"Pigmy" Quotes from Famous Books
... pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle, Wha us'd at trystes an' fairs to driddle. Her strappin limb and gausy middle (He reach'd nae higher) Had hol'd his heartie like a riddle, ... — Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... more as active as a boy and almost as impatient for the start for the Dark Continent. Ben slept at the Chester's home that night and if his dreams were not as populated with visions of elephants, leopards, deer, huge snakes and pigmy savages as theirs it was not any lack of interest in the coming expedition that ... — The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... their way up the wolf-haunted bottom, over rocks, through puddles, into pigmy forests of cherry and plum. But now, careless of lost time, Dallas ran with backward looks and frequent haltings, giving strict heed to the whereabouts of ... — The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... or fairer symmetry than that of body and soul, as the contrary is the greatest of deformities. A leg or an arm too long or too short is at once ugly and unserviceable, and the same is true if body and soul are disproportionate. For a strong and impassioned soul may 'fret the pigmy body to decay,' and so produce convulsions and other evils. The violence of controversy, or the earnestness of enquiry, will often generate inflammations and rheums which are not understood, or assigned to their true cause by the professors of medicine. And in like ... — Timaeus • Plato
... to Melton Mowbray, a cleanly, good-looking town in Leicestershire, situated on the little river Eye. One cannot say exactly in regard to Rutlandshire what an Englishman once said to the authorities of a pigmy Italian duchy, who ordered him to leave it in twenty-four hours. "I only require fifteen minutes," said cousin John, with a look and tone which Jonathan could not imitate. This rural county is to the shire-family of England what ... — A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... see, and more often hear, the clear, strong notes of the Western meadowlark ringing over the hills and meadows. The wise, and rather murderous, magpie goes chattering about. Here and there the quiet bluebird is seen. The kingfisher is in his appointed place. Long-crested jays, Clarke's crows, and pigmy nuthatches are plentiful, and the wild note of the chickadee is heard on every hand. Above the altitude of eight thousand feet you may hear, in June, the marvelous melody ... — Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... steamer, a mere pigmy beside this gigantic Indian liner, had left the harbor of Aden at the same time, and was beating in a southwesterly direction across the gulf with a speed that was rapidly increasing the distance ... — The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... roars. All creatures hide or fly,— Such mortal terror at The work of one poor gnat! With constant change of his attack, The snout now stinging, now the back, And now the chambers of the nose; The pigmy fly no mercy shows. The lion's rage was at its height; His viewless foe now laugh'd outright, When on his battle-ground he saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody ... — The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... "You pigmy," cried the steward interrupting the speaker, "we have fed you and let you abuse people to your heart's content, but if you wag your sharp tongue against our mistress, I will take you by the girdle and fling you to the ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... A pigmy scraper, wi' his fiddle, Wha us'd at trysts and fairs to driddle, Her strappan limb and gausy middle He reach'd na higher, Had hol'd his heartie like a ... — The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... nor the left, marching onward, onward to Vienna. Such obstacles as he encountered on his way he removed by the might and strength of his forces, as an elephant lifts his ponderous foot to crush a pigmy lying in his path. His march was through burning villages and devastated fields; the glare of his torch illumined the sky, the blood of his victims reddened the earth. Austria's desponding hopes were concentrated upon the Duke of Lorraine; for the King of Poland had not arrived, and the ... — Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... to climb there this afternoon. Lazily smoking a cigar I drank in the pastoral panorama spread out before me. The old Sumner road wound as a dusty-gray ribbon amid fields of grain and corn. Below were the pigmy figures of golfers, grotesque in their insignificance, striding along ... — John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... about it, and be told it was King's College. If he asked which king, he would again be told Henry VI. If he then went into the library and looked up Henry VI. in an encyclopaedia, he would find that the legendary giant, who had left these gigantic works behind him, was in history an almost invisible pigmy. Amid the varying and contending numbers of a great national quarrel, he is the only cipher. The contending factions carry him about like a bale of goods. His desires do not seem to be even ascertained, far less satisfied. And yet his real desires ... — A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... figure in lithography as the fantastic Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes (in chalk) to shelter under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose: Marshal Loban's squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy figure and round spectacled face were no more to appear in print.* Robert Macaire was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace—his remarks were a great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of the great men ... — The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of nearly a hundred feet, began to travel shoreward. It grew heavier and heavier as the water grew shallower. Then a leather-colored mountain of a back heaved itself up through the smother and a colossal form, that would make the hugest elephant a pigmy, came ponderously ... — In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... reconstitute the process. What the Yorkshiremen desired to make for themselves was a pigmy, prick-eared terrier with a long, silky, silvery grey and tan coat. They already possessed the foundation in the old English Black and Tan wire-haired Terrier. To lengthen the coat of this working breed they might very well have had recourse to a cross with the prick-eared ... — Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... everywhere a wonderful cloud sea, scintillating with colour. It is enough to make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. When I think of those ateliers of ours, the art jargon, the decadents with their flamboyant talk I long for a two-edged sword and a minute of Divinity. To perdition with ... — Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... extinct and gigantic quadrupeds brings the whole question of the succession of species vividly before one's mind; and I found in South America great pieces of tesselated armour exactly like, but on a magnificent scale, that covering the pigmy armadillo; I had found great teeth like those of the living sloth, and bones like those of the cavy. An analogous succession of allied forms had been previously observed in Australia. Here then we see ... — The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with this touch of romance he took new attributes. His Japanese cook inhabited the lower story through which one entered to mount to the main floor. Inside the place revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more diminutively impressive. One passed it on the way to the works, and often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were ... — The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... endured. He has shot up into stature while those of his contemporaries who bulked largest in the eyes of the world have dwindled and shrunk into insignificance in comparison with him. The witty, dissolute king, Charles II., is now seen to be a wretched pigmy: Milton, who died in blindness and political disgrace, is the real king of that era, overtopping all the rulers, cabals, and intriguers. So, too, in Scotland, Burns is the giant of his period. During Burns's life, the Earl of Dundas was to all intents and purposes king of the country. He could ... — Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... be so fortunate as to always surround ourselves with others who have acquired it, the student of the Higher Philosophy must learn to be serene and self-poised when he encounters life's pigmy worries. ... — The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... organ wander o'er The rock-built mountain, and the winding shore; No apt ideas could the pigmy mite, Or embryon emmet to the touch excite; But as each mass the solar ray reflects, The eye's clear glass the transient beams collects; Bends to their focal point the rays that swerve, And paints the living ... — The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... America being larger than the otter of Europe, while the badger is smaller; in the mink being with us a much stouter animal than its Scandinavian and Russian kinsman, while the reverse is true of our sable or pine marten. No one can say why the European red deer should be a pigmy compared to its giant brother, the American wapiti; why the Old World elk should average smaller in size than the almost indistinguishable New World moose; and yet the bison of Lithuania and the Caucasus be on the whole larger and ... — Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... king; For thus his royalty doth speak in me. He is prepar'd; and reason too he should: This apish and unmannerly approach, This harness'd masque and unadvised revel This unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops, The king doth smile at; and is well prepar'd To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, From out the circle of his territories. That hand which had the strength, even at your door, To cudgel you, and make you take the hatch; To dive, like buckets, in concealed wells; To crouch in litter of your stable planks; To lie, ... — King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... at a brick wall, through which we passed by a gate into an extensive court or yard. The darkness would allow me to see nothing but outlines. Compared with the pigmy dimensions of my father's wooden hovel, the buildings before me were of gigantic loftiness. The horses were here far more magnificently accommodated than I had been. By a large door we entered an elevated hall. "Stay here," said he, "just ... — Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... distant objects dwindling and growing dwarfish, the closer objects swelling enormous and intolerable. There is something frantic in the notion that one's own father by walking a little way can be changed by a blast of magic to a pigmy. There is something farcical in the fancy that Nature keeps one's uncle in an infinite number of sizes, according to where he is to stand. All soldiers in retreat turn into tin soldiers; all bears in rout into toy bears; as if on the ultimate horizon of the world ... — Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... made his escape from Captain Patterson's ship, the "City of Edinburgh," about five years before, and had been living among the natives ever since. Compared with the New Zealanders, he looked, Nicholas says, like a pigmy among giants. However, he had got so much attached to the manners of his new associates that he declared he would much rather remain where he was than return to his own country. He had married a native woman, and was treated, ... — John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... the Spanish Count d'Aranda to his royal master in 1782, "is born a pigmy. A day will come when it will be a giant, even a colossus. Liberty of conscience, the facility for establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the advantages of the new government, will draw thither farmers and ... — The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... graceful and evidently quite tall, although she seemed a pigmy among the towering giants that attended her stroll. Her hands were thrust deep into the pockets of a white duck skirt. A glance revealed white shoes and trim ankles in blue. She wore no hat. Her hair was like spun gold, thick, wavy and ... — Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... gang were busied here and there, bulking grotesquely as they moved about the fire, seeming disheveled demons of the pit. Like some master imp torturing a pigmy over the flames, old Ben York was kneeling close beside the blaze, holding to the coals a hickory stick, which served as spit for the roasting of a squirrel. The brilliance shone full on the frowsy gray whiskers, and, above them, the blinking, rheumy eyes, so intent on the proper browning ... — Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... responsibility, owing allegiance to God and my own conscience alone. I may have been born with less capacity than the least among you, with small chance of growing to your mental stature, or reaching your standard of moral elevation; but I have a perfect right to sit in your midst, pigmy that I may be, since I am one of "the people" who did ordain this glorious old Constitution, and one of "the governed," whose consent is made the basis of a government that can be ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... She seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of that curse, an overheated and discursive imagination; but whenever, opening a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, her head in her pigmy hand, that room seemed to ... — Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... ran ashore for his peavie. Roaring Dick, like a demon incarnate, threw himself into the work. Forty men attacked the jam at a dozen places, encouraging the movement, twisting aside the timbers that threatened to lock anew, directing pigmy-like the titanic forces into the channel of their efficiency. Roaring like wild cattle the logs swept by, at first slowly, then with the railroad rush of the curbed freshet. Men were everywhere, taking chances, like cowboys ... — Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... fly, And, on the verge of death, learn how to die! Vain exhortation! wash the Ethiop white, Discharge the leopard's spots, turn day to night, Control the course of Nature, bid the deep Hush at thy pigmy voice her waves to sleep— Perform things passing strange, yet own thy art Too weak to work a change in such a heart; 440 That Envy, which was woven in the frame At first, will to the last remain the same. Reason may droop, may ... — Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... feet high, in which are cut the steps of a not very solid staircase, forms here the curtain of the esplanade which carries the pigmy fort. The house of the commandant consists of a couple of huts placed in a square, and the soldiers occupy an oblong building a hundred feet away, at the ... — Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... base passion—miserable dupes Who seldom mark their own worst bane of all. The black-skinned girl is "tawny like the honey"; The filthy and the fetid's "negligee"; The cat-eyed she's "a little Pallas," she; The sinewy and wizened's "a gazelle"; The pudgy and the pigmy is "piquant, One of the Graces sure"; the big and bulky O she's "an Admiration, imposante"; The stuttering and tongue-tied "sweetly lisps"; The mute girl's "modest"; and the garrulous, The spiteful spit-fire, is "a sparkling wit"; And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness Becomes "a slender ... — Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... than a literary colossus. Pigmies can only claim pigmy honors. Size, after all, rules in this universe, because size and power go together. The large bodies rule the small. There is no impression of greatness in art without something that is analogous to size,—breadth, depth, height. The sense ... — Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... been the deeds done by the heroes of the sixteenth century with the pigmy means at their command, they were but the merest child's play to the awful storm of devastation which, in a few hours, was to burst over southern England. Then it was England against Spain; now it was Anglo-Saxondom ... — The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... stage of all time, and on it placed a lot of little figures, "pigmy minds"—all save one, and he the nearest great, an unworldly person summoned from a cloister, with the vision of genius and the practical incapacity of one who has run away from life, hating men but loving all mankind, eloquent but inarticulate in a large way, incapable of true self expression ... — The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... the lagoons—ducks, shags, great geese, and pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed ... — We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... fifteen generations of Kami, whose birth seems to have been essential to the "making of the land," though their names afford no clue to the functions discharged by them. From over sea, seated in a gourd and wearing a robe of wren's feathers, there comes a pigmy, Sukuna Hikona, who proves to be one of fifteen hundred children begotten by the Kami of the original trinity. Skilled in the arts of healing sickness and averting calamities from men or animals, this pigmy renders invaluable aid to the Great-Name ... — A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... pigs, with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... return to others the evil they did me.' Well, no! not at all: he said, 'Oh! if I were strong and bold, I would defend the weak against the strong; for I am weak, and the strong make me suffer.' In the mean time, as he was too much of a pigmy to prevent the strong from molesting the weak, he prevented the larger beasts ... — Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... for some hanging matter—"suspend your judgment," or you will deserve credit for very little. We promise you that there are giants on the earth in these days, ay, and famous giants of their cubits! But when a giant is made to drivel, his drivelings are very little better than those of a pigmy. And we swear to you, (under correction from the parish vestry, which is entitled to half-a-crown an oath,) that the circulating libraries would make a driveler of Seneca! Under the circulating library tyranny, Johnson himself would have been forced to break up his long words into smaller pieces, ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... instead of the philosophic term God) can be enjoyed as well as obeyed. He paints life at its darkest and then tells the babe unborn to take the leap in the dark. That is heroic; and to my instinct at least Schopenhauer looks like a pigmy beside his pupil. But it is the heroism of a morbid and almost asphyxiated age. It is awful to think that this world which so many poets have praised has even for a time been depicted as a man-trap ... — George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... lonely human being, a pigmy in the midst of the architecture of nature, stands solitary on those icy waters and looks abroad to the horizon and sees mighty castles and temples of eternal ice raising up their pinnacles tipped by the pencil ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is the typical man of that generation, both the victim and the hero of his time—a man who is almost a Titan in word and a pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is not an impostor. His enthusiasm is ... — Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... held out. The sultan, enraged at this opposition, now despatched what he considered an overwhelming force, with orders to take the town without delay, and to punish the garrison as they deserved for their foolish obstinacy. But what was his surprise and fury to receive word that the pigmy still held out stubbornly against the leviathan, that all their efforts to take it were in vain, and that its guns commanded and swept the pass so that it was impossible to advance under its storm ... — Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... slumb'ring string, And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing, Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste; Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste, Lay down their grainy loads, as slow they move Thro' lanes of reed and grass, to them a grove! As if an Orpheus thou, they gather round, Erect their tiny ears, and drink the sound. Gray was ... — Poems • Sir John Carr
... soul, which, working out its way Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er informed the tenement ... — Familiar Quotations • Various
... overlooked an immense plain, uncultivated, apparently unfertile, and without a sign of life as far as the eye could reach. Kara Dagh, in the south, lifted nearer us its cluster of dark summits; to the north, the long ridge of Uesedjik Dagh (the Pigmy Mountain) stretched like a cape into the plain; Hassan Dagh; wrapped in a soft white cloud, receded behind us, and the snows of Taurus seemed almost as distant as when we first beheld them from the Syrian Gates. We rode for four hours over the dead level, the only objects that met our eyes being ... — The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the dewy grasslands where late the frost hath shone, And lo, what elfin cities are these we come upon! What pigmy domes and thatches, what Arab caravan, What downy-roofed pagodas that have known no touch of man! Are these the oldtime meadows? Yes, the wildgrape scents the air; The breath of ripened orchards still is incense everywhere; Yet do these dawn-encampments bring the lurking memories Of Egypt ... — The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... channel from Europe, and imagine her to contain in her chief metropolis, as she does at present, the amazing contradictions and refutations of the democratic idea which are to be noted now. What food for English, French, and German sarcasm would our pigmy Four Hundred then become! In those remote realms they have already shrank aghast at the licentious tyrannies of our newspapers. England has freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a cipher. Our law of libel ... — The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... Spirits is a deep forest which stretches back and back in a dense and chaotic tangle of strangled sapling and parasitic weed to the edge of the Pigmy forest. No man—white or brown or black—has explored the depth of the Forbidden Forest, for here the wild beasts have their lairs and rear their young; and here are mosquito in dense clouds. Moreover, and this is important, a certain potent ghost named ... — Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... in your —, divine, charming is —. in the calm light of mild —, teaching by examples Physic to the dogs —, take Physician, is there no —, heal thyself Picture, look here upon this Pierian spring Pigmies are pigmies still Pigmy body, fretted the, to decay Pigs squeak, as naturally as Pilgrim shrines, such graves are Pilot of the Galilean lake Pinch, a hungry, lean-faced villain Pink of courtesy Pines, silent sea of Pin's fee, set my life at a Pitch, he that toucheth ... — Familiar Quotations • Various
... know any more than little mites of Sunday-school children do nowdays. I never could understand why his philosophy was so remarkable, only that he lived in a heathen country and got ahead of all the rest, but if he were living now he would be a pigmy." ... — Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... a muddy stream, and with its low banks, scattered flat sand-bars, and pigmy islands, a melancholy river, straggling through the centre of vast prairies, and only saved from being impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel trees standing at long distances from each other, on ... — The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that invitation to his house at, any moment. I am perishing to go! I do long to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pigmy among these pigmies here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am really—." Her thoughts drifted into other channels, for a season. Then she continued:— "He said I could be useful in the ... — The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... second trapper was by no means a man of low stature, alongside his companion he appeared only a pigmy. He was not less strangely accoutred, but in the absence of the firelight his costume was not sufficiently visible for its style to be distinguished. Of him and his dress we ... — Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the ... — Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... scorn as well as defiance in her voice—scorn because he stood before her so silently; scorn because the fierce torrent of her anger had flowed unchecked. She had only to stand up to him, it seemed, and like the giant of the fable he dwindled to a pigmy. She was no longer hurt by his passivity. She despised ... — The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... unturned to discover if any foul play in connection with it could possibly be perpetrated. But the impossibility of such being the case seemed more and more evident as I went on with my search. Only a pigmy could be secreted inside the idol. There was no vulgar form of deception possible on the lines, for instance, of the ancient priests of Pompeii who conducted a speaking-tube to an idol's mouth. Siva was not even standing by the wall, thus precluding the possibility of the sounds being ... — A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... sorts of eagle (Circaetos gallicus and Aquila naevioides), the osprey, the vulture, the falcon, the kite, the honey-buzzard, the marsh-harrier, the sparrow-hawk, owls of two kinds (Ketupa ceylonensis and Athene meridionalis), the grey shrike (Lanius excubitor), the common cormorant, the pigmy cormorant (Graeculus pygmaeus), numerous seagulls, as the Adriatic gull (Larus melanocephalus), Andonieri's gull, the herring-gull, the Red-Sea-gull (Larus ichthyo-aetos), and others; the gull-billed tern (Sterna anglica), ... — History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... your boasted chivalry? Is this an evidence of the existence of that heroic valor which has so often led our arms on to glory and immortality? Re-open negotiation, sir, with France? Do it, and soon you will find your flag insulted, dishonored, and trodden in the dust by the pigmy States of Asia and Africa—by the very banditti of the earth. Sir, the only negotiations, says the President of the United States, that he would encounter, should ... — Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... that are visible! The pureness of the medium through which things are seen presents distant objects with great distinctness, but it will not present them in their natural size, for it can not change the angle of vision. The villages upon the table-land were apparently pigmy villages, inhabited by pigmy men and pigmy women, surrounded with pigmy cattle, and garrisoned by pigmy soldiery. It is, by an optical illusion, Liliput in real life. Had the English satirist placed himself where we now stood, he would have more than realized the picture which his fancy painted. ... — Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... children. The beauty of the season, the cloudless sun, gilded these few peaceful days. Susannah compared her child with other children, marvelled at the baby intercourse he held with them, at the likes and dislikes displayed among these pigmy associates; and the other mothers had like sources ... — The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... at Portsmouth Gates, A pigmy at Goree. An orange-tawny up the Straits, A black at St. Lucie. Thus whatsomedever course I bend ... — The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... GODDESS with attention sweet Turns to the GNOMES, that circle round her feet; Orb within orb approach the marshal'd trains, And pigmy legions darken all the plains; 5 Thrice shout with silver tones the applauding bands, Bow, ere She speaks, and clap their fairy hands. So the tall grass, when noon-tide zephyr blows, Bends it's green blades in undulating rows; Wide o'er the fields the billowy tumult ... — The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... steps the scholar's thought strode on, and the sombre storming of the gale made an awful accompaniment to the pigmy's strenuous musings. Ferrier's destiny was being settled in that cataclysm, had he only known it; his pride was smitten, and he was ready to "receive the kingdom of God as a little child," to begin to learn ... — A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... "the pigmy hog is about the size of a large hare, and extremely resembles both in form and size a young pig of the ordinary wild kind of about a month old, except in its dark and unstriped pelage. The likeness ... — Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... up in his majesty; Ahchoogah was like a pigmy before him. "Tell him to go!" cried the policeman. "His mouth is full of lies and bad talk. Tell him to have the dug-out or the two canoes here by to-morrow morning or I'll come ... — The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... waves, dashed here and there by conflicting currents, but resolutely steaming on—such is the audacity of man—and poking her venturesome nose into the boiling foam under the Horseshoe. On the deck are pigmy passengers in oil-skin suits, clumsy figures, like arctic explorers. The boat tosses about like a chip, it hesitates and quivers, and then, slowly swinging, darts away down the current, fleeing from the wrath of the waters, and pursued ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... there came a troop of revilers and slanderers—men of evil tongue, who swore that the Fane-builder was no better than a midnight robber, and had despoiled other temples of all that adorned his own. The tale was as false and foul as they who coined it; but when they pointed to many pigmy fanes which now began to be reared about the city, and when men saw that they were built of like marbles as those which glittered in the temple of Adonais, they paused not to mark that the fairest stones in these new structures were but the imperfect sculptures ... — Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the god of the toilet of the Egyptians. He was represented as a deformed pigmy. He led the women to conquest in love, and the men in war. He was ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers
... building, which was thronged with strange, gigantic figures—like the wild possessors of a lost globe, such as Lord Byron has described in "Cain" as beheld by the fratricide, when, guided by Lucifer, he wandered among the shadowy existences of those worlds which had been destroyed to make way for our pigmy earth. I will not attempt further to describe the magnificent vision which a little pill of "brown gum" had conjured up from the realm of ideal being. No words that I can command would do justice to its ... — The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... referred to, was the simplicity and condescension of his manners. From the gigantic stature of his understanding, he was prepared to trample down his pigmy competitors, and qualified at all times to enforce his unquestioned pre-eminence; but his mind was conciliating, his behaviour unassuming, and his bosom the receptacle ... — Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... seems highly probable that this species occasionally exceeds 12 ft. in height. On the ground, between the great African elephant's fore and hind legs, in the museum, I placed a stuffed specimen of the smallest terrestrial mammal—the pigmy shrew-mouse. It is worth while thus calling to mind that the little animal has practically every separate bone, muscle, blood-vessel, nerve, and other structure present in the huge monster compared with it—is, in fact, built closely upon the same plan, and yet is so much smaller ... — More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the shadows and grotesque fragments of the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But his voice—thanks to the inimitable constructive art of the ancient architect, which, even in the desolation of at least thirteen centuries, has not lost its cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and fills the whole vast hollow with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank heaven, there is no danger of Roman resurrection here! The illusion is completely broken, and we turn to gather the first violets of February, ... — Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... banish'd thence on Wednesday night, By Jove you can do nothing right. I hear (perhaps the story false is,) From Almacks, that he never waltzes With Lady Anne or Lady Biddy, Twirling till he's in Love, or giddy. The girl a pigmy, he a giant, His cravat stiff, her corset pliant. There, while some jaded couple stops, The rest go round like humming tops. Each in the circle with its neighbour Sharing alternate rest and labour; While many a gentle chaperon As the fair ... — Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Pigmy flints" are tiny, prehistoric implements. Some of them are a quarter of an inch in size. England, India, France, South Africa—they've been found in many parts of the world—whether showered there or not. They belong high up in the ... — The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... for the two, and they were to ride "turn about"; but Chuar'ruumpeak, the chief, rides, and Shuts, the one-eyed, barelegged, merry-faced pigmy, walks, and points the way with a slender cane; then leaps and bounds by the shortest way, and sits down on a rock and waits demurely until we come, always meeting us with a jest, his face a rich ... — Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... too, and the angry hiss of the storm-lashed waters, contributed their quota to the feeling of awe with which we looked abroad from our pigmy ark. ... — For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... Hall filled is enough of itself to arouse enthusiasm, whatever the object of the gathering may be. Ten thousand human beings, more or less, swarming on the floor, clustering on the walls, rising tier above tier, until in dim distance the pigmy throng seems soaring up into the very heavens, is a tremendous, a solemn, a heart-stirring sight, suggestive—I write with reverence—of the Judgment Day. And when such an assembly is convened for the purpose of considering matters ... — Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Chanteloupe; and the life of the former having been on one occasion attempted, the faction of Monsieur did not hesitate to attribute the contemplated assassination to the adherents of the Queen-mother; whence arose continual conflicts between the two pigmy Courts, which rendered unavailing all the efforts of the Marquis d'Ayetona to reconcile the royal relatives. Moreover, Marie was indignant that the Marquis constantly evinced towards her son a consideration in which he sometimes failed towards herself; and, ... — The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... manufacture. It required little observation to discover that this strange object was revered as a god. By the side of the big and lusty images standing sentinel over the altars of the Hoolah Hoolah ground, it seemed a mere pigmy in tatters. But appearances all the world over are deceptive. Little men are sometimes very potent, and rags sometimes cover very extensive pretensions. In fact, this funny little image was the 'crack' god of the island; lording it ... — Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... squeeze was in sooth better than yours," said he. The giant didn't know what to say, for he couldn't have believed it of the little fellow. To prove him again, the giant lifted a stone and threw it so high that the eye could hardly follow it. "Now, my little pigmy, let me see you do that." "Well thrown," said the tailor; "but, after all, your stone fell to the ground; I'll throw one that won't come down at all." He dived into his wallet again, and grasping the bird in his hand, he threw it up into the air. The bird, enchanted to be free, soared up into the ... — The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... keep, If thou dost always, or dost never sleep? Sure hasty-pudding is thy chiefest dish, With bullock's liver, or some stinking fish: Garbage, ox-cheeks, and tripes, do feast thy brain, Which nobly pays this tribute back again. With daisy-roots thy dwarfish Muse is fed, A giant's body with a pigmy's head. Canst thou not find, among thy numerous race Of kindred, one to tell thee that thy plays Are laught at by the pit, box, galleries, nay, stage? Think on't a while, and thou wilt quickly find Thy body made for labour, not thy mind. No other use of ... — English Satires • Various
... much regretted my not being able to understand: Before the song was well finished, Mr Cumming came up with the tobacco, and I could not but smile at the astonishment which I saw expressed in his countenance, upon perceiving himself, though six feet two inches high, become at once a pigmy among giants; for these people may indeed more properly be called giants than tall men. Of the few among us who are full six feet high, scarcely any are broad and muscular in proportion to their stature, ... — A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Of the first mud that comes to hand. A handful of dirt, a breath, and behold Adam. It suffices for a God to pass by. A God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny being. By the word "fortune" we mean chance, to some extent. That pigmy kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. Will that become an Ionian or a Boeotian? Wait, currit rota, the Spirit of Paris, that demon which creates the children of chance and the men of destiny, reversing the process of the Latin potter, makes ... — Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of earth,' but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, with immortal longings, with thoughts which sweep the heavens and 'wander through eternity.' A pigmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there finds rest." Then turning to the combined effects of individual lives, the ... — The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of the "Battle in the Clouds," and I could almost evoke the presence of General Joe Hooker, with his once grand proportions and noble mien, so deservedly famed as The Hero of Lookout Mountain. I afterward ascended another hill, which, although a pigmy in comparison with the Leviathan Lookout, would, in the monotony of our prairie country, be ranked as a mountain. It was upon its top were constructed the government water works, and upon which my brother William was employed for two years, occupying ... — The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... all things vanish away—their bodily structure into the general substance; the very memory of them into that great gulf and abysm of past thoughts. Ah! 'tis on a tiny space of earth thou art creeping through life—a pigmy soul carrying a dead body to ... — Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... man looms as large as a mountain before us. An insect does not see things as they are but as they seem to it. Growth in intelligence necessitates a truer appreciation of proportions and relations. The pigmy also sees little but himself, but years and experience leave behind them wisdom. The civilized races have all risen from barbarism and savagery—that is, from a state of imperfect thinking as well as of imperfect loving and choosing. Experience and culture bring larger knowledge and a more ... — The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... that half of Red Lake was wet, and that the shiny patches here and there were not mirage pictures but shallow pools of water. Moreover, out in the reddest, wettest part of it an automobile stood with its back to him, and pigmy figures were moving slowly ... — Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... her affectionate and devoted husband, who was a nephew of the once Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts. He was very wealthy, besides his West India estate—owning a large estate in England. The wonderful piety of this devoted saint, during the long years of her widowhood, ought to humble pigmy Christians, like me, in the dust. Oh, can I ever be saved, if such men ... — The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the master-at-arms. "In brig there, I say!"—They dally no more; Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, Pinion and cripple and hustle him in. Anon, under sentry, between twin ... — John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... town near, and I had no friends whom I could visit? I did a fair amount of reading, for Lord Saltire let me have the run of his library. Gibbon gave me a couple of enchanting weeks. You know the effect that he produces. You seem to be serenely floating upon a cloud, and looking down on all these pigmy armies and navies, with a wise Mentor ever at your side to whisper to you the inner meaning of all ... — The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... glimmering gray; and some there be From chance-dropped seed that rear them, as the tall Chestnuts, and, mightiest of the branching wood, Jove's Aesculus, and oaks, oracular Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth A forest of dense suckers from the root, As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant, Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes Nature imparted first; hence all the race Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves Springs into verdure. Other means there are, Which use by method for itself acquired. One, sliving suckers ... — The Georgics • Virgil
... farmers, is the Dodder (Cuscuta trifolii), a destructive vegetable parasite which strangles the plants in a crafty fashion, and which goes by the name of "hellweed," or "devil's guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, ... — Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Parnell kills him, it is no loss to the world; but if O'Shea kills Parnell, the Irish cause is lost," said John Dillon, who went to see O'Shea and told him to go after some pigmy ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... by God requested To BE, the glorious light Has never paused or rested, But travelled day and night. Yet pigmy man, unseeing The purpose of his being, Demands escape and freeing From universal force. But law is law for ever, And like a mighty lever It thrusts him tow'rd endeavour, And speeds him ... — Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... The king's. Then the people love him for being so rich. The king receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a farthing. How generous he is! The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back. A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant: it is to perch himself on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it, there is the wonder; and that he should admire ... — The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... for the absurdity it was. Instead of walking on together in simple equality, in mutual honour and devotion, each helping the other to be better still, to have the woman, large and noble, come cowering after her pigmy lord, as if he were the god of her life, instead of a Satan doing his best to damn her to his own meanness!—it is a contrast that needs no argument! Not the less if the woman be married to such a man, will it be her highest glory, by the patience ... — Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... You defy me?—you pigmy, you insolent scrap! What!—this to my teeth, that have worried a score Of the biggest rats bred in the granary floor! Come on, and be swallowed! ... — Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... engulfed her. She could not rest her soul upon this pigmy. She felt revengeful rather toward him—revengeful, because he could sit there opposite her so capable and faithful, so truthful and decent, so utterly unlike the ... — The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man ... — Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... dwarf who drank the sea dry. As he was walking one day with Vishnoo, the insolent ocean asked the god who the pigmy was that strutted by his side. Vishnoo replied it was the patriarch Agastya, who was going to restore earth to its true balance. Ocean, in contempt, spat its spray in the pigmy's face, and the sage, in revenge of this affront, drank ... — Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... thousand difficulties. Bailly often confounded them. We may regret, I think, that in many instances, the learned academician disdained to throw in the face of his vain fellow-labourers these words of an ancient philosopher: "When I examine myself, I find I am but a pigmy; when I compare myself, I think I ... — Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... whole gang had been turned to stone, their self-constituted leader being the most rigid of the crowd, and he stared at Dick Winthorpe as a giant might stare at the pigmy who tried to snatch ... — Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... progress. It was surrounded by an atmosphere absolutely fatal to animal life; an atmosphere which, while it stimulated vegetable growth, no living thing could breathe and continue to live. Hence it was, that vegetation, gigantic almost beyond conception, covered its surface. Fern, which is now a pigmy plant, nowhere higher than a few feet, grew tall and overshadowing like great oaks, while oaks, it is fair to presume, towered thousands of feet towards the sky. These stupendous forests stood alone upon the surface of the earth; no animals ... — Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of sweetest music the peace of the words stole over the dwarf's troubled spirit, soothing and fortifying him so that he felt himself no longer a weakling, a pigmy, but a veritable giant to fight and to endure. And with a smile upon his lips and a light not of earth in his sunken eyes, Bambo and his charges slipped noiselessly away from the bear, the monkey, and the caravan, ... — Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... sequestered spot where the flame would be unseen. Some of us at once started for a large lagoon that we had passed in the morning, and creeping up through the long grass, found its surface quite covered with water-fowl of every description, from the black swan to the beautiful pigmy goose. A volley, fired at a concerted signal, strewed the surface of the lake with the dead and wounded, and we were compelled to stand idly on the bank until the wind wafted the game ashore, for at the report of the guns two or ... — Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... Pigmy seraphs gone astray, Velvet people from Vevay, Belles from some lost summer day, Bees' exclusive coterie. Paris could not lay the fold Belted down with emerald; Venice could not show a cheek Of a tint so lustrous meek. Never such an ... — Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... life. But when he became Chancellor of the University, one of his duties was to lead a procession to the Cathedral, where certain formal religious services were held. Kant tried to have the exercises in a hall, but failing in this, he did his duty, and marched like a pigmy drum-major at the head of ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... the first time in his life he felt humble. He perceived how misguided he had been ever to suppose that he could pit his pigmy wits against this smooth-faced worker ... — A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... opine—let Fame say what it can— Of ancient vigour, (Fame is, oft, a Liar) That Milo was a pigmy to this Man, And his fat Ox quite skinny ... — Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... that the masters are the strong people of the world, but they are not. Labor is really the giant, the Samson, and it would be impossible for the pigmy, capital, to rob him, but for his lack of knowledge. The Holy Ghost sees to it that the slave class is kept ... — Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... shame—not for brave men dead in vain, not for a wasted land, scourged and flame-shrunken from the Rhine to the Loire, not for provinces lost nor cities gone forever—but for the strange creatures that her agony brought forth, shapes simian and weird, all mouth and convulsive movement, little pigmy abortions mouthing and playing antics before high Heaven while the land ran blood in every furrow and the world was a hell ... — Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... OF MANKIND to the level of the "man of the future"—as idealized by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly POSSIBLE! He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of mankind—and perhaps also ... — Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... broad daylight, on that open stony hillside, where the baby pines were growing, scarcely tall enough to be a badge for a MacGregor's bonnet, I came suddenly upon his innocent body, lying mummified by the dry air and sun: a pigmy kangaroo. I am ingloriously ignorant of these subjects; had never heard of such a beast; thought myself face to face with some incomparable sport of nature; and began to cherish hopes of immortality in ... — The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Achitophel was first: A Name to all succeeding Ages curst. For close Designs, and crooked Counsels fit; Sagacious, Bold, and Turbulent of wit: Restless, unfixt in Principles and Place; In Pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of Disgrace. A fiery Soul, which working out its way, Fretted the Pigmy-Body to decay: And o'r inform'd the Tenement of Clay, A daring Pilot in extremity; Pleas'd with the Danger, when the Waves went high He sought the Storms; but for a Calm unfit, Would Steer too nigh the Sands, to boast his Wit. ... — Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... et seq.] Without denying the danger of the extension of slavery, he argued that it was not for Congress to stay the course of this dark torrent. "If you have power," said he, "to restrict the new states on admission, you may squeeze a new-born sovereign state to the size of a pigmy." There would be nothing to hinder Congress "from plundering power after power at the expense of the new states," until they should be left empty shadows of domestic sovereignty, in a union between giants and dwarfs, between power and feebleness. ... — Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... adulteration of money—in ancient Rome, in Ireland under James the Second, in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, in the American colonies and the United States, in Portugal, in Greece, in various republics of Central and South America, even the assignats of the French Revolution—seem pigmy frauds in comparison with the present vast inundation ... — The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... which a confectioner out of a back street has furnished, and where everything, down to the very flowers, is hired for the occasion. It glitters in the brooches and bracelets of the women, in the studs and signet-rings of the men; it is in the hired broughams, the hired waiters, the pigmy page-boys, the faded paper flowers, the cheap champagne, and the affectation of social consideration that meet us at every turn. The whole of the lower section of the middle classes is penetrated through and through ... — Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... names; as Allotar (wave-goddess), Koskenneiti (cataract-maiden), Melatar (goddess of the helm), and in The Kalevala these are sometimes personally invoked. Of these minor deities, Pikku Mies (the Pigmy) is the most noteworthy. Once when the far-outspreading branches of the primitive oak-tree shut out the light of the sun from Northland, Pikku Mies, moved by the entreaties of Wainamoinen, emerged from the sea in a suit of copper, with a copper hatchet ... — The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... such effort as this has been made by the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics in Great Britain. The Children's Bureau reports only incidentally present this impressive evidence. They fail to coordinate it. While there is always the danger of drawing giant conclusions from pigmy premises, here is overwhelming evidence concerning irresponsible parenthood that is ignored by ... — The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... the Scottish prelude, which is of high quality in style and pathos. It is curious how utterly his powers desert him the moment he leaves his native heath: like Antaeus, he is a giant on his mother earth and a pigmy off it. His first published book was 'Better Dead' (1887); it works out a cynical idea which would be amusing in five pages, but is diluted into tediousness by being spread over fifty. But in 1889 came a second masterpiece, 'A Window in Thrums,' a continuation of the Auld Licht series from an ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... indeed. And no longer concerning himself about nature what wonder is it that nature ebbs out of him. She has her revenge, for from whatever standpoint of idealism considered the average man shows but of pigmy stature. For him there is no before or after. In his material life he has forgotten or never heard of the heroic traditions of his race, their aspirations to godlike state. One wonders what will happen ... — AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... down and looked below at the house—a doll's house; at the toy corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a mere pigmy—a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly through it with many a twist and loop, fringed with a tender green of young leaves. ... — Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... I had been great and rare, just as I find myself now pigmy and vulgar by the standard of some past ages, wherein, if no other better qualities concurred, it was ordinary and common to see a man moderate in his revenges, gentle in resenting injuries, religious of his word, neither double nor supple, nor ... — The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the river was loth to loose its grip. It was a slow travail, and man, used to nursing nature with pigmy skill, able to burst waterspouts and harness waterfalls, could avail nothing against the billions of frigid tons which refused to run down the hill ... — A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... took me to his house (their houses are but a single story in height and built of brass blocks), set food before me, and by signs manifested the utmost good will. A long time afterward, when I had learned the language of the country, he explained that he had recognized me as an American pigmy, a race of which he had some little knowledge through a letter from a brother, who had been in my country. He showed me the letter, of which the chief part is here presented ... — The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... they had toiled over for nearly 80 miles, they now emerged on to fine open well-grassed river flats, lightly timbered, and separated by small spurs of ridges running into them. A chain of small lagoons was passed at 12 miles, teeming with black duck, teal, wood duck, and pigmy geese, whilst pigeons and other birds were frequent in the open timber, a sure indication of good country. At 13 miles a small creek was crossed, and another at 18, and after having made a good stage of 25 miles the party again camped on the Einasleih. At this point it had increased to a width ... — The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... from tune to twang! Sweets bitter grow, as aye they did; For e'en the Roman poet sang "Surgit amari aliquid." Our pigmy worries turn us grey; And sorrows fierce are less acute; Our hearts are riddled every day ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... narrated his fortune in life. Born in Chopi, he was sent for by Kamrasi, who first gave him two women, who died; then another, who ran away; and, finally, a distorted dwarf like himself, whom he rejected, because he thought the propagation of his pigmy breed would not be advantageous to society. Bombay then marched him back to the palace, with 500 simbi strung in necklaces round his neck. When these two had gone, the Kamraviona arrived with two spears, one load of flour, ... — The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... senses, as when we see a man; consequentially, by likeness, as when from a portrait we apprehend the original; by composition, as when, by compounding a horse and man, we acquire the image of a Centaur; by augmentation, as in the image of a Cyclops; or by diminution, as in that of a pigmy. Judgment is employed either in determining, concerning particular things, or concerning general propositions. In judging of things we make use of some one of our senses, as a common criterion or measure of apprehension, by which we judge whether a thing ... — Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... women there were then! Read the old French writers! None was a pigmy. When they stood under the waterfall the water ran off their skins as off a marble table. Not a drop stayed on. They were ... — Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the land. With shouts the Trojans, rushing from afar, Proclaim their motions, and provoke the war So when inclement winters vex the plain With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain, To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,(108) With noise, and order, through the midway sky; To pigmy nations wounds and death they bring, And all the war descends upon the wing, But silent, breathing rage, resolved and skill'd(109) By mutual aids to fix a doubtful field, Swift march the Greeks: the rapid dust around Darkening arises from the ... — The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... tilted back to place, bent toward me again. I heard a shout; heard a bullet strike the pigmy that now clearly menaced; heard the bullet ricochet without the slightest effect upon it. Dick leaped beside me, raised a foot and kicked at the thing. There was a flash of light and upon the instant he crashed down as though struck by ... — The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... whose wont is once a-year To lounge in watering-places, disagreeable and dear; Who on pigmy Cambrian mountains, and in Scotch or Irish bogs Imbibe incessant whisky, and inhale incessant fogs: Ye know not with what transports the mad Alpine Clubman gushes, When with rope and axe and knapsack to the realms of snow he rushes. O can I e'er the hour forget—a ... — Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... when veil'd in misty shroud, Some men seem kings, through mists of ignorance; Must we have darkness, then, and cloud on cloud, To give our hills and pigmy kings a chance? Must we conspire to curse the humbling light, Lest some one, at whose feet our fathers bow'd, Should suddenly appear, full length, in sight, Scaring to laughter the adoring crowd? Oh, no! God send us light!—Who loses then? The king of slaves and not ... — The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... no artist could possibly master. They approached their gigantic subjects with correspondingly large canvases, without ever giving the essential element, of their huge motives, namely, a certain feeling of scale, of monumentality, as compared to the pigmy size of the human figure. Really great pictures of the Yellowstone, the Grand Caon, and the lofty mountain-tops still remain to be painted. The daring and courage of these men has benefited our art very much in a technical sense. The study of panoramic distances ... — The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... honest, has rotted or disintegrated until it has almost fallen into dust. Across the yellow, ill-printed pages there runs, zig-zagging sideways and backwards crab-fashion on his crooked brown legs, one of those pigmy book-spiders,—those ugly little bibliophiles that seem flatter even than the close-pressed pages that form ... — Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... talked Assyrian, and Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pigmy for King of Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them until it occurred to Cyrus to change the ... — Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... bestowing upon Ivan Ivanovitch a glance such as a giant might cast upon a pigmy, a pedant upon a dancing-master: and he stretched out his foot and stamped upon the floor with it. This boldness cost him dear; for his whole body wavered and his nose struck the railing; but the brave preserver of order, ... — Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Spanish zebec and three gunboats, and afterwards with a felucco and two more gunboats which came to their aid, which were only allowed to escape when the English ammunition was nearly exhausted, the Speedy having discharged fourteen hundred shot. On the 3rd of July, the pigmy vessel, after hard fighting, had to surrender to three French line-of-battle ships. It was on that occasion that their senior officer, Captain Palliere, declined to accept the sword of "an officer," as he said, "who had for so many hours struggled against impossibility." In his thirteen months' ... — The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... instantly from many newspaper portraits he had seen—and the photograph in Sanda's bag. It was Richard Stanton, poseur and adventurer, his enemies said, follower and namesake of Richard Burton: first white man to enter Thibet; discoverer of a pigmy tribe in Central Africa, and—the ... — A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... hasty-pudding is thy chiefest dish, With bullock's liver, or some stinking fish: Garbage, ox-cheeks, and tripes, do feast thy brain, Which nobly pays this tribute back again. With daisy-roots thy dwarfish Muse is fed, A giant's body with a pigmy's head. Canst thou not find, among thy numerous race Of kindred, one to tell thee that thy plays Are laught at by the pit, box, galleries, nay, stage? Think on't a while, and thou wilt quickly find Thy body made for labour, not thy mind. No other use of ... — English Satires • Various
... is over now, The quarter-deck undone; The carved and castled navies fire Their evening-gun. O, Tital Temeraire, Your stern-lights fade away; Your bulwarks to the years must yield, And heart-of-oak decay. A pigmy steam-tug tows you, Gigantic, to the shore— Dismantled of your guns and spars, And sweeping wings of war. The rivets clinch the iron-clads, Men learn a deadlier lore; But Fame has nailed your battle-flags— Your ghost ... — Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... or fairer symmetry than that of body and soul, as the contrary is the greatest of deformities. A leg or an arm too long or too short is at once ugly and unserviceable, and the same is true if body and soul are disproportionate. For a strong and impassioned soul may 'fret the pigmy body to decay,' and so produce convulsions and other evils. The violence of controversy, or the earnestness of enquiry, will often generate inflammations and rheums which are not understood, or assigned to their true cause by ... — Timaeus • Plato
... took ship at Balsora. After we had been at sea a few weeks, we were overtaken by a dreadful storm, and were obliged to cast anchor near an island which the captain had endeavored to avoid; for he assured us that it was inhabited by pigmy savages, covered with hair, who would speedily attack us in great numbers. Soon an innumerable multitude of frightful savages, about two feet high, boarded the ship. Resistance was useless. They took down ... — Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... his pigmy freight Haply thy herald was, who drave of yore Deep-laden from Bolerium by the Strait Of Gades, and beside his city's gate Chaffered in ... — From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... continued his mother. "When you've got your full growth and can earn money enough to pay for such foolishness you've a right to indulge in it if you see fit; but until then don't start a habit that will do you no good and may make a pigmy of you ... — Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... away. What is man, I thought, but a pigmy trapped in a bowl, bounded by an unknown beginning and headed for a concealed destination? It was sweet to be, but whether good or evil lay in the unseen, who knew? Uneasiness, which did not quite displace my earlier ... — Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... time when the animals reigned on the earth they had killed all but a girl and her little brother, and these two were living in fear and seclusion. The boy was a perfect pigmy, never growing beyond the stature of a small infant, but the girl increased with her years, so that the labour of providing food and lodging devolved wholly on her. She went out daily to get wood for their lodge fire, ... — Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... chaos and blind wrestling with life. And feeling stronger and more sure than ever in my life before, I set out to build my series of glory stories about it all, laying on the color thick to reach a million pigmy readers, grip them, pull them out of their holes, make them sit up and ... — The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... To catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on it before she had spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her; became the business of his life. Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, and never thought of or suspected the admiration of her little pigmy adorer. ... — The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... mounted above it. Everywhere men marvelled at it, but of all those who saw it none could have marvelled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing ... — Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells |