwithstanding the smallness of the brains of fishes, their portraits show that this law applies also to them—as if nature had determined to warn mankind of the character of every animal. Alas for the dulness of human observers! Our naturalists and anatomists have said not one word of the most ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... there was nothing but the smallness of the steamer and the costumes and character of the passengers to prevent Rollo and Mr. George from supposing that they were steaming it from New York to Albany, up the North River, ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... general, as well as to keep the returns and records of events for the information of the next higher authority, and for history. A bulky staff implies a division of responsibility, slowness of action, and indecision, whereas a small staff implies activity and concentration of purpose. The smallness of General Grant's staff throughout the civil war forms the best model for future imitation. So of tents, officers furniture, etc., etc. In real war these should all be discarded, and an army is efficient ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... liquid, owing to the smallness of the pail, he could easily lick the spile which conveyed the sap from the tree, and this Mokwa did with evident relish. His tongue sought out every crevice and even greedily lapped the tree about ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... that of the see which not only holds no rank among bishops, but has not even the rights of a metropolitan. The power of the secular kingdom is one thing, the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities is another. The smallness of a city does not diminish the rank of a king residing in it; nor does the imperial presence change the measure of religious rank. Let that city be renowned for the power of the actual empire; but the ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... spare, straight, and tolerably long, would have added something to his stature had they been vertical, but they stood in the direction of an open pair of compasses. His body was not only short, but thin, being in every respect of most inconceivable smallness—when naked he must have appeared like a grasshopper. His head was of the common size, to which appertained a well-formed face, a noble look, and tolerably fine eyes; in short, it appeared a borrowed head, stuck on a miserable stump. He might very well have dispensed with dress, for ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... volcanoes. They were his friends, and, of all times, he loved most these moments spent in contemplation of those grim reminders of the strength of Nature, of the untamed fires which burnt beneath and of the smallness of man. He revelled in the changing colour tones of the rugged ice cliffs, of the mountain mists and of the rolling deliberate smoke-cloud. Grand, too, was the space of it all, wonderful the air, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... days of cavalry had gone by. No account was made of the enormous distance by sea that the cavalry had to be transported, the unfavorable nature of the seat of war for that arm, the little scope given in a campaign that resolved itself into a siege, the smallness of the cavalry force employed, and the difficulty in keeping up a fresh supply of horses. After this war came the introduction and improvement in the breech loader, and with it opinions were strengthened ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... face had become smooth and expressionless. I laid aside the garments, fished out quill and inkhorn, and, lying flat on the ground, wrote my letter to Albany, describing carefully the maid who was to be fitted, her height, the smallness of her waist and foot as well as I remembered. I wrote, too, that she was thin, but not too thin. Also I bespoke a box of French hair-powder for her, and buckled shoes of Paddington, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... quick, mobile face, and a lithe and shapely, if as yet somewhat unformed figure. The long thick plait in which her chestnut hair was arranged could not hide its plenitude and beauty, while the smallness of her hands and feet showed breeding, as did her manners and presence. The observant Godfrey, at his first sight of Juliette, for such was her name, marvelled how it was possible that she should be the daughter of that plain and ungainly ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... three volumes, even if they had to put up with inferior quality. Besides, there was always a considerable risk in bringing out a book by an unknown hand, with more in the same strain of explanation of the smallness of the sum offered for the manuscript. The price being so small, Constance was not strongly tempted to accept it. Then she wanted to get the manuscript back. The thought of appearing as a competitor for public favour ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight to Claire's father, and asking for her hand, and protested that he dare not risk the loss of her, which would work irreparable havoc in his life. It was only another ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... smallness of his studio. If he had only had the old garret of the Quai de Bourbon, or even the huge dining-room of Bennecourt! But what could he do in that oblong strip of space, that kind of passage, which the landlord of the house impudently let to painters for ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... some fashion superb. He was different from other men. That quiet kingliness of his was so natural to him, so sublimely free from arrogance. He was immeasurably greater than his fellows by reason of the very smallness of his self-esteem. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... was kind o' disapp'inted At de smallness of de man, Case I 'd allus pictered great folks On a mo' expansive plan; But I t'ought I could respect him An' tek in de wo'ds he said, Fu' dey sho was somp'n knowin' In de bald ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... do a lot of inland work. The smallness of the Snark makes this possible. When we enter the land, out go the masts and on goes the engine. There are the canals of China, and the Yang-tse River. We shall spend months on them if we can get permission from the government. That will be the one obstacle to our inland ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... design, but was more probably introduced or modified by the person who recased the tower in 1826. That there was sculpture we know, for in 1709 ten shillings was paid for taking the images down from the steeple. The smallness of the sum indicates that they were few in number, and if they occupied similar positions to those on the belfry stage of St. Michael's, and the structure was as decayed as was the tower of that church it is probable that the cutting away of the niches may have suggested the curving of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... continually exercises myself. He cannot: granted. But Scott could. And Montaigne. And Julius Caesar. And many more. And why can't R. L. S.? Does it not amaze you? It does me. I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of the field in which we labour and in which we do so little. I think David Balfour a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man's life it seems to me inadequate. Small is the word; it is a small age, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... equipped him so poorly. Measured by the German standard, however, his modest patrimony suggested princely opulence; and its possessor became conscious of a certain agreeable expansion, peculiar to capitalists. Smile as he might at the smallness of the social conditions which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... of heaven in the world is like a mustard-seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants as a mustard-seed falls between the furrows, and lay long unnoticed there. With the Lord, in the development ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the water drove the air out of the cavern through this little hole, continually making an intermittent blowing sound. The great cleft in the rock acted like the horn of an immense megaphone. This gave rise to a roar, high-pitched—owing to the smallness of the hole—like a wolf's howl. Night and day, but more especially when the tide was coming in, the howl of the Wolf Rock sounded over the sea to warn mariners ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... in the hospital Sally looked at the other women and felt so deliriously happy she wanted to cry. It was a beautiful baby and it cuddled close to her heart, its smallness ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... (Vol. viii., pp. 59. 233.).—So Ben Jonson was buried at Westminster, probably on account of the large fee demanded for a full-sized grave. It was long supposed by many that the story was invented to account for the smallness of the gravestone; but the grave being opened a few years ago, the dramatist's remains were discovered in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... occasionally resorted here for refreshments. The stockholders, living a few miles from town, who ought to have succeeded the best, were getting dissatisfied at the many disadvantages which they laboured under, and the smallness of the community around them, and every thing wore a ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... course, Ellen did not come to Haworth while Charlotte was away. Branwell, too, was absent. His first engagement was as usher in a school; but, mortified by the boys' sarcasms on his red hair and "downcast smallness," he speedily threw up his situation and returned to Haworth to confide his wounded vanity to the tender mercies of the rough and valiant Emily, or to loaf about ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the reins and galloped after Vesta, who was already over the hill. As he rode he began to realize as never before the smallness of this fence-cutting feud, the really worthless bone at the bottom of the contention. Here Philbrook had fenced in certain lands which all men agreed he had been cheated in buying, and here uprose those who scorned him for his gullibility, and lay in wait to murder him ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... by all this detail to pay much attention to what he was saying about the smallness of the kettle's mouth; but I remembered it ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... to Columbus, served to strengthen his opinion. The success indeed of his undertaking depended greatly on two happy errors: the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the earth. A deep religious sentiment mingled with his meditations. He looked upon himself as chosen by Heaven for the accomplishment of its purposes, that the ends of the earth might be brought together, and all nations and tongues united under ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... nothing to do but let the witnesses speak for themselves. Gentlemen of the Jury, I do not ask you to convict on insufficient evidence; but I do ask you not to be swayed by any false sentiment bearing reference to the so-called smallness of the offence, or the poverty of the offender. The law is made for the poor as well as for the rich, for the rich as well as for the poor. The poor man has no more right to shelter himself behind his