"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bewitching sweetness of her smile is tempered by a certain dignity of countenance, to which her dark, raven hair, and darker eyes, do not a little contribute; her hands, and the foot that peeps from beneath, her graceful robe, are of exquisite smallness, and bespeak the purest Norman blood. Her extreme fairness, shaded by her sable locks, form a strong contrast to the auburn hair and ruddy visage of the stalwart warrior ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and very beautiful little churches in Athens, "delicious little Byzantine churches," as Renan calls them. They are very peculiar, and unlike what one generally sees in Europe. They strike the observer with their quaintness and smallness, and he fancies he here sees the tiny model of that unique and splendid building, the cathedral of St. Mark at Venice. But yet it is surprizing how little we notice them at Athens. I was even told—I sincerely hope it was false—that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... dim, childish sense of her own smallness and inadequacy, a fatal sense of worthlessness. She could not do anything, she was not enough. She could not be important to him. This knowledge ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... was nothing for it but for Conflans to take his whole fleet to the Morbihan transports. Hawke was upon him at once, and the disastrous day of Quiberon was the result. The Dunkirk division alone got free, but the smallness of its size, which permitted it to evade the watch, also prevented its doing any harm. Its escort, after landing its handful of troops in Ireland, was entirely destroyed; and so again the attempt of the French to invade over an uncommanded sea produced ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... decision to Mercy; and began her own preparations by sending him a jewel-case full of those diamonds which were her private property. She explained to him at considerable length the reasons which had dictated the choice. The very smallness of Montmedy was in itself a recommendation, since it would prevent any one from thinking it likely to be selected as a refuge. It was also so near Luxembourg that, in the present temper of the nation, which regarded the Austrian power ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... instructing her, no part was lost. The appearance of Mr. Brunton's daughter in Euphrasia, with a prologue written for the occasion, was announced, and notwithstanding there were not wanting wretches mean and miserable enough to trumpet abroad her youth and smallness of stature, as insurmountable obstacles to her personating the Grecian daughter, more just ideas of her, or perhaps curiosity brought a full house. Mr. Brunton himself spoke the prologue, which was written for him by the ingenious Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... of a poor weaver, and lost six precious years as a soldier in the artillery at Berlin. Owing to the smallness of his size he was at length dismissed, when he surrendered to a natural talent for engraving. Arriving at Strasburg, on his way to Paris, he fell in with Wille, a wandering gunsmith, who joined him in his journey, and eventually, in his studies. ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... blame of the smallness of the herd on the shoulders of Professor Jordan, and declare that it is due to the branding ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 49, October 14, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... pleasant brown eyes, and brown hair brushed down flat, giving his head the appearance of smallness, looked very lank and Yankeeish among the robust, fat Teutons of the Saxon capital. He was entering Dresden on a late afternoon brown with German sunshine. The school year had begun, but a loitering summer-time brightened city and countryside. As he made his way slowly through the throng at ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... into intellectual muscle. Out of dull and selfish seclusion go forth. Regulate with care your basal endowments. Prove thy strength, and render it sure. Deliver thy conceptions from narrowness, thy charity from scrimpness, thy purposes from smallness. Deny thyself and take up thy cross. Do and dare, love and suffer. So shalt thou build a character that will abide all the tests which future years or ages ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... didn't matter which—must do something unusual, in order to be talked about, and get a good free advertisement. Nowadays, when professionals vied with each other in the expensiveness of their jewels, the size of their hats, or the smallness of their waists, and the eccentricity of their costumes, it was perhaps rather a new note to wear no jewels at all, and appear in ready-made frocks bought in bargain-sales; while, as for the young woman's air of childlike innocence ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion that he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of the soul. He will only ask for a further admission:—that beauty is the cause of the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small, and so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which escapes the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of that which is smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other difficulties ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... fond of one another. They appear to keep the run of the whole performance, and listen and notice like children in a school when one or more of their number goes out to recite. It was extremely interesting to observe them when the leap-frog game was going on. Owing to the smallness of the stage, it was difficult for the horse who was to make the jump to get under headway, and several times poor Sprite, or whichever it was, would turn abruptly to make another start, upon which every horse on her ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... ways altogether. There was a glebe or church-farm attached to the manse or clergyman's house, and my father rented a small farm besides, for he needed all he could make by farming to supplement the smallness of the living. My mother was an invalid as far back as I can remember. We were four boys, and had no sister. But I must begin at the beginning, that is, as far back as it is possible for ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... which may be the perpetuation of a feature of the original design, but was more probably introduced or modified by the person who recased the tower in 1826. That there was sculpture we know, for in 1709 ten shillings was paid for taking the images down from the steeple. The smallness of the sum indicates that they were few in number, and if they occupied similar positions to those on the belfry stage of St. Michael's, and the structure was as decayed as was the tower of that church it is probable that the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... occasionally resorted here for refreshments. The stockholders, living a few miles from town, who ought to have succeeded the best, were getting dissatisfied at the many disadvantages which they laboured under, and the smallness of the community around them, and every thing ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... thirty-two thousand men; but in one night desertions reduced this body to six thousand. It is said that, on the morrow after his return, looking from his window on the field where his forces were encamped overnight, he was panic-struck by the smallness of the number that remained. After deliberation, he resolved on starting in the night for Conway, disguised in the garb of a poor priest of the Friars-Minor, and taking with him only thirteen or fourteen friends. He so planned his journey as to reach Conway at break of day, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... worse than foolish, and here he was, ruined. The act had been an act of temporary madness; and influenced by Dellwig, he had saved his skin afterwards as best he could. Now there was the price to pay, the heavy price, so tremendous when compared to the smallness of the follies that had led him on step by step. His bad genius, Dellwig, went free; and later on lived sufficiently far away from Kleinwalde to be greatly respected to the end of his days. Manske's eyes filled with tears when he came to the action of Providence in this matter—the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the less for it. For as to fear in all encounters is the mark of a heavy and cowardly heart, as Agamemnon did, who for that reason is ignominiously taxed by Achilles with having dog's eyes and a stag's heart; so, not to fear when the case is evidently dreadful is a sign of want or smallness of judgment. Now, if anything ought to be feared in this life, next to offending God, I will not say it is death. I will not meddle with the disputes of Socrates and the academics, that death of itself is neither bad nor to be feared, but I will affirm that this ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... never, in this half-annihilation of those beings of my species, could I recognize without shuddering the extent of the power which we may exercise over the existence of our fellow,—the narrow circle of knowledge and of enjoyment within which we may confine him,—the smallness of the sphere to which we may ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... of great annoyance to him that his wife still continued to attribute her ill-health to the smallness and darkness of the house; and the fact that there were only two of the houses in Charlton Grove left caused a marked depression of spirits. It was clear that she was fretting. The small servant went further, and said ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... chap. I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable. He made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, except with a jovial brusqueness that was worse than the offence. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wise man is aware that we retain spiritual qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the Infinite, and the smallness of man's Sympathy when compared with the source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with perfect Sympathy, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... have worked with their hands possess heavy hands. Conversely, people whose ancestors have not worked hard with their hands possess small and fine hands. Hence the small delicate hands of Jews, the frequent perfection of form and invariable smallness of the hands of Gypsies, who have inherited their hands from high-cast Hindoos, and the so-called racial hands of real aristocrats. That hard work, even tumbling, piano playing, etc., should alter the form of a hand is self-evident, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... complete the great work of placing the new order of monks in all the convents, Edgar summoned a general council of the prelates and the heads of the religious orders. He here inveighed against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure, which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the crown of thorns; their negligence in attending the exercise of their function; their mixing with the laity in the pleasures of gaming, hunting, dancing, and singing; ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... giving "proofs," and no one who does not wish to believe in the selection-value of the initial stages can be forced to do so. Among the many pieces of presumptive evidence a particularly weighty one seems to me to be the smallness of the steps of progress which we can observe in certain cases, as for instance in leaf-imitation among butterflies, and in mimicry generally. The resemblance to a leaf, for instance of a particular Kallima, seems to us so close ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... well and strong, and the least of them lifted up and glamoured over by the idea that unites them. All the pettinesses and smallness of every-day existence seem brushed aside, for no one is working for money or himself, and every man of them may be ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... directions, and there is something startling in the enormous shields of green inscribed in gold with the names of God, Mohammed, and the earliest khalifs. Everything in the building produces a sensation of smallness in the beholder, almost amounting to stupor. But the Agia Sophia seen by day, in the company of a chattering Greek guide, is one thing; it is quite another when viewed at night from the solitude of the vast galleries, during the religious ceremonies ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... outside the Fatherland, I should imagine, would prisoners be forbidden to pray even pour nos armes, and the stupidity of the misunderstanding is typical enough. The cheerful dignity shown by prisoners under provocation makes a fine contrast to such pitiful smallness, and of that this little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... has rendered familiar with the present character of the American forest, will be struck with the smallness of the diameter which Dr. Williams and Dr. Dwight ascribe to trees of such extraordinary height. Individuals of the several species mentioned in Dr. Williams's table are now hardly to be found in the same climate, exceeding one-half or at most ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... denotes unsatisfactory pursuits. Business will suffer, and lovers and friends will complain of the smallness of affection. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... made her ill since, after her father's death, the clergyman had permitted himself, in her hearing, to vent his personal disappointment at the unexpected smallness of his wife's inheritance. The man had presumed to take the air of one reasonably aggrieved; he had even dropped angry words about "deception" in the first heat of his chagrin. "As if," said haughty Deb, "it was ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... she kept her secret from him all that day. They left Tete Jaune before sunrise with an outfit which MacDonald had cut down to six horses. Its smallness roused Joanne's first question, for Aldous had described to her an outfit of twenty horses. He explained that a large outfit made travel much more difficult and slow, but he did not tell her that with six horses ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... in the race for advancement. There is some reason to believe that Lincoln, strange as it seems, was his successful rival in a love affair, but otherwise Douglas left Lincoln far behind. Buoyant, good-natured, never easily abashed, his maturity and savoir faire were accentuated by the smallness of his stature. His blue eyes and his dark, abundant hair heightened his physical charm of boyishness; his virile movements, his face, heavy-browed, round, and strong, and his well-formed, uncommonly large head gave him an aspect of intellectual power. ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... into wars, whether we will or not, I should suppose it very imprudent to suffer our credit to be annihilated, for so small a sum as fifty-one thousand guilders. The injury will be greater, too, in proportion to the smallness of the sum; for they will ask, "How can a people be trusted for large sums, who break their faith for such small ones?" You know best what effect it will have on the minds of the money lenders of that country, should we fail in this payment. You know best, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... afraid. Again his mind went back to old Anna Green and what she had told him of his grandfather. How far away—how long ago that had been.... And yet, was Anna Green far away now? Something of her had seemed always to be with him on that long, weird voyage, from the infinite smallness and pettiness of Earth to this realm out beyond the stars. And more than ever now, somehow Lee seemed aware of her presence here in this quiet room. Occultism? He had always told himself that surely he was no mystic. A practical fellow, who could understand science when it was ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... boy's sister so airily—communed. With a hand yet on the door that he was leaving, and while his distress for what had befallen in this room brought a foreboding of what might impend in the other, he felt the chiding of that celestial benignity and was dimly made to see its illimitable span and the smallness of magnifying the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... chance may afford, should be looked for and appropriated; a pile of stones, or even two trunks of trees rolled close together, may make a dry bedstead in a marshy land. Over these, let him lay whatever empty bags, skins, saddle-cloths, or spare clothes he may have, which from their shape or smallness cannot be turned to account as coverings, and the lower part ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... making fulsome compliments on his great victory. Then the wretch sent for Mr. Holwell. We bade him farewell; sure we thought we should never see him more. But he returned to us presently, and told us the Nawab was vastly enraged at the smallness of the treasure he had found; the stories of the French had led him to expect untold wealth. Omichand and Krishna Das had been took out of prison, and treated with great affability, and presented by the Nawab with siropas—robes ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... that which is, Democritus, as against the Eleatics, maintained that this was not a unity, some one immovable, unchangeable existence, but an innumerable number of atoms, invisible by reason of their smallness, which career through empty space (that which is not), and by their union bring objects into being, by their separation bring these to destruction. The action of these atoms on each other depended on ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... by all this detail to pay much attention to what he was saying about the smallness of the kettle's mouth; but I remembered it ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... criminals with severity; he was gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert in all military exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... First and Last To present smallness welded fast, And he beholds with prophet eye The brotherhood of earth and sky, And, when Time's voyage wild is o'er The lights ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... erect Position (Vol. viii., pp. 59. 233.).—So Ben Jonson was buried at Westminster, probably on account of the large fee demanded for a full-sized grave. It was long supposed by many that the story was invented to account for the smallness of the gravestone; but the grave being opened a few years ago, the dramatist's remains were discovered in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... not only makes us think a great deal of our own merits, but it also makes us blind to the merits of others. We need only put this into words, to see its smallness, but it often happens. Some people's patriotism seems to consist in despising the French and Germans. No one values true patriotism more than I do, but I detest "insularity"—that insufferable feeling of superiority of which English people are so often guilty. We ought to love ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... bright blue linen apron, that half hid her thickly-plaited black woolen petticoat, which was short enough to give full effect to scarlet knit stockings and low, boat-shaped shoes. She carried in her hand a plate of large hot fat cakes, which she pressed upon us; then pitied the smallness of our appetites, and urged two apiece at least. Two mouthfuls, however, were sufficient, as the cakes were not only extremely greasy, but filled with white curds, aniseed and chives. Having received in good part this intended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satin slippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in younger days he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possible white dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... at this band of powerful, lithe, wiry, covetous savages, and thought of the hundreds of others whom they could summon by a single war-whoop to their side, and of the smallness of our own party, I could not help feeling that moral influence was a powerful factor in the affairs of man. No doubt they were restrained to some extent by the certain knowledge that, if they attacked and killed us, and appropriated our goods without ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... monthly flow, and is always preceded by severe pains in the back and lower part of the abdomen. It is caused by taking cold during the period; fright, violent mental emotions, obstinate constipation, sedentary occupations, smallness of the mouth and neck of the womb. Females subject to this trouble are generally relieved by marriage. The symptoms are severe bearing-down pains in the region of the uterus, like labor pains; restlessness, coldness, flashes of heat, with headache; aching ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... thousand pounds of tobacco or the equivalent in current money[1]. Mrs. Lee died in 1761 and thereafter Washington owned the estate absolutely. That it was by no means so valuable at that time as its size would indicate is shown by the smallness of the, rent he paid, never more than four hundred sixty-five dollars a year. Many eighty-acre farms rent for that much ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... impossible with town-populations even approaching only distantly those of to-day; and, in fact, when we come to inquire into the size and populousness of mediaeval German cities, as into those of the classical world of antiquity, we are at first sight staggered by the smallness of their proportions. The largest and most populous free Imperial cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Nuernberg and Strassburg, numbered little more than 20,000 resident inhabitants within the walls, a population rather less than that of (say) many an ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... doubtful; for as far as we could judge, while they flitted in and out among the trees, there were a hundred or more of them yelling and shrieking and hurling their sharp-pointed spears towards us. A hundred opposed to three were fearful odds. Probably they were not aware of the smallness of our number, or they might have made a rush at our camp, and knocked us all over with their waddies. Every moment we expected that they would do so. Should one of us be killed or wounded so as to be unable to fire, the other two ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... Abbey woke all his veneration. He went into it, one morning, just as service was about beginning, and took his place among the worshippers. Those of our readers who have attended the morning service at an English cathedral on a week-day cannot have forgotten the ludicrous smallness of the congregation compared with the imposing array of official assistants. A person who has a little tincture of the Yankee in him may even find himself wondering how it can "pay" the British empire to employ ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... rather ornate English the good appearance and convenient smallness of Mary's house; said her own was the same size. That person with whom she sometimes passed "of a Sundeh"—yes, and moonlight evenings—that was her husband. He was "ferst ingineeur" on a steam-boat. There was a little, just discernible waggle in her head as she ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... according to the arithmetic of heaven, entries are made in terms of quality rather than of quantity, and values are determined termined on the basis of capability and intent. The rich gave much yet kept back more; the widow's gift was her all. It was not the smallness of her offering that made it especially acceptable, but the spirit of sacrifice and devout intent with which she gave. On the books of the heavenly accountants that widow's contribution was entered as a munificent gift, surpassing in worth the largess of kings. "For ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the eldest son, does not appear in the case. Perhaps he also was away. But it is remarkable that the king never does directly take part in any contract. That is probably due to his sacred character. The young princess was not treated with overmuch consideration, judging by the smallness of her dowry. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... known than the names and the population, are first, the Staitan, or Kite Indians, a small tribe of one hundred men. They have acquired the name of Kites, from their flying; that is, their being always on horseback; and the smallness of their numbers is to be attributed to their extreme ferocity; they are the most warlike of all the western Indians; they never yield in battle; they never spare their enemies; and the retaliation of this barbarity has almost extinguished the nation. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... years now, and formerly much less—is all which is held against the liabilities of Lombard Street; and if that were all, we might well be amazed at the immense development of our credit systemin plain English. at the immense amount of our debts payable on demand, and the smallness of the sum of actual money which we keep to pay them if demanded. But there is more to come. Lombard Street is not only a place requiring to keep a reserve, it is itself a place where reserves are kept. All country bankers keep their reserve in London. They only ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... gestured toward himself as though he were ashamed of his brawn, and the heart of Tod warmed and expanded. He himself would never be large, and his heart had ached because of his smallness many a time. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... offer of some two or three ships, which William put at his disposal, under pretence to reconnoitre the Northumbrian coasts, and there attempt a rising in his own favour. But his discontent was increased by the smallness of the aid afforded him; for William, ever suspicious, distrusted both his faith and his power. Tostig, with all his vices, was a poor dissimulator, and his sullen spirit betrayed itself when he took leave of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Raffaelle, to which we do not implicitly bow. He is considered as having "committed two striking faults against nature and lineal perspective, in his famous picture of the Transfiguration, by the ridiculous smallness of his Mount Tabor, and by the disproportionable size of the Christ and of the two Prophets." But we question if the mind, in that state of feeling in which it beholds a miraculous and altogether overwhelming subject, is not necessarily in a condition to overstep the actual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... by the Russians. The season was too far advanced for them either to cross the Balkans or to push forward operations against the uncaptured fortresses. Shumla and Silistria remained in the hands of their defenders, and the Russians, after suffering enormous losses in proportion to the smallness of their numbers, withdrew to Varna and the Danube, to resume the campaign in the spring of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that such a part of the world expected to be regarded or referred to at all. Betty began early to realise that as her companions did not talk of Timbuctoo or Zanzibar, so they did not talk of New York. Stockholm or Amsterdam seemed, despite their smallness, to be considered. No one denied the presence of Zanzibar on the map, but as it conveyed nothing more than the impression of being a mere geographical fact, there was no reason why one should dwell on it in conversation. Remembering ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... managed to get in again; but the other was captured, and with her a Confederate commissary, who was making arrangements for crossing a large number of cattle from the West at various points. Red River was effectually closed, but the smallness of his force made it necessary to keep them all together, in case of attack, and though intercourse across the Mississippi was seriously impaired, it was not wholly checked. On the 15th the admiral again returned to the bend above Port Hudson, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... time Mirande was nearing the close of her seventeenth year. She was beautiful, and well grown. An air of purity, innocence, and artlessness hung round her like a veil. The length of her eyelashes, which barred her blue eyes, and the childlike smallness of her mouth, gave the impression that evil could never find means to enter into her. Her ears were so tiny, so fine, so finished and so delicate, that the least modest of men could never have dared to breathe ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... grape hurtled through the air. "Charge!" shouted the leader, and down they went, with double-quick step, over the ditch and hedge, and into the line, sweeping everything before them. The Mexicans fell from their guns, but soon, seeing the smallness of the force opposed to them and reassured by the galling fire poured from the azoteas and Molino on the stormers, they rallied, charged furiously, and drove our men back into the plain. Here eleven out of the fourteen ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... resumed, smiling a little. "Now, if it seems probable that there is no limit to the immensity of space, why should we make its smallness finite? How can you say that the atom cannot be divided? As a matter of fact, it already has been. The most powerful microscope will show you realms of smallness to which you can penetrate no other way. Multiply that power a thousand ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... struck with his delicate features, the softness of his voice, and the smallness of his hands. There were other points, besides, in the tournure of the boy's figure that had appeared singular to me. I had frequently observed the eyes of this lad bent upon me, when Dubrosc was not present, with ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... composing it have been rushing in this direction and that at an enormous speed, but do not appear to us on the earth to alter their positions in regard to each other. I know of nothing that gives one a more overwhelming sense of the mightiness of the universe and the smallness of ourselves than this fact. From age to age men look on changeless heavens, yet this apparently stable universe is fuller of flux and reflux than is the restless ocean itself, and the very wavelets on the sea are not more numerous nor more restless than ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... will, Mistress Carver," replied Howland heartily, for his relationship toward the governor and his beautiful wife was rather that of a younger brother than of a retainer; and although the smallness of his fortune had induced him to accept the patronage of the older and wealthier man, it was much as a lad of noble lineage was content a few years before this to become first the page and then the squire ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... and subsided into a reverie which, undisturbed by De Morbihan, endured throughout the brief remainder of their drive; for, thanks to the smallness of the hour, the streets were practically deserted and offered no obstacle to speed; while the chauffeur was ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... [183] In such a state the poor were maintained at the expense of the masters who enjoyed the fruits of their labor; and as the rolls of tribute were filled only with the names of those citizens who possessed the means of an honorable, or at least of a decent subsistence, the comparative smallness of their numbers explains and justifies the high rate of their capitation. The truth of this assertion may be illustrated by the following example: The Aedui, one of the most powerful and civilized tribes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... my rule, which he hath engraved to admiration, for goodness and smallness of work: it cost me 14s. the doing. This day, for a wager before the King, my Lords of Castlehaven and Arran, (a son of my Lord of Ormond's) they two alone did run down and kill a stoute ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... humble duty to your Majesty, humbly acquaints your Majesty that your Majesty's Ministers, taking into consideration the smallness of the force with which the campaign in China was commenced this year, and the advanced period of the season at which the reinforcements would arrive (which reinforcements would not so raise the strength of the Army as to afford ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... one of far less consequence. They said he needed not to have given himself the trouble of dressing, for he was not missed in the afternoon; but now, they supposed, he came at night as the most suitable time; with other allusions to the meanness of his figure and smallness of stature. All this was addressed to the bride, who sat near him, but spoken out on purpose that he might hear it. My brother, perceiving this was purposely said to provoke an answer and occasion his giving offence to the King, removed ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... key to many of the ideas of Columbus. The territories of the Great Khan were the object of his search in all his voyages. Much of the success of his enterprise rested on two happy errors; the imaginary extent of Asia to the east, and the supposed smallness of the earth. Without these errors he would hardly have ventured into the immeasurable waste of waters of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... so very drunk when we were at their camp, I did not at first see how they had been made aware of my presence. They did not seem to see me, and I concluded that they had identified me in the morning by the smallness of my track in the soft soil. They could not have known what transpired in their fury, but probably reasoned that, as I had been there, and taken the horses, I had burned their ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... of Mexicans came upon them unexpectedly in canoes, and besides wounding many of our men, they seized four soldiers alive, whom they carried off in triumph to Mexico; and from these men Guatimotzin learnt the smallness of our number, and the great loss we had sustained in killed and wounded. After questioning them as much as he thought proper, Guatimotzin commanded their hands and feet to be cut off, and sent them in this mutilated condition through many of the surrounding ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... discovered us until they were fairly out of hearing their shrieks were so loud and incessant that it seemed, for once, our presence in that country had been unknown to the surrounding natives, a proof perhaps of the smallness of their numbers. In the evening other natives (men) were heard approaching along the creek, and we at first supposed they had come to that place as their rendezvous to meet the gins and their families whom we had unwillingly scared; but Mr. Stapylton, during ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the mistresses of roomy houses in the western quarters of town, shudder as they imagine the discomforts which these young wives of other days must have endured. "What! live in chambers?" they exclaim with astonishment and horror, recalling the smallness and cheerless aspect of their husbands' business chambers. But past usages must not be hastily condemned,—allowance must be made for the fact that our ancestors set no very high price on the luxuries of elbow-room and breathing-room. Families ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... restricted living. Men obeyed their base immediate motives until the world grew unendurably bitter. Some disappointment, some thwarting, lit up for them—darkly indeed, but yet enough for indistinct vision—the crowded squalor, the dark inclosure of life. A sudden disgust with the insensate smallness of the old-world way of living, a realization of sin, a sense of the unworthiness of all individual things, a desire for something comprehensive, sustaining, something greater, for wider communions and less habitual things, filled them. Their souls, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of the penis, in which the glans penis cannot be uncovered, either on account of a congenital smallness of the orifice of the foreskin, or it may be due to the acute stage of gonorrhoea, or caused by the presence of ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score gravestones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exaggerated by Americans and even by ourselves. To take the frigate actions alone, as being those which properly attracted most attention, we see that the captures in action amounted to three on each side, the proportionate loss to our opponents, considering the smallness of their fleet, being immensely greater than ours. We also see that no British frigate was taken after the first seven months of a war which lasted two and a half years, and that no British frigate ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... to great misery. Their only domestic animal was the pig which roamed about half wild and in no great numbers, for they had never taken the trouble to breed it in captivity. Their resources, therefore, were limited, which accounted for the comparative smallness of the population, further reduced as it was by a wicked habit of infanticide practised in order to lighten the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... you if you like—that skin was given me by a feller named Harrisson, in the Commissariat—quite another sort of Johnny. He was down with the Central Indian Horse—quite another place!" He dwells on the inferiority of this shot, the smallness of the skin, the close contiguity of its owner. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... nor littleness smallness. Nebuchadnezzar's conquest of Judah was, in his eyes, one of the least important of his many victories, but it is the only one of them which survives in the world's memory and keeps his name as a household word. The Jews were a mere handful, and their country a narrow ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... instrumentality of valor and of prudence; and thus prepared he set forth to oppose Hannibal, not with intention to fight him, but with the purpose of wearing out and wasting the vigor of his arms by lapse of time, of meeting his want of resources by superior means, by large numbers the smallness of his forces. With this design, he always encamped on the highest grounds, where the enemy's horse could have no access to him. Still he kept pace with them; when they marched he followed them, when they encamped he did the same, but at such a distance as not to be compelled to an engagement, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... consent to this, and only agreed to the present measure upon a clear understanding that early in the next session the matter was to be brought forward in Parliament with a view to render the militia more efficient; that nothing but the militia justified the smallness of our military establishments as compared with those of other nations; and he finished by saying that the state of our relations with Russia made the maintenance of this force of paramount importance, as it was impossible to say what dangers we might not be menaced with from that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... on the eve of a period of great development. Its resources are known to be immense. Its climate has been found most favourable to human health, and the objectionable feature of the climate, the smallness and irregularity of the rainfall, has been studied and become understood and found remediable. Once the confederation that is now in process of formation takes place, there is no doubt that Australia will enter upon a new and prosperous commercial era. Owing to the fact that its chief opportunities ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... neither is it important to the world, but it appeared both large and important in the eyes of our hero and his comrades. In their circumstances any town would have been regarded as a city of refuge, and their joy on arriving was not much, if at all, marred by the smallness and the poor appearance of the town, which, at that time, consisted of about twenty houses. They were built on the top of posts about twelve or fourteen feet from the ground—like the hut of the Spaniard already described— because, being closely walled in by ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the Wabash valley became quite discouraged and was almost ready to give up his work, on account of the smallness of his sales. On every side, his ears were filled with complaints of 'hard times;' the wheat crop had partially failed two years in succession—the California emigration, and railroad and plank-road speculations had almost drained the country of money. Frequently he would ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... I shall be unable to supply you with tea, sugar, and rum; but such other articles as we have and can spare you will be furnished with; but should you consider it will in any way endanger your party going overland without the stores you have asked for, or from the smallness of the number for which you can carry stores, or for protection, I do not consider that it is imperative you should do so, having every reason to believe that Mr. Walker's party will do everything that is possible and necessary ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... thick bushes. Henry Kingsley's explanation (1859), that the word means shrubbery, is singularly misleading, the English word conveying an idea of smallness and order compared with the size and confusion of the Australian use. Yet he is etymologically correct, for Scrobb is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) for shrub; but the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the bottle politely to de Laney, and the latter helped himself. For his part, he was glad the tin cups had been necessary, for it enabled him to conceal the smallness of his dose. Lawton filled his own up to ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... proved to be a very small people. The impression of graceful height had come from the slenderness and justness of their proportions, the smallness of their bones, and the upright grace of their carriage. After standing alongside one, we acquired a fine respect for their ability to handle ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the average as normal life, this normal life seems no better to him than some horrible chaotic and uneven turmoil, and his brain ready to be turned if he had to remain in it for long. When so unfastened, the whole savour of life is completely gone, and a smallness of mind and outlook is fallen back into from which the soul recoils in horror and struggles ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... the effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, and more resistant ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... strove to convince her of his identity. She would only answer with a laugh, which grated so harshly on his ear that he finally desisted, and suffered her to think he was her cousin. The smallness of her chamber troubled him, and when Mrs. Aldergrass came up he asked if there was no other apartment where 'Lena ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... rose steadily, the pressure of the water drove the air out of the cavern through this little hole, continually making an intermittent blowing sound. The great cleft in the rock acted like the horn of an immense megaphone. This gave rise to a roar, high-pitched—owing to the smallness of the hole—like a wolf's howl. Night and day, but more especially when the tide was coming in, the howl of the Wolf Rock sounded over the sea to warn mariners ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... smallness of Nelson Lodge as she walked up the garden path; she had pictured something more imposing than this low white building, walled off from the wide street; but within she discovered an inconsistent spaciousness. The hall was panelled in white wood, the drawing-room, sparsely but beautifully ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... "impenitence," not as denoting permanence in sin until death, in which sense it was taken above (for thus it would not be a special sin, but a circumstance of sin), but as denoting the purpose of not repenting. The other thing is the smallness or brevity of the good which is sought in sin, according to Rom. 6:21: "What fruit had you therefore then in those things, of which you are now ashamed?" The consideration of this is wont to prevent man's will from being hardened ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... girlish young man, but so phenomenally self-possessed in danger, had been, as we have said, our Roland's Oliver, his companion of old days, his rival and his confidant. Fonck, whom I called Aymerillot because of his smallness, his boyish simplicity and his daring, the hope of the morrow and already a glorious soldier, had perhaps avenged Guynemer's death already. For Lieutenant Weissman, according to the Koelnische Zeitung, had boasted in a letter to his people of having brought down the most famous French aviator. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... the fire he looked uncommonly sardonic and wild, with his long beard, bald head, flowing hair, shaggy brows, and little cunning eyes, which seemed in their smallness to share in his grin, and yet did not; and though to be sure he was some one to talk to and to make plans with for our escape, yet I felt that if he were to fall into a stupor again it would not be my hands that should chafe ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the mind with richest truth Gathered from sages of all lands, May toil through days of sunny youth, And on till Death gives his commands, But fails to call to him the aid Of Reason, Judgment, and Good Sense, Will find himself at last dismayed At smallness of ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... immediate and startling. Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever received for his greatest work; others, magnanimously renouncing the world on his behalf, have rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him for a priceless work. Lament and heroics are both out of place. London was a small town, and it may well be doubted whether any modern provincial town of the same size would buy up in eighteen ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... terraced sides, as in Pueblo Bonito, or the whole rectangular design was converted into an ellipse, as in Pueblo Penasca Blanca. There are indications that these fortresses were not in all cases built at one time, but that, at least in some cases, they grew by gradual accretions.[94] The smallness of the distances between those in the Chaco valley suggests that their inhabitants must have been united in a confederation; and one can easily see that an actual juxtaposition or partial coalescence of such communities ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... even in hardest times, is often quite miraculous. When Hilary sat waiting in the jeweler's shop, she watched a little episode of high life—two wealthy people choosing their marriage plate; the bride, so careless and haughty; the bridegroom, so unutterably mean to look at, stamped with that innate smallness and coarseness of soul which his fine clothes only made more apparent. And she thought—oh, how fondly she thought!—of that honest, manly mein; of that true, untainted heart, which she felt sure, had never loved any woman but ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... be sleeping in a deep delightful peace. Beyond his fences there were the neighbors' farms, and then there were the heath, the hills; and beyond these, other counties, other countries, the rest of the turning globe, the universe it turned in—and once again he had that feeling of infinite smallness, the insect unfairly matched against a solar system, the speck of dust whirled as the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... another, no energy was allowed to sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetually roused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to its height. Nature herself set the boundaries of the river and the mountain to the confines of the several states—the smallness of each concentrated power into a focus—the number of all heightened emulation to a fever. The Greek cities had therefore, above all other nations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind—a perpetual intercourse with numerous ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this inconvenience, divided his army, marching himself with one body to encounter the Volscians on their approach from without, and leaving Titus Lartius, one of the bravest Romans of his time, to command the other and continue the siege. Those within Corioli, despising now the smallness of their number, made a sally upon them, and prevailed at first, and pursued the Romans into their trenches. Here it was that Marcius, flying out with a slender company, and cutting those in pieces that first enraged him, obliged the other assailants ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... antagonist than each now met in the other. Douglas was by far the most conspicuous member of his party. His admirers had dubbed him "the Little Giant," contrasting in that nickname the greatness of his mind with the smallness of his body. But though of low stature, his broad-shouldered figure appeared uncommonly sturdy, and there was something lion-like in the squareness of his brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of his long hair. His loud and persistent advocacy of territorial ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... essayed with all skill to keep a taut line. It was impossible. Now I felt his weight and again only a slack line. This fish, too, ran right to my feet, then in a boiling splash sheered away. But he could not go far. I reeled him back and led him to the canoe. He was small, and the smallness of him was such a surprise in contrast to what his fight had led me to ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... just received your letter, and am indeed sorry that its contents should be so little favourable to my hopes. I understand that your objection to me is simply in regard to the smallness and insecurity of my income. On the first point I may say that I have fair hopes that it may be at once increased. As to the second, I believe I may assert that it is as sure at least as the income of other professional ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... without some corn or maize in their hands. The real politeness with which food is given by nearly all the interior tribes, who have not had much intercourse with Europeans, makes it a pleasure to accept. Again and again I have heard an apology made for the smallness of the present, or regret expressed that they had not received notice of my approach in time to grind more, and generally they readily accepted our excuse at having nothing to give in return by saying that they were quite aware that there are no white men's goods in the interior. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... bell-shaped, while some have got little heads and small fins. Of these last it is said that each little creature has no fewer than three hundred and sixty thousand minute suckers on its head with which it seizes its prey. When we think of the exceeding smallness of the creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact that each little thing must obtain food by making war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we are led almost in spite of ourselves ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the authorities that only a limited few besides those interested in the case would be allowed in the court-room was the reason of the smallness of the crowd. People, knowing that they could not get in to see the trial, did not—beyond a few of the more curious—care to merely get ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... put into a separate vessel. I was really frightened for fear she would do as she proposed, as I knew her fondness for pleasantries of this sort, and also, that so far from being taken as a joke, it would bring down upon us a storm of wrath. We were surprised at the smallness of the saucers containing the fruit. Certainly the contents of as many as four or five could have been put into a pint. Then the sugar was supplied in meagre quantity, though at that time cheaper than ever before known. There were common tin spoons, so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... pittances of food as were obtainable. We watched an orderly who entered the church with a single loaf of bread which had just been secured and which was to be divided among several hundred wounded. He used a great knife as if he hoped to make up for the smallness of the supply by the largeness of the implement. Slowly and with sober care he cut slice after slice, each one so thin that the light shone through it. Every head was turned toward him and each burning pair of eyes was fixed upon the precious bread with an expression ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... this report of Lebrun holds a high place. In order to furbish up the dulled prestige of the Gironde he sought to excite national animosity, and to revive the former hatred of the name of Pitt. What could be more criminal than to sneer at the smallness of England's naval preparations? What more false than to charge Pitt and Grenville with secretly begging for interviews with agents whom outwardly they scorned? It is by acts like these that nations are set by the ears; and generally they are ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... he, a little ashamed at the smallness of the act, had gone with Hester to the barn and made a nest for it in the hay. But the wonderful words that he remembered were these: "Perhaps some day a little mouse will help you, Jim!" Hester had spoken laughingly. And ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... such cases the circulating blood is pale in colour, but certainly not less in quantity than normally. The condition of the pulse is an important indication of diminution of the quantity of the blood, though only when it is marked. It presents a peculiar smallness and feebleness in ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... man, whose proportions at once disappointed Harry's preconceived notions as to the smallness and leanness of Frenchmen, rose from the table at which he ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... partly owing to the size and terrible energy of the iron laborer; for the character of Owen's mind was microscopic, and tended naturally to the minute, in accordance with his diminutive frame and the marvellous smallness and delicate power of his fingers. Not that his sense of beauty was thereby diminished into a sense of prettiness. The beautiful idea has no relation to size, and may be as perfectly developed in a space too minute for any but microscopic investigation as within the ample verge that is measured ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... separately; and supposing the number of each age to have been alike, this would give less than fifty of the age of twenty-five—the average height of whom was 69.3 inches. But independently of the smallness of the number, the professor's customers were volunteers, and it is not to be supposed that under-sized persons would put themselves forward on such an occasion. It may be added, that even the height of the boot-heels of young collegians of twenty-five would tend ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... To know the smallness of the human atom, the limit of desire, the existence of other lives as precious as their own, is not the philosophy which makes great kings. Philosophy engenders pity; and one who possesses that can not ride roughshod over men, and that is ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... irregular, offering at every turn the most picturesque forms to a painter's eye. We were soon conducted to the famous dockyard, constructed by Bonaparte, which had been the source of so much uneasiness to this country; and could not help being surprised at the smallness of the means which he had been able to obtain for the overthrow of our naval power. The docks did not appear to us at all large; but they are very deep, and during the siege, by the English and Prussian troops, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the day he walked into Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird's office, and saw Mr. Tribbledale seated on a high stool behind a huge desk, which nearly filled up the whole place. He was rather struck by the smallness and meanness of Messrs. Pogson and Littlebird's premises, which, from a certain nobility belonging to the Quaker's appearance, he would have thought to be spacious and important. It is impossible not to connect ideas after this fashion. Pogson ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... but the smallest deflection from the law of right, in theory or in practice, does lower a man's standing therein, inasmuch as it makes him less capable of that conformity to the King, and consequent nearness to Him, which determines greatness and smallness there. Dignity in the kingdom depends on Christ-likeness, and Christ-likeness depends on fulfilling, as He did, all righteousness. Small flaws are most dangerous because least noticeable. More Christian men lose their chance of promotion in the kingdom ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fortified with outworks, which are now in ruins. Here is a square, a town-house, the cathedral, and two or three convents of nuns; in one of which there are several English girls, sent hither for their education. The smallness of the expence encourages parents to send their children abroad to these seminaries, where they learn scarce any thing that is useful but the French language; but they never fail to imbibe prejudices against the protestant religion, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... for Anjou was at the time the all but accepted suitor of Queen Elizabeth, and it was thought that the choice would unite both powers in defence of Holland. The duke, however, speedily proved his incapacity. Irritated at the smallness of the authority granted him, and the independent attitude of the great towns, he attempted to capture them by force. He was successful in several places; but at Antwerp, where the French thought to repeat the Spanish success and to sack the city, the burghers gathered so strongly and ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... pleasant that each scent came to one separately; and, as the most of the foliage is dry and thin just now, these flowers and green bushes were the more effective. Certainly the surroundings were more beautiful than those we have in low ground shooting at home, and the smallness of the bag was balanced by this, and the delightfully unfamiliar sensation of both shooting and right-of-way, being free to you or ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the poles of the earth. "As the Martian winters must be fully as severe as ours," said Cortlandt, "on account of their length, the planet's distance from the sun, and the twenty-seven and a half degrees inclination of its axis, we can account for the smallness of its ice-caps only by the fact that its oceans cover but one fourth of its surface instead of three quarters, as on the earth, and there is consequently a smaller evaporation and rain and snow-fall." They were too much interested to think of sleeping that night, and so, after dining comfortably ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Marian had known each the other from childhood. And she perhaps came nearer to liking him for himself than did any one else of his acquaintance. She was used to his conceit, his selfishness, his meanness and smallness in suspicion, his arrogance, his narrow-mindedness. She knew his good qualities—his kindness of heart, his shamed-face generosity, his honesty, the strong if limited sense of justice which made him a good employer and a good landlord. They had much in common—the same companions, ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... "The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were unusually successful, and England has been successful ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... less perfectly dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... evidently contradictory appeared in the countenance. The soft, fat, double chin generally points out the epicure; and the angular chin is seldom found save in discreet, well-disposed, firm men. Flatness of chin speaks the cold and dry; smallness, fear; and roundness, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... this first set of lodgings, I found not a single person upon whom I could pour out my benevolence. The landlady, in spite of the fact that the poverty, smallness and dirt of these quarters struck me after the palatial house in which I dwell, lived in comfort, compared with many of the poor inhabitants of the city, and in comparison with the poverty in the country, with which I was thoroughly familiar, she lived luxuriously. She had a feather-bed, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... reflectors over open fires of coal secured his appointment; and no sooner had he set his hand to the task than the interest of that employment mastered him. The vacant stage on which he was to act, and where all had yet to be created—the greatness of the difficulties, the smallness of the means intrusted him—would rouse a man of his disposition like a call to battle. The lad introduced by marriage under his roof was of a character to sympathise; the public usefulness of the service would appeal to his judgment, the perpetual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the smallness of the particles which caused the tentacles to become greatly inflected that it seemed worth while carefully to ascertain how minute a particle would plainly act. [page 27] Accordingly measured lengths of a narrow strip of blotting paper, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... whole amusing history of impostures, there is no more diverting chapter than that which deals with literary frauds. None contains a more grotesque revelation of the smallness and the complexity of human nature, and none—not even the records of the Tichborne trial, nor of general elections—displays more pleasantly the depths of mortal credulity. The literary forger is usually a clever man, and it is necessary ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... attempts, and very imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world." We are speaking here of small things, it must be remembered—of little attempts, little sketches, a little world. But everything is relative, and this smallness of scale must not render less apparent the interesting character of Hawthorne's efforts. As for the Twice-Told Tales themselves, they are an old story now; every one knows them a little, and those who admire them particularly have read them a great many times. The writer ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... liquid, owing to the smallness of the pail, he could easily lick the spile which conveyed the sap from the tree, and this Mokwa did with evident relish. His tongue sought out every crevice and even greedily lapped the tree about the gash; ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... baths near the Yellow River; and, in one city, they remark that "there were many taverns, at the doors of which sat a number of young girls of extraordinary beauty." Nor do the travels of two Mahomedans into China in the ninth century, published by Mr. Renaudot, make any mention of the unnatural smallness of the women's feet; and they are not by any means deficient in their observations of the manners and customs of this nation, at that time so very little known to the rest of the world. Almost every thing they have related concerning China at this early ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... lot of Vicksburg. I remember, Colonel, that, despite its smallness, it is one of the great river ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler |
