"Diminish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't think I shall," he answered slowly. "But if I do—the trouble of which I spoke will not diminish. It will increase. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... all the advantages in a conjunction, are miserly in keeping them, and shudder to think that one thing remains hidden, which the world they move in might put down pityingly in favour of their spouse, even though to the little man 'twere naught. She assumed that a revelation would diminish her moral stature; and certainly it would not increase that of her husband. So no good could come of it. Besides, Andrew knew, his whole conduct was a tacit admission, that she had condescended in giving him her hand. The features ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shed th' untreasur'd seed, The withering pasture, and the fading mead, Less tempting grown, diminish more and more, The dairy's pride; sweet Summer's flowing store. New cares succeed, and gentle duties press, Where the fire-side, a school of tenderness, Revives the languid chirp, and warms the blood Of cold-nipt ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... more frequently we re-examine our knowledge and pass it under review, the more does it become fixed in its character, the more full and exact in its proportions. Handling it does not wear it out. Even giving it away does not diminish it. In short, so far as the cultivation of the memory is concerned, the next best thing we can do, after reducing our knowledge to due order, is to give it a frequent and thorough re-examination. Constant, almost endless repetition is the inexorable ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... for others, as others have done for you. Equalitie is the chiefe ground-worke of equitie, who can complaine to be comprehended where all are contained? So may you live long enough, you shall never diminish anything from the time you have to die: it is bootlesse; so long shall you continue in that state which you feare, as if you had died, being in your swathing-clothes, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... manufacturers, into the most direct and friendly relations possible. Hence we must dispense with a surplus of middle-men, not that we are unfriendly to them, but we do not need them. Their surplus and their exactions diminish ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... twelve hundred a-year. For our own parts, without believing all Walpole's details, we substantially agree in his opinion, that the King's friendship was by no means Platonic or refined; but that the Queen and Mrs. Howard, by mutual forbearance, good sense, and decency, contrived to diminish the scandal: after all, the question has no great interest for the present generation, since scandal is only valued when fresh, and the public have generally enough of that poignant fare, without ripping up the frailties of their grandmothers." Sir Walter sums up his notice of the inaccuracies ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... well enough to go out." The haste with which the old gentleman made the last remark, and the fact that he did not invite his visitor to examine the library then and there, led Marcus to think that the old gentleman had some private trouble on his mind, which he wished to diminish by imparting ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... describing, and depicting is none the less an integral part of the truth when it is a matter of expounding and transmitting the latter. To express it feebly is often to compromise it, to diminish it; and even to betray it. There are terms which say better than others what has to be said. "Words have their physiognomy; if there are lifeless words, there are also picturesque and richly-coloured words, comparable to the brush strokes which scatter flecks of light on the grey background of ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... with eating and drinking and diversion, forgetteth that the folk beat upon tambourines and sing of thee and say, The wife of the king loveth the youth; and as long as he abideth alive the talk will increase and not diminish." Quoth she, "By Allah, 'twas ye egged me on against him, and what shall I do now?" and quoth they, "Go thou in to the king and weep and say to him, Verily, the women come to me and inform me that I am ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Night. In civilized warfare, it is seldom necessary to draw the outpost closer to the main body at night in order to diminish the front; nor is it necessary to strengthen the line of observation, as the enemy's advance in force must be confined to the roads. The latter are therefore strongly occupied, the intervening ground ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... affairs of the whole jurisdiction if necessity so required; and some image hereof is yet to be seen in the north parts. But as the number of churches increased, so the repair of the faithful unto the cathedrals did diminish; whereby they now become, especially in their nether parts, rather markets and shops for merchandise than solemn places of prayer, whereunto they were first erected. Moreover, in the said cathedral churches upon Sundays and festival days the canons do make certain ordinary ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... to diminish the influence of Montague in the House of Commons than a step which he had taken a few weeks before the meeting of the Parliament. It would seem that the result of the general election had made him uneasy, and that he had looked ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sulphate of potash 1/2 drm., and syrup of ginger sufficient to make into pills; mix and divide into five pills. These five pills given at once form an excellent hydragogue cathartic to clear the chest, relieve breathing and diminish the dropsical effusion. ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... 83). A little later the body is divided into two, which appear sometimes spherical (fig. 84), sometimes elongated (fig. 85). As the sperm head elongates still more, approaching maturity, these bodies diminish in size (figs. 86, 87) and ultimately disappear. A cross section of the sperm head at such a stage as figure 87 shows the chromatin in crescent shape with material which stains very little within (fig. 88). The ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... It is, therefore, the censor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the assumption of which is forced upon us by the dream, that we have to recognize and honor as the guardian of our psychic health. But is it not carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish its vigilance during the night and to allow the suppressed emotions of the Unc. to come to expression, thus again making possible the hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to rest—and we have proof that ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Society at home were at a low ebb, and it was thought needful to diminish the number of stations. The intolerance of the Burmese Government led to the decision that there was less benefit in maintaining that at Rangoon than those in the British provinces; and, as Dr. Judson had no private means, he was obliged ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the same paint brush; staying together meant ruin—certain, sure. Now, then, separated and going singly, there might be a thin strand of hope. Yet the man felt that, parted a single hour from the woman, and she still alive, his wofully small prospect would diminish and shrink to the vanishing point—New York juries being most notoriously easy upon women murderers who give themselves up and turn state's evidence; and, by the same mistaken processes of judgment, notoriously hard upon their male accomplices—half a dozen such ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... all lay stunned and sightless. Then the discharge appeared to diminish both in volume and in intensity. The air cleared somewhat and the ground no longer trembled. The burst of flame slowly subsided, like a fountain that is being gradually turned off. Either the Ring man wasn't going ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the "White Doe of Rylstone," he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the continuation of his literary labours increased the irritation of the wound; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced perfect cure. In connection with this incident he remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labour in composition, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement He preserved ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... attachment of the dog to its master was increased, or, at least, the exhibition of it, by the penury of the owner. At all events one fact is plain enough, that, while poverty drives away from us many a companion of our happier hours, it was never known to diminish the love ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... progressing, and even yet the sarvers, or waiters, were hurrying from room to room. It was as if a twofold blessing had descended upon all this abundance of food and drink, for, in the first place, they did not seem to diminish; secondly, they ever found a new place for disposal. To be sure, this appetite was sharpened by the presence of a little dwarf-like, unimportant-looking man. He was esteemed, however, none the less highly ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... means of rescuing from dulness—to increase the supports and diminish the burdens ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... indeed the story which the Venetian and her friends, Hafner, Ardea, and others, circulated throughout Rome in order to diminish the scandal. The accusation of madness is very common to women who have goaded to excess man's passion, and who then wish to avoid all blame for the deeds or words of that man. In this case, Boleslas's fury and his two incomprehensible duels, fifteen minutes apart, justified the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in their reports: to diminish the number of these, the teacher may say, after the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... not to be had in the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... composition of London porter. It is evident that some porter is more heady than others, and this arises from the greater or less quantity of stupefying ingredients intermixed with it. Malt itself, to produce intoxication, must be used in such large quantities as would very much diminish the brewer's profit. Of the wholesomeness of malt there can be no doubt; pale malt especially is highly nutritive, containing more balsamic qualities than the brown malt, which being subject to a greater degree of fire in the kiln, is sometimes so crusted and burnt, that the mealy part loses some ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... without picturing the departure of the French ships after bidding farewell to the English officers and colonists. Sitting at the edge of the cliff, one can follow Laperouse out to sea, with the eye of imagination, until sails, poops and hulls diminish to the view and disappear below the hazy-blue horizon. We may be sure that some of Governor Phillip's people watched the sailing, and the lessening, and the melting away of the vessels, from just about the same place, one hundred and twenty four ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... born and die here, as among us, with astonishing abundance. The rage for evocations and magic spectres begins to diminish. The French assert that they have borrowed it from us, and from the school of MRS. RADCLIFF, &c. &c. They also assert, that the policy of the royalist-party was not unconnected with this propagation of cavernous, cadaverous adventures, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of the barbarians being thus effectually accomplished, the princes immediately commenced anew their strife. All their old feuds were revived. Every lord wished to increase his own power and to diminish that of his natural rival. Andre, of Souzdal, to whom we have before referred, whose capital was the little village of Moscow far away in the interior, deemed the moment favorable for dethroning Mstislaf and extending ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... That king who behaves deceitfully towards his own people that have not been guilty of any fault, shears his own self like a person cutting down a forest with an axe. If the king does not always attend to the task of slaying his foes, the latter do not diminish. That king, again, who knows how to kill his own temper finds no enemies. If the king be possessed of wisdom, he would never do any act that is disapproved by good men. He would, on the other hand, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... snubs him who, as a candid friend, Horrors Siberian, Hebrew would diminish. Must Muscovites prove tyrants to the end? At least they aim to prove so ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... and the present dwellings are much larger and more comfortable than those of former days. The duke said rightly that the abolition of fortresses well-nigh doubled his fighting power, for that so many men were required to garrison them as to greatly diminish the number their lords could take with them into the field. You do not have castles in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... making knowne to one another their desires, and other affections; yet they want that art of words, by which some men can represent to others, that which is Good, in the likenesse of Evill; and Evill, in the likenesse of Good; and augment, or diminish the apparent greatnesse of Good and Evill; discontenting men, and troubling their Peace ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... as much as others. Woe to him who would seek to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... exclude chance. You have two terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; and we cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain term. It is proper, no doubt, that an author's copyright should last during his life. But, Sir, though we cannot altogether exclude chance, we can very much diminish the share which chance must have in distributing the recompense which we wish to give to genius and learning. By every addition which we make to the certain term we diminish the influence of chance; by every ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is not, we are inclined to think, so great a curse or so wholly to be ascribed to malevolent intentions as many despondent people suppose. A very considerable, if not the greater, number of new works have for their aim not to add to, but to diminish, the literature of the world, and so to lighten the burden imposed on each successive generation of readers. The great bulk of the writers of our day are employed not in producing anything new, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... use. It releases the Krangor-wave throughout Xlarbti. Its effect is to make each atom of Xlarbti, the Sthalreh metal and everything on it, become compact, to do away with the empty spaces that exist in every atom. Theoretically, it would reduce Xlarbti to a fraction of its present size, diminish its mass while its weight and gravity remained ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... by the Congress. The volume of construction work in the Government is already at the maximum limit warranted by financial prudence as a continuing policy. To increase taxation for purposes of construction work defeats its own purpose, as such taxes directly diminish employment in private industry. Again any kind of construction requires, after its authorization, a considerable time before labor can be employed in which to make engineering, architectural, and legal preparations. Our immediate problem is the increase of employment for the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... are rare; CONSUMPTION IS UNKNOWN; and pulmonary affections are uncommon. Fevers, including those of a typhoid character, and ague from malaria, are the usual types; outbreaks of small-pox have been reduced by general vaccination. The improvement in sanitary regulations will no doubt diminish the occurrence of typhoid fevers, which even now are rare considering the filth of the villages and the generally ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... did not diminish the esteem in which Washington was held by the Virginians, and by those of the mother country who came in contact with him. When General Edward Braddock, in 1755, started on his ill-fated expedition for the capture of Duquesne with a force ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... psychic conditions of a living soul. They are themselves in a perpetual state of change, of growth, of increase, of withering, of fading. They are affected at every moment by the will and by the emotion of the subject of them. They project themselves; they withdraw themselves. They dilate; they diminish. Thus it happens that at the very touch of this "discovering," the malice which is thus "discovered" dilates with immediate reciprocity to meet its "discoverer"; and this can occur—such is the curious telepathic ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... character must reject such a metaphysical entity, for one sees the organizing energy increase and diminish with the rest of character through health, age, environment, etc. Further, there is at work in all living things a similar something that organizes the action of the humblest bit of protoplasm. This organizing energy of character will be, for us, that something inherent ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... consenting; and then is the sin actual." Sin is either venial, or deadly; deadly, when a man loves any creature more than Jesus Christ our Creator, venial, if he love Jesus Christ less than he ought. Venial sins diminish man's love to God more and more, and may in this wise skip into deadly sin; for many small make a great. "And hearken this example: A great wave of the sea cometh sometimes with so great a violence, that it drencheth [causes to sink] the ship: ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... seen to die with emotions of joy and pleasure, some even to go singing to the place of execution; and when although thirty and sometimes one hundred were put to death at a time, and it was found that their numbers did not appear to diminish, it was then determined to use every exertion to change their joy into grief and their songs into tears and groans of misery. To effect this they were tied to stakes and burned alive; were broiled on wooden gridirons, and thousands were thus wretchedly destroyed. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... me. But, on the other hand, I know that they will not always deceive me. I well know, that the eye shews me the sun much smaller than it really is; but experience, which is only the repeated application of the senses, informs me, that objects always appear to diminish, as their distance increases; thus I attain to a certainty, that the sun is much larger than the earth; thus my senses suffice to rectify the hasty judgments, which they ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... the Turks in the Eastern Empire, and they at once offered protection and immunities to the patriarch and his prelates. The conquest of the entire peninsula, with the islands, occupied a generation, and it was good policy meanwhile to do nothing that would diminish the advantage or awaken alarm of persecution. Their system required the increase rather than the conversion of Christian subjects, for the tribute of gold as well as the tribute of blood. The Janissaries were selected among the sons ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them simply in a dramatic view, we claim the right to suggest their dramatic force and pertinency. This effect, we might remark, is particularly and most truthfully regarded in the Lament of David over Saul ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... letter to one of his friends: "You know that my humor is neither to flatter nor to lie; but I swear to you that there is in this man a something which surpasses humanity, and that if our bark is ever to outride the tempests, it will be whilst this glorious hand holds the rudder. Other pilots diminish my fear, this one makes me unconscious of it. Hitherto, when we had to build anew or repair some ruin, plaster alone was put in requisition. Now we see nothing but marble used; and, whilst the counsels are judicious and faithful, the execution is diligent and magnanimous. Wits, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... interrupted him: "That would surely, inevitably be the evil fruit which would grow from such a treaty. It would deliver to the Pope, with fettered hands, this very Council which your Majesty so confidently expected would remove or diminish, in orderly methods, the abuses which are urging so many Christians to abandon the Catholic Church. How often I have heard even her most faithful sons acknowledge that such abuses exist! But if you make the alliance, the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that they had both been actively employed in trying to make mischief, and to poison the mind of their grandfather against the dauphiness. They became still more busy now, since each day seemed to diminish the probability of Marie Antoinette becoming a mother; while, if she should leave no children, the Comte de Provence would be heir to the throne. He scarcely made any secret that he was already contemplating ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... condition which obscures vision. The discharge by this time has become thicker and white, and looks like matter from an abscess. By slow degrees the inflammation may subside, the discharge lessen, the swelling diminish, and the eye in the course of weeks may regain its natural condition. But the danger is—and when proper treatment is not adopted early the danger is very great—lest the mischief should extend beyond the surface of the eye, lest ulceration of the eye should ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... touching picture of melancholy desolation is that of Sykes and the dog! The poor cur is not too well drawn, the landscape is stiff and formal; but in this case the faults, if faults they be, of execution rather add to than diminish the effect of the picture: it has a strange, wild, dreary, broken -hearted look; we fancy we see the landscape as it must have appeared to Sykes, when ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he looked at it. As for the Jew in the dungeon, let us say nothing of it—what can we say to ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... apart from the reflection of the red sky, it was pitch dark in the side streets, and soon he stood before the Police Station. The big old-fashioned building was just within the outer circle of light cast by the huge fire whose fierceness seemed to increase rather than diminish, and Sherston suddenly espied an Inspector standing half in the open door. "I've some very urgent business," he said hurriedly. "Could you come inside for a moment, and take ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... expand and intensify political and military cooperation throughout Europe, increase stability, diminish threats to peace, and build relationships by promoting the spirit of practical cooperation and commitment to democratic principles that underpin NATO; program under ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... makeshift sniff. Happy were those who smoked, with smould'ring logs, The harmless Yarmouth bloater after death— Another pipe not all the world contain'd; The furze was set on fire, but, hour by hour, The stock diminish'd; all the prickly points Quivered to death, and soon it all was gone. The lips of men by the expiring stuff Drew in and out, and all the world had fits. The cinders fell upon them; some sprang up, And blew their noses loud, and some did ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... use them again; and so diminisheth respect to himself; especially they be not to be omitted, to strangers and formal natures; but the dwelling upon them, and exalting them above the moon, is not only tedious, but doth diminish the faith and credit of him that speaks. And certainly, there is a kind of conveying, of effectual and imprinting passages amongst compliments, which is of singular use, if a man can hit upon it. Amongst a man's peers, a man shall be sure of familiarity; and therefore ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... completely set in that he intimated his apprehensions whether he was in the right road. The increasing snow rendered this intimation rather alarming, for as it drove full in the lad's face, and lay whitening all around him, it served in two different ways to confuse his knowledge of the count and to diminish the chance of his recovering the right track. Brown then himself got out and looked round, not, it may be well imagined, from any better hope than that of seeing some house at which he might make inquiry. But none appeared—he could therefore only tell the lad to drive steadily ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the request now made them to assemble at Philadelphia. To appear in a public character, for a purpose not generally deemed of the utmost importance, would not only be unpleasant to himself, but might diminish his capacity to be useful on occasions which subsequent events might produce. "If," said he in a private letter to a military friend, "this second attempt to convene the states for the purposes proposed by the report of the partial representation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was not for want of having attempted it. Those in the rear pushed on the foremost assailants, and it was an incessant struggle with revolvers and hatchets. Several colpeos already lay dead on the ground, but their number did not appear to diminish, and it might have been supposed that reinforcements were continually ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... law which, however, is scarcely defined. It is true that the intensity of weight will diminish just in proportion to the depth to which we go. You know very well that it is on the surface of the earth that its action is most powerfully felt, while on the contrary, in the very centre of the earth bodies cease to ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... suddenly raised to the high position of cardinal and prime minister. His administration was, in many respects, well-intentioned and useful. Having the good fortune to serve a king who was both economical and just, he was able to diminish the imposts, to introduce order among the soldiery, and above all, by the ordinances of 1499, to improve the organization of justice. He was also zealous for the reform of the church, and particularly for the reform of the monasteries; and it is greatly to his credit that he did ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... varied with the character of the men who have worked them and the varying needs of the times and places in which they have been worked; and our intense feeling of the gratitude we owe to English Puritanism need in nowise diminish the enthusiasm with which we praise the glorious work of the mediaeval church. It is the duty of the historian to learn how to limit and qualify his words of blame or approval; for so curiously is human nature compounded of strength and weakness that the best of human institutions are likely ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... these social and economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the group into the community; the community into a new society. In this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Reformer, and to stand by that opposition." Sir Robert Peel defined Conservatism when he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its strength from the popular will, should diminish the risk and deaden the shock of collisions between the two ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... There can be no question as to that; but if she were a hundred times more charitable than she is, and were to give away a hundred thousand times more money than she does give, she could not greatly diminish the vast poverty of London. Mrs Twitter had done what she could in this case, but that was little, in a money point of view, for there were others who had stronger claims upon her than Mrs Frog. But Mrs Twitter had put her little finger under ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... trees, thickets, and tangled briers was intolerable and full of difficulty. Not less wearisome was the road which they still must take to reach the people and village of Paran, and even more difficult: but neither the one nor the other could weaken or diminish the tenacity, spirit, and valor which not only the captain but his soldiers displayed. They traveled all night in this way until a little before daybreak, when they mistook the road, and took another, which did not lead to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... his might and delivered the ball with all his weight in the swing. The ball seemed to diminish in size, it went so swiftly. Near the plate it took an upward jump, and it knocked Worry's ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... "Soda Water" and "double Soda Water," we have not been able to discover any soda. It is common water mechanically super-saturated with fixed air, which on being disengaged and rarified in the stomach, may, as Dr. Paris observes, so over distend the organ as to interrupt digestion, or diminish the powers of the digestive organs. When acid prevails in the stomach, which is generally the case the day after too free an indulgence in wine, true soda water, taken two or three hours before dinner, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... this rule to the practical affairs of to-day, would diminish the number of our machine politicians by about four fifths. We are loaded down, almost to the breaking point, with politicians who do not understand politics, and who advocate measures which are not ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Jackson's election would be a blow to Republican Institutions as he understood them. He was really a patriot, but he was above all things a Parliamentarian, and the effect of Jacksonian democracy really was to diminish the importance of Parliamentarianism. Altogether Clay probably honestly thought that Adams was a fitter man to ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... course, upon the native's side. Given a great public matter, like Lord Curzon's Bill of 1903 for the necessary reform of the Indian Universities, immediately educated Indians and the native press perceive in it a veiled attempt to limit the higher education in order to diminish the political weight of the educated class. The 1904 expedition into Thibet was unanimously approved by the Anglo-Indian, and as unanimously disapproved by the native press. Educated India no doubt joined with ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... with the kindliness and sympathy of a great mind, to make the provisions he did in his will. He devoted all his fortune to the encouragement of scientific discovery and the reward of endeavors to diminish standing armies and the chances of war, to promote fraternity among nations, and the settlement of international disputes by peace congresses. His will, in its very conciseness and unsophisticated simplicity, is characteristic of the man. It is dated Nov. 27, 1895, and ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... but {120} see," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily worse and worse by delays, and that, as the business is now more difficult than it was six months ago, so these difficulties will, in all human appearance, rather increase than diminish. Violent diseases must have violent remedies, and to use none has, in some cases, the same effect as to use bad ones." Indeed, it was impossible that the Chevalier himself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. Both had personal courage quite enough for such an attempt. On the 28th of October ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... all there, sir;" and the never-failing pill and draught, with rigid restrictions as to diet, and injunctions as to exercise, invariably followed, although perhaps rarely attended to; for persons in general would rather submit to even nauseous medicine than abandon sensual gratifications, or diminish their worldly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... for Pompey was in the neighborhood of the city at the head of an army, and would have overawed the judges by his soldiery as at Milo's trial. The Tribune Curio consequently interposed his veto upon the proposition of Marcellus. The Senate, anxious to diminish the number of his troops, had, under pretext of a war with the Parthians, ordered that Pompey and Caesar should each furnish a legion to be sent into the East. The legion which Pompey intended to devote to this service was one he had lent ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... patience and his purse, involved him in perpetual difficulties with his finance minister, which her extravagant attempts to assume the airs and to usurp the privileges of quasi-royalty did not tend to diminish. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... in her seemed to grow, rather than diminish. She carried it so far as to go and almost hide during the working hours. She made off to the jungle, and spent an unreasonable time there. She professed to be collecting cotton, and it must be admitted she brought a good deal home with her. But ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... falsetto the false vocal cords drop down to within a quarter of an inch of the true cords and even closer, reducing the cup space in the larynx to its dimensions before mutation. To secure a good quality of tone in falsetto the singer must have complete control of the cup space—be able to diminish it not only by allowing the false cords to drop down almost upon the vocal cords, but also by contracting it laterally. If he can do this, he can produce some genuinely artistic effects in falsetto. When a tenor cannot control the muscles that contract the cup space, his falsetto will be ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Indian's last words, dying away on the breeze, as the boat receded gradually from the shore. For a long time, his dark, motionless SILHOUETTE stood out against the sky, through the white, dashing spray of the waves. Then by degrees his tall form began to diminish in size, till at last his friends of a day lost sight of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... were nearly as many sleds as wagons to be seen, though there was not a particle of snow. The sleds went scraping over the bricks or cobblestones, some provided with an apparatus in front for sprinkling water, to diminish the friction, and some rendered less musical by means of a dripping oil rag, which the driver occasionally ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... like our leonids in November. It rained pellets or balls of fire, these phosphorescent trains gleaming spectrally, while a kind of half audible crackling accompanied the fall. Shooting in irregular shoals or volleys, they would increase and diminish, and recurrent explosions announced the arrival at the ground ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... early advised of the advance of the foraging party, mounted their horses, rifle in hand, from every direction; and, occupying well protected positions along the main road, also faithfully endeavored to diminish the number of his Majesty's forces, and hastened the retreat of the British into Charlotte, the survivors swearing after their arrival that "every bush along ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... that the standard of perfection has changed, or the world has changed, or God's knowledge has changed. All this is impossible. The Law says besides, "Thou shalt not add thereto, and thou shalt not diminish therefrom" (Deut. 13, 1). Therefore, concludes Aaron ben Elijah the Karaite, we do not believe in the oral or traditional law because of the additions to, and subtractions from, the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... hundred and fifty Spanish religious in Filipinas, and seven hundred Filipino secular priests, or thereabouts. More than three per cent of the Spaniards die annually; so that, in order that their present number may not diminish, it is necessary for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... House of Lords. With his character it was inevitable that he should meet the danger by a bold, decisive, and even aggressive, policy. It was no less natural that Lord Derby should have persistently leaned towards the side of caution and shrunk from any measure that could cut short negotiation and diminish the chances of peace. The order given that the British Fleet should enter the Dardanelles, first produced the inevitable schism, and Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned. The order was countermanded, and Lord Derby, for a short time, resumed his post. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and the Whigs generally inclined to the same view. But it was already obsolete. Lord Kimberley had proceeded on exactly the opposite principle, and Lord Carnarvon's object in Federation was certainly not to diminish the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... universality, one by exclusion, the other by inclusion. Communists like Tolstoy demand that art express only those feelings that are already common, the religious and moral; they would exclude all values that have not become those of the race. But this is to diminish the importance of art; for it is art's privilege to make feelings common by providing a medium through which they can be communicated rather than merely to express them after they have become common. Understanding is more ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... matter of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[258] In Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to diminish the amount of meat consumed. There is also in the West an increasing sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in transportation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry were established in Japan there would ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... of some of those Territories ought to be developed as rapidly as possible. Every step in that direction would have a tendency to improve the revenues of the government and diminish the burdens of the people. It is worthy of your serious consideration whether some extraordinary measures to promote that end cannot be adopted. The means which suggests itself as most likely to be effective is a scientific ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the pageant of the 'Faery Queene' remains, and grows clearer with the lapse of ages. That time, against which he built so perseveringly, and fortified himself on so many sides, will not be able to diminish there 'one dowle that's in his plume.' [He was also a patron of Plays and Players in this stage of his career, and entertained private parties at his house with very recherche performances of that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Prince, as alter ego, may have a right to claim the homagium of the great tenants of the crown, since all faithful subjects are commanded, in the commission of regency, to respect him as the King's own person. Far, therefore, be it from me to diminish the lustre of his authority by withholding this act of homage, so peculiarly calculated to give it splendour; for I question if the Emperor of Germany hath his boots taken off by a free baron of the empire. But here lieth the second difficulty—the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to render to the Company which shall propose the most feasible and advantageous plan; then leave to capitalists with judgment sharpened by interest, the selection of the route, and the difficulties will diminish as did those which you overcame when you connected your harbor with ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... excellent qualities never rose beyond the bounds of friendship, we have now reason to rejoice at this, since it will save us much useless pain. It spares me the difficulty of conquering a passion that might be fatal to my happiness; and it will diminish the regret which you may feel at our separation. I am now obliged to say, that circumstances have made me certain we could not add to our mutual felicity by any ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... of this aid. "Remember and let them remember," said the Advocate, "that the reforms which they are pretending to make there by relieving the subjects of contributions tends to enervate the royal authority and dignity both within and without, to diminish its lustre and reputation, and in sum to make the King unable to gratify and assist his subjects, friends, and allies. Make them understand that the taxation in these Provinces is ten times higher than there, and that My Lords the States hitherto by the grace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cutting down, as far as possible, all the activities for which it furnishes power, even as we would diminish the number of cars where power in the dynamo had become deficient; we will either sever the wires that connect with the stomach, or make a marked reduction in the labor to be performed in the stomach. With power accumulating ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... To diminish the pressure of the prisoners on the British treasury, Macquarie granted tickets-of-leave: the holders, without employment and without capital, became robbers. Then he turned his thoughts to public works of permanent utility, and requiring continued labor: these ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... severity of the retribution meted out under his superintendence to those who had ventured to resist the royal authority was unparalleled in French history.[529] If the constable's ferocity did not diminish with age, it acquired a tinge of the ludicrous from his growing superstition. Never would he omit his devotions at the appointed hour, whether at home or in the field—"so conscientious was he." But he would interrupt the recital of his pater-nosters ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... regularity, sometimes retiring to infinite depths of space, where no human eye will ever see them more. These strange visitors are called comets, and are of all shapes and sizes and never twice alike. Even as we watch them they grow and change, and then diminish in splendour. Some are so vast that men see them as flaming signs in the sky, and regard them with awe and wonder; some cannot be seen at all without the help of the telescope. From the very earliest ages those that were large enough to be seen ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... answered, unwilling by disputing about a trifle to diminish his satisfaction in her assistance. She wrote, therefore, another note to Mrs Delvile, desiring she would not expect her till near ten o'clock, and promising to account and apologize for these seeming caprices when she had ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... persist the end must be fatal. What grounds have we for expecting that we may yet be victorious? Each man we lose renders us weaker; every hundred men we lose means a similar gain to the enemy. England's numerical strength does not diminish; on the contrary, there are even more troops in the country at this moment than when Lord Roberts had the command. England also has used our own men against us, and has not been ashamed of arming the Kaffirs; the enemy are learning from our own men in what ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... documents of the period; and I have not been at liberty to state many things, on both sides of the question, which would be necessary to a complete discussion of the subject. For instance, among the motives to be mentioned for the popularity of laws whose chief effects were to diminish the pay of the established clergy, should be considered those connected with a growing dissent from the established church in Virginia, and particularly with the very human dislike which even churchmen might have to ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... success, as none can have the same range of subjects before them. The scene is changing with each year, and the past, with respect to the Savages, does not recur. They fall back with no hope to recover lost ground; they diminish with no hope to increase again; they degenerate with no hope to revive in physical or moral strength. Those who have seen them most during the last few years, have seen them best. After observers will find mere fragments, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... while at Delhi we know that our position is becoming stronger every day; the reinforcements are beginning to arrive from England, and though the work may be slow at first, our army will grow, while their strength will diminish, until we sweep them before us. I need not stop until the end, only till the peril is over, till Lucknow ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... abolition of the slave trade. As Boswell said that "to abolish the slave trade would be to shut the gates of mercy on mankind," so the advocates of eighteen hours labor in factories said that the ten hour system would diminish produce, lower wages, and bring starvation on the workmen. His lordship was denounced as an incendiary, a meddling fanatic, interfering with the rights of masters, and desiring to exalt his own order by destroying the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a recurring decimal. It goes on and on and on forever, and if you write it for a thousand years you are still as far from the end as when you began. It will carry you round the world and back again, and never diminish. It is the mathematical emblem of ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... canal scenery every year, she says; so I suppose he is popular, and that his income is sufficient to keep them in comfort. If not, I do not see why my father could not settle something more on them than he had intended, and diminish by a little what he had proposed for me, whilst it was imagined that I should be the first to stand in need ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... medium of exchange is oversupplied. The lack is in the goods to be exchanged. The enormous extension of German note issues does not, and can not, diminish. In this country the expansion of credit and money immediately after the war (manifested by the issue of Clearing House certificates and emergency banknotes) has been cleared away by liquidation. In Germany the "canned" assets behind the depreciated currency cannot be liquidated ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... continued for nearly fifteen years, ought to be able to say something as to the good and the evil there is in the habit. It forms, however, no part of my purpose to do this, nor to enter into any detailed statement of the circumstances under which the habit was formed. I neither wish to diminish my own sense of the evil of such want of firmness as characterizes all who allow themselves to be betrayed into the use of a drug which possesses such power of tyrannizing over the most resolute will, nor to withdraw the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... it.—But Stanton felt there was something more than national bigotry in the exclamations of the old woman; there was a peculiar and personal horror of the English.—And he was right; but this did not diminish the eagerness ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... suffering. Alfred bore all the pain which it caused him with exemplary patience; and, though he could not always resist the tendency to discouragement and depression with which the perpetual presence of such a torment wears upon the soul, he did not allow it to diminish his exertions, or suspend, at any time, the ceaseless activity with which he labored for the welfare of the people of ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... will make bold to add to the preceding stories another, which I might well, had I been minded to deviate from the truth, have disguised, and so recounted it to you, under other names; but as whoso in telling a story diverges from the truth does thereby in no small measure diminish the delight of his hearers, I purpose for the reason aforesaid to give you the narrative ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of living on the Rand, the import duties upon certain necessaries in common use would be reduced, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commissioners on this point; but that, since it was obviously inexpedient to diminish the revenue of the Republic, the duties upon certain other articles of the same class would be raised to an extent more than counterbalancing the loss upon the reduction. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... that those of her race had redder blood and larger veins than others,—which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... and walked to and fro before the fireplace. "Ah, well! The years bring me an ever-deepening sadness, an ever-increasing sense of our impotence to diminish, the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... drop; depress, reduce; decrease, diminish, fall, humble, humiliate, degrade, abash, detrude, dishonor; frown, scowl, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... began suddenly to diminish, and to such a degree was this continued from June to December, when the hard frosts begin, that, at the commencement of the latter month, Lake Ontario, at Kingston, was three feet below its customary level, and consequently, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself greatly at the Fallkill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently gave her no anxiety, and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of power which had awakened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... In order to diminish the woes of authors and to help the maimed and wounded warriors in the service of Literature, we should like to rear a large Literary College, where those who have borne the burden and heat of the day may rest secure from all anxieties ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... equinox, from the time when the globe is at a due-west point of the table until it reaches the east, the north pole would always receive the light, in a circle around it, that would gradually increase and diminish; and for the other half, the same would be true of the other hemisphere. Of course there is a precise point on the earth where this polar illumination ceases. The shape of the illuminated part is circular; and placing the point ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... with a height of sixty-six feet to the top of the pediment, were sufficiently great to give an impression of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbed by any obtrusive subdivision of parts, such as is found to diminish the effects of some larger modern buildings, where the same singleness of design is not observed. In the Parthenon, whether viewed at a small or at a great distance, there was nothing to divert the spectator's contemplation from the simplicity and majesty of mass ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... equally valid for one man as for another, without regard to race or nation. For a doctrinal religion, therefore, to proselytize, is no more than a duty of consistent humanity. You, the professors of that religion, possess the medicinal fountains. You will not diminish your own share by imparting to others. What churlishness, if you should grudge to others a health which does not interfere with your own! Christians, therefore, Mahometans, and Jews originally, in proportion as they were sincere ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age. I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment. I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... the people. That their efforts were overborne they attributed to the subservience of the Parliament to the ministers, and of the ministers to the crown.[58] And consequently several motions were made by members of that party, the object of which was, in one way or another, to diminish what they regarded as the undue influence of the crown. In one instance, and that the most successful, a direct denunciation of that influence was employed, but the earlier and more frequent proposals were ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... cohorts in ten ranks, would have been able to form but one complete line, the first, and a second, half as numerous, as a reserve. But he knew the bravery of his troops, and he knew the apparent force of deep ranks to be a delusion. He did not hesitate to diminish his depth in order to keep the formation and morale of three-fifths of his troops intact, until the moment of their engagement. In order to be even more sure of the third line of his reserve, and in order to make sure that it would not be carried away by its enthusiasm ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... language.' LANGTON. 'Why was you glad? You surely had no doubt of this before.' JOHNSON. 'No; the merit of The Traveller is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it.'[722] SIR JOSHUA. 'But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, the partiality of his friends was always against him. It was with difficulty we could give him ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... would have weighed as nothing, could I have remained at Stowey, but now they come upon me to diminish my regret. Add to this, Poole's determination to spend a year or two on the continent, in case of a peace and his mother's death. God in heaven bless her! I am sure she will not live long. This is the first day of my arrival at Keswick. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... personal considerations which induced people to vote against us on this point, who do so on no other. It has, I imagine, entirely put an end to any further discussion of this subject. It will not diminish your satisfaction on this occasion to hear that the previous question was moved by me, and that I had the good fortune not only to satisfy myself, which I have not done before in the course of this session, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of the inferior slaves, stables, and other accessories. These are separated from the main building by means of a mesaulon, or small internal court, to diminish the danger in case of a fire happening in the kitchen or bake-house. There were two ways of communication from the level of the street to the level of the garden; on one side by the corridor, A, A, principally reserved ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... population to be supported that will thus be thrown loose on the market of labour? How are the burdens to be provided for that the land thus disabled has hitherto borne? Are the imposts on agriculture to increase while its returns are to diminish? or is the old Whig expedient to be resorted to, of raising that very tax which they have resisted and denounced? Are all customs-duties to be abolished, and is the deficiency to be supplied by having the property-tax aggravated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... my betrothed? and betray him on the very stroke of the Sword? and diminish him by a withdrawal of that faith in his right wrist which strengtheneth it more than Karavejis and Veejravoosh wound round it in coils?' And she leaned her head, and cried, 'Hark! hear'st thou? there's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... should pay the entire expense in which the General Government should become involved by the war. This clearly would be only a penalty and not a concession of the right, the object being to increase and not to diminish the security of the General Government against any attempt of a State to do ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the gorse, when grown in dry, gravelly situations, we see many leaves and twigs modified into thorns to diminish the loss of water through evaporation by exposing too much leaf surface to the sun and air. That such spines protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... vanquished him, Hengist at the first [Sidenote: Hengist is slaine.] meeting of the battell being slaine, with a great number of the Germans. The fame of this victorie (saith Polydor) is had in memorie with the inhabitants of those parties euen vnto this day, which victorie did sore diminish the power of the Saxons, insomuch that they began now to thinke it should be more for their profit to sit in rest with that dishonour, than to make anie new warres to their great disaduantage and ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... comes, can it be possible for the farmers all over the country to form so perfect and well-disciplined an organization that every member shall diminish his remittances to market of grain, wool, meat, hay, or what not, enough to raise prices; or that he shall refrain from selling all these articles below a certain defined price? It must be plain to every intelligent person that it would be a practical impossibility ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... the Inca would be upon them. Their movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the intricacies of the Sierra than themselves; the passes would be occupied, and they would be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere fact of this retrograde movement would diminish the confidence and with it the effective strength of his own men, while it doubled ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... a great pretension!" exclaimed the queen, angrily. "A pedlar's daughter who carries arrogance so far as to wish to appear at the court of the King of Prussia! This can never be, and never could I advocate such an innovation: it is destructive, and only calculated to diminish the prestige of the nobility, and to deprive it of its greatest and best privilege—that privilege which entitles it alone to approach royalty. It was this view which prevented me from receiving the so-called Count Neal at my court, although ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the bell, the whole of the force is not instantaneously imparted to the surrounding air; but the denser the air the sooner it loses its motion. In a dense fluid like water, the motion is imparted quickly, and the sound is not a ring but a click. If we diminish the density of the air, the loss of motion is retarded; so that we might conceive it possible, provided the bell could be suspended in a perfect vacuum, without a mechanical tie, and there was no friction to overcome from the rigidity ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... and if by the providence of God, that by Stormy Weather or some unforeseen Accident we should part, I then Order You to proceed directly to the Island of providence, One of the Bahamia Islands, and there to wait my Arrivall, And not to Embezzle diminish Waste Sell or Unload any part of her Cargo till I am there present, Under the penalty of the Articles Already Signed by You. Att Your Arrivall att providence make a Just Report to his Hon'r the Gov'r of that place ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... free passage to the East and North, yet with England it may not be so, because the naturall coldenes of our Climate is sufficient without any assistance to further bitternesse, our best industry being to be imployed rather to get warmth, which may nourish and bring forth our labours, then any way to diminish or weaken ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... which were penned by me for this purpos (as in the beginning I did protest) that the errors of Authors concerning an vnknowen land, and the affected vanitie also of some men might be disclosed, for I am not desirous to diminish any mans good name: but because I consecrated these my labours to trueth and to my countrey, I could not chuse but shew, that those things which hitherto haue bene reported by many concerning our Island deserue very litle ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... certain, I think, that a translator of an Augustan poet ought not to suffer them to be a prominent feature of his style. I have, perhaps, indulged in them too often myself to note them as a defect in others; but it seems to me that they contribute, along with the Tennysonian metre, to diminish the pleasure with which we read such a version as that of which I have already spoken by "C. S. C." of "Justum et tenacem." I may add, too, that I have occasionally allowed the desire of brevity to lead me into an omission of the definite article, which, though perhaps in ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... from somewhere on the roof!" he said, and setting down the pail he had brought, he got on his hands and knees, first to escape the wind in his ears, and next to diminish its hold on his person. Over roof after roof he crept like a cat, stopping to listen every time a new gush of the sound came, then starting afresh in the search for its source. Upon a great gathering of roofs like these, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... that she could not see us; I therefore went forward and slipped the cable without noise, and sent men up aloft to loose the sails. There was a light breeze, sufficient to carry us about two knots through the water, and we knew that it would rather increase than diminish. In half an hour, weak-handed as we were, we were under sail, every thing being done without a word being spoken, and with the utmost precaution. You may imagine how rejoiced we all were when we found that we had manoeuvred so well; notwithstanding, we kept a sharp look-out, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... displays are far less frequent. Such, I believe, will be more and more the case; and that whilst religious distinctions will remain the same, and conscientious convictions unaltered, social and party differences consequent on those distinctions and convictions will daily diminish; that all alike will more and more feel in how many things they can think and act together for the benefit of their common country, and of the community of which they all are members; how they can be glad together in her prosperity, and be sad together in the day of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... moment when I was close to one of the crimson curtains. For I hoped that if I entered any one of the twelve halls at the right moment, that would as it were give me the right of entrance to all the others, seeing they all had communication behind. I would not diminish the hope of the right chance, by supposing it necessary that a desire to enter should awake within me, precisely when I was close to the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... into the sacks again, chanting, 'May it increase.' But these are not removed to the granary until late at night, at an hour when the hands of the demons are too much benumbed by the nightly frost to diminish the store. At the beginning of every one of these operations the presence of lamas is essential, to announce the auspicious moment, and conduct religious ceremonies. They receive fees, and are regaled with abundant chang and the fat of ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... vegetables which creep on the ground, and the trees submit to his disposition. He also raised the heaven; and he appointed the balance, that ye should not transgress in respect to the balance: wherefore observe a just weight; and diminish not the balance. And the earth hath he prepared for living creatures: therein are various fruits, and palm-trees bearing sheaths of flowers; and grain having chaff, and leaves. Which, therefore, of your LORD'S benefits will ye ungratefully deny? He created man of dried ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as the metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical discussions; ...
— Sophist • Plato
... deepest crimson, the white of the calla lily becomes a gorgeous yellow, rose and blackberry lose their thorns, the cactus its spines. The meat of the walnut and almond become richer in quality, while their shells diminish to the thinness of a ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... total abstainer, a non-smoker, and a frequenter of houses of fair reception. If anomaly can go further, I can declare to you that he is engaged to a clergyman's daughter. When he is angered, his face grows as thin as a razor, the small blue eyes diminish to glittering points, and the small white teeth close like a vise. It is then that I am sorry for the clergyman's daughter. We do not understand each other, I fear, because I am so unsentimental. He believes in unpractical things like Money, Success, Empire, Home Life, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... throw. The great game had now begun, and each time the ball went through a goal it counted one tally. The score-keepers, who were chosen from the older sachems of the tribes, were invested with peculiar powers. If one team was making far less tallies than its opponent, they could diminish its rival's score (without the players' knowledge, however) in order that the contest might be protracted. Games of this vigorous kind have made the athletes of the Six Nations noted in both Canada and the United States down to ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... conclusion, "the path to both of us remains the same. To Alice is our first duty. The discovery I have made of your real parentage does not diminish the claims which Alice has on me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from yourself. Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever. But when I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to his last account, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... considerably wider at the bottom than at the top, this result being produced by the spreading of the sheet of water as it was precipitated from the dizzy height above. The breadth of this one is about twenty feet at the bottom, and its depth about fourteen feet. But its depth and span gradually diminish from the bottom to the top, and the rock is worn as smooth as if chiselled by the hand of an artist. Moss and small plants have sprung out from the little soil that has accumulated in the crevices, but not enough to ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various |