poverty, than the ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... of the smallness of the house," added Maude, endeavouring to be polite. "We hardly knew how ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... exultation, joyously seeking out the sheep from among the goats. Of course I was a sheep, and my governess and the head gardener goats, so that the results could not fail to be in every way satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions, I laughed at the smallness of the field I had supposed ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... that the smallness of phrase does suggest a smallness of idea. The plan of magic motive will not hold ad infinitesimum. As the turn of the triplet, in the first movement, twists into a semblance of the Allegro theme, we feel like wondering with ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... understood all the particulars as to how a shoe is made, and had indeed done a few stitches himself, a good deal of hammering both of leather and of hob-nails, and a little patching, at which last the smallness of his hands ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... it," said Ford, "though now I recall it, I used often to hear my father speak of Miss Hester Stanbrook." Then he was going on to say that trite thing about the smallness of the world ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of Galilee," partly because [Hebrew: ncr] never occurs in this signification; partly because it is not conceivable that the place received a name which is due to it [Greek: kat'anti phrasin] only. It is much more probable that the place received the name on account of its smallness: a weak twig in contrast to a stately tree. In this signification [Hebrew: ncr] occurs in Is. xi. 1, xiv. 19, and in the Talmudical usus loquendi where [Hebrew: ncrim] signifies "virgulta salicum decorticata, vimina ex quibus corbes fiunt." There ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... same fact in relation to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "sweet puck."[41] The names of the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed, are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness, speed, and smallness. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Pope, or his soul been seen of the poor monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... considerable, would be small, compared to the payment aforesaid: for as the premium of 4 per cent. is but small, so the safety lies upon all men being bound to insure. For I believe any one will grant me this: it is not the smallness of a premium ruins the insurer, but it is the smallness of the quantity he insures; and I am not at all ashamed to affirm that, let but a premium of 4 pounds per cent. be paid into one man's hand for all goods imported and exported, ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... on account of the various significations of these means, so likewise it will be found that neither of them will be identical in its signification in all cases if the objects are different. The smallness in general of this difference must not cause us perplexity, for in reality the weakest motives, the finest shades of difference, often decide in favour of this or that method of applying force. Our only business here is to show that, certain conditions ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... saith he, 'were garnished with all manner of precious stones' (Rev 21:19). True, these there are called 'The foundations of the wall of the city,' but it has respect to the matter in hand; for that which is before called a temple, for its comparative smallness, is here called a city, for or because of its great increase: and both the foundations of the wall of the city, as well as of the temple, are 'the twelve apostles of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is, Democritus, as against the Eleatics, maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeable existence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason of their smallness, which career through empty space (that which is not), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separation bring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each other depended ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... pennies, denotes unsatisfactory pursuits. Business will suffer, and lovers and friends will complain of the smallness of affection. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... remarked that Barbadoes has, more than any other island, reduced slave labor and sugar cultivation to a regular system. This the planters have been compelled to do from the denseness of their population, the smallness of their territory, the fact that the land was all occupied, and still more, because the island, from long continued cultivation, was partly worn out. A prominent feature in their system was, theoretically at least, good bodily treatment of the slaves, good feeding, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... halt is too easily overlooked, with consequent failure to appreciate the momentous influence exerted upon the course of the Revolutionary War by this naval campaign, in which Pellew bore so conspicuous a part. It has never been understood in America, where the smallness of the immediate scale has withdrawn attention from the greatness of the ultimate issue, in gaining time for the preparations which resulted in the admittedly decisive victories about Saratoga. "If we could have begun our expedition ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... of solemn Covenant devotedness? Could resolutions to prosecute this be embodied so well as in a solemn Covenant engagement with God? In this manner