"Dwindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the ground in sober recognition of my error. "Forgive me the heat of my zeal," I protested. "I diminish, I dwindle, I wither. Unless your pity forgives me, I shall evaporate ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a tawdry figure she makes! And how well that garb becomes her poor parents' circumstances!—And how would they look upon me, thought I to myself, when they should come to be threadbare and worn out? And how should I look, even if I could purchase homespun clothes, to dwindle into them one by one, as I got them?—May be, an old silk gown, and a linsey-woolsey petticoat, and the like. So, thought I, I had better get myself at once equipped in the dress that will become my condition; and though it may look but poor ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... figure seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... destined to disappointment; for the wind continued to dwindle after sunset until it finally died away altogether, and left both craft without steerage-way. By this time, however, we had drifted within range of the barque's guns, and she had opened a rather desultory but well-directed fire upon us whenever any of her guns could be brought to bear, the result ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... "this hair was turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled cloak waver and spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained the lock of ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... ultimate gate of heaven. And, alas! what a dismal crowd of sufferers, refusing all shorter and happier ways, wait to be drawn through this torturing passage of remedial mercy! May the number entering by the other gates ever increase, and those entering this dwindle! And yet, may it forever stand open for the unhappy culprits who must be ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... their daily business in town and country; and, as they received no pay and their own affairs demanded their attention, their military service did not extend beyond a few weeks. The Protestant leaders had no sooner taken possession of Edinburgh than their following began to dwindle. During the first week their numbers amounted to over seven thousand men; by the third week they had diminished to one thousand five hundred. In these circumstances the Regent had only to bide her time, and her opportunity must come. On July ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... she has, and now I think on't, a little taller wou'd do well for Propagation; I should be both the Posterity of the antient Family of the Blunts of Essex should dwindle into Pigmies or Fairies. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... sinecures in the State. They make their student-years but a pretext for a life of rough debauchery, from which they issue with a bought diploma; and, in many cases, satiated and disgusted with their own lives, they dwindle down into the timeserving reactionaries, the worst enemies of free development, because they themselves have abused in youth the little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... reasonable prospect for meeting our energy needs when our current domestic reserves of oil and natural gas begin to dwindle in the next decade. I urgently ask Congress and the new administration to move quickly on these issues. This Nation has the resources and the capability to achieve our energy goals if its Government has the will to proceed, and I ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the light of a new ambition must appear in Fiji or the race shall dwindle to its death. No real progress has been made by the Fijians; they have received much from their teachers, but have given nothing in return. They are in the position of a youth whose schooling has just been finished, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all." One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul of the leader left ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... discuss it," said Lazaro, "You have my sympathy; but I must urge you, for your own sake and for mine, to attempt no harm to Merriwell. Leave him to me, and you shall have the pleasure of seeing all his plans go wrong, his fortune dwindle, his friends drop away, his sweetheart taken from him, his strength sapped, his beauty destroyed, and, at last, his life crushed out of his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... China, we find converted into the high, porcelain, gradated towers; and these again converted into the more imposing temples of Cochin-China, Hindostan, Ceylon—so grand, so stupendous in their wealth of ornamentation that those of Chichen-Itza Uxmal, Palenque, admirable as they are, well nigh dwindle into insignificance, as far as labor and imagination are concerned, when compared with them. That they present the same fundamental conception in their architecture is evident—a platform rising over another platform, the one above being of lesser size than the one below; ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... hourglass. condensation, compression, compactness; compendium &c. 596; squeezing &c. v.; strangulation; corrugation; astringency; astringents, sclerotics; contractility, compressibility; coarctation[obs3]. inferiority in size. V. become small, become smaller; lessen, decrease &c. 36; grow less, dwindle, shrink, contract, narrow, shrivel, collapse, wither, lose flesh, wizen, fall away, waste, wane, ebb; decay &c. (deteriorate) 659. be smaller than, fall short of; not come up to &c. (be inferior) 34. render smaller, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the West, and South, in which sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and were in many instances even identical, differed materially from those found in the West and South, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... nor Latin verse, but good English prose, he is utterly at a loss alike for thought and expression. He neither knows what to communicate, nor is he master of the language in which it is to be conveyed. Hence his recorded travels dwindle away into a mere scrap-book of classical quotations—a transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions, destitute of either energy, information, or eloquence. Does he come from Cambridge? He could solve cubic equations as well as Cardan, is a more perfect master of logarithms ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... The superior attractions of other newly discovered countries and the fear of piratical invasions had by 1591 decreased the total population of the colony to 15,000. This number remained almost stationary until about 1663 when it began to dwindle further until the low water mark was reached, about 1737, and the entire population of the Spanish portion of the island was estimated at but 6,000. Timely tariff concessions revived trade and encouraged ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... again like fire the violet kindle, [Str. 1. Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom, Ere the crescent of the last pale month of winter dwindle, Shrink, and fall as falls a dead leaf on the dead month's tomb, Round the hills whose heights the first-born olive-blossom brightened, Round the city brow-bound once with violets like a bride, Up from under earth again a light that long since lightened Breaks, whence all the world took comfort ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a long time before he would dare smoke a cigar again, and his supply of cigarettes was destined to dwindle down to nothing before that day. But he did not seem ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... big fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin—and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... truthful unconscious curiosity and faith in Nature. Here it may be that one gallops, here one trots, here again one walks. But all alike pull the bridle and snuff the air and find it good, and see the grass grow or dwindle, and watch the stars and the passing seasons, and find the world very fresh and very sweet ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... manner, the majestic orbs of the political firmament undergo a cruel lessening of diameter as they approach the Federal City. The greatest of men ceases to be great in the presence of hundreds of his peers, and the multitude of the illustrious dwindle into individual littleness by reason of their superabundance. And when it comes to occupations, it will hardly be denied that the stranger who beholds a Senator "coppering on the ace," or a Congressman standing in a bar-room with a lump of mouldy cheese in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... with scorn. "Abe Rose, dew yew know what ails yew?" he demanded fixing his eyes fiercely upon the invalid. "Dew yew know what'll happen tew yew ef yew don't git out o' this bed an' this here house? Either yer beard'll fall out an' yew'll dwindle deown ter the size o' a baby or yew'll turn into a downright old woman—Aunt Abraham!—won't that sound nice? Or yew'll die or yew'll go crazy. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... shrink from the presence of ghosts. Conceive how this must tell upon the nerves in islands where the number of the dead already so far exceeds that of the living, and the dead multiply and the living dwindle at so swift a rate. Conceive how the remnant huddles about the embers of the fire of life; even as old Red Indians, deserted on the march and in the snow, the kindly tribe all gone, the last flame expiring, and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think about it," said Thorndyke. "I never reject a case off-hand unless it is obviously fishy. It is surprising how difficulties, and even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them attentively. My experience has taught me that the most unlikely case is, at least, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... of the red man appears to be nearly decided. What between their wars with each other, the use of spirituous liquors, and the diseases imported by the whites, they dwindle away every day. The most fatal disease to them is the small-pox. The following account, which I have extracted from one of the American papers, was confirmed to me by a letter from ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the wise man knew to be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look in behind the veil of the family circle, we are more convinced than ever that fraternal affection an all the boasted nobility of sisterly love dwindle down to a series of petty quarrels and jealousies as painful as they are unchristian and unbecoming. The reserve, or rather the hypocrisy of politeness, put on before strangers, is no criterion of the inward domestic life. Some one has said of ladies, "A point yielded or a pardon ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... another compelling influence. We recognise something in the Temple-children question which touches a wider issue than the personal or missionary. Those who have read Queen Victoria's Letters must have become conscious of a certain enlargement. Questions become great or dwindle into nothingness according as they affect the honour and the good of the Empire. We find ourselves instinctively "thinking Imperially," regarding things from the Throne side—from above instead ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... She had poured out upon her child all the passionate love that had been so miserably thwarted in her own marriage. It had been more than bitterness to her to note that whilst her love for her girl increased, the girl's love for her seemed to dwindle. It was the bitterest blow that Vigee Le Brun had ever known; and she had been struck more than once. It turned the wanderer's eyes homewards to her wrecked Paris. Russia was no longer a delight to her. She became ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; but their return was a phasis, a phenomenon which ministers had rendered it inevitable to go ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Meredith illustrates one phase of his own idea of the comic spirit, by the language which Miss Millimant uses in accepting her lover: "If I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife." Congreve's peculiar genius is well shown in his ability to make her manner of speech reveal her characteristics. His plays are unfortunately disfigured with the coarseness ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in squeek, squeak, squeal, squall, brawl, wraul, yaul, spaul, screek, shriek, shrill, sharp, shrivel, wrinkle, crack, crash, clash, gnash, plash, crush, hush, hisse, fisse, whist, soft, jar, hurl, curl, whirl, buz, bustle, spindle, dwindle, twine, twist, and in many more, we may observe the agreement of such sort of sounds with the things signified; and this so frequently happens, that scarce any language which I know can be compared with ours. So that one monosyllable word, of which kind are almost all ours, emphatically expresses ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... and could wait. This was a taking argument with the legislators, many of whom had grown gray in the party service, and Lyons's managers felt confident that the support accorded to this tribune of the people would dwindle to very small proportions when the time ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Experience has shown that there is something in the nature of the Red Indian which makes him very slow of being able to endure civilization, renders wandering almost a necessity to his constitution, and generally makes him, when under restraint, even under the most favourable conditions, dwindle away, lose all his fine natural endowments, and become an abject and often a vicious being. The misfortune has been that, with a few honourable exceptions, it has not been within the power of the better and more thoughtful portion of man to change the Red Indian's vague belief ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... born in India, must be sent home in early life to the climate of his ancestors, or to one closely resembling it, in order to escape incurable disease, if not premature death. Again, the offspring of Asiatics born in this country pine and dwindle into one or other of the twin cachexiae—scrofula and consumption; and, if the individual survives, lives in a state of passive existence, stunted in growth, and incapable of enduring fatigue. If such extreme changes of climate prove obnoxious to the health of individuals having naturally ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... hundreds of them. Rosy had imagined a function of the first magnitude, and it was not to dwindle for mere lack of material. She had determined upon a ceremony in church and a large reception at the house, with everything in the way of music, flowers, functionaries, and supernumeraries that the most approved forms could incorporate. She stood out for a bishop, a surpliced choir, a wedding-breakfast ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and what seemed a night-shade in one mind unfold as a morning-glory in ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... without ever being forct but when its judg'd advantageous—this is certain you can move your Army across the Country in three or four days, which will take the regular Troops as many weeks. You can make them starve and rot with cold and fluxes, and make them dwindle away to nothing if they were triple your Number, and without striking a stroak, if we take the advantage the Countrey and Climate affords—the renown'd King Robert Bruce, Sir William Wallace, and the late Marquis of Montrose, of which your R.H. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... a morning, as wet and sad as any other, when Stewart and Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any one had ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... clover-leaf, and the long rays that twinkled to them were still just tinged with rose. Here and there a flake of gold seemed to have lit upon the clump of sombre green furze-bushes, by which neighbours in a small knot stood watching the three generations of Patmans dwindle away down the road with its narrow dewy grass-border, threading the vast sweep of sky-rimmed brown. Father and son walked, while little Katty bobbed along, balanced in a swaying donkey-pannier. The widow M'Gurk, who felt a good deal of concern about ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... of the royal couple. Estrangement grew thereafter between them, and, in a measure, as it grew so did Darnley's kingship, hardly established as yet—for the Queen had still to redeem her pre-nuptial promise to confer upon him the crown matrimonial—begin to dwindle. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... churches like wars in countries. Where war is, the ground lieth waste and untilled; none takes care of it. It is love that edifieth, but division pulleth down. Divisions are, as the northeast wind to the fruits, which causeth them to dwindle away to nothing; but when the storms are over, every thing begins to grow. When men are divided, they seldom speak the truth in love; and then, no marvel they grow not up to him in all things, which is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is in direct ratio to the number enrolled. In a class of 200 carpenters there would probably be, for example, 10 or 15 men who need specialized instruction in stair-building. On the basis of the present enrollment of 40 or 50 carpenters the class would dwindle to three or four, with the result that the per capita ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... magnitude—ranging between two and four thousand feet high—and then in what multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightier they appear—and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindle or dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with your imagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bring them under your command, you are indeed a sovereign—and have ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... one day, Du Mesne," replied John Law. "'Tis a roadway fit for a nation. Ah, Du Mesne! our St. Lawrence, our New France—they dwindle when compared to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... his Presence and Purse has help'd to support? No, Madam, 'tis Numbers strengthen the Enemy, and give fresh Courage to his Attempts! A Full House is the very Life of the Stage, and keeps it in Countenance, whereas thin Audiences would, in time, make it dwindle to nothing. ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... out on the ice, up a steep grade, and then quite a little distance back to the dwelling—for we do not build directly upon these eroding banks. The water-hole is continually freezing up and has to be continually hewed free of ice, and as the streams dwindle with the progress of winter, new holes must be cut farther and farther out. On the trail, where snow must usually be melted for water, it is obvious that bathing is out of the question; even the water for hands and face is sparingly doled by the cook, and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the English village and the English town neither in spirit nor in legal definition. You have a town like Maidenhead, which has a full local Government, and yet which has no mayor for centuries. Conversely, a town having once had a mayor may dwindle down into a village, and no one who respects English tradition bothers to interfere with the anomaly. For instance, you may to-day in Orford enjoy the hospitality, or incur the hostility, ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle and decrease, yet maintaining not only his serenity of mind, but his accustomed self-respecting outward refinement of bearing and habit. To meet death with a gracious stoicism, well-dressed and standing upright, is, rightly considered, a very fine art, reflecting much credit upon the successful ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Upon her wedding-day, Must tell her Bees the story, Or else they'll fly away. Fly away—die away— Dwindle down and leave you! But if you don't deceive your Bees, Your Bees will not ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... on the way—a surprise so stupendous and unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Loulia slipped by, yellow light after yellow light. From above the blue light looked down like a watchful eye. The darkness of the water, like streaming ebony, took the felucca and the fateful voices. And the tide gave its help to the oarsmen. The lights began to dwindle when Isaacson said ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... continuous progress. It is because these events can be particularized and described that they assume proportions beyond their real importance, but when compared with the colossal advances made by the state during the period covering them, they dwindle into mere points of educational experience, to be guarded against in the future, while the many blessings showered upon the state, consisting of the health and wealth imparting sunshine, the refreshing ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... wrote Lord Cholme, "can no longer afford to pass by one of her most brilliant sons. In the light of his magnificent achievement, the daring of a Peary, the nerve of a Shackleton, the indomitable persistence of a Marconi, dwindle and fade. We do not hesitate to say that since the capture of Gibraltar, the Empire has secured no such chance for consolidating her paramountcy in Europe. The present is no time for hesitation or delay. Mr. Carville is master of the situation. By his message from the air, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... plundered by the charwoman, laundress, and undertaker's man and realized the end to which he must come unless he led an altered life. Holding up his hands he prayed to have his fate reversed and saw the Ghost shrink and dwindle ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... eyes are far too bright for tears Of sorrow; by her silent dead she kneels, too proud for pride; Their blood, their love, have bought her right to claim the new imperial years In England's name for Freedom, in whose love her children died; In whose love, though hope may dwindle, Love and brotherhood shall kindle Between the striving nations as a choral song takes fire, Till new hope, new faith, new wonder Cleave the clouds of doubt asunder, And speed the union of mankind in one ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and my pretty little wife to keep, I sold out, thinking that before the money was exhausted, I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling to Italy, and we lived there in splendid style as long as my two thousand pounds lasted; but when that began to dwindle down to a couple of hundred or so, we came back to England, and as my darling had a fancy for being near that tiresome old father of hers, we settled at the watering-place where he lived. Well, as soon as the old man heard that I had a couple of hundred pounds left, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... quenched the rush, And cried, "Bring a gorse-bush, And under the caldron now kindle!"— But the Miller cried, "Nay! Give over, I pray!"— For his courage began fast to dwindle. ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Now is all done ... all done ... and all your deed. She broke the thread, and it shall not join again. Spindle, spindle, the coiling weft shall dwindle; Leap on the fire and ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... more and more; we have seen how many burghers have become unfaithful and strengthened the enemy. If it were not for those unfaithful people out of our midst we would never have had such a hard time of it. If we go on we shall ever become weaker and weaker, and ultimately dwindle away. What shall we then have gained by continuing the struggle? To-day we are still in a position to obtain something from the enemy, and to stipulate for assistance for our ruined people, who cannot get on their legs again without help. The burghers are prepared to proceed and to ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... they blow; All the quarters that they know, I' th' ship-man's card.— I will drain him dry as hay, Sleep shall neither night nor day, Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man (c) forbid; Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Tho' his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... at Rosebury knew nothing whatever of the value of money. Like many another woman who has been brought up in affluence, neither had Mrs. Mainwaring the faintest idea of how fast a small sum like L1,000 can dwindle. She felt comfortable during the latter years of her life at the knowledge that she had a good balance in the bank. It never occurred to her as a possibility that she who was still fairly young could die suddenly and ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... had without very much effort on the part of the seeker. Mrs. Sikes, whose work had chiefly been dressmaking and plain sewing, found the new field of labor quite irksome. The money realized from the sale of her property she must not let dwindle away too swiftly; her husband was helpless, and she must work, and the children must work. She found the North a place where a day's work meant a day's work in full; there was no let up; the pound of flesh was exacted. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... people. There is nothing more miserable than to see a man, as his years go by, gripping harder and tighter at this poor, fleeting world that is slipping away from him; nothing sadder than to see how, as opportunities and capacities for the enjoyment of life dwindle, and dwindle, and dwindle, people become almost fierce in the desire to keep it. Why, you can see on the face of many an old man and woman a hungry discontent, that has not come from the mere wrinkles of old age or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... be ruled by authority, new popes would imprison new Galileos; the knowledge already acquired would be strangled in the cords which were intended to keep it safe from harm, and, deprived of the free air on which its life depends, it would dwindle and die. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... again, and much more probably, as an ordinary Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for a while with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunchbacked giant or dwindle into a ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religion, the thin security of self-satisfied morality, can now no more tease us with their sleek impertinence. In the presence of a venture of this high distinction, of a faith of this tragic intensity, such shabby counterfeits of the race's hope dwindle ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and plenty; and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle away, and perish off the earth. Yes, God's laws work in strange and subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often believe that there are no laws of God, and say—"Tush, how ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... years followed, eight years during which the minority, which had been feeble ever since Lord Granville had been overthrown, continued to dwindle till it became almost invisible. Peace was made with France and Spain in 1748. Prince Frederick died in 1751; and with him died the very semblance of opposition. All the most distinguished survivors of the party which had supported Walpole and of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will have it, is that this matter should be shrewdly pressed, and an end made of it as soon as may be. Our people dwindle daily; they who were well a se'nnight since are ill to-day, and may be dead to-morrow. Our provision waxeth short and poor, and be it once spent our good friend Jones will give us none of his we may be sure. We ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... sociable and open, where our daily life is furtive; work a craft; art a participation—it is in miniature the goal of statesmanship. If Chicago were like Hull House, we say to ourselves, then vice would be no problem—it would dwindle, what was left would be the Falstaff in us all, and only a spiritual anemia could worry over that jolly and ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... not appear impossible to secure both in alternation. The principal defect in persons of fortunate lot is to care for nobody but themselves; this curtails the excitements of life, and makes everything dwindle as the end approaches. Another circumstance rendering life unsatisfactory is the want of mental cultivation, by which men are deprived of the inexhaustible pleasures of knowledge, not merely in the shape of science, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of the rushing stream his terrible form could be discerned apparently moving with the torrent, but in reality remaining stationary. Now he would raise himself half out of the water, and ascend like a mist half as high as the near mountain, and then he would dwindle down to the size of a man. His laugh accorded with his savage visage, and his long hair stood on end, and ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... which first presents itself, being the first outgrowth from the great inferior ganglion or summit of the spinal system. As human brains degenerate to a lower type they approximate this form. The frontal and occipital lobes dwindle and the principal mass remaining is that in the basis of the skull between the ears. We see this form distinctly in congenital idiots. The embryo cerebrum here represented measures but three lines vertically, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... once more in '61, and each write his story over again. Then bring out your original and compare notes. Not only will the stories differ from each other, but the writers will probably differ from themselves. In the course of the year the incidents will grow or will dwindle strangely. The least authentic of the statements will be so lively or so malicious, or so neatly put, that it will appear most like the truth. I like these tales and sportive exercises. I had begun a little print collection ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the accident. "You stopped the horses, didn't you?" Hilda said, and the speculation in her eyes was concerned with the extent to which a muscular system might dwindle, in that climate, under sacerdotal robes worn ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... dress, how great things have arisen! In respect of amplification, dress may be said to have attained its maximum when men wore ruffs which nearly concealed their heads, and shoes a quarter of a yard longer than their feet; but "fashion" has its day, and now dress threatens to dwindle into something not far from ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw her own vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until Sarah Smith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" With trembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must be dropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... rotting, because there was no money to pay men to bring it to the army. Washington wore himself out in fruitless efforts to awaken Congress to a sense of its duty. And at length, utterly despairing of any support, weary of seeing his men suffer and dwindle day by day under the miseries of Valley Forge, he wrote out his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of the army. And it needed all the persuasions of his officers to ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it and rote us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... and other luxurious Meats, which shortened their Lives so many hundred Years; the [87][Greek: makro-biote-a] of the Patriarchs, which was an Emblem of Eternity as it were (after the new Concession) beginning to dwindle to a little Span, a ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... loads, were accelerating slowest, with the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle to star ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... began to dwindle and the shadows to encroach with a dominion of somberness over the room. It seemed to the figure in the bed as he struggled against rising tides of torpor and exhaustion that his own resolution was waning with the firelight and that the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rear light dwindle, he fancied that the grey shadow was slowing down; but one could not ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... forlorn. There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare. Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away into ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail possess for him its ancient fascination. He had ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... to the maintenance of the same numeric proportions in all times, that, while a Class is represented by few types, those types are wonderfully rich and varied, but in proportion as other expressions of the same structure are introduced, the first dwindle, and, if they do not entirely disappear, become at least ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not merely the time of disappointment, it is in itself disappointment; it is not what it expected to be; and it finds nothing which confronts it quite, if at all, responsive to the inward vision. The greatest, the loveliest things in the world lose their iridescence or dwindle before it. The old come to things measurably prepared to see them as they are, take them for what they are worth; but the young are the prey of impassioned prepossessions which can never ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... ever been able to write with free and genuine appreciation of even the later novels?" asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White and Gray," ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... enlightened and humane legislation, the cultured society shown to us in Pliny's Letters as diffused all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams of tradition which descended on this age, the schools of law and grammar alone kept their course; the rest dwindle away and disappear. Sixty years pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate; one or two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inconsiderable extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise out of the common herd of undistinguished grammarians. Among the obscure ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... particular Prince on whom the authority may happen to devolve. This, if it takes a regular hereditary course: but,—if the succession be interrupted, and the supreme power frequently usurped or given by election,—worse evils follow. Science and Art must dwindle, whether the power be hereditary or not: and the virtues of a Trajan or an Antonine are a hollow support for the feeling of contentment and happiness in the hearts of their subjects: such virtues are even a painful mockery;—something that is, and may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to death already. What they want is cultivation. They need to be stimulated to develop a large, comprehensive, catholic life, in which their domestic duties shall have an appropriate niche, and not dwindle down to a narrow and servile one, over which those duties shall spread and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, kept burning at night; and there is a story that a Government packet, passing in the days of our French wars, noticing that the sleepy watchman had allowed the fire to dwindle to a mere smoulder, discharged a cannon-ball at the spot to arouse the neglectful watcher. It must be remembered that the Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... across the ship and disappeared, but the noise of its engines did not dwindle more than a little. The blast of the siren seemed to summon it back again. Once more it came in sight, and this time it dived steeply, flashed across the forecastle deck amid a hideous uproar, desperately, horribly close to the dangling ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... did you ever see a large Camellia plant in full blossom? If you have not, I will risk my reputation by saying that all other flowers within my knowledge, barring the rose, dwindle into insignificance when compared with it. It excels the finest rose in doubleness and form of its flowers, and puts the virgin lily to shame for spotless purity and whiteness; if it only possessed fragrance, it would be unquestionably the Queen of the floral world. What I shall have to ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... glowering abroad from a shop door festooned in boots, his leather apron in front, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, as befitted an important man, saw young Gourlay pass the Cross with his bag in his hand, and dwindle up the road to ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... you are in a basement, foretells that you will see prosperous opportunities abating, and with them, pleasure will dwindle ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... husband! Arnauld, though so intimately connected with Racine for many years, had not read his compositions. When at length he was persuaded to read Phaedra, he declared himself to be delighted, but complained that the poet had set a dangerous example, in making the manly Hippolytus dwindle to an effeminate lover. As a critic, Arnauld was right; but Racine had his nation to please. Such persons entertain notions of poetry similar to that of an ancient father, who calls poetry the wine of Satan; or to that of the religious and austere Nicole, who was so ably ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is, for Egypt, a very modern place, on flat ground of course, containing the usual bazaars, mosques, barracks and pasha's residence or konak, with some substantial private buildings near the centre, from which the houses soon dwindle to the ordinary mud residence of the Fellah. The place was said to contain some fifty or sixty thousand people, while more than double that number was just now drawn to it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... an ordinary Christian gentleman like you or me, who had opened a mine and worked it for awhile with better and worse fortune. So, through a defective window-pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunch-backed giant, or dwindle into a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life they have found more real happiness than the applause ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... infinite complexity of things, is the concern of the writer, who spends all his skill on the endeavour to cloth the delicacies of perception and thought with a neatly fitting garment. So words grow and bifurcate, diverge and dwindle, until one root has many branches. Grammarians tell how "royal" and "regal" grew up by the side of "kingly," how "hospital," "hospice," "hostel" and "hotel" have come by their several offices. The inventor of the word "sensuous" gave to the English people an opportunity of reconsidering ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... he accomplish it? How small and insignificant he felt, and how utterly worthless! How he seemed to dwindle into nothing beside the great work that he was called to do! And yet how anxious he was to do it well! How he longed to be like his father David, a true shepherd to his people! How his heart yearned over his subjects; and how greatly he desired to govern them aright, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the rest, I saw the commerce dwindle, High-bosomed, sturdy vessels take the main And leave us, with the morning in their faces, Never to come to any port again. Slowly an ominous and pregnant silence Grew deep upon the wharves where ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... works, like the beginning and purpose of his intimacy with Elisa, are always large, comprehensive, and idealistic, but they always, even in his most important work, Merlin, dwindle to petty details of actuality. His significance for the present age does not so much rest on his objective achievement, as on some of his qualities which prevented achievement. He was perhaps the most considerable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... determined against its extension, was nevertheless pledged not to interfere with its continuance in the States where it already existed. Of course, when new regions were forever closed against it, from its very nature it must have begun to shrink and to dwindle; and probably gradual and compensated emancipation, which appealed very strongly to the new President's sense of justice and expediency, would, in the progress of time, by a reversion to the ideas ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... follow. She discovered that her husband was a hopeless gambler and spendthrift, spending long hours daily at the card-tables, watching with pale face and trembling lips his pile of gold dwindle (as it usually did) to its last coin; and often losing at a single sitting a month's revenue from the Civil List. Her own dowry of five million roubles, she knew, was safe from his clutches. Her father had taken care to make that secure, but Milan's private ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... existence, and the subdued solemnity of his reveries which sometimes remind us that he was writing in an age which had rediscovered Sir Thomas Browne. The following sentence proves how accurately he could catch the rhythm of the seventeenth century. "That we should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our prime our strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment, and we are the creatures of petty circumstance."[104] Other passages in the same essay echo this manner only ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Gospels cannot in any case necessarily indicate their existence ... It is unnecessary to add that, in proportion as we remove from Apostolic times without positive evidence of the existence and authenticity of our Gospels, so does the value of their testimony dwindle away. Indeed, requiring, as we do, clear, direct and irrefragable evidence of the integrity, authenticity, and historical character of these Gospels, doubt or obscurity on these points must inevitably be fatal to them as sufficient testimony—if ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a faint flush of palest primrose stole into the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... world bows down with reverence before the book of all books, the Bible. The Roman sword, the Grecian palette and chisel, have indeed rendered noble service to the cause of civilization, yet even their proudest claims dwindle into insignificance when compared with the benefits which the Bible has wrought. It has penetrated into realms where the names of Greece and Rome have never resounded. It has illumined empires and ennobled peoples, which Roman war and Grecian art ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... once; the Earth swept out all round them and grew larger, and larger still, and then began to dwindle. They saw then that they were launched upon some astounding journey. Does my reader wonder they saw when they had no eyes? They saw as they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible. Our eyes gather in light, and with ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... To her mind it is to be unfriendly. This propensity to give a personal turn to things is an expression of that intensity of nature which makes her, as Mr. Kipling has truthfully put it, "more deadly than the male!" She must be that—were she not, the race would dwindle. He would never sacrifice himself as she does for the preservation of the young! This necessity of concentrating her whole being on a little group makes her personal. The wise woman is she who recognizes that like all great forces this, too, ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated. But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque glass, Clark's magnetic accents appeared to dwindle before the inexorable character of the statement Brewster now scrutinized. It was the detailed and financial history of each successive company, a history in which birth and bones and articulation were clearly set forth, and what struck the young man most forcibly ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of such a hopeless, ghastly death, my sensations were accompanied by a languor and lassitude indescribable but far from unpleasant. To some extent thought or wonderment was still alive. Should I dwindle painlessly away, preferring rest and peace to effort, or should I make a last struggle to save myself? The ice seemed to close in more and more every moment. I ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of grit? What was the climate on its banks when it washed down the delicate leaves of broad-leaved trees, akin to our modern English ones, which are found in the fine mud-sand strata of Bournemouth? When, finally, did it dwindle down to the brook which now runs through Wareham town? Was its bed, sea or dry land, or under an ice sheet, during the long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say—Who is sufficient for these things?—Who can answer these ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... the cheapest product ever offered to man. Most newspapers cost more than they sell for; they could not live by subscriptions; for any profits, they certainly depend upon advertisements. The advertisements depend upon the circulation; the circulation is likely to dwindle if too much space is occupied by advertisements, or if it is evident that the paper belongs to its favored advertisers. The counting-room desires to conciliate the advertisers; the editor looks to making a paper satisfactory to his readers. Between this see-saw of the necessary subscriber ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dwindle, till on the immediate coast they wholly disappear. At Caribou Island, which, the reader will remember, is south of the Strait of Belle Isle, I found in a ravine some sadly stunted spruces, firs, and larches, not more than three feet high,—melancholy, wind-draggled, frightened-looking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... conducting frauds in mining. They had work before them, and had better be about it without any more delay, since there could be no telling at what time the absent men might show up. Once they returned to the camp, of course, the chances of the scouts accomplishing much began to dwindle enormously. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... got one pound ten," said Grannie. "I looked at the purse this morning. One pound ten, and sevenpence ha'penny in coppers; that's all. That wouldn't be a bad sum if there was anythink more coming in; but seeing as ther' aint, it is uncommon likely to dwindle, look at it from ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... and space quickly dwindle to their absolute minimum. If a body of troops is attacked in flank and rear by the enemy, it soon gets to a point where retreat no longer remains; such a position is very close to an absolute impossibility ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... gipsy carol in dear Mr. Kenyon's volume, because it is, and was in MS., a great favorite of mine. There are excellent things otherwise, as must be when he says them: one of the most radiant of benevolences with one of the most refined of intellects! How the paper seems to dwindle as I would fain talk on more. I have performed a great exploit, ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountains to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with baby) on other donkeys; guides, of course. We set off at ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... trotters, and drive so much and ride so little, it ain't easy to get the right saddle beast in our State. The Cape Breton pony is of the same breed, though poor feed, exposure to the weather, and rough usage has caused him to dwindle in size; but they are the toughest, hardiest, strongest, and most serviceable of their inches, I ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his abode in the Rue de Courcelles, situated in one of the most aristocratic quarters of Paris. But so far, events had shown his theory to be incorrect. In spite of the greatest economy, very cleverly concealed, he had seen the little capital which constituted his entire fortune dwindle away. He had originally possessed but twenty thousand francs, a sum which in no wise corresponded with his lofty pretensions. He had paid his rent that very morning; and he could not close his eyes ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... one they all dwindle away at the word of command, Olga, true to her word, making such a clatter as she passes Miss Fitzgerald's door as might readily be classed with those noises popularly supposed to be able to wake the silent dead. Whether it wakes Miss Fitzgerald is unknown to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... now they dwindle, Whirling with the whirling spindle. Twist ye, twine ye! even so Mingle human ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... upon it as a mere misfortune that no person could avoid; but I, besides that, thought it was a judgment upon me, to punish me in the loss of all my ill-got gain. But when I found that his own fortune began to dwindle as well as mine, I was almost ready to think it was possible his lordship might have been as wicked a liver as I had, and the same vengeance as had been poured upon me for my repeated crimes might also be ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... towns, they are generally unfit to engage in profitable conversation. The thousands of Aborigines, if ever they did exist in these parts, decreased to hundreds, the hundreds have lessened to tens, and the tens will dwindle to units before a very few years will ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... grow in height, to tower unhumanly tall above the cringing wretch he confronted. His eyes narrowed into red points that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife, Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one black face ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... talk like this!— It is as if we dissolved grey walls between us, Stepped through the solid portals, become but shadows, To hear a hidden music . . . Our own vast shadows Lean to a giant size on the windy walls, Or dwindle away; we hear our soft footfalls Echo forever behind us, ghostly clear, Music sings far off, flows suddenly near, And dies away like rain . . . We walk through subterranean caves again,— Vaguely above us ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... confines of the eighteenth century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's "monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a new art, and in others dwindle down ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... honor of being the first individual to excite the organs of the brain by agencies applied externally directly over them, before which the discoveries of Gall, Spurzheim, or Sir Charles Bell—men who have been justly regarded as benefactors of their race—dwindle into comparative insignificance. This important discovery has given us a key to man's nature, moral, intellectual, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... mariner, despairing, faint, (The price paid down) you are ordain'd to paint. Why dwindle to a cruet from a tun? Simple be ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... feel that our friendship is going to be subjected to the heaviest strain it has ever borne, and I wish to minimize any risks to it, in which, however, I don't believe. I am determined that it shall not dwindle into a form or pretence of friendship of which the substance has departed. It will be a great change if I do not feel that I can go to your house or to your room as freely as ever. At the same time confidence from one in the inner ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... know more economics than you, and I say that but for the railways the small towns would have gone to pieces. There never yet was a civilisation growing richer and improving its high roads in which the small towns did not dwindle. The village supplied the local market with bodily necessaries; the intellectual life, the civic necessities had to go into the large towns. It happened in the second and third centuries in Italy; it happened ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... great ocean from east to west was a Spanish lake, sacred to the ships of the king's subjects alone. With such a simple code of navigation coming in aid of the other causes which impoverished the land, it may be believed that the maritime traffic of the country would dwindle into the same exiguous proportions which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... remarked Carruthers. "The moment the ray touched him his body began to dwindle. But evidently he suffered no pain. As a matter of fact ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... lights, mazing the obscurity wherein I live. And after all, excellent as it is, I can be no gainer by this book. For the more we learn, the more we unlearn; we accumulate not, but substitute; and take away, more than we add. We dwindle while we grow; we sally out for wisdom, and retreat beyond the point whence we started; we essay the Fondiza, and get but the Phe. Of all simpletons, the simplest! Oh! that I were another sort of fool than I am, that I might restore my good ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... but to pluck the poor victim of the wrecks of his fortune! Absenteeism, the curse of England, is the only alternative of wretched and humiliating imprisonment. An entire change of habit ensues: ease and elegance of manners dwindle into coldness and neglect, liberality to meanness, and good-natured simplicity to chicanery and cunning. In society, too, how changed; once the gay table companion, full of gallantry and wit, now solitary and dejected, with the weeds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... carry out his dishonest purpose, and not likely to shrink from violence, to which he was probably only too well accustomed. From the old man he was not likely to obtain assistance, for already Paul's courage had begun to dwindle, and he regarded his nephew ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... begin to kindle And burn with love's sweet anguish As tapers blaze and dwindle. Love, our lady! lend thine ear! Would'st thou but spoil our pleasure? Ah, leave us not to languish! Who vows to thee his treasure, Haughty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... grimness that appears in the face of persecutors, Satan can tell how to lessen, and make to dwindle in our apprehensions, those truths unto which our hearts have joined themselves afore, and to which Christ our Lord has commanded us to stand. So that they shall now appear but little, small, inconsiderable things; things not worth engaging for; things not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall |
