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Puny   Listen
noun
Puny  n.  A youth; a novice. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Puny" Quotes from Famous Books



... year old infant from the basket. It was a pale, puny little creature, whose father had fallen in battle, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... "Puny knave!" Masanath heard. "Well for thee I do not love thee, else thou shouldst sleep this night in the reeking cave of a paraschite, with the whine of feeding flies about thee for dreams. Well for me that I do not love thee, for thine instant death would rob me of the long revenge that ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... address was sent by the Dover Association to Pitt, as Lord Warden, on 19th December, asking for permission to take arms in defence of King and Constitution against invaders from without or levellers within.[140] The example was widely followed; and thus, as usually happens in this land, the puny preparations of Government were helped on by the eager exertions ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... shot! They don't see him!" shouted Tad. He cried out at the top of his voice to attract the attention of the ranchers, but in the uproar, no one heard him. His voice in that mad melee was a puny thing. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... which the productive tasks of the home have almost all been surrendered to the factory; in an age in which even cooking and sewing, last puny provinces of a once ample empire, are forever making concessions of territory to those barbarian invaders, the manufacturers of ready-to-eat foods and ready-to-wear clothes; in an age in which home industry lies fainting and gasping, while Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman begs ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... the bell-push towards the end of last guest-night the Adjutant said he should mark me down for the job of Physical Training Officer; but I hope he was only joking. I am not built for the work. My frame is puny and my countenance irresolute. I hate bending and stretching my arms; they creak and frighten me. I never could squat on my heels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... Congo, 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 ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... going over it again. The children all fell ill together—the two eldest were twin boys, one puny, the other a very fine fellow, and his father's especial pride and delight. As so often happens, the sickly one was spared, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... interested. In declining to become jealous of the bevy of titled lords, who pay fawning court to my wealth and social position, here in Washington, you do yourself justice; while at the same time, you pay me the compliment of a lifetime! When compared with you, how puny and feeble are the princes and titled lords, made by kings and courts, in lands where selfishness reigns supreme at the expense of millions of unfortunate subjects! An impecunious host of these fortune-hunting lords swarm in the society of our large cities. With faded titles ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... in again and avoided that line. But one day, coming softly as a cat, she heard Sir Charles and Lady Bassett talking over their calamity. Sir Charles was saying that it was Heaven's curse; that all the poor people in the village had children; that Richard Bassett's weak, puny little wife had brought him an heir, and was about to make him a parent again; he alone was marked out and doomed to be the last of his race. "And yet," said he, "if I had married any other woman, and you had married any other man, we should have had children by ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... were fastened on the rocket now, a feeling of awe sweeping through him. He suddenly realized how puny man was against the forces man could unleash. Forces that here were being utilized to scientific ends, but forces that upon a moment's notice, could in turn be unleashed upon the rest of humanity in a burning, devastating ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw

... for the individuals who backed the venture. In the year 1587 with 23 ships and orders permitting him to operate freely on Spain's home coasts, he first boldly entered Cadiz, in almost complete disregard of the puny galleys guarding the harbor, and destroyed some 37 vessels and their cargoes. Despite the horrified protests of his Vice Admiral Borough (an officer "of the old school" to be found in every epoch) at these violations of traditional methods, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the coup d'etat achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... oblivion as completely as an ant-hill which exists one night and is trodden down the next. Forever and forever he works and plans in vain; forever and forever Nature, the visible and active Spirit of God, rises up and crushes her puny rebel. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... playing "tip-cat," another game upon which the law has its eye, or hurrying along on crutches after something that serves as a football, and getting there in time, too, for a puny kick. But that kick, little as it is, thrills the poor chap, and he feels that he has been playing. I am sure that football is going to play a great part in the physical salvation of Tom, Dick and Harry, but they must ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... Minna and 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Then he called to a negro who happened to be passing through the hall: "Jesse, tell Miss Lizzie that Mr. Compton is in the parlor." Then he turned to Compton. "I tell you what, sir, that gal looks mighty puny. She's from the North, and I reckon she's homesick. And then there's all this talk about war. She knows our boys'll eat the Yankees plum up, and I don't blame her for being sorter down-hearted. I wish you'd try to cheer ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... your ways; it may be wise, To let these puny, pestering flies Buzz about people's ears and eyes, A season ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... at a full pit. Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear, And wonders how the devil he durst come there; Wanting three talents needful for the place— Some beard, some learning, and some little grace. Nor is the puny Poet void of care; For authors, such as our new authors are, Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare: And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one 10 But has as little as the very Parson: Both say, they preach and write ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... "Puny bards, I am trying To secure the prize, if I can; By a gentle prophetic strain I am endeavouring to retrieve The loss I may have suffered; Complete the attempt, I hope, Since Elphin endures trouble In the fortress of Teganwy, On him may there not be laid Too many ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... observation, and, by standing on tiptoe, he succeeded in distinguishing a puny little boy, some three or four years old, and clad in rags, who was playing with the remnants of a toy-horse. The sight of this child increased Chupin's indignation. "So there's a child?" he growled. "The rascal ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... 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 of his countrymen, who, among other gibes, were wont ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... consciousness was filled with a morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite labor—something of which he could not even think. He lurched forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... cooked two pumpkins, but the same thing happened. The baby went to the pot and ate both. The children told her how it happened, but she wouldn't believe them. She said she couldn't be made to believe that one puny little baby could eat two whole pumpkins—and it is very queer, when you come to think ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... I told her of the hermitage in the oak wood and of the unhappy small tower, and of you and me and those others, and what was done that day. Don Jayme, I told it like a minstrel who believes what he sings! And then I spoke of to-day. She is no puny soul, nor is she in priest's grip. She acts from her own vision, not from that of another. The Queen is no weak soul either! She also has vision, but too often she lets the churchmen take her vision from her. But Dona Beatrix is stronger there. Well, she ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... night, and there was no sign of the blacks, Mick allowed them to take their watches alone. This experience did more than any other to impress them with Central Australia: its silence, its absolute loneliness, its vastness and the puny insignificance of man, who dared to pit his power ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... this child was weakly and puny to boot; its parents often thought it looked sickly and would soon become a little angel in Heaven. But it was not so; Matthew thrived, became a priest subsequently, and weighed in his prime two hundred and fifty, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... bold stroke of his diplomatic pen, to efface all the volumes which I could write in a century, or which the most laborious publicists of Germany ever carried to the fair of Leipsic, as an apology for monarchs and monarchy. Whilst I, or any other poor, puny, private sophist, was defending the Declaration of Pilnitz, his Majesty might refute me by the Treaty of Basle. Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by founding another republic that has cut off the head of its ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... traditions and caste prejudices." The past was depicted in the blackest colours, and the nation was called upon to begin a new and glorious epoch of its history. "We have to struggle," it was said, "in the name of the highest truth against egotism and the puny interests of the moment; and we ought to prepare our children from their infancy to take part in that struggle which awaits every honest man. We have to thank the war for opening our eyes to the dark sides ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... bear had been for a number of years a feature at Hartranft's. As a puny infant, barely able to crawl, Solomon, as he was solemnly dubbed, was brought in off the Teton Mountains, and as milk was scarcer than money at the horse-ranch, he was ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... of her life held for her an agony more terrible than anything she had ever known. Sea, sky, wind, and sudden pelting rain seemed leagued against her in a monstrous array against which she battled vainly with her puny woman's strength. The horror of it was like a leaden, paralysing weight. She fought and struggled because instinct compelled her; but at her heart was the awful knowledge that the sea had claimed her and she could not ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... stirred to their profoundest depths, Jack Dudley took no note of the passage of time. Midnight came and passed, and still he held his post, wondering, admiring and worshipping, as must puny man when brought face to face with such exhibitions ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... of wife to husband, and that unity of relationship which is required by a true and a real Christian marriage. You will have substituted a system of contention and difference warring against the laws of nature herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange the palpable will of the Creator of the world. I can see in this proposition for female suffrage the end ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... himself at the Chief, literally snarling. His small fist hit the Chief's face—and Mike was small but he was not puny. The "crack" of the impact was loud in the car. Haney grabbed. There was a moment's frenzied struggling. Then Mike was helplessly wrapped in Haney's arms, ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... love for women, because I've got a mother, and if ever there was a woman on the face of this earth that deserves the love of a son, that woman is my mother. Sister," he added, turning to one of those who sat on a bench near him with a thin, puny, curly-haired boy wrapped up in her ragged shawl, "the best prayer that I could offer up for you—and I do offer it—is, that the little chap in your arms may grow up to bless his mother as heartily as I bless mine, but that can never be, so long as you love the strong drink and ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... secure, in 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 by the sacred rules of prescription, found in that full ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... With puny fists I pounded the panel. A small pane in it was transparent. Within the lock I could see the blurred figures of Anita and her captor—and, it seemed, another figure. The lock was some ten feet square, with a low ceiling. It glowed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... dog held by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... inferior in size and no less sparingly equipped, greatly surpasses the Grasshopper in nocturnal rhapsodies. I speak of the pale and slender Italian Cricket (Oecanthus pellucens, Scop.), who is so puny that you dare not take him up for fear of crushing him. He makes music everywhere among the rosemary-bushes, while the Glow-worms light up their blue lamps to complete the revels. The delicate instrumentalist consists chiefly ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... 10th of October, 1804, an heir was given to the proud house of Moncton; a weak, delicate, puny babe, who nearly cost his mother her life. At the same hour, in the humble cottage at the entrance of that rich domain, your poor friend, George Harrison (or Philip Mornington, which is my real name) was launched upon the stormy ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... cathedral happened not to be on the route between Alexandra Grove and her principal customers. Suddenly, out of Victoria Street, they came up against the vast form of the Byzantine cathedral. It was hemmed in by puny six-story blocks of flats, as ancient cathedrals also are hemmed in by the dwellings of townsfolk. But here, instead of the houses having gathered about the cathedral, the cathedral had excavated a place for ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... other rushed in and clinched, at the same time securing both the holds it sought. Immediately the two commenced beating at each other's heads with the joints of their wings, kicking with their soft, puny feet and biting, each ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... world below is still slumbering in the half-shadows, and the valleys are filled with purple darkness. I do not believe that there is any more splendidly sublime sight to be seen in the whole world. For a while the eternal snows, unchanging in their calm majesty, dominate the puny world below, and then, because perhaps it would not be good to gaze for long on so magnificent a spectacle, the mists fall and the whole scene is blotted out, leaving in the memory a revelation of unspeakable grandeur. I saw this sunrise daily for a week, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... know in my own breast that I am pained By what thou griev'st at, and if I had power, My censure of their deeds would soon be known. But in misfortune I have chosen to sail With lowered canvas, rather than provoke With puny strokes invulnerable foes. I would thou didst the like: though I must own The right is on thy side, and not on mine. But if I mean to dwell at liberty, I must obey in all ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... very moment the poor fellows were making their last and almost superhuman struggles to burst their watery prison and ascend once more into the cheerful regions of light and air! Alas! How vain must such puny efforts prove! Plunged into ocean depths of three or four miles beneath the surface, subjected to an inconceivable pressure of millions and millions of tons of sea water, their metallic shroud was utterly unassailable from within, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... I were punish-ed For every pun I've shed, I should not have a puny shed Wherein to ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... Cervantes; and like his famous predecessors he too would laugh quite out of countenance the fool and the hypocrite, the pretender and the enthusiast, the knave and the persecuter, all those who would create a god in their own sour and puny image. ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... the harp, the song, The theatre, delight this dreamer: true, He lives but in imaginations: yet Suppose this aesthete made omnipotent, Feeling there is no bar he cannot break, Knowing there is no bound he cannot pass; Might he not then despise the written page, A petty music, and a puny scene? Conceive a spectacle not witnessed yet, When he, an artist in omnipotence, Uses for colour this red blood of ours, Composes music out of dreadful cries, His orchestra our human agonies, His rhythms lamentations of the ruined, His poet's fire not circumscribed by words, But now ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... upon his sister; the project flattered the vanity of the King, and accordingly on the 14th of May the vanguard of the French army entered the Duchy, and before the middle of the ensuing month the whole of Savoy, with the exception of Montmelian, was in the possession of his troops. This puny triumph was, however, counterbalanced and outweighed by the disasters at Casal and Mantua, the former of which, from the failure of provisions and reinforcements, fell into the hands of Spinola; while the latter, after having had twenty-five ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the required service. He has been chosen, and the country which has chosen him is to trust that he will do his best. I do not know that this matters much with reference to the legislature or governments of the different States, for their State legislatures and governments are but puny powers; but in the legislature and government at Washington it does matter very much. But I shall have another opportunity of speaking on ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... the Devil! They're about as like what fightin' Christians ought to be as a spit wad's like a bullet! Well, we went in with a whoop; but God wasn't out for the sissies that night, Wayland: he was out with a gun for red blood men! He got us, Wayland! That's all! 'Twasn't the poor puny preachers, perhaps 'twas th' music: th' fat one cud sing, but when we came out the doctor was cryin'; poor fellow he killed himself in D. T.'s later; an' A was all plugged up wi' cold in m' head blowin' m' nose! 'Boys,' says I, 'here's where I get off. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... When eighty years old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, Bowring, who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents, and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. Although the child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing. Before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. Before he was 'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he ran home from a dull walk, ordered a footman ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... line, and prompt the lay. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower. Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour, Though no broad river swept along To claim perchance heroic song; Though sighed no groves in summer gale To prompt of love a softer tale; Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claimed homage from a shepherd's reed; Yet was poetic impulse given, By the green hill and clear blue heaven. It was a barren scene, and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; But ever and ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... the supposition a monstrous and a deadly fallacy, to be combated, to be struck down to the dust. Even now he was chiefly conscious of a mental weakness in himself which had caused him to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. But he ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... immensity, would cease to feel! Whilst living, ah, how few were known to fame! One in a million has not left a name,— A single token, on life's shifting scene, To tell to other years that such has been. Yet man, unaided by a hope sublime, Thinks that his puny arm can cope with time; That his vast genius can reverse the doom, And shed a deathless light upon his tomb; That distant ages shall his worth admire, And young hearts kindle at the sacred fire Of him whose fame no envious clouds o'ercast, Yet died ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... for he loved her! he loved her! he loved her! the thought went on hammering in her mind, for she knew of its great truth! He loved her and went away! And she, poor, puny weakling, was unable to hold him back; the tendrils which fastened his soul to hers were not so tenacious as those which made him cling to suffering humanity, over there in France, where men and women were in fear of death ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... 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 some mad game; ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... order that each may freely develop his own personality in an environment of equality of social conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to the wall in competition with a child puny but rich.[6] ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... that against my 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, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... what they said about those gods, but I am not afraid of them; they are puny things and no gods, and they have no power whatever. I shall manage them as well as the Germans whom I shall meet in the field and ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... hour,—how short a time To wage our wars, to fan our fates, To take our fill of armored crime, To troop our banner, storm the gates. Blood on the sword, our eyes blood-red, Blind in our puny reign of power, Do we forget how soon is ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... was sure he loved her hopelessly, but the Duke then lived, and British law was in the way, a woman could not marry more than one man at one time. She little knew that the mighty eagle, as he soars to his home in the mountain heights, with his bold glance wooing the sun, would as soon love the puny night hawk as would Lionel Trevalyon waste his heart's strongest feelings on such a ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... was unavailing. He could no more move that bent and stubborn neck, than he could straighten the crooked fluke of an anchor. Then he pounded wildly upon the neck, shoulders, and flanks of the ass, and kicked against his sides. This, too, was useless, for his puny blows seemed to affect the animal no more than so many puffs of wind. Then Bob tried other means. He sat upright, and suddenly called, in a short, sharp, peremptory voice, "Whoa!" This he repeated over and over, but without any success; and at ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... there she stood, calm, serene, as if it were no affair of hers, while the little guardian, placing her hand in that of the little groom, said, "I do." Thus was this stately woman bandied about by these three puny men, all of whom she might have gathered up in her arms and borne off to their respective places ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... repeated Mrs. Joyce; 'I daresay you don't want; but beggars can't be choosers, you know. If you'd been a nice, smart, strong girl, I might have kept you instead of Betsey Ann; but a little puny thing like you wouldn't be worth her salt. No, no, miss; your fine days are over; to the house you'll go, sure ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... the Clerk and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in selfishness? That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol. Had not even we, two "boys"—as they called us—put a just law before them and made them take up the pen and sign it? If we had done so much without even a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to aid and back us, what would ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... 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

... affecting me. Why should I be estranged from you? I honour you even in what I think your error; why, then, should my feelings to you alter in anything else? It seems to me as though, in these fearful times, events were more and more growing too large for our puny grasp, and that we should the more look for and trust the Divine purpose in them when we find they have wholly passed beyond the reach and measure of our own. 'The Lord is in His holy temple: let ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... the unprotected cells, and enrages the dwellers inside. They swarm out full of fight, like an army lusting for battle. Their home has been ravished of the protection they had raised with half a lifetime of labour, and in their puny way they want vengeance. They find a foe on top, a man ready to their wrath. They crawl into his scorched boots, over his baked feet, guiltless of stockings; they charge up the legs, on which the trousers hang loosely, and as they charge they bite, because they are out for business, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... healthy motion of the hips or sides; their raiment, meanwhile, being purposely misshapen in this direction and in that, to hide—it must be presumed— deficiencies of form. If that chignon and those heels had been taken off, the figure which would have remained would have been that too often of a puny girl of sixteen. And yet there was no doubt that these women were not only full grown, but some of ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... something about walking along Market street with the procession of people that passes all day, ah, how shall I express it? It is thrilling and it is amusing; it is cosmic and it is puny. It is often ridiculous and always sublime. Sometimes when we are in most of a hurry the consciousness of the procession will come to us. It is as though we were one of a moving crowd that never began and will never end. At such times we listen to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots—now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;—the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... contemptible than many suppose); all expenses were to be defrayed by the Mayor of Tiverton and kindly Mr. Oliver Peard. After a year under Hudson, young Cosway entered Shipley's Academy, already mentioned. Probably he was a somewhat puny, insignificant-looking lad, and was therefore made the butt and fag of the robuster students, compelled to attend upon them and obey their behests, even to performing menial offices, just as younger boys do in other academies—for might is right in the world of school—and thus Mr. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... them, and as for Buffalo Bill—both the Buffalo and the redskins, whose scalps had always dangled in fancy from my belt in revenge for their plaguing my mother on her brave drive with my sick father across those long unsettled miles, were far beyond my puny vengeance. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... can do without them; And what if you should never know them more!— He is a puny soul who, feeling pain, Finds ease because another feels it too. If e'er I open out this heart of mine It shall be for a nobler end—to teach And not to purchase puling sympathy. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... 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 ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... wrists. Thus I held her at arm's length, and my fingers tightened until I saw the flesh grow white beneath them. The intensity of my rage beat hers down and made it a puny thing. ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... he fell, and regaining his feet rushed madly and blindly about in vain hope of finding the lost trail and escaping the doom that seemed closing in upon him. The snow clouds were like dense walls, and he, like a child, in puny effort wildly trying to batter them down to gain ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a good drinker will empty that horn at a draught. Some men make two draughts of it, but the most puny drinker of all can empty ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... Father," the monk said. "He is a lad of spirit, and it is a pleasure to train one of that kind. As to the puny boys they send to be made monks because, forsooth, they are likely to grow up too weak for any other calling, I have no patience with them; and I get into sore disgrace, with the abbot, for my shortness ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... last night, but not so fine as on that night we saw it together. But it was very solemn to look at it, and think how puny all man's works are in comparison with this little volcano. What is all the bombardment of Paris to those masses of fire and hundreds of tons of rock cast out into the sea? "If He do but touch ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the heart, they never penetrated. What a poor, narrow little world was that myth-haunted one of the Grecian poet and sculptor, and even philosopher, compared with the actual world which modern science is revealing from year to year! What a puny affair was that Grecian sun, with its coachman's apparatus of reins, fire-breathing nags, and golden car, which Schiller looks back to, in the spirit of Mr. Weller, Senior, when compared with the vast empyreal sphere and light-fountain of modern science, with its retinue of planets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... gives birth to a child. It would be foolish to assume that this child comes into the world with a normal standard of resistance; but it is certain he is not tubercular and doomed at the moment of his birth. He may be what is ordinarily termed a weak, puny, sickly infant, but the germ of disease is not implanted in his constitution. If he is taken from his mother, taken away from the tubercular environment, and brought up under the best hygienic and sanitary surroundings, it is ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... Front the keen arrows of Love's sunken sun, For that, with nearer vision it discerns What in the distance like ripe roses seemed Crimsoning with odorous beauty the gray rocks Are the red lights of wreckers! Just as well The obstinate traveler might in pride oppose His puny shoulder to the icy slip Of the blind avalanche, and hope for life; Or Beauty press her forehead in the grave, And think to rise as from the bridal bed. But let the soul resolve its course shall be Onward and upward, and the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... I had married a feller by de name of Charlie Hodges, what lived on a nearby plantation an' we wus livin' on Marse Rufus' place wid pa an' ma. We moved ter Raleigh den an' atter seberal years mammy moved hear too. You can fin' her on Cannon Street, but I'll tell you dat she's pretty puny now, since her stroke. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... 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. No hale man ever loves him; he ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... little mountain stream, undefiled for years by the silt of industry. The peak of the cross, lifting a needle point high above them, as if keeping watch over the Blue Mountains, the far-distant Idaho hills, the near-by forests of Oregon, and the puny, man-made structures at its feet, appeared to have a lofty disdain of them and the burrowings into its mammoth sides, as if all ravagers were mere parasites, mad to uncover its secrets of gold, and futile, if successful, to wreak the slightest damage ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... he was small, thin, puny, and rather round-shouldered. No one knew exactly how old he was; he could not be more than forty, but he looked more than fifty. He had a little wrinkled face, with a pink complexion, and kind pale blue eyes, like faded forget-me-nots. When he took off his cap, which ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... Steele; the former of whom has composed a classical and sportive Latin poem on this very subject. But Quadrio might well rest satisfied that the nation which could boast of its Fantoccini, surpassed, and must ever surpass the puny ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... and not only destroy his own soul but those of many others. Alack, and woe is me! The sins that he and his friends will commit this very night will cry to Heaven against us for our shameful delay! When shall our great work of cleansing the sanctuary be finished, if we proceed at this puny rate?" ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... 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 ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... Heber,[12] and other travellers on the same route, is struck by the contrast between the robust and well-fed peasantry of Hindustan Proper, and the puny rice-eaters of Bengal; "who eat fish, boiled rice, bitter oil; and an infinite variety of vegetables; but of wheaten or barley bread, and of pulse, they know not the taste, nor of mutton, fowl, or ghee, (clarified butter.) The author of the Riaz-es-Selatin, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... where along that upper terrace, where in places the seductive gold streak lay half uncovered to the sun, were those same yawning holes leading far down beneath the surface; about them grouped the puny figures of men performing the labors of Hercules under the galling spur ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... 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 New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... could he do? He was but a boy, and the great world would look with contempt upon his puny form. But he felt that he was not altogether insignificant. He had performed an act that day, which the fair young lady, to whom he had rendered the service, had declared very few men would have undertaken. There was something in him, something that would come out, if he only put his best foot ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... meant it, too. It was no empty phrase. Rather something in touch with Life's great scheme of compensations, which she manipulates in her own great way, beyond the comprehension of puny humans. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... of his cause as did the shepherd-warrior of ancient Israel. Eugene was pale and collected, but his nostrils were distended, and his eyes were aflame. Barbesieur's great chest heaved with fury, as he felt himself in the grasp of his puny antagonist, and turning met the glance of the son of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... courts his kind applause, 290 With humble adulation cowering low. All now is joy. With cheeks full-blown they wind Her solemn dirge, while the loud-opening pack The concert swell, and hills and dales return The sadly-pleasing sounds. Thus the poor hare, A puny, dastard animal, but versed In subtle wiles, diverts the youthful train. But if thy proud, aspiring soul disdains So mean a prey, delighted with the pomp, Magnificence and grandeur of the chase; 300 Hear what the Muse from faithful records ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... puny villain," gasped old Lobbs, paralysed by the atrocious confession; "what do you mean by that? Say this to my face! ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... 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 New World • Witter Bynner

... ruined where you bled; It was a dirty way to die! To put a bullet through your head And make a silly woman cry! You could not vex the merry stars Nor make them heed you, dead or living. Not all your puny ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer

... steal the beans; and one by one subsequently received each an arrow and started on his errand. There only remained the scented taros, so that picking again a mandatory arrow, he ascertained who would go and carry away the taros: whereupon a very puny and very delicate rat was heard to assent. 'I would like,' he said, 'to go and steal the scented taros.' The old rat and all the swarm of rats, upon noticing his state, feared that he would not be sufficiently ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... first to last, was in favor of the plan, and a firm ally to the lovers. He had grown extremely Western in his ideas, and was persuaded in his mind that "this old East," as he termed it, with its puny possibilities, did not amount to much, and that as soon as he was old enough to shape his own destinies, he should return to the only section of the country worthy the attention of a young man of parts. Meanwhile, he was perfectly well again, and willing to comply with ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... these are the master qualities, and yet we are compelled to see here—if we would not wilfully be blind or blindfold—a poet, yes, a true poet, with a perfervid fancy rather than an imagination, a poet with puny passions, a poet with no more than the momentary and impulsive sincerity of an infirm soul, a poet with small intellect—and ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... doubt that Seal Bay as a trading port owed its existence to two spits of mud and sand on either side of a completely inhospitable foreshore. They stretched out, forming the two horns of a horseshoe, like puny arms seeking to embrace the wide waters ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... and Merton gardens (where the remains can still be seen) to Magdalen on the south, and with the numerous rivers and conduits which form so many natural moats on west and east, the city soon becomes impregnable. To-day such puny efforts would be ludicrous, but in those times of cannon balls which could scarcely pierce a two-inch board, they more than suffice, did he for whom the work was done but have a ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... number of years, then was sold "on the block" to Mr. Stevens of Upson County. Betsy was sold at this same auction. Betsy and Peter were married by "jumping the broomstick" after Mr. Stevens bought them. They had sixteen children, of which Emily is the next to the last. She was always a "puny", delicate child and her mother died when she was about seven years old. She heard people tell her father that she "wasn't intented to be raised" 'cause she was so little and her mother was "acomin' to get her soon." Hearing this kind of remarks often had a depressing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... stop her ears with her fingers and run from the spot. The tough fellows standing around enjoyed the war of words hugely. Mr. Sherwood was too big to strike Gedney Raffer, and of course the latter dared not use his puny ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... to the excitement that he had forgotten himself, but Condell told him to think no more of 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 ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... that Christ is offered a cult made up of practices only. And why is it the monks, above all, who contribute to the deterioration of faith? 'I am ashamed to tell how superstitiously most of them observe certain petty ceremonies, invented by puny human minds (and not even for this purpose), how hatefully they want to force others to conform to them, how implicitly they trust them, how boldly they ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... steep cliff to find a bigger piece; but, though we could find plenty of small ones, which we sent bounding down by the help of the iron lever with more or less satisfactory results, the heavy masses all seemed to have portions so wedged or buried in the live rock that our puny efforts ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... puny lad, and not strong enough to work. He did not care to play with the other boys of the town. But he liked to go with his grandfather to the stone-yard. While the old man was busy, cutting and trimming the great blocks of stone, the lad would play among the chips. Sometimes he ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin

... 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 ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... have so many children in such a short time; but the truth is, the wife always brought him two and once three at a time. This made him very poor, for not one of these boys was old enough to get a living, and what was still worse, the youngest was a puny little fellow who hardly ever spoke a word. Now this, indeed, was a mark of his good sense, but it made his father and mother suppose him to be silly, and they thought that at last he would turn out quite a fool. This boy ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... the grey sea would have been black with ships, and the pale waves would have been red with fire. Carne looked at the water way touched with silver by the soft descent of the winter sun, and upon it, so far as his gaze could reach, there were but a dozen little objects moving, puny creatures in the distance—mice in front of a lion's den. And much as he hated with his tainted heart the land of his father, the land of his birth, some reluctant pride arose that he was ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... KENNEDY of Colzen, another violent persecutor in Carrick and parts adjacent; for having got the command of a troop of militia, he ranged the country in quest of the sufferers, (a very puny employment for a gentleman) and amongst other cruelties killed one Wm. M'Kirgue at Blairquachen mill 1685, and the same year surprized a meeting for prayer near Kirkmichael, and shot Gilbert M'Adam for essaying to escape. And, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Essay on Man, because he poured into them a still more vivid energy. But I doubt if there is any reasonable definition of poetry which would exclude even Pope the "essayist" from the circle of the poets. He was a puny poet, it may be, but poets were always, as they are to-day, of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... the vagaries of the weather, as little guided by sense or reason as the passions of early childhood. On one subject they agreed at all times, and that was to pet and spoil most thoroughly their infant daughter, a puny, weak-voiced, slender-limbed, curly-haired child, with the least possible chance of living to the age ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... forming unions and making speeches about their rights. If, here and there, in some remote nooks we find an approximation to the coarse, hearty patriarchal mode of life, we regard it as a naturalist regards a puny modern reptile, the representative of gigantic lizards of old geological epochs. A sketch or two of its peculiarities, sufficiently softened and idealised to suit modern tastes, forms a picturesque background to a modern picture. Some of Miss Bronte's rough ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... said Ralph, with a look of deep and unutterable scorn. "But to thee!—words would fail to express my contempt, my derision, my defiance of thy puny power! Read, and skulk ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... dream of prey to size Aspired; so she could nigh despise The puny specks the breezes round Supplied, and let them shake unwound; Assured of her fat fly to come; Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum; Who takes the fatal odds in fight, And gives repast an appetite, By plunging, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But I do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on the pitying consideration and kindness of his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate, who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. I have no doubt that some of those who were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought they ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... a puny little deposit near the Logan farm," replied Sykes. "The big strike is on the other side of the satellite. I figured that if Vidac was honest it wouldn't hurt to delay sending information back about the big strike until later." He paused ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... he seemed absolutely unconcerned, and after having washed himself leisurely, proceeded to discharges his devotions, looking around all the while with a certain self-satisfied composure, before returning to his cell. His appearance was puny, undergrown, and effeminate, and his small, narrow, and elongated head markedly prognathous, but he exercised over some of his companions a passionate, if unnatural, fascination which, I have been told by one who was present at ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... scornfully, not at all pleased with the idea of having his powerful enemy in the boat with him, "such a puny young fellow can be of no use to me, and if I go as far out to sea as I generally do, and stay as long, you will catch a cold that will be the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... answered Elizabeth, softly, and busied herself with walking baby up and down the room, hushing it on her shoulder. If in the dim light tears fell on its puny face, God ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... thoroughfare between the new and old cities, and at all hours of the day is thronged. It is a place favored by the native gig drivers to whip heavily laden coolies out of the way. A big Chinaman with powerful limbs, carrying a great burden, hastens to give the road to a puny creature driving a puny pony, lashing it with a big whip, and scrambles furiously away from a two-wheeler whirling along a man able to pay a ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... find a surgeon who can put together my crushed bones? Daggers, indeed! Do you not suppose that in thinking of you I have often thought of daggers? Why have I not thrust one into your heart, so that I might rescue you from the arms of this puny, spiritless English girl?' All this time she was still seated, looking at him, leaning forward towards him with her hands upon her brow. 'But, Paul, I spit out my words to you, like any common woman, not because they will hurt you, but because I know I may take that comfort, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence can not bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce. —The ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 the crop is being gathered and so they will ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... five years older than I and as handsome a boy as he now is a man, was the favorite of my father, the idol of my mother, and consequently the sovereign of the house. He was robust and well-made, and had a tutor. I, puny and even sickly, was sent at five years of age as day pupil to a school in the town; taken in the morning and brought back at night by my father's valet. I was sent with a scanty lunch, while my school-fellows brought plenty of good food. This trifling contrast between ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... 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, so tasteless, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... he was a type of that class which would look upon him as an outsider, and a black sheep, until he had bought his standing. They would expect him to conform to their type, to learn to speak their jargon, to think with their puny brains and to see with their short-sighted eyes. At the "Criterion" he turned in and had a drink, and, bolder for the wine which he had swallowed at a gulp, he told himself that he would do nothing of the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... councils, men were what they still are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... The last place to pay a debt! That is Jesus' picture of man as He knows him who knows him best. And in effect He says what we have been forgiven by God is as an unpayable amount. And what are not willing to forgive is like sixteen dollars and a fraction by contrast. What little puny folks some of us are in our thinking ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... entirely to qualities of the mind and his indefatigable application to business, he had come to recognise the importance of these more ornamental endowments in securing and holding the regard of Elizabeth. His son, Sir Robert Cecil, who was not only puny and deformed, but also somewhat sickly all his days, made, and could make, no pretensions to courtier-like graces, and must depend for Court favour, to a yet greater degree than his father, upon his own powers of mind and will. To combat Essex's social influence at Court, these two more ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... person the lad was tall and strongly-built; and I, poor puny wretch! so reverenced physical strength. Everything in him seemed to indicate that which I had not: his muscular limbs, his square, broad shoulders, his healthy cheek, though it was sharp and thin—even to his crisp ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... suffered from being cooped up in Paris. He, who had had the whole country-side to roll about in, felt stifled in the narrow space where he now had to keep quiet. His rosy cheeks became pale, he grew up puny, serious, like a little man, with eyes which stared at things in wonder. He was five by now, and his head by a singular phenomenon had become disproportionately large, in such wise as to make his father say, 'He has a great man's nut!' But ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... with Time for some seven decades, and he is a weak and puny antagonist in the first ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... herself the whole burden of an expensive war, big with ruin and disgrace. England, from being the umpire, was now become a party in all continental quarrels; and, instead of trimming the balance of Europe, lavished away her blood and treasure in supporting the interest and allies of a puny electorate in the north of Germany. The king of Prussia had been at variance with the elector of Hanover. The duchy of Mecklenburgh was the avowed subject of dispute; but his Prussian majesty is said to have had other more provoking causes of complaint, which however he did ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett



Words linked to "Puny" :   puniness, runty, little, shrimpy



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