might there not be made arrangements regarding missions, more solemn than has heretofore been attempted? To many causes may the comparative smallness of success that has attended these be attributed. But it is little less than certain, that it is on account of the want of that resolute heroic Christian spirit which Covenanting calls forth and ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... is like, or what Lord Palmerston is like, runs through society. We have simply no notion what it would be to be left with the visible sovereignty in the hands of an unknown man. The notion of employing a man of unknown smallness at a crisis of unknown greatness is to our minds simply ludicrous. Mr. Lincoln, it is true, happened to be a man, if not of eminent ability, yet of eminent justness. There was an inner depth of Puritan nature which came out under suffering, and was very attractive. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the yacht into his control. The Park Lane chef was also on board, Mr. Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's Rilboche ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... morning's breakfast. Which of us was so unhappy as to have forgotten how his heart beat at the sight of this booth, open periodically during play-hours on Sundays, to which we went, each in his turn, to spend his little pocket-money; while the smallness of the sum allowed by our parents for these minor pleasures required us to make a choice among all the objects that appealed so strongly to our desires? Did ever a young wife, to whom her husband, during the first days of happiness, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... her infantine bones, they were such as needed not to fail of straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... is worth while to inquire if there be not some compensatory value attaching to this impermanency and this smallness in ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... small leaf-beetle found on Robinia pseudacacia. The chromosomes are comparatively few in number, 16 in the spermatogonia (figs. 58 and 59), and of immense size when one considers the smallness of the beetle. In some of the spermatogonial cysts many of the chromosomes are V-shaped as in figure 58, while in others all, with the exception of the small one, are rod-shaped as in figure 59, which looks like a hemipteran equatorial plate. The spermatogonial resting ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... that the chance of getting money should be preferred, but Vatsyayana says that money has only a limited importance, while a disaster that is once averted may never occur again. Here, however, the choice should be guided by the greatness or smallness ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... sheriff, and looked uneasily about. Now that his eyes were turned away, Vic could study him at leisure, and he wondered at the smallness of the man. Suppose one were able to lay hands on him it would ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... impatience. He accepted the offer of some two or three ships, which William put at his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts, and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed itself when he ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was not only favorable but brisk, and was no sooner in reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight, and, having in the night carried us by Christchurch and Peveral-point, brought us the next noon, Saturday, July 25, oft the island of Portland, so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton, of which a leg seldom weighs four pounds. We would have bought a sheep, but our captain would not permit it; though he needed not have been in such a hurry, for presently the wind, I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness, showed ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times—the last-named institution on account of introducing and selling whisky in the territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... of other bees, his demerit becomes exhausted and he regains the status of humanity. By stealing paddy, one becomes a cat. That man who steals food mixed with sesame cakes has in his next birth to assume the form of a mouse large or small according to the largeness or smallness of the quantity stolen. He bites human beings every day and as the consequence thereof becomes sinful and travels through a varied round of rebirths. That man of foolish understanding who steals ghee has to take birth as a gallinule. That wicked person who steals fish has to take birth as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... water, with great rapidity; and, the object of their pursuit being concealed from a distant spectator, they appear to be running about in the sea and dashing up the foam for no conceivable cause or reason. Notwithstanding the speed they are running with and the smallness of the object, in striking they rarely miss their aim. In deep rivers or in the sea the mode of spearing fish varies according to the circumstances of the case; sometimes it is done by diving, sometimes by sitting on a rock or tree and watching them as they pass underneath; but in all cases ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... difficulty of making them be what it might. Messrs. Leadham and Loiter had thought that they might be justified in offering her certain terms for a novel,—terms not very high indeed, and those contingent on the approval of the manuscript by their reader. The smallness of the sum offered, and the want of certainty, and the pain of the work in her present circumstances, had all been felt by her to be very hard. But she had persevered, and the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Guesclin. But, in spite of its pride, it proved to be commanded by a yet higher point, sufficiently near to throw round shot into the Castle in the more advanced days to which our tale relates. For this reason, and also because of the smallness of the harbour at its feet, Mont Orgueil had given way to the growing importance of S. Helier, protected by its virgin Castle. Hence the place, though not quite in ruins, had sunk to a minor and subordinate character; the Hall, in which the ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... just where the Champagne begins. When we had groomed and watered our horses, and the stable guard had been set, and we had all an hour or so's leisure to stroll about in the cool darkness before sleeping in the barns, we had a sudden lesson in the smallness of the world, for what should come up the village street but that monstrous Barrel, and we could see by its movements that ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Mary on her hair, her complexion, the smallness of her feet, the largeness of her eyes, the slenderness of her waist, the width of her hat and of her shoe strings: so impartially and inclusively did she compliment her that by the time they went out Mary was rosy with appreciation ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... greatest satisfaction. But it does put something else in my power, which I am sure nothing can make me decline, and for which I have long wanted an opportunity. Nothing could prevent my being unhappy at the smallness of your fortune, but its throwing it into my way to offer you to share mine. As mine is so precarious, by depending on so bad a constitution, I can only offer you the immediate use of it. I do that most sincerely. My places still (though ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Startled and distressed, I pondered. What was her new purpose, that she should ask, or even accept, such a favor as this from Ned Ferry; a favor which, within an hour, the whole command would know he had granted? Was this a trifle, which only the Gholson-like smallness of my soul made spectral? The first time I had ever seen Ferry with any of his followers about him, was he not on Charlotte's gray, now, unluckily, beyond reach, at Wiggins? Ah, yes; but Beauty lending a horse to speed Valor was one thing; Valor unhorsing himself to speed Beauty—oh, how ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... A small youthful figure, in a pale yellow dress, lacking even the maturity of womanly outline. The full oval of her face, the straight line of her back, a slight boyishness in the contour of her hips, the infantine smallness of her sandaled feet and narrow hands, were all suggestive of fresh, innocent, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... cause for winter losses are: Queenlessness, smallness of number of bees in colonies, insufficient food, improper food, dampness, bad air, the breaking of the clusters, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... legs seemed of equal length, both exceedingly long. The handsomeness of his mother appeared only in his nose and mouth, which were regular and good, though expressionless; and the birth of his father only in his small delicate hands and feet, of which any girl who cared only for smallness, and heeded neither character nor strength, might have been proud. His feet, however, were supposed to be enormous, from the difficulty with which he dragged after him the huge shoes in which in winter they ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... would at first sight induce the belief of a much greater population than it actually contains. This is attributable to two circumstances, the largeness of the leases, which in most instances possess sufficient space for a garden, and the smallness of the houses erected in them, which in general do not exceed one story. From these two causes it happens, that this town does not contain above seven thousand souls, whereas one that covered the same extent of ground in this country would possess a population ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... under-clothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woollen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian. When, afterward, he had occasion to take off his shoes and stockings, I was struck with the smallness of his feet. He had worked a good deal as a lumberman, and appeared to identify himself with that class. He was the only one of the party who possessed an India-rubber jacket. The top strip or edge of his canoe was worn nearly through by friction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Elisabeth's balance and found wanting, Alan Tremaine went abroad for a season, and Sedgehill knew him no more until the following spring. During that time Elisabeth possessed her soul and grew into a true woman—a woman with no smallness or meanness in her nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... scattered by these suspended particles is perfectly polarised in a direction at right angles to the beam, and this release of the particles from the ordinary law of polarisation is a demonstration of their smallness. I should say by far the greater number of the particles concerned in this scattering are wholly beyond the range of the microscope, and no ordinary filter can intercept such particles. It is next to impossible, by artificial means, to produce a pure water. Mr. Hartley, for ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and avarice, in their most repulsive forms, are packed away between decks scarcely three feet high, in small vessels of 30 or 40 tons, and thus situated have to encounter the cold and stormy passage round the Cape: the average mortality is of course most frightful, but the smallness of the vessels employed decreases the risk of the speculators in human flesh, who consider themselves amply repaid, if they save one living cargo out ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... "menial" of "high Dutch extraction" as yet "only partially extracted;" and again it is the delicate insinuation contained in spelling "Parc" with a c, for that one letter gives us an entire foreign atmosphere, and the disproportion between the smallness of the letter and the extent of the suggestiveness touches our sense of ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... belief that a certain ratio would be found between the several parts of a telephone, and that the size of the instrument was immaterial; but Professor Peirce was the first to demonstrate the extreme smallness of the magnets which might be employed. And here, in order to show the parallel lines in which we were working, I may mention the fact that two or three days after I had constructed a telephone of the portable form (Fig. 12), containing the magnet inside the handle, Dr. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... politeness with which food is given by nearly all the interior tribes, who have not had much intercourse with Europeans, makes it a pleasure to accept. Again and again I have heard an apology made for the smallness of the present, or regret expressed that they had not received notice of my approach in time to grind more, and generally they readily accepted our excuse at having nothing to give in return by saying that they were quite aware that there are no white ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... attention again to the wonderful smallness of the means, the minuteness of the physical enginry, as compared with more modern manifestations, especially in our own land and epoch, by which so stupendous a result had been reached. In the midst of an age in which regal and sacerdotal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him the required verses, because he had with him only one box of his books. It is evident that a great number of volumes might be comprised in this way within a small space; and this may tend to explain the smallness of the ancient libraries—at least of the rooms which are considered to have been such. Beside the box are two tablets, which, from the money-bag and coins scattered about, had probably been used in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... The gateway.] Landino refers this to the smallness of the city: Vellutello, with less probability, to the simplicity of the people in naming one of the gates ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... smallness of the sum. A hundred dollars would be next to nothing, even in Mexico. Bandrist, he felt sure, possessed money in plenty. If there was not enough for two, there would be plenty ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... criticism passed in the House of Commons on the smallness of the recognition, the Prime Minister replied that Nelson's glory did not depend upon the rank to which he might be raised in the peerage; a truism too palpable and inapplicable for serious utterance, the question before the House being, not the measure of Nelson's ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... large, but he's a gentle little chap," said I, to ease my partner of his dismay over the pony's surprising smallness. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the eve of a period of great development. Its resources are known to be immense. Its climate has been found most favourable to human health, and the objectionable feature of the climate, the smallness and irregularity of the rainfall, has been studied and become understood and found remediable. Once the confederation that is now in process of formation takes place, there is no doubt that Australia will enter upon a new and prosperous commercial era. Owing to the fact that its chief opportunities ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... occasionally happens that a man who is called to rule over men and to reorganise a disordered government is able best to accomplish his end by a gentle diplomacy, a conciliatory manner, which is often misunderstood by those who surround him and who interpret gentleness of spirit as smallness of spirit and self-restraint as weakness. It would be truer to describe Augustus as a man who wore most skilfully the mask of an ordinary man though himself an extraordinary man. The more we study the chaotic condition of Rome under the ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... any thing of the matter, and if he should be once taken in he will remember it well for the future; people conversant with cattle very readily find them out by their round form, particularly their buttocks, which are turned like a black coach horse, and the smallness of the tail; but they are best known to the graziers and dealers in cattle by the feel or touch of the fingers; indeed it is this nice touch or feel of the hand that in a great measure constitutes ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... first settlement of, 36; comparative smallness of, 41; unites with other districts under Penda, 46; accepts Christianity, and rejects the supremacy of North-humberland, 48; its relations with Ecgberht, 55; its relations with AElfred, 60; under Leofwine, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... they could not foresee, must in numbers considerably exceed the besieged, covered as these were by their works, and able to receive re-enforcement from the opposite shore. Consequently, when the officer in immediate local control, Major-General Riall, embarrassed by the smallness of his field force, suggested the destruction of Fort Niagara, except a citadel of restricted extent, needing a less numerous garrison, his superior replied that not only would such smaller work be much more easily ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and suspected her griefs without understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his house would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and it was for them that he kept the first floor. The smallness of his fortune was so well known at headquarters, that the War Minister, the Prince de Wissembourg, begged his old comrade to accept a sum of money for his household expenses. This sum the Marshal ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... intended to be seen from below, the horizon is placed high up in the canvas instead of low down; the consequence is that compositions so treated not only lose in grandeur and truth, but appear to be toppling over, or give the impression of smallness rather than bigness. Indeed, they look like small pictures enlarged, which is a very different thing from a large design. So that, in order to see them properly, we should mount a ladder to get upon a level with their horizon line (see Fig. ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... held it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline, the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain swift thought of her as superior ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... received the grant of various privileges; he was looked on as a pillar of the State, and was welcome at the court. But it proved an injury to him in the end. His honours, and the high society they led him into, were too great for the comparative smallness of his income. Rich in flocks and herds, he had but little coin. High-spirited, and rather fond of display, he could not hold back; he launched forth, with the usual result of impoverishment, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... they were females with children; but from the moment they discovered us until they were fairly out of hearing their shrieks were so loud and incessant that it seemed, for once, our presence in that country had been unknown to the surrounding natives, a proof perhaps of the smallness of their numbers. In the evening other natives (men) were heard approaching along the creek, and we at first supposed they had come to that place as their rendezvous to meet the gins and their families whom we had unwillingly scared; but Mr. Stapylton, during his ride home along one side of the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... mine eye-strings; crack'd them, but To look upon him, till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air, and then Have turn'd mine eye and wept. But, good Pisanio, When shall ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... fortune had not been rapid in early life. He had begun with a small capital and a small establishment, and even now his place of business was very limited in size. He had been clever enough to make profit even out of its smallness,—and had contrived that it should be understood that the little back room in which men were measured was so diminutive because it did not suit his special business to welcome a crowd. It was his pride, he said, to wait upon hunting ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... walked in with his kit-bag, and put his cap on the sewing machine. He was little and self-confident, with a curious neatness about him that still suggested the Charity Institution. His face was brown, he had a small moustache, he was vigorous enough in his smallness. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... pay, so enormous is it), I saw statesmen, whom I imagined not deprived of intelligence, smile at the paltriness of the offer. An indemnity of fifty milliards of gold marks, such as that proposed by Keynes, appeared absurd in its smallness. ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... detestable traffic is the smallness and often the unseaworthiness of the vessels in which it was carried on. Few such picayune craft now venture outside the landlocked waters of Long Island Sound, or beyond the capes of the Delaware and Chesapeake. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... madness, selfish and small; but after-events went far to justify my fears and imaginings, for behind there was a love, an aching, absorbing solicitude. I can not think that my anxiety was all vulgar smallness then. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who was protected by the drunkard and the smallness of the crowded chamber, sprang violently against the weak planks that formed the wall, and by a blow of his heel knocked two of them out, and passed through the space thus created. The whole side of the cabin was broken; it tottered, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the adjoining features were allowed to appear; and which, with their distorted movements, must have produced a highly ludicrous effect, from the contrast in the fixed distortion of the rest of the countenance.] and notwithstanding the smallness of the theatre, I did not find that they were in any way prejudicial to vivacity. The mask was peculiarly favourable for the jokes of the roguish slave: his uncouth physiognomy, as well as his apparel, stamped him at once as a man of a peculiar race, (as in truth the slaves were, partly even by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... were silent, not with the silence of embarrassment, but with that of two friends in the presence of something beyond the reach of words. As they stared out into the infinity each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of even our whole solar system and the utter insignificance of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... duties: and, leaving a substitute in his place, he made a tour in the United States and Canada. He was presented to Jefferson, and felt impressed by his republican simplicity. Such a quality, however, was not in Moore's line; and nothing perhaps shows the essential smallness of his nature more clearly than the fact that his visit to the United States, in their giant infancy, produced in him no glow of admiration or aspiration, but only a recrudescence of the commonest prejudices—the itch for picking little holes, the petty joy of reporting them, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... The smallness of such a family circle may act in two ways: it may either send the members of it in different directions, or it may draw them together in an intense concentration of interests and sympathy. This latter was happily the condition of the Gores. The varying degrees of their strength and weaknesses ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... curious leisure with works of fancy, or Dependants wringing bread by their genius from a patron's caprice, Dryden saw that the time had come for the author, trusting for support to the world of readers, and wielding a power over opinion which compensates for the smallness of his gains. But he was not only the first to create a literary class; he was the first to impress the idea of literature on the English mind. Master as he was alike of poetry and of prose, covering the fields both ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... cottage, stood on the side of a slight rising bank overlooking Oulton Broad, and was sheltered from the winds of the sea and marshland by a belt of storm-rent pines. The house contained a sitting-room on either side of the entrance-hall, a kitchen, four bedrooms, and two attics. It was its smallness and compactness that commended it to Borrow, and it also had the extra recommendation to a man of his disposition of being quiet and secluded. Indeed, so out-of-the-way was its situation that to take a boat upon the broad was looked upon as the best and most direct means of attaining this isolated ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... of the smallness of human life, of human aims and efforts, of human emotions, was occupying the busy brain behind his reflective eyes. The scene before him, upon which he had so often looked, never failed to remind ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... body, and are the size of a finger-joint.[C] And the Macusi Indians[D] believe that although the body will decay, "the man in our eyes" will not die, but wander about; an idea which is met with even in Europe, and which perhaps gives us a clue to the conception of smallness in size of the shades of the dead. Again, the belief that the soul lives near the resting-place of its body is widespread, and at least comparable with, if not equivalent to, the idea that the little people ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... is proved by our behaviour. We did no harm to any one, but publicly invited those who wished to live under a national, Boeotian government to come over to us; which as first you gladly did, and made an agreement with us and remained tranquil, until you became aware of the smallness of our numbers. Now it is possible that there may have been something not quite fair in our entering without the consent of your commons. At any rate you did not repay us in kind. Instead of refraining, as we had done, from violence, and inducing us to retire ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Grand Mesa and from other localities in northern Colorado. The six specimens from two localities in Colorado available to Cockrum and Fitch exhibited evidence of intergradation at one locality, and atypical smallness at the other locality. A specimen (70134) taken on June 26, 1956, by Phillip M. Youngman on the Black Mesa, nine miles WNW of Sapinero, 9500 ft., Gunnison County, Colorado, is almost identical in color to the two specimens ...
— Mammals of the Grand Mesa, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... ample for the distance I believed we would have to cover before attaining land. But the nature of that unknown coast was so doubtful I determined to deal out the provisions sparingly, saving every crumb possible. The men grumbled at the smallness of the ration, yet munched away contentedly enough, once convinced that we all shared alike. Watkins relieved the Dutchman at the steering oar, and I rejoined Dorothy. The silence was finally broken by one of the men forward asking ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... numbers are more precise and distinguishable than in extension; where every equality and excess are not so easy to be observed or measured; because our thoughts cannot in space arrive at any determined smallness beyond which it cannot go, as an unit; and therefore the quantity or proportion of any the least excess cannot be discovered; which is clear otherwise in number, where, as has been said, 91 is as distinguishable from 90 as from 9000, though ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... be a politic one, for Anjou was at the time the all but accepted suitor of Queen Elizabeth, and it was thought that the choice would unite both powers in defence of Holland. The duke, however, speedily proved his incapacity. Irritated at the smallness of the authority granted him, and the independent attitude of the great towns, he attempted to capture them by force. He was successful in several places; but at Antwerp, where the French thought to repeat the Spanish ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty |
