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Puny   Listen
adjective
Puny  adj.  (compar. punier; superl. puniest)  Imperfectly developed in size or vigor; small and feeble; inferior; petty. "A puny subject strikes at thy great glory." "Breezes laugh to scorn our puny speed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books



... Yanaon, Mahe, and Chandarnagar—196 square miles in all,—while the Indian Empire of Britain spreads over an area of 1,800,000 square miles. French empire in America is now represented only by two puny islands off the coast of Newfoundland, two small islands in the West Indies, and an unimportant tract of tropical Guiana, but historic traces of its former greatness and promise have survived alike in Canada and in Louisiana. In Canada the French population has stubbornly held ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... elf-like, thin black hair blowing above his full, elf-like dark eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin crinkling up into odd grimaces on his small-featured face, he looked an odd little boy-man, a bat. But in his figure, in the greeny loden suit, he looked CHETIF and puny, still strangely different ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... with the nation's tale! How despot trembles in his castled hall, When liberty's wild shouts of power prevail, And give their gladness unto every gale! Fetters and chains dissolve in holy trust, Scepters and swords in puny weakness fail, While crowns and thrones make monumental dust, And kingly Might is ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... their necks rise from their shoulders like ivory towers. Any costume will look beautiful on such women. But how are poor, puny, ill-made women to dress in such fashions? They could not wear those dresses without exhibiting all those personal defects which our present fashion conceals. It's all very fine for perfectly beautiful women to have such fashions; but it's very cruel to those who are not beautiful. Don't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... senseless before the castle gate, Golaud having still in his side the sword with which he had sought to kill himself. Melisande had been wounded,—"a tiny little wound that would not kill a pigeon;" yet her life is despaired of; and on her death-bed she has been delivered of a child—"a puny little girl such as a beggar might be ashamed to own—a little waxen thing that came before its time, that can be kept alive only by being wrapped in wool." The room is very silent. "It seems to me that we keep too still in her room," says Arkel; "it is not a good sign; look how she sleeps—how ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... drown sorrow, does not promise redundancy of health and vigour to those suckled by them—on the contrary, children thus unnaturally thrown from the arms of a parent into those of a nurse, are, almost without exception, weak and puny; of irrascible tempers and vicious inclinations.—Nor does the attention of the ladies expire with the infancy of their children—they still are unwearied in instructing them as they increase in years, and assiduously endeavour to inculcate principles of virtue ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... boast of the fact,—[This honor has been claimed also for Mrs. Millie Upton and a Mrs. Damrell. Probably all were present and assisted.]—but she had no particular pride in that matter then. It was only a puny baby with a wavering promise of life. Still, John Clemens must have regarded with favor this first gift of fortune in a new land, for he named the little boy Samuel, after his father, and added the name of an old and dear Virginia friend, Langhorne. The family fortunes would seem ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... his time ridiculed him because they were unable to comprehend his lofty ideals or see the practical wisdom of his great purposes. They measured him by their own puny standards and in condemning him only condemned themselves. His sad life, his tragic death, his immortal glory are one with all the reformers, prophets and saviors of the world. As war scenes receded, as men's prejudices ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers

... velvet of his favorite cat's-paw. Thus it was that Michael's momentary defeat had come about. Czar Nicholas crossed him openly; put upon him an affront unbearable; lowered him in the eyes of three hundred puny men and women over whom he had no power for revenge. It was, then, as a result of this, that treason had begun to surge through the mind of a brilliantly wicked man. And had he been able to read certain thoughts passing through his subject's head, it is possible that the Iron One might have felt ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... pane of the window. Nothing broke the smoothness of its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a way out. That he should have tried to find his way through such an untracked desolation amazed her. He could never do it. No puny human atom could fight successfully against the barriers nature had dropped so sullenly to fence them. They were set off from the world by a quarantine of God. There was something awful to her in the knowledge. It ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... mother, Nature, had driven away before her this surplus, as unmoved as if they had been superabundant men. On the scorching funnels and ironwork of the ship they died away; the deck was strewn with their puny forms, only yesterday so full of life, songs, and love. Now, poor little black dots, Sylvestre and the others picked them up, spreading out their delicate blue wings, with a look of pity, and swept them ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... there should be given one-tenth of the entire produce of the countries. Such a far reaching demand as this could not have been acceded to only by a doubting sovereign, and he would probably have been beheaded with his puny crew of one hundred and twenty men if he had reached Asia and attempted to carry out such a wholesale ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women, like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack—a well-meaning, clean and dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer too much, and you are making a fool of me, and—and that's why I like you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good, and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... such thing, only if the boy was like to die, he must be christened. Well, Madge knew that sometimes they flee at touch of holy water, but no; though the thing mourned and moaned enough to curdle your blood and screeched out when the water touched him, there he was the same puny little canker. So when madam was better, and began to fret over the child that was nigh upon three months old, and no bigger than a newborn babe, Madge up and told her how it was, and the way to get her ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of care and anxiety pressing so heavily upon her, anxiety for her grandfather, whose health seemed failing so fast, and who always looked so disturbed if a shadow were resting on her bright face, or her voice were less cheerful in its tone, and care for the imbecile Joseph, who clung to her as a puny child clings to its mother, refusing to be cared for by any one else, and often requiring of her more than her strength could endure for a great length of time. She it was who gave him his breakfast in the morning, amused him through the day, and then, after ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... means puny either in proportions or slaughter, as, for instance, when he meditated the conquest of Kauai, his expedition included seven thousand picked warriors, twenty-one schooners, forty swivels, six mortars, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... inflation came upon this country specialized thievery marched abreast with legitimate enterprise; with it as with the other, rewards became tremendously larger; small turnovers were regarded as puny and contemptible, and operators thought in terms of pyramiding thousands of dollars where before they had been glad to strive for speculative returns of hundreds. By now Chappy Marr had won his way to the forefront of his kind. The same intelligence invoked, the same energies exercised, and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... leg and line out of balance and twisted; and fancy, if one could avoid it, putting it in a theatre! The play itself was very well acted, but, as is nearly always the case here, unless it is a lovely blood-and-shooting, far West play, the heroine is drawn to be a selfish puny character, full of egotism and thinking of her own feelings. The men were perfectly splendid actors, but they distracted my eye so with their padded shoulders it quite worried me. The hero was a small person, and when he appeared ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... two large strips of poster, proclaimed Chicklet Face Powder to the cosmetically concerned. With an eye to fidelity, a small brood of small chickens, half dead with bad air and not larger than fists, huddled rearward and out of the grilling light—puny victims to an ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... cliffs which seventy years ago were only known to travellers and a few shepherds. But although this great change has been brought about by railway enterprise, the gorge is still uninhabited, and has lost little of its grandeur; for when the puny train, with its accompanying white cloud, has disappeared round one of the great bluffs, there is nothing left but the two pairs of shining rails, laid for long distances almost on the floor of the ravine. But though there are steep gradients to be climbed, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... us. Three of the brethren are Egyptians, and two are natives of Damascus. The rest are, like myself, descendants of a race supposed to have perished from off the face of the earth, yet still powerful to a degree undreamed of by the men of this puny age." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... like the annals of the poor," he replied. "From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta for ten years, a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with asthma, then"—the boy hesitated a moment—"my mother died, father moved to Edmonton, lived there for five years, thence to Wapiti, away northwest of Edmonton, our present home, prepared for college by my father, university course in Winnipeg, graduated ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted." [111] This diminutive stature of mankind, if we pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of pygmies; when the fierce giants of the north broke in, and mended the puny breed. They restored a manly spirit of freedom; and after the revolution of ten centuries, freedom became the happy parent of taste ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... faces were blurred, unrecognizable; all I seemed to note clearly was that solid, brutal, heartless, blaspheming line of desperate men sweeping toward us with a relentless fury our puny bullets could not check. Reckless ferocity was in that mad rush; they pressed on more like demons than human beings. I saw men fall; I saw the living stumble over the dead. I heard cries of agony, shouts, curses, but there was no pause. I could mark their ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... he should go off to the Splash and find Kate there; but presently he returned with an axe in his hand. Giving the lantern to his father, he proceeded to smash the skiff with the axe, his object being to prevent my going on board the Splash. I regarded it as a puny effort on his part, and was relieved to find they did not intend to visit her themselves. As soon as I was satisfied in regard to his purpose, I crept carefully up to the horse, unfastened him, and jumped into ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... thinking of the assignation, he entered the chamber. And having entered that hall enveloped in deep gloom, that wretch of wicked soul came upon Bhima of incomparable prowess, who had come a little before and who was waiting in a corner. And as an insect approacheth towards a flaming fire, or a puny animal towards a lion, Kichaka approached Bhima, lying down in a bed and burning in anger at the thought of the insult offered to Krishna, as if he were the Suta's Death. And having approached Bhima, Kichaka possessed by lust, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Powerless, with only their puny knives with which to give battle to the serpent, the boys stood petrified with terror. Even Ben, to whom his rescue and Frank's peril had been unfolded so swiftly that he was half-dazed, seemed unable to determine ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... and it WAS her shroud only three months after; and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your mother's family, Arthur. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would turn out a Donnithorne. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... his advance, whether he performs any services or not. But let him take care how he endangers the safety of that constitution which secures his own utility or his own insignificance; or how he discourages those who take up even puny arms to defend an order of things which, like the sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the worthless. His grants are engrafted on the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. They are guarded ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... and in straining closed the cut upon the saw. Another man who had joined them was endeavouring to hammer a wedge in, but with that crushing weight against him the attempt seemed futile. He persisted, however, and stood above the white froth of the rapid, a puny figure dwarfed by the tremendous rock wall, whirling what appeared to be a wholly insignificant hammer. His comrades were scattered about the grinding mass making ineffective efforts to heave a butt or top clear of the others with their handspikes, but there was clearly only one vulnerable point ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... or intellectually. But as the puny youth can by systematic exercise broaden his frame and develop his muscles into at least a semblance of the athlete, and can then through his healthier appetite and his faster rate of repair maintain himself without effort at the new standard; ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... be made stronger for brute beasts, as horses, in whose disorders I have found it very useful." "This same water will also give charitable relief to the ladies, who often want it more than the parish poor; being many of them never able to make a good meal, and sitting pale, puny, and forbidden, like ghosts, at their own table, victims of vapors and indigestion." It does not appear among the virtues of Tar Water that "children cried for it," as for some of our modern remedies, but the bishop says, "I have known children take it for above six ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... pass that Sandy said no word of reproach to the broken-down man who greeted him. Nay, far from reproaching, he felt himself sharing in the universal pity. Where God's hand was smiting hard, how could man dare to raise his puny arm? ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... 'Christ leaving the Praetorium,' the pictures in Burlington House look like the production of a race of dwarfs whose mental faculties are as diminutive as their stature. And it is not alone the efforts of the English School of Painting that appear puny in presence of so great and gigantic an undertaking; the work of all the existing schools of Europe sinks into equal insignificance, and we must go back to the Italian painters of the sixteenth century to find a picture worthy of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... toward which he had so jauntily set forth, now weighed upon his soul. The immeasurable distances; the slumbering disregard of time; the brooding, interminable silences; the efforts to conquer the land that were so futile, so puny, and so cruel, at first appalled and, later, left him unnerved, ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... Regis and the Gotham, he favoured the great hostelries with contemplative, calculating eyes; he even looked with speculative envy upon the mansions of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Huntingtons. She was born and reared in a house of vast dimensions. Even the Vanderbilt places were puny in comparison. His reflections carried him back to the Plaza. There, at least, was something comparable in size. At any rate, it would do until he could look around for something larger! He laughed at his ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... enormous piles, Which no rude censure of familiar time Nor record of our puny race defiles, In dateless mystery ye stand sublime, Memorials of an age of which we see Only the types in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... from them received his first impression that women were small of soul and narrow of mind. As they stood by the gate now, this last hour grudged to them, neither dreamed that this was the final canto in the poem of boyhood. They had been fast friends since the first day pale, puny Fred made his appearance in school, and was both laughed at and bullied by some boys larger in size, but ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... strange if I say that the artillery fire in the Mamund Valley did very little execution. It is nevertheless a fact. The Mamunds are a puny tribe, but they build their houses in the rocks; and against sharpshooters in broken ground, guns can do little. Through field-glasses it was possible to see the enemy dodging behind their rocks, whenever the puffs of smoke ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... and the summer had come round again, the grafting had done its work: she was really a Rosa Indica, and timidly put forth the first blossom in her new estate. It was a small, rather puny yellowish thing, not to be compared to her own natural red clusters, but ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... our usual air speed of about ninety-five miles an hour, our ground speed was sufficient to avoid lingering in any region made unhealthy by A.-A. guns. The water-marked ribbon of trenches seemed altogether puny and absurd during the few seconds when it was within sight. The winding Somme was dull and dirty as the desolation of its surrounding basin. Some four thousand feet above the ground a few clouds moved restlessly at the ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... midst of wild, rolling clouds, the moon was a drowning face. Stunted trees bent before the wind like puny men who strained impotently to advance. Over there was one more like a real man—a figure, Bobby thought, with a black thing ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... was hissed. Special interests became intrenched behind a triple rampart of fashion and administration and loyalty. Details of the revolt need not be given here. A great love is always the best cure for a puny affection—a Juliet for a Rosalind; and when a pure patriotism arose to oust this spurious lip-loyalty, there ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... tales inveigh'st, As much too pleasant for thy taste; Egregious critic, cease to scoff, While for a time I play you off, And strive to soothe your puny rage. As Esop comes upon the stage, And dress'd entirely new in Rome, Thus enters with the tragic plume.— "O that the fair Thessalian pine Had never felt the wrath divine, And fearless of the axe's wound, Had still the Pelian mountain ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... himself up to his full height, lifted his sword from the ground and hung it on his side, and strode away with Wattie, looking all the while like a great giant in company of a puny dwarf. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... grow thin and weak, instead of giving the plumpness to the figure, designed by Nature. The delicate and feeble appearance of many American women, is chiefly owing to the little use they make of their muscles. Many a pale, puny, shad-shaped girl, would have become a plump, rosy, well-formed person, if half the exercise, afforded to her brothers in the open air, had been secured to her, during childhood ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... of our steps by a Power beyond us. But as I could not bring my mind to any clearness upon this matter, and the stars shed no light upon it, but rather confused me with wondering how their Lord could attend to them all, and yet to a puny fool like me, it came to pass that my thoughts on the subject were not worth ink, if I ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... have got to?" exclaimed Jerry at last; "I am certain that we are up to the spot where we left him." I thought so likewise. We shouted at the top of our voices, but the puny sounds seemed lost in the vast solitudes which encompassed us. "I think it must have been further on," said I, after I had taken another survey of the country. So on we rushed, keeping our eyes ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm climates, where human existence can be ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... hand stands the garden-wall of the puny, though costly, palace of the Regent, Prince of Wales. It is, however, fortunate, that it is not larger, if the expenditure of palaces, like that of private houses, were to keep pace with their bulk. The ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... clouding up its ancestry, if you know what I mean. He didn't seem to get any broad view of it at all. You'd almost think I'd been reporting an indiscretion in some member of his family. Can you beat it? Heating up that way over a puny kitten, six inches from tip to tip, that he'd been thinking of as a pest and only taken to please Irene Tuttle! So he starts in from that minute to doctor it up and nurture it with canned soup and delicacies; and every time I see him after that he'd look indignant and say ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... of past into present, and of present into future, are clothed with the sanctity of an inner shrine. We may think that a fox-hunting duke and a racing marquis were very poor centres round which to group these high emotions. But Burke had no puny sentimentalism, and none of the mere literary or romantic conservatism of men like Chateaubriand. He lived in the real world, and not in a false dream of some past world that had never been. He saw that the sporting squires of his party were as much ...
— Burke • John Morley

... Minnie Finley, who were born in Ohio and examined by him. They were fused together in a common longitudinal axis, having one pelvis, two heads, four legs, and four arms. One was weak and puny and the other robust and active; it is probable that they had but one rectum and one bladder. Goodell accompanies his description by the mention of several analogous cases. Ellis speaks of female twins, born in Millville, Tenn., and exhibited in New York in 1868, who ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... him perhaps, but not to every one—the "plot of ground" which is "scanty" to an elephant is a wilderness to a mouse; and the garment in which Wordsworth might feel straitened hangs flabby about a puny imitator. There seems no great modesty in the estimate which Mr. Moxon thus exhibits of his own superior powers, but we fear there is, at least, as much modesty as truth—for really, so far from being "bound" within the narrow ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... this trade too base, (Which seldom is the dunce's case,) Put on the critic's brow, and sit At Will's the puny judge of wit. A nod, a shrug, a scornful smile, With caution used, may serve a while. Proceed on further in your part, Before you learn the terms of art; For you can never be too far gone In all our modern critics' jargon; Then talk with more authentic face Of unities, in time, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... destroys it, Or unto completion brings it, Bringeth out its faults or virtues, Shewing where its merit lieth. Then shall every beast that liveth, Every bird and every reptile, Every fish and every insect, Raise their own peculiar voices— (Terrible, or sweet, or puny); And will testify their own way Of the powers of King Nimaera, Who their being's fire feedeth, Gives them space for life and glory, With that limit ends their being; For no hidden spirit have they Image to the ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... Lambert aside and strode to the centre of the room; his face was hard, his tone contemptuous. "You forbid it! What is your puny will against the invisible ones? You forbid it?" His voice changed as he asked, "Who has influenced you to this childish revolt?" He turned to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... audience. Encouraged, he essayed another effort. He wrinkled his comical face and pursed up his lips, starting three or four times, and shaking his head at his failures. The others were watching him much as they would a catherine-wheel that refused to ignite. At last he brought forth a puny little sound. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... kind-hearted termagant, Aunt Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset. When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, and so puny and fastidious in appetite, she treated him as kindly as if he were her own son, in the matter of jellies, strong soups, and curious light wines, and had afterwards lent him some good books which the little lieutenant had read through, like ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... after this day was one not soon forgotten in London. In the still darkness came an earthquake—that most terrible of phenomena held in God's hand, whereby He saith to poor, puny, arrogant man, "Be still, and know that I am God." Isoult awoke to hear sounds on all sides of her—the bed creaking, and below the dishes and pans dancing with a noisy clatter. In the next chamber she heard Walter crying, and Kate asking if the end of all the world were come; but John would ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... purpose—to produce good soldiers and obedient citizens. A sound body formed the first essential. A father was required to submit his son, soon after birth, to an inspection by the elders of his tribe. If they found the child puny or ill-shaped, they ordered it to be left on the mountain side, to perish from exposure. At the age of seven a boy was taken from his parents' home and placed in a military school. Here he was trained in marching, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... the administration and government of the state, and the whole executive was concentrated in the hands of the monarch. First of all, the Imperator naturally decided in person every question of any moment. Caesar was able to carry personal government to an extent which we puny men can hardly conceive, and which is not to be explained solely from the unparalleled rapidity and decision of his working, but has moreover its ground in a more general cause. When we see Caesar, Sulla, Gaius Gracchus, and Roman statesmen in general displaying throughout an activity which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... before you one whose excellence in all things has wrought his ruin. Julius Caesar was such a man, and the great Napoleon, and I, Rene Bossuet, am the third. All men fear me, and because of my great skill and prodigious strength, all men hate me. They refuse to work beside me lest their puny efforts will appear as the work of children. I am the undisputed king of the rivers. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... Bridgman (d. 1868), a substantial Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck. Though ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... his hand, turns the wheels of a great mill, drives forty thousand spindles, applies a thousand horse power to daily work in the spinning of threads, the weaving of cloth, the impulsion of a steamboat, or the drawing of great masses of hot iron into finest wire. This puny creature, his mind in his finger tips, exerts the power of ten thousand men, working with muscle alone, and, aided by a handful of women, boys and girls, clothes a city. A half dozen men in the engine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... was warm, and with my window raised, I sat and mourned, and wrung my hopeless hands. No light was in the house. I half reclined— My back toward the window. Something shut The puny sheen of starlight from the room. The Thing, a monstrous shape, was with me there, And two hard arms were thrown about my waist. For very terror I was hushed, nor moved To cast my foe off. I was in the arms Of the strong spider. As we went, I grew Glad, for I thought ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... littleness and insignificance! They see the earth which he inhabits dwindle to a speck in the unimaginable infinities of space, and the brief span of his existence shrink into a moment in the inconceivable infinities of time. And they ask, Shall a creature so puny and frail claim to live for ever, to outlast not only the present starry system but every other that, when earth and sun and stars have crumbled into dust, shall be built upon their ruins in the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... one will take the trouble to watch the action of the sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars upon its ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... prison; but the prisoners! There were forty-eight—grey-haired men and puny boys—all ragged, and stalking with slippered feet from end to end with listless eyes. Some, all eagerness; some, crushed and motionless; some, scared and stupid; now singing, now swearing, now rushing about playing at ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... But this was puny expense compared with that which they often incurred, by the damage done to the furniture and servants, in the madness of their intoxication, as well as the loss they sustained at hazard, an amusement to which all of them had recourse in the progress of their debauches. This elegant ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... proportion. The people of that nation began to stand in need of some such cordial after the losses they had sustained, and the ministry of Versailles did not fail to make the most of this advantage: they published a pompous narrative of the battle of St. Cas, and magnified into a mighty victory the puny check which they had given to the rear-guard of an inconsiderable detachment. The people received it with implicit belief, because it was agreeable to their passions, and congratulated themselves upon their success in hyperboles, dictated by that vivacity so peculiar ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... that he utters when he is roused to fight, the savage roar that means "I smell blood." It is one of those tremendous menacing sounds that never fail to give one the creeps and make one feel, oh! so puny ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... tree. They see that the elephant is down— that he is impaled. There will be no need for their puny weapons. Their game ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... France, Duke of Alencon and Anjou, was at that time just twenty-eight years of age; yet not even his flatterers, or his "minions," of whom he had as regular a train as his royal brother, could claim for him the external graces of youth or of princely dignity. He was below the middle height, puny and ill-shaped. His hair and eyes were brown, his face was seamed with the small-pox, his skin covered with blotches, his nose so swollen and distorted that it seemed to be double. This prominent feature did not escape the sarcasms ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... stay. He begins to see that I am worth something. But pouf! how do people live in this crowded up town in the winter! It is dirtier than ever. The Americans have not improved it much. You see there is Rose and Angelique, before Baptiste, and he is rather puny, and father is getting old. Then, I could go up north every two or three years. Well, one finds out your worth when ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... home use. Among these, provided the seed has been good and true, at least 90 per cent will be about alike in appearance, productivity and otherwise. The remaining plants may show variations so striking as to attract attention. Some may be tall and scraggly, some may be small and puny; others may be light green, still others dark green; and so on. But there may be one or two plants that stand out conspicuously as the best of the whole lot. These are the ones to mark with a stake so they will not be molested when ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... doubters, with a puny joy, Accept amusement for their little while And feed upon some nourishing employ But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile— Protesting that one man can no more move the mass For good or ill Than could the ancients kindle the sun By tying ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner

... rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble to follow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth of hillocks, puny and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in the trough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty about three of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and was something less than civil at what he ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Landgrave Rudolf. He rejects her advances, and in revenge she has him stabbed by her followers. This is the bare outline of the story, but the value of the work lies in the highly poetical and imaginative framework in which it is set. Behind the puny passions of man looms the vast presence of the eternal forest, the mighty background against which the children of earth fret their brief hour and pass into oblivion. The note which echoes through the drama is struck in the opening scene—a ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... be reverenced. But when we add to it that little word 'my,' we rise to the wonderful thought that the creature can claim an individual relation to Him, and in some profound sense a possession there. The tiny mica flake claims kindred with the Alpine peak from which it fell. The poor, puny hand, that can grasp so little of the material and temporal, can grasp all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... seat and added his puny voice to the maelstrom of noise. On the Yale ten-yard line a blue-clad man pulled down the mud-spattered object and, clutching it firmly against his chest, took a few slipping side-steps to dodge an eager tackler. The Eli succeeded in this, only to crash directly ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... nature great and high, No puny thought could dwell within her breast; How sad to see her worth untimely die! Yet who may wail the needful rest? Her willing hand, her tireless step, her active brain, Rear'd lofty landmarks on the busy way; The haunts that knew ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... cloak still further disfigured by the yellow wheel, dwelt the soul of a thinker. The son of the Ghetto might have worn his badge with pride, for in truth it was a medal of distinction awarded by the papal Church to the Jews, for dauntlessness and courage. The awkward, puny Jew in his way was stronger and braver than a German knight armed cap-a-pie, for he was penetrated by the faith that "moves mountains." And when the worst came to the worst, he demonstrated his courage. When his peaceful ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... looking towards the bunk where the tiny little chap he had found was peacefully sleeping. The fire burned low in the chimney; the candle sank down in its socket. On the floor the pup was twitching in his dreams. Outside the peace, too vast to be ruffled by puny man, had settled on all that ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... in a few months' time; shall we deny the power of the Creator to eliminate the element of time, when we have gone so far in eliminating the element of space? Who am I that I should attempt to measure the arm of the Almighty with my puny arm, or to measure the brain of the Infinite with my finite mind? Who am I that I should attempt to put metes and bounds to the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... tells us, came home thin and puny, like a somnambulist sleeping with open eyes, and his grandmother groaned over the strain of modern education. At first he heard hardly any of the questions that were put to him, and his mother was obliged to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... belonged to the provincial nobility. They were worthy and respectable subjects of the King of Spain. The old-fashioned adjectives, "poor, but honest" could be applied to them. The boy was a puny, sickly lad, whom they scarcely expected to reach man's estate. When he was fourteen years old they entered him in the great University of Salamanca where he took his degree as Bachelor of Laws, after a two years' course. The law, in Spain, was considered an entirely ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... and diminutive, like those of pigmies; it must have belonged to a giant, one of those red- haired warriors of whose strength and stature such wondrous tales are told in the ancient chronicles of the north, and whose grave-hills, when ransacked, occasionally reveal secrets which fill the minds of puny moderns with astonishment and awe. Reader, have you ever pored days and nights over the pages of Snorro? probably not, for he wrote in a language which few of the present day understand, and few would be tempted to read him tamed down by Latin ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... puny, paltry business of the bazaar—the whereabouts of the dagger and its wealth, or of the detectives, gone for good into military secret service at the front—she drearily smiled away the whole trivial riddle as she lay of nights contriving new searches ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... sufficiently wild to please the most exacting, even to-day; for its isolated buttes, rocky bluffs, lightning-splintered gorges, foaming torrents, fantastically formed bowlders, and towering mountains brook no change at the hands of puny man, and are as firm as the rock itself. Under a sky that nowhere else seems to be of such an intensely cerulean hue, the charm of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... their differences of opinion, and puny wranglings, hoistings of two standards, reconciliations for the sake of decency, breaches of the truce, and his detested meanness, the man behind the mask; and glimpses of herself too, the half-known, half-suspected, developing creature claiming to be Diana, and unlike her dreamed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... she scarcely knew it. Again, as the men rolled toward the outer side of the ledge and seemed for a moment almost to overhang the precipice, she gave a smothered cry and darted forward, moved by some wild impulse to fling her puny strength into the scale against ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... puny hands, While near the school the church-spire stands, Nor fears the bigot's blinded rule, While near the church-spire stands ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... whatever course it shall happen to take. The good-natured man is commonly the darling of the petty wits, with whom they exercise themselves in the rudiments of raillery; for he never takes advantage of failings, nor disconcerts a puny satirist with unexpected sarcasms; but while the glass continues to circulate, contentedly bears the expense of an uninterrupted laughter, and retires rejoicing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... heroes of a dark age. In such an age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and quivers not: Only that film which fluttered on the grate Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit By its own moods interprets; everywhere, Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... find healing for death or defence against old age. Meanwhile the rich-tressed Graces and cheerful Seasons dance with Harmonia and Hebe and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, holding each other by the wrist. And among them sings one, not mean nor puny, but tall to look upon and enviable in mien, Artemis who delights in arrows, sister of Apollo. Among them sport Ares and the keen-eyed Slayer of Argus, while Apollo plays his lyre stepping high and featly ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... path leaves the road, and the pilgrim has either to proceed on horseback or on foot. We had to go on foot, and a very long and tiring walk it proved to be. Besides Dr. S. and his factotum, Lazo, we took another man with us, a wretched puny individual, but seemingly possessed of more endurance than any of us. He led us by a short cut over rocks, and up slippery breakneck walls of cliffs, over which our guide skipped nimbly, and having reached the top seemingly hours before us, sat down ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... folk had of late done homage as king, he was at first seen about a corner of the High House with his nurses; and then in a while it was said, and the tale noted, but not much, that he must needs go for his health's sake, and because he was puny, to some stead amongst the fields, and folk heard say that he was gone to the strong house of a knight somewhat stricken in years, who was called Lord Richard the Lean. The said house was some twelve miles from Oakenham, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris

... then in my power! This model of piety! This being without reproach! This Mortal who placed his puny virtues on a level with those of Angels. He is mine! Irrevocably, eternally mine! Companions of my sufferings! Denizens of hell! How grateful will ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... she "never reckoned the poor, measley little thing would stay with us." It was little, it was puny, but it brought a happiness into the household never before experienced—brought a happiness into the lives of Uncle Al and Aunt Tillie—that only those who love children and have never been blessed with them ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... he shouted. "I tell you I am a god, the one god, supreme above all. Do you think to match your puny will against my own? I tell you Lucille is mine. And for ever, Dent. Whenever we two have reached old age, all that will be necessary for us to do will be to turn this screw a hair's breadth back into the past, and we are both young again. By holding this vessel steady ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... saw Arras, and, for the first time, a town that had been systematically and ruthlessly shelled. There are no words in any tongue I know to give you a fitting picture of the devastation of Arras. "Awful" is a puny word, a thin one, a feeble one. I pick impotently at the cover-lid of my imagination when I try to frame language to make you understand what it was I saw when I came to Arras ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... oxen, or the last thing in strawberry roans. He spent a small fortune that would have been large for a small man—in the attempt to acclimatise strange animals in his park in the Midlands. Sophia, Duchess of Dovedale, had seven country seats, and no home. Her children were puny and feeble. They sickened in the feudal Scotch castle, they languished in the Buckinghamshire Eden—a freestone palace set among the woods that overhang the valley of the Thames. No breezes that blow ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... Behold this puny fellow, this meek and humble chap! No doubt he'd show up yellow if he got in a scrap. His face is pale and sickly, he's weak of arm and knee; if trouble came he'd quickly shin up the nearest tree. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... numerous as booksellers, I doubt not but your correspondents furnish you with a sufficient quantity of waste paper. I perhaps may add to the heap; for, as men do not always know the motive of their own actions, I may possibly be induced, by the same sort of vanity as other puny authors have been, to desire to be in print. But I am very well satisfied with you for my judge, and if you should not think proper to take any notice of the hint I have here sent you, I shall conclude that ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... suspense into marble. Indeed, none of our petty vulgarities could jar or even fret the majestic calm of the desert and the stone Mystery among its billows. The Sphinx gazed above and past us all. She was like some royal captive surrounded by a rabble mob, yet as undisturbed in soul as though her puny, hooting tormentors had no existence. It was not so much that she scorned us, as that she did ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... four; so big and strong was he. He spoke perfectly in his childish way, with great emphasis and a curious, soft burr over his r's and h's. And he actually tried to wrestle with his cousin Ibrahim, who was, however, rather a puny boy, despite the fact that he was three years older than ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... Castillian ain't done up a full-grown wild cat! It's jest coughin' its last when I arrives. Son, I wouldn't have opened a game on that feline—the same bein' as big as a coyote, an' as thoroughly organized for trouble as a gatling—with anythin' more puny than a Winchester. An' yet that guileless Mexican lays him out with rocks, and regyards sech feats as trivial. An American, too, by merely growlin' towards this Mexican, would make him quit out like a jack rabbit. "As I observes prior, courage is frequent the froots of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... parlour; but the moment he makes his appearance, these intruders fly at him with furious rage; and I have admired the sovereign indifference and contempt with which he seems to look down upon his puny assailants. When her ladyship drives out, these dogs are generally carried with her to take the air; when they look out of each window of the carriage, and bark at all vulgar pedestrian dogs. These dogs are a continual source of misery to the household: as they are always ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... his grandfather and his great-grandfather had allowed unwisely to slip through their fingers. The difficulties in the way of such an enterprise might very well have disheartened any being less headstrong, any spirit less stubborn. There were forces opposed to him that seemed to overmatch his puny purpose as much as the giants overmatched the pigmy hero of the nursery tale. St. George in the chivalrous legend had but one dragon to destroy; the young royal St. George set himself {24} with a light heart to attack a whole ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... grew very angry. "What! dress me like a girl!" he roared. "I should never hear the last of it! The Asir will mock me, and call me 'maiden'! The giants, and even the puny dwarfs, will have a lasting jest upon me! I will not go! I will fight! I will die, if need be! But dressed as a ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... believed, could be controlled as well by absent treatment as by present. Unhappily, Katharine had reckoned without taking into account either Brenton's wilful allegiance to the old-fashioned notions of disease, or the nurse's abject allegiance to the father of her puny charge. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... purpose, we must also wish to have the grand means, and our nerves ought in some measure to accommodate themselves to painful impressions, if, by way of requital, our mind is thereby elevated and strengthened. The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakspeare lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had yet inherited enough of the firmness of a vigorous olden time, not to shrink ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; the mind pronounces all things small compared with this magnificence. Yet what will all such grandeur do—the self-defensive heart ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... it, as it was the sort of spirit that he liked to see a young man display. There was little time for conversation, however, for the Huascar, as though in revenge for the damage inflicted by her puny enemy, again discharged her whole broadside—or at least so much of it as was still capable of being fired; and the marksmanship was so excellent that every missile again struck the Covadonga, while at the same moment the Union again started firing ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... whetting his knife for my throat for the last year. Why, this is what he wants; this is why he brought the prisoner here! Would you have me walk into his trap? Would you have me sacrifice my men, this garrison, why, this country even, to save the life of one puny Englishman, who is probably himself a spy?" He stopped a moment. "Why, man, you sicken me!" he cried, and he slashed at me with his sword as if I were ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... but that we are a very bad people"; that we set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us; that with a malignant insanity, we oppose the measures, and ungratefully vilify the persons, of those whose sole object is our own peace and prosperity. If a few puny libellers, acting under a knot of factious politicians, without virtue, parts, or character, (such they are constantly represented by these gentlemen,) are sufficient to excite this disturbance, very perverse must be the disposition of that people, amongst whom such a disturbance can ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the smith retorted gruffly, as a puny atomy of a man with a stick and lanthorn was pushed with difficulty to the front. 'But so being you are here, supposing you put Joe Hincks a foot or two back, and let the gentleman ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... seemed full of the idea of making himself "fit." Our peace camps and continuous training at home look very puny and small in comparison with the work which now occupied our time. At manoeuvres the number of troops might be anything up to thirty thousand. To march in the rear of such a column meant that each of the Ambulances soon ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... themselves of an sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however in their literary than in their political character, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... and bowed in mock reverence to the spectators beneath him. He had not yet learned in a land of puny archers how sure and how strong is the English bow. Half a dozen men, old Wat amongst them, had run forward toward the wall. They were too late to save their comrades, but at least their deaths ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... hypocrite that you are!" she blurted out. "I don't understand your lawyer ways. I like plain speaking myself. Don't you know me, and Luke and Hector, and—and most of us, indeed, except that puny, white-faced girl yonder, whom, having been brought up on the other side of the Ridge, we have none of us seen since she was a screaming baby in Hildegarde's arms. And the young gentleman over there"—here ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... arm or cheek, can no further go, without too great an expenditure of force in proportion to the volume of noise attainable. And right here the splendid triumphs of modern invention and discovery are made manifest; electricity and gunpowder come to the relief of puny muscle, simple appliance, and orchestras limited by sparse population. Batteries of artillery thunder exultingly our victory over Primeval Man, beaten at his own game-signally routed and put to shame, pounding his impotent gong and punishing his ridiculous kettledrum in ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... lights in line. Now he realized that his tiny human force formed a third contender in this vast battle. As he eased the great dock down the rushing sheer of a wave so the shock would not break the straining cable, he had won a point over two violent antagonists. His puny arm, that could raise perhaps two hundred pounds, was lifted against enemies that could fling about billions of tons. Without his force, tug and dock would part company instantly. Each watery mountain that he climbed, each gulf that he fathomed, was ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... brain tumor. One sister is neurotic; her eight year old son suffers from congenital heart disease. Patient was born in Manchester, England. He was the twentieth child; mother was over forty years old at the time of his birth. He was an unusually small and puny infant and remembers using crutches when a child. At seven he was bitten by a dog and dragged about on the ground for a great distance; when finally rescued was unconscious for a long time. No further ill-effects. School life was characterized throughout by truancy and disobedience and finally terminated ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... rocks. By the time they reached the ridge of foot-hills where the trail led off to the cliffs at the Devil's Grave, both sisters were silenced by the impressive scenery, so that petty problems of puny mortals faded ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... the negligence or extravagances of his Muse. He 'bears a charmed reputation, which must not yield' like one of vulgar birth. The Noble Bard is for this reason scarcely vulnerable to the critics. The double barrier of his pretensions baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off some of his tarnished laurels, and the coronet appears glittering beneath: restore them, and it still shines through with keener lustre. In fact, his Lordship's blaze of reputation culminates from his rank and place in society. He sustains two lofty and imposing ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... prodigally, given thyself to sides and heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!... Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Philistines, compared with the warfare which this Queen of Romance has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after we ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... making ready their pieces, looked along the trail. There, sure enough, was a bear coming up as fast as he could gallop. It was at him Francois had fired. The small shot had only served to irritate him; and, seeing such a puny antagonist as Francois, he had ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... wrenched my heart from the dead children; each gift was a separate pang. The toys, too, go to-morrow to the Sisters of Charity, who have a great house near at hand. A Sister, a virginal creature whom I have seen holding the puny babies of the poor to a breast innocently maternal, has told me of the children who at Christmastide have no toys. This year they shall not go without; so I am sending them all—the doll's house and the rocking-horse, and all the queer contents of the nursery ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... house, and we'll take the yard," proposed Quentina, as, a little later, she led the way down-stairs and out of doors. "There! aren't my nasturtiums beautiful?" she exulted, with the air of a fond mother displaying her first-born. She was pointing to a bed of straggling, puny plants, beautifully free from weeds, and showing here and there ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... them in any point but one. I am not of consequence enough to claim for myself so much as an undistinguished place among the select theologians who at this day have declared war on heresies: but this I know, that, puny as I am, I run no risk while, supported by the grace of Christ, I shall do battle, with the aid of heaven and earth, against such fabrications as these, so odious, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... on Mary was frightful. She was extended at full length with her legs braced against an outcrop of rock. Stonor could see her agonized expression. He shouted to her to slack off the line, but of course the roar of the water drowned his puny voice. In dumb-play he tried desperately to show her what to do, but Mary was possessed of but one idea, to hang on until her arms ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... heeded; and without any attempt to prevent them, several of the madmen started the water from the tanks. "Hurrah!" they shouted as they performed this feat. "The fire will now be put out, and we shall be saved." The hidden fire laughed at their puny efforts, and the wreaths of smoke came forth as ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... memory of the saint. The monument is of silver, and the worth of the metal alone is estimated at 80,000 florins. The church itself is not spacious, but is built in the noble Gothic style; the lesser altars, however, with their innumerable gilded wooden figures, look by contrast extremely puny. In the chapel are many sarcophagi, on which repose bishops and knights hewn in stone, but so much damaged, that many are without hands and feet, while some lack heads. To the right, at the entrance of the church, is the celebrated chapel of ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... vivid flash, now on one side, now on the other, would show us a glimpse of the land looming darkly ahead. The powers of darkness seemed at play; while the sea, the ice, the craggy cliffs, and the flashing heavens were advertising man's puny power. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... demanded Toby, appalled at the thought of any one venturing out on that swirling river in a puny powerboat. ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... will have. His church is never established; the world does not follow him; only of Wisdom is he known, and of her children, who are children of light. He never speaks by their mouths who say "Shalt not." He knows that "shalt not" is illegitimate, puny, trying always to usurp the throne of the true ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... quivering eyelids were lifted. She turned her head slowly, and looked steadily at him. He held his breath. A cart rumbled along the cobble-stones outside; the puny wail of a child sounded across the stillness; a handful of rose leaves from a vase at the foot of the altar dropped on the hem of Madame Arnault's dress. It might have been the gaze of an angel in a world where there is no marrying nor giving ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... life within him, the truer, deeper self, will assert itself against the decisive efforts of sin. It is just as impossible for a man to go on eternally living apart from the universal life as it is for a sand castle to shut out the ocean; the returning tide would break down the puny barriers and destroy everything that tends to separate between the soul and God. For, after all, what is our life but God's? To try to keep it for ourselves is like trying to catch and imprison a sun ray by drawing the blinds. To save the self we must serve the All. When, therefore, we ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... When they become sick, and are unable to rise from their beds to go to work, there are men employed to go on horseback from house to house, and cajole and bully them into arising and going to work. Ten per cent of them contract active consumption. All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind and body. Elbert Hubbard says of the child-labourers of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... filled his puny chest, took a long, devouring look about him, and sought a definition of the word to make sound the lift of pride and hope ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... rabbinical fancies is strangely gigantic and vast. The works of eastern nations are full of these descriptions; and Hesiod's Theogony, and Milton's battles of angels, are puny in comparison with these rabbinical heroes, or rabbinical things. Mountains are hurled, with all their woods, with great ease, and creatures start into existence too terrible for our conceptions. The winged monster in the "Arabian Nights," called the Roc, is evidently one of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... despising of His Name' may be taken as the very definition of sin. It is usual with men to-day to say that 'Sin is selfishness'; but that statement does not go deep enough unless it be recognised that self-regard only becomes sin when it rears its puny self in opposition to, or in disregard of, the plain will of God. The 'New Theology,' of course, minimises, even where it does not, as it to be consistent should, deny the possibility of sin: for, if God is all and all is God, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... case as closely as possible for more than an hour. There was but one peculiarity or symptom upon which to base a prescription. It was this: It would lie a few moments apparently asleep, then it would give a start and begin to scream with all its puny power. This would last one or two minutes, when it would as suddenly fall asleep again. This, they assured me, was the way it had performed all through its illness, except when opiated. 'Pains come and go suddenly.' That was all I had to ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... Grant, returning after his morning's errands, was standing by the puny little blaze that John Dexter had stirred out of the logs in the Serenity. The two were standing together. Mr. Brotherton, reading his Kansas City paper at his desk, called to them: "Well, I see Doc Jim's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... from the poet's puny arm swished the air. Pinchas was roused, the veins on his forehead swelled, his heart thumped rapidly in his bosom. Wolf shook his knobby fist laughingly at the poet, who made no further effort to use any other weapon of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill



Words linked to "Puny" :   weak, runty, little, puniness, small



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