"Shorten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh [72] might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... length of sommers day, which the travailers on foote may use for a staye to ease their weried bodye, and the journeours on horsback, for a chariot or lesse painful meane of travaile in steade of a merie companion to shorten the tedious toyle ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... got ready to go out. When she came out she bore a little basket on her arm, and she went to visit her old women, and her favourite children. Whenever she stepped into Black Mary's kitchen that aged dame was sure to be smoking, and the little lady would say, "Now Mary, you'll shorten your life if you keep on with that bad habit." Mary would answer, "Well, well, I'm a long way over seventy now, a day or two won't make a great deal of difference." This joke pleased both parties very much, and it was always followed by the production of enough tobacco ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... could run a good distance with a horse and trap, ere he would come to the step and look up with a laugh, saying, "Here, take me up; I'm blown!" The old horse in the shafts knew the ways of the dogs well, and would shorten his pace, and indeed pull up altogether, if a thoughtless one was likely to be injured. It was probably from this that Murphy suffered all his life from a mistaken notion that it was the duty of horses, as well as drivers of all kinds, to get out of his way, and not ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... one thing, and, for another, less pretentious and rhetorical. The second (Gertrude of Wyoming, 1809) is truly one of 'the glories of our birth and state.' The third (idem) I have ventured to shorten by three stanzas: a proceeding which, however culpable it seem, at least gets rid of the chief who gave a country's wounds relief by stopping a battle, eliminates the mermaid and her song (the song that 'condoles'), and ends the lyric on as sonorous and romantic a word as even Shakespeare ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
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