"Shortness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Q. M., you are beside yourself." (We always called the Quartermaster Q. M. for shortness.) "There was a pass sent to your wife, but nothing was ever said about a ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... maintains at all times a regular army, respectable in numbers as well as in personal valor, had at the beginning, and, from the shortness of the war, continued to the end to have a decided land superiority over ourselves. Whatever we might hope eventually to produce in the way of an effective army, large enough for the work in Cuba, time was needed for the result, and time was not ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... dangerous," he added, with a forced cough. "I hae my plaid and my bonnet on; but a coat o' mail couldna stand mists, that are a vera shadow o' death to an auld man, wi' a sair shortness ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... by. There couldn't be much air left in their tanks. Rick risked holding his wrist close to the opening and saw that his watch showed one minute of diving time before shortness of breath would signal time to turn on ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the amendment that they did not take the trouble to go to the polls to vote for it; illegal changes in the numbering and position of the amendment on the ballots of the various counties; the absence from the State of about 200,000 soldiers; unfavorable weather conditions; the shortness of the time allowed for the campaign, and, chief of all, the organized opposition of the foreign-born and negro voters. The Texas suffragists won a clear-cut victory January 28 when the State Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the lower courts that the Primary suffrage bill ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... The shortness of his means, with a wife and the near prospect of a family to provide for, no doubt had a good deal to do with Bach's decision to resign his post at St. Blasius' at once. He had, in fact, already received ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... you, in order that you may receive the fruit of your tribulations, that you assume the armour of patience. And should it seem very hard to you to endure your many troubles, bear in memory three things, that you may endure more patiently. First, I want you to think of the shortness of your time, for on one day you are not certain of the morrow. We may truly say that we do not feel past trouble, nor that which is to come, but only the moment of time at which we are. Surely, then, we ought to endure patiently, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... not close with this picture of the man; for my purpose is rather to present the poet. Hampered though he was by fewness of years, by feebleness of body, by shortness of bread, and, most of all perhaps, by over-luxuriance of imagination, Lanier was yet, to my mind, indisputably a great poet. For in technique he was akin to Tennyson;* in the love of beauty and in lyric sweetness, to Keats and Shelley; in ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Dombey projected this morning a ride to Warwick Castle, and to Kenilworth, to-morrow, to be preceded by a breakfast with us. I undertook the delivery of this invitation. Will you honour us so far, Ma'am?' said the Major, swelling with shortness of breath and slyness, as he produced a note, addressed to the Honourable Mrs Skewton, by favour of Major Bagstock, wherein hers ever faithfully, Paul Dombey, besought her and her amiable and accomplished daughter to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... organization. The nutritive functions are overbalanced; consequently there is a predisposition to scrofulous diseases and disorders of the blood, various degenerating changes taking place in its composition; loss of red corpuscles, signified by shortness of breath; morbid changes, manifested by cutaneous eruptions; exhaustion from lack of nourishment, etc., until, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... his beard disheveled by his restless movements, with his angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any other angry old man who suffered with insomnia and shortness of breath. It was as if the death which people were preparing for him, had made him bare, had torn away from him the magnificence and splendor which had surrounded him—and it was hard to believe that it was he who had so much power, that his body was but an ordinary ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... of the ancient philosophers, is employing the last days of his political existence in composing a learned discourse "On the Shortness of Ministerial Life." To try the effect of it, his lordship gives a full dress dinner-party, immediately after the meeting of Parliament, to several of his friends. On the removal of the cloth, he will read the essay, and then the Queen's intended speech, in which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... This action is a very common one, and it is curious that the faster the electron goes the shorter is the wave-length of the radiation. A very fast electron generates an X-Ray of so short a wave-length that the penetrating power of the ray, which goes with the shortness of the wave, is excessive, and in this way we may have rays which go right through the human body or even through inches of steel. As the speed of the exciting electron becomes less, the X-Rays are less penetrating. With still slower electrons we may generate ordinary light, ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... approaching, he did not change his resolution at the sight of danger, but, being a man of his word, offered them his house. But one Hipposthenidas, a man of no ill principles, a lover of his country, and a friend to the exiles, but not of as much resolution as the shortness of time and the character of the action required, being as it were dizzied at the greatness of the approaching enterprise; and beginning now for the first time to comprehend that, relying on that weak assistance ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Reply to Sir R. Howard's Answer about his Essay of Poesy, and a Letter in answer to that; the last whereof is mighty silly, in behalf of Howard. The Duchesse of Monmouth is at this time in great trouble of the shortness of her lame leg, which is likely to grow shorter and shorter, that she ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... fever of impatience and fright. He dared not abjure the postman to hurry, lest Dobson should turn his head and descry his colleague. But that ancient man had begun to realize the shortness of time and was urging the cart along at a fair pace, since they were now on the flatter shelf of land ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... for shortness and sweetness, I suppose," said her husband, his eyes twinkling and sparkling with love, as he looked at her, and from ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... August 28, 1880, Mr. Rust's attention was attracted by a pair of mantis, whether Mantis religiosa or not, he was not sure, but from the length of the body and the shortness of the wings he was inclined to think them of some other species. The female had her arms tightly clasped around the head of the male, while his left arm was around her neck. Mr. Rust watched intently to see whether the embrace was one ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... already heard whispers that deer and all game were not safe within a mile or two of Ardlaugh. These were injurious tales, sir, which I had no mind to believe; for, bating his religion, I saw everything in Mr. Mackenzie which disposed me to like him. But I knew (as neighbours must) of the shortness of his purse; and the multiplied evidence (particularly my own Goodrich pippins staring me in the face) overwhelmed me for ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... as fast as we can, Mister David, to make up for the shortness of time we've got to do it in," observed Pat, as he rolled himself up in ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... Government, which was productive of wide-spread misery, was the compelling hundreds of people, from the labourer to the man in business, to leave Rome for their place of birth. These measures, which would have been oppressive under any circumstances, were rendered still more oppressive by the shortness of the notice given to those on whom this sentence of expulsion fell. Some had twenty-four hours, and others thirty-six, to prepare for their departure. The labourer might plead that he had no money, and must beg his way with wife ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to (the idea of) the other; that difficulty and ease produce the one (the idea of) the other; that length and shortness fashion out the one the figure of the other; that (the ideas of) height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other; that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relation of one with another; and that being before and behind give ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... wandered across to the other side of the studio and was revolving about Miss Light. "Ah, he 's gone to look at my beautiful daughter; he is not the first that has had his head turned," Mrs. Light resumed, lowering her voice to a confidential undertone; a favor which, considering the shortness of their acquaintance, Rowland was bound to appreciate. "The artists are all crazy about her. When she goes into a studio she is fatal to the pictures. And when she goes into a ball-room what do the other women say? ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... saw—in partial proof of Isaac Borrachsohn's veracity—"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they rode nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side eyes, an unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably, to the shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers similarly amiable. The cows, too, seemed far to seek, but the trees and grass and flowers were everywhere. Through long stretches of "for sure country" they picked their way, until they ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it. If we pass 'no day without a line,' visit no place without the company of a book, we may with ease fill libraries or empty them of their contents. Those who complain of the shortness of life, let it slide by them without wishing to seize and make the most of its golden minutes. The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have. Mr. Brougham, among other means of strengthening and enlarging his views, has visited, we believe, ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... anxiety a slight shortness of breath, a gasping after unusual exercise, and called the attention of physicians to this state of things in my sister, who regarded it merely as a nervous symptom, and this was all to indicate that the fell destroyer was silently at work. She ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... at the question. "My dear lady, she has suffered already far more than you have any idea of. One lung is practically gone, wholly useless. The other is rapidly going the same way. She has probably suffered for a year or more, first lassitude, then shortness of breath, and pretty often actual pain. Hasn't ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... one secret of the hedgehog's weakness very often causes his loss of life. His weakness is a terror of being wet or dropped into water; and when the fox finds him all rolled up, he carefully rolls him into a pond of water and, when he unrolls, quickly drowns him. Notwithstanding the shortness of the hedgehog's spines, he is the most highly specialised of all spine-bearing animals. In the lower order of animals there are spiny mice and spiny rats, and even the horned toad uses his horns as a means of ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... sudden resolve to let her opponents win. She was the stronger member of their team and knew if it had not been for her endurance, the young man would have given in long ago; so assuming a shortness of breath that she did not really feel, she slid from her partner's flabby embrace and sank on a bench by the side of the bride's mother, just a second before the old man and his daughter-in-law flopped in an ignominious ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... tons. These berries brought as high as fifteen cents and as low as four cents per pound, but netted an average of about eight cents per pound, or $2240. That would make an acre of berries produce a cash return of $746.66 2/3, which, considering the shortness of the berry season, from four to five months, is a pretty good ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Rebels would discharge grape and canister, or throw a shell into the prison, it would lash everybody to such a pitch that they would see that the sole forlorn hope of safety lay in wresting the arms away from our tormentors. The great element in our favor was the shortness of the distance between us and the cannon. We could hope to traverse this before the guns could be ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... fair hair and a fair skin, small bones and copious soft flesh. She had a trick of sighing gently in the evolutions of the waltz, which young men attributed to her softness of heart, and old ladies to her shortness of breath. They both loved dancing dearly, and were content to enjoy it whenever the chance might be given to them by the aid of Miss ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... spreading his hands he rose to his feet. At that the others began to gibber in unison, also rising to their feet, spreading their hands and swaying their bodies in rhythm with their chant. I noticed then the abnormal shortness of their legs, and their lank, clumsy feet. All three began slowly to circle round, raising and stamping their feet and waving their arms; a kind of tune crept into their rhythmic recitation, and a refrain,—"Aloola," or "Balloola," it sounded like. Their eyes began ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... say; for it is a tactful forgetfulness that makes for happiness. In the minor matter, for instance, of small money obligations, that shortness of memory which the school of Professors Panurge and Falstaff rashly praises, may often betray into some unfortunate allusion or reference to the subject which shall pain the delicate feelings of the obliger; or, if he ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the shortness of life, and how, even so, we might improve our minds by study between getting up and breakfast, dressing, as educators are beginning to say of the long summer vacation, seems a sheer 'wastage of education'; yet the plain truth ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... have attached to them what I rudely term an endpiece (for want of a better name), that is, a shallow and extremely light adhering bookcase (light by reason of the shortness of the shelves), which both increases the accommodation, and makes one short side as well as the two long ones of the parallelopiped to present simply a face of books with the lines of shelf, like threads, running ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... with which Arthur looked on at all this, struck him dumb. Mr Flintwinch, who had spun backward some two or three yards under the impetus last given to him, brought himself up with a face completely unchanged in its stolidity except as it was affected by shortness of breath, and looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit less reticent and wooden was Mr Flintwinch outwardly, than in the usual course of things: the only perceptible difference in him being that the knot of cravat which was generally under his ear, had worked round ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... founder of the imperial house. The Goddess of Long Life, Iha-naga-hime (Rock-long-princess), was sent to him for wife; but he rejected her because of her ugliness; and that unwise proceeding brought about "the present shortness of the lives of men." Most mythologies ascribe vast duration to the lives of early patriarchs or rulers: the farther we go back into mythological history, the longer-lived are the sovereigns. To this general rule Japanese ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... hunting, the use of sharp spurs is forbidden, except by special permission. Whyte-Melville points out that my sex are unmerciful in the abuse of the spur. He says:—"Perhaps because they have but one, they use this stimulant liberally and without compunction. From their seat and shortness of stirrup every kick tells home. Concealed under a riding habit, these vigorous applications are unsuspected by lookers on." I have seen more than one poor animal's side badly torn and bleeding from a lady's spur. A lady who rides a horse in ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... be found superior. Competition in the art of translation is not our object; our object is to show, that half an hour a day, steadily appropriated to grammar and Latin, would be sufficient to secure a boy of this age, from any danger of ignorance in classical learning; and that the ease and shortness of his labour will prevent that disgust, which is too often induced by forced and incessant application. We may add, that some attention to the manner in which the pupils repeat their Latin lessons, has been found advantageous: as they were never put in bodily ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the other hand, refuses absolutely to grant the excess which our imagination sometimes ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... suffered an important reverse in the person of one of its oldest representatives—in the person of Nola, the head of the municipals. As we know, this person, who was so unpopular in Lancia on account of the shortness and excessive roundness of his nose, lost in the first struggle his kepis, his sword, and the honour of his cheeks. Anger and revenge reigned in his heart. But he could not do anything to gratify these feelings, because he was deprived of all coercive ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... one, sorry that it had been wayward, not angry—but only sorry—Pearl hoped that they would look at it when they came in. She hoped too, that they would look at the few scattered tombstones in the churchyard, over which the birds were darting and skimming, and be reminded of the shortness of life, and their own need of mercy—and she hoped that some of the dead, who lay there so peacefully now, might have been sinners who redeemed the past and died respected, and that they might plead now with these just persons ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... seated himself—a left-handedness of which he would have been incapable had he been less perturbed—in Madame Jolicoeur's own special chair. An anatomical vagary of the Notary's meagre person was the undue shortness of his body and the undue length of his legs. Because of this eccentricity of proportion, his bald head rose above the back of the chair to a height approximately identical with that ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... in them, giving as great a charge, and as handsome an allowance with them, as could have been expected from a father. Indeed he doubtless had passed for being so in the opinion of every body, had he arrived sooner in the kingdom; but the shortness of the time not permitting any such suggestion, he was looked upon as a ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the medicine was "effective as a remedy for all fluxes, spitting of blood, agues, measles, colds, coughs, and to put off the most violent fever; as a treatment, remedy, and cure for stone and gravel in the kidneys, bladder, and urethra, shortness of breath, straightness of the breast; and to rekindle the most natural heat in the bodies by which they restore the languishing to perfect health." Okell and Dicey had scarcely promised more. By 20th-century standards, the government asserted, ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... these be the objects of thy ordinary meditation: to consider, what manner of men both for soul and body we ought to be, whensoever death shall surprise us: the shortness of this our mortal life: the immense vastness of the time that hath been before, and will he after us: the frailty of every worldly material object: all these things to consider, and behold clearly in themselves, all disguisement of external outside being removed ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... name of Ireland, which is not mentioned even in Tacitus' Agricola[99]; for the Orcades cf. Tac. Agr. 10; and the excessive shortness of the summer nights mentioned in the last clause is especially true ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... promontory of Fairhead, county of Antrim. I mention this, because, though my tour in Ireland, with Mr. Marshall and his son, was made many years ago, this allusion to the eagle is the only image supplied by it to the poetry I have since written. We travelled through the country in October; and to the shortness of the days, and the speed with which we travelled (in a carriage-and-four), may be ascribed this want of notices, in my verse, of a country so interesting. The deficiency I am somewhat ashamed of, and it is the more remarkable, as contrasted with my Scotch ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.... It was characteristic of this lady that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.—C. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, ii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon, from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather than ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribands, or among the more opulent and showy classes by brass, and even silver, chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... much she was very different. But she had her mother's eyes,—though hers were much softer in their lustre, as became her youth,—and she had her mother's nose, but without that look of scorn which would come upon her mother's face when the nostrils were inflated. And in that peculiar shortness of the lower face she was the very echo of her mother. But the mouth was smaller, the lips less full, and the dimple less exaggerated. It was a fairer face to look upon,—fairer, perhaps, than ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... sung with great solemnity by the congregation, and then the good old man offered a prayer; after which he addressed the slaves on the shortness of human life and the certainty of death, and more than once hinted at the hardness of their lot, assuring, however, his fellow-slaves, that if they were good and faithful, all would be right hereafter. ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... without any visible gradations of approach; that every event has been influenced by causes acting without his intervention; and that whenever he pretended to the prerogative of foresight, he was mortified with new conviction of the shortness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... dancer's attire; any one who is not blind can see that for himself. His very mask is elegant, and well adapted to his part; there is no gaping here; the lips are closed, for the dancer has plenty of other voices at his service. In old days, dancer and singer were one: but the violent exercise caused shortness of breath; the song suffered for it, and it was found advisable to ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... evidently weighed long on his mind. The closing sentences of his third prison book, "Christian Behaviour," published in 1663, the second year of his durance, clearly point to such an expectation. "Thus have I in few words written to you before I die, . . . not knowing the shortness of my life, nor the hindrances that hereafter I may have of serving my God and you." The ladder of his apprehensions was, as Mr. Froude has said, "an imaginary ladder," but it was very real to Bunyan. "Oft I was as if I was on the ladder with a rope ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... and was derided for his strange and uncouth style, which was cumbered with long sentences and tortured with formal arguments to a most harsh and disagreeable excess. Besides, he had, it seems, a weakness in his voice, a perplexed and indistinct utterance and a shortness of breath, which, by breaking and disjointing his sentences, much obscured the sense and meaning of what he spoke. So that in the end, being quite disheartened, he foresook the assembly; and as he was walking carelessly and sauntering about the Piraeus, Eunomus, the Thriasian, then ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... streets were covered by a growth of thick, rank grass, which was kept to a navigable shortness by the machetes of the police. Stone sidewalks, little more than a ledge in width, ran along the base of the mean and monotonous adobe houses. At the outskirts of the village these streets dwindled to nothing; and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... period for which the schooner was chartered having expired, he was only waiting the return of the expedition from motives of humanity. The further care of Lieutenant Grey and his comrades was at once undertaken by Captain Wickham, by whom it was determined, owing to the shortness of provisions on board the Beagle, to proceed to Timor on the return of the boats, in the hope of being able to revictual there, leaving some conspicuous record of his recent visit, with hidden letters declaratory of his proceedings, and promising ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the time. Even in the middle of what they were saying they would begin to flutter; it was not so much that they meant to dance as that the slightest thing set them going, such as sitting in a draught; and David found he could blow them about the room like pieces of paper. You could see by the shortness of Josy's dress that she was very young indeed, and at first this made him shy, as he always is when introduced formally to little girls, and he stood sucking his thumb, and so did she, but soon the stiffness ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Although the shortness of the period she remained at school, might be disadvantageous to her in several respects, yet it is highly probable that, in her mother's sick chamber, some impressions were made, and lessons learned, which were as ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... excelled herself in that fifth game, but I was still unable to find a length. To be more accurate, I was unable to find a shortness—my long game was ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... abstained from this practice. A stranger frequently hears important truths at the fire-side of his host, which the latter would perhaps conceal from the ear of friendship; he consoles himself with his guest for the silence to which he is restricted, and the shortness of the traveller's stay takes away all fear of his indiscretion. I carefully noted every conversation of this nature as soon as it occurred, but these notes will never leave my writing-case; I had rather injure the success of my statements ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of the figure, but it is worn far too low down. I use the expression 'worn' advisedly, for a waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put on when and where one likes. A long waist always implies shortness of the lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect of diminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the most charming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire style of dress. This style is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and bloated face, a short neck, and a continual trembling in his fingers, resulting from excessive indulgence in strong drink. He belonged to the class of so-called 'bourbons,' that's to say, soldiers risen from the ranks; had learned to read at thirty, and spoke with difficulty, partly from shortness of breath, partly from inability to follow his own thought. His temperament exhibited all the varieties known to science: in the morning, before drinking, he was melancholy; in the middle of the day, choleric; ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hero and its Turkish heroine who coolly remarks "L'infidelite a des charmes," might have been better if the author had known how to make it so. Both these books have, as has been said, the merit of shortness. Puget de la Serre's La Clytie de la Cour (2 vols., Paris, 1635) cannot plead even this; for it fills two fat volumes of some 1500 pages. I have sometimes been accused, both in France and in England, of unfairness to Boileau, but I should certainly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... assuring to find in the whole of the remaining plates only three periods when it seems to have got longer. But doubtless the very ample cloak, which is so long that it even trails upon the ground, extenuated and in some degree justified its shortness. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... The shortness of food was owing to their having expected to reach a certain point of the journey where fresh supplies could be procured. But they had been held up so many times that afternoon by the passing of cattle that they were five or six miles from ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... confirmation held when the bishop returned to Paihia (Jan. 5), only 44 Maoris were able to be presented, besides 20 white people—mostly missionaries' children. At the Hauraki station the bishop found a mere handful able to receive the laying-on of hands. Owing to the shortness of his visit and to the difficulty of communication, he was unable to visit more than these three stations; and he had left for Norfolk Island before many of the missionaries knew of ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... acquired such a development as to allow them to rise on their hind limbs and graze on trees in a kangaroo-attitude, nor a power of climbing, nor, as far as known, any other modification tending to compensate for the comparative shortness of the neck. Again, it may perhaps be said that leaf-eating forms are exceptional, and that therefore the struggle to attain high branches would not affect many Ungulates. But surely, when these severe droughts necessary ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... 4 oz., syrup of squill 3 drms., antimonial wine 60 drops, wine 1/2 oz., mix and cork. Give two tablespoonsful often, or when either the cough or shortness of breath is troublesome. ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... ambassador at Vienna, where he was very much liked, a persona grata in every way. He was very tall, distinguished-looking, quite the type of the ambassador. When I went to inspect his room I was rather struck by the shortness of the bed—didn't think his long legs could ever get into it. The valet assured me it was all right, the bed was normal, but I doubt if he had a very comfortable night. He and W. were old friends, had travelled in the East together and discussed every possible subject ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... high, and the chin shapely, whilst neither the brow-ridge nor the lower jaw protrudes as in the Neanderthal type. Whether this race survives in modern Europe is, as was said in the last chapter, highly uncertain. In certain respects—for instance, in a certain shortness of face—these people present exceptional features; though some think they can still find men of this type in the Dordogne district. Perhaps the chances are, however, considering how skulls of the neolithic period prove to be anything ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... for the irreconcilable antagonism between good and evil, and the certain overthrow of evil: the recognition of this makes action responsible. With this limitation, the author urges that the very shortness of life and youth is so much incentive to make joyful ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... twentieth centuries,—was initiated the next morning in Assisi, when Francis preached for the first time. He spoke simply, emphasizing the truths he had learned to realize through his own experience: the absolute duty of following after perfection; the importance of realizing the shortness of life and the need of repentance. The first disciple of Francis was a wealthy resident of Assisi, named Bernardo. He was impressed with the conviction that he should distribute his possessions and unite with Francis ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... form. These special characteristics were so fully developed by Beethoven's successors, Schubert, Weber, Schumann, Chopin, etc. that they are always grouped together as the Romantic School. A striking feature in this whole Romantic group is the early flowering of their genius and the shortness of their lives—Weber, forty years, Schubert, thirty-one, Schumann, forty-six, Mendelssohn, thirty-eight, Chopin, forty. In the case of all the composers we have hitherto studied, with the exception of Mozart, their masterpieces have been the result of long years of patient, technical study ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... not to approve of what is false as if it were true. And he does so often at other times, if there is by chance any heaviness or slowness in his senses, or if those things which are seen by him are rather obscure, or if he is prevented from thoroughly examining them by the shortness of the time. Although the whole of this fact, that the wise man sometimes suspends his assent, makes against you. For if there were no difference between his perceptions, he would either suspend it ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... over at Newport had got engaged to a mandarin or a count or something 'nother, and the Dowager had been preaching kind of eloquent concerning the shortness of ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... animals is no unworthy exercise of benevolence. We hold that the life of brutes perishes with their breath, and that they are never to be clothed again with consciousness. The inevitable shortness then of their existence should plead for them touchingly. The insects on the surface of the water, poor ephemeral things, who would needlessly abridge their dancing pleasure of to-day? Such feelings we should have towards the whole ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the bulgy roundness of his person and the shortness of his legs in any way detracted from his personal importance, these trifling defects were, he was well aware, more than atoned for by the peculiar dignity of his countenance. If his legs were short, his face was not; if there ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... turned iron-grey but remained wonderfully thick and strong; the moustache and beard, only a slight growth, were perfectly white. He had once been of more than average stature; now his bent shoulders and meagre limbs gave him an appearance of shortness, whilst he suffered on the score of dignity by an excessive disregard of his clothing. He sat in a round-backed wooden chair at an ordinary table, on which were several volumes ranked on end, a large blotter, and an inkstand. The room was exclusively his, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... a ropin' contest, in which some of our most notorious ropers will rope, throw, an' hog-tie a steer, in the least shortness of time. The prizes fer this here contest is: First prize, ten dollars, doneated by the directors of the bank fer which's openin' this celebration is held in honour of. Second prize, one pair of pants doneated by the Montana Mercantile Company. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... and you being wise and judicious, I am satisfied there is nothing of it but what you understand, and therefore will not be more prolix. Thus much may serve to satisfy your curiosity, it being as much as the shortness of time and my business would permit me to say. So, I remain most ready to satisfy and serve his Highness to the utmost, in all the commands he shall ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... likewise is a practice by no means to be recommended, as it weakens the system by the excess of so general a stimulus, brings on a premature old age, and shortens the span of life; as may be further deduced from the quick maturity, and shortness of the lives, of the inhabitants of Hindostan, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... said that Mr. Slope, as he started for Ullathorne, received a dispatch from his friend Mr. Towers, which had the effect of putting him in that high good humour which subsequent events somewhat untowardly damped. It ran as follows. Its shortness will be ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the first place, then, he had a very weak voice, and could not speak loud enough to be heard by a large assembly; and, besides this, he was very much troubled with shortness of breath. These were very great discouragements, and had he not labored very hard to overcome them, he never could ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... the 11th a slight change in the Prince's breathing was perceptible and occasioned uneasiness. On the 12th it was too evident the fever and shortness of breathing had increased, and on the 13th Dr. Jenner had to tell the Queen the symptom was serious, and that there was a probability of congestion of the lungs. When the sick man was wheeled into the next room as before, he failed to notice ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... fast and furious and by comparison reducing to insignificance all that had gone before. Here indeed were two magnificent swordsmen, and here was to be a battle that bade fair to make up for whatever the people felt they had been defrauded of by the shortness of the game. Nor had it continued long before many there were who would have prophesied that they were witnessing a duel that was to become historic in the annals of jetan at Manator. Every trick, every ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... we part from in this world with a light good-bye whom we never see again! Often do I think, in my meditations on this subject, that if we realised more fully the shortness of the fleeting intercourse that we have in this world with many of our fellow-men, we would try more earnestly to do them good, to give them a friendly smile, as it were, in passing (for the longest intercourse on earth is little ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... truly, madam," answered the landlady, "you could not take me again at such a disadvantage; for I must confess I have nothing in the house, unless a cold piece of beef, which indeed a gentleman's footman and the post-boy have almost cleared to the bone." "Woman," said Mrs Abigail (so for shortness we will call her), "I entreat you not to make me sick. If I had fasted a month, I could not eat what had been touched by the fingers of such fellows. Is there nothing neat or decent to be had in this horrid place?" "What think you of some eggs and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... very interesting sight to watch a Mias making his way leisurely through the forest. He walks deliberately along some of the larger branches in the semi-erect attitude which the great length of his arms and the shortness of his legs cause him naturally to assume; and the disproportion between these limbs is increased by his walking on his knuckles, not on the palm of the hand, as we should do. He seems always to choose those branches which intermingle with an adjoining ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... elders—Sir Seth and Lord Isaac—the liking of Lady Susanna. But I left her—a woman to me is no more than a match, sir, at tennis is— When I heard she'd gone off with my valet, and burnt my rhymed version of Genesis. You may see by my shortness of speech that my time's almost up: I perceive That my new-fangled brevity strikes you: but don't—though the public will—grieve. As it's sometimes my whim to be vulgar, it's sometimes my whim to be brief; As when ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... quiet, domestic life, which ALONE enabled me to bear my MUCH disliked position, CUT OFF at forty-two—when I HAD hoped with such instinctive certainty that God never WOULD part us, and would let us grow old together (though HE always talked of the shortness of life)—is TOO AWFUL, too cruel!" The tone of outraged Majesty seems to be discernible. Did she wonder in her heart of hearts how the Deity ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... paid for this and receive honour—the greatest honour, as might be expected, from tyrants, and the next greatest from democracies; but the higher they ascend our constitution hill, the more their reputation fails, and seems unable from shortness of breath ...
— The Republic • Plato
... The shortness of the poem has been objected to it. But this, we think, shows the poet's good sense. The subject is too uniform and too gloomy for a long poem. "The Grave, in twelve books" would have been totally unreadable. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the hostler presented him a bill for the horse's board during his residence at the inn. Joseph said Mr Adams had paid all; but this matter, being referred to Mr Tow-wouse, was by him decided in favour of the hostler, and indeed with truth and justice; for this was a fresh instance of that shortness of memory which did not arise from want of parts, but that continual hurry in which parson Adams was ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... class, stomach disorders and their attendant sufferings, such as giddiness, shortness of breath and pain in the side, are always attributed to cardiac irregularity. There may be a lack of appetite and dull or acute pain following eating, and the fetid breath arising from a disordered ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Primula Auricula, but is very unlike that plant as it is figured in its wild state by Prof. Jacquin, in the Fl. Austr. the leaves being much narrower, the flowers larger, and of a different colour; it differs from glutinosa in the shortness of its involucrum, from villosa (already figured) in having leaves much narrower, perfectly smooth in respect to villi, and in the colour of its blossoms, which approach that of the Lilac, but more especially in its disposition to become mealy, particularly ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... Neither did Burt, but Cassopolis is within the geographic range ascribed to S. c. cooperi on his map (The Mammals of Michigan, Univ. Michigan Press, p. 213, 1946). Examination (by Kelson and Hall) of the specimen (41777 MCZ) reveals that it resembles S. c. cooperi in shortness of hind foot (18 mm.), shortness of tail (18 mm.), narrowness across zygomata (16 mm.), and grayish pelage. In the long braincase, heavy rostrum, greater condylobasilar length, greater lambdoidal breadth, long rostrum, and longer incisive foramina, it agrees closely with specimens of S. c. saturatus, ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... took care of the tram tickets and things like that, or kept her eye on them if the young man took them, and told him where they were when he wanted them. Glorious times they had, these young people, in that pale brown cleanly city of memories that was once the world. Their only sorrow was the shortness of the time. They said indeed that the electric trams and the '70 buildings, and that criminal advertisement that glares upon the Forum, outraged their aesthetic feelings unspeakably; but that was only part of the fun. And indeed Rome is such a wonderful place ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... wish I was safely cleared out of it. [KNICKERBOCKER rises, hobbles forward; but, forgetting the shortness of the petticoats, in curtseying, is discovered by the DAME, from the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... to do a good deal of business as tranters over there—Jonathan, do ye mind?—I knowed the man by sight as well as I know my own brother, in a manner of speaking. Well, this man was a coming home along from a wedding, where he had been playing his fiddle, one fine moonlight night, and for shortness' sake he took a cut across Forty-acres, a field lying that way, where a bull was out to grass. The bull seed William, and took after him, horns aground, begad; and though William runned his best, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... place in the roll of its "Makers." At all events, if Wykeham obtained his wealth by secular service, he spent it for the promoting of the welfare of the Church, as he conceived it. The purpose of his two colleges was to remedy the shortness of clergy in his day, and to assist the /militia clericalis/, which had been grievously reduced /pestilentiis, guerris et aliis mundi miseriis/ (an obvious reference to ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... him, as fetcheth the banco skin The innocent rustic. For my part, I pray That Badarjewska maid may wait for aye Ere sits she with a lover, as did we Once sit together, Amabel! Can it be That all that arduous wooing not atones For Saturday shortness of trade dollars three? Behold the deeds that are done of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... illustration of the idea expressed by the gentleman who had preceded him, he would state the fact that, when he was invited to Vermont to address the Legislature in favor of the appropriation of $20,000 for Kansas,[150] the meeting was postponed, on the ground that the shortness of the notice would not allow time for procuring the attendance of the women of the village to fill the galleries, and by their sympathy to influence the determination of the members of the Legislature who might be present. Accordingly they waited a little longer, gave ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... occasioned was neither debilitating nor durable. My sanguine self-confidence, though sometimes apalled, has all my life prevented me from being subject to fits of permanent chagrin, or melancholy. The recollection of my mother's passionate promises, the shortness of the time, the suddenness of the change, the family into which she had married, and the instability of a woman that was my mother, drew a few sighs from me, and in these my gloom evaporated. I returned cheerfully to my books and determined to visit home no more, but while ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... seen death before. She noticed now the queer shade of grey in the complexion, the short and labored breath. She felt puzzled by these signs, for though she had never seen death, this grayness, this shortness of ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... churches, it seems reasonable that the sentences may be sung as of old, and as was prescribed in the Prayer-Book of 1549: "Where there be clerks, they shall sing one or many of the sentences above written, according to the length and shortness of the time that the ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... to call for me in the morning at nine o'clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night's rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... sailing owing to a shortness of crew and the inability to procure recruits. In the meantime Captain Barry was, on November 10, 1780, appointed, by the Navy Board of the Eastern Department, President of a Court-Martial, together with Captains Hoystead Hucker, Samuel ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... become the friend of the human race. He attaches himself equally to the poor man and the rich, and shares our fortunes "for better, for worse," clinging with heroic loyalty to his master when all other friends may have abandoned him. The power of memory is wonderfully exhibited, considering the shortness of life which Nature, by some mischance has ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... for Pykes in Brasey is in H. Ord. p.451. The head of a Carp, the tail of a Pike, and the Belly of a Bream are most esteemed for their tenderness, shortness, and well rellishing. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... I could continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by one of the two objects in the room—a blue porcelain bath-tub. It has character, this bath-tub. It is not one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged, however, by the shortness of its legs, it has submitted to its environment and to its coat of sky-blue paint. But it grumpily refuses to allow any patron completely to stretch his legs—which brings us neatly to the second object in ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... deep, and I was bending to the search with some shortness of breath, when the Englishman ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... again felt that shortness of breath that had seized him on his way to Jurand, also a weight on his head as of a heavy iron helmet, but this only lasted a second. Then he drew a deep breath ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... oration, presented with some of the most beautiful productions of the Academic press, entertained with music, and invited to a sumptuous feast in the Sheldonian theatre. He departed in a few hours, pleading as an excuse for the shortness of his stay that he had seen the colleges before, and that this was a visit, not of curiosity, but of kindness. As it was well known that he did not love the Oxonians and was not loved by them, his haste gave occasion to some idle rumours which found credit with the vulgar. It was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by nature, my mother had to keep me as a little child almost sitting upright in bed. After I had outgrown that and as a big girl could run around and play well enough, I still had much trouble with shortness of breath in the beginning of my singing lessons. For years I practised breathing exercises every day without singing, and still do so with especial pleasure, now that everything that relates to the breath and the voice has ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... they had, the hospitals have done their utmost. In the base hospitals there was nothing to complain of. At Bloemfontein there was great suffering owing to lack of medical staff, surgeons, nurses, orderlies, &c., and also owing to the lack of necessary supplies and medical comforts. For the shortness of the staff the War Office is of course responsible, and as blaming the War Office hurts nobody, I dare say the Commission will come down on it severely. For the shortness of supplies, this was due to the working of our line of communication, which considered the efficiency of the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Mafulu earring, is apparently something like it), to their use of pigs' tails as ear ornaments, to their plaiting of the hair and the decoration of the plaited hair with teeth and shells, to their small charm bags and to the shortness of their bows. Also to the construction of their houses, with the roof carried down to the ground, with a fireplace about 2 feet wide extending down the centre of the building from one end to the other, and having an ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... I know when we danced until morning, And you were the gayest of all the gay crowd - With only that shortness of breath for a warning, How could I know that you danced for a shroud? Whirling and whirling through moonlight and starlight. Rocking as lightly as boats on the wave, Down in your eyes shone a deep light—a far light, How ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to a stronger, and impossible on the part of a morally great, power. If Serbia chose wrongly in refusing to bite the dust, then the guilt is still chargeable to Austria for forcing her little neighbour to take a choice in haste. Sir Edward Grey emphasized in his speech of July 27th the shortness of the time which all the Powers had had at their disposal to formulate a plan, by which the conflict could be restricted to the East, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... finish. Like the pistols, of which Roland had had opportunity to test the accuracy, the rifle was made by the celebrated Manton, and carried a twenty-four calibre bullet. That it had been originally intended for a woman was easily seen by the shortness of the stock and the velvet pad on the trigger. This original purpose of the weapon made it peculiarly suitable for ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... so readable. The subject material, set in the Canadian wilderness, is very well treated: in fact one might almost say that he had read the works of the later masters of Canadian wilderness writing, Ballantyne or Egerton Ryerson Young. Another feature which is unusual for him is the shortness and evenness of the chapters; nor are there any of the long paragraphs normal for his earlier works. This helps to make the book so suitable as a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... time you were," the answer came with equal shortness. "You'll pardon me making this a heart-to-heart talk—and anyway it's no funeral of mine. But she's the loveliest girl and I right down like her. So you take it from me. That F.F.V. Lady with the violets—Oh, don't pretend you don't know ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... which the servant returned was almost insolent in the shortness and coolness of its tone. Mr. Rambert had no books in his library which were not in perfect condition. The volume of the Times had left his house perfect, and whatever blame might attach to the mutilation of it rested therefore on other shoulders ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... great name and fallen fortunes, the despoiled decaduta house, the unfailing Italian grace, the space so out of scale with actual needs, the absence of books, the presence of ennui, the sense of the length of the hours and the shortness of everything else—all this was a matter not only for a second chapter and a third, but for a whole volume, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... evolution of Man from the amoeba all complete whilst Nelson was still alive on the seas. And in 1809, before the battle of Waterloo, a French soldier named Lamarck, who had beaten his musket into a microscope and turned zoologist, declared that species were an illusion produced by the shortness of our individual lives, and that they were constantly changing and melting into one another and into new forms as surely as the hand of a clock is continually moving, though it moves so slowly that it looks stationary to us. We have since come to think that its industry is less continuous: ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... rural developments from the viewpoint of Americanization, he was certain that the study must be conducted in relation to the immigrant colonies only. The study of the Americanization of America would lead us nowhere, especially in view of the smallness of available forces and the shortness of time. The study must be confined, therefore, to the immigrant elements of the population, and even then it could only be a preliminary survey to reveal the problems to be studied ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... of chronic myocardial degeneration are progressive weakness, slight at first, noticeable on exertion (and what was not considered exertion becomes such), as evidenced by slight palpitation, slight shortness of breath, leg weariness and mental tire. The heart frequently becomes more rapid, not only with exertion and change of position to the erect, but even after eating. Slight cardiac stimulants, as coffee, affect the heart more than previously; ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... days after Octavia's arrival he made her get out one of her riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... looking backwards to flight rather than to battle or the enemy, he enters on an engagement without judgment or boldness; and as he was conquered by a very slight effort and unequivocally, so did he by the very shortness of the distance, and by the facility of his retreat into the camp so near at hand, protect his soldiers without difficulty from much loss; and scarcely were any slain in the engagement itself, and but few in the confusion of the flight ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... so soon as I have of late practised, my little trouble of mind and the shortness of the days making me to lie a little longer than I used to do, but I must make it up by sitting up longer of nights. To my office, whither my brother Tom, whom I chide sufficiently for yesterday's work. So we sat at the office all the morning, some of us at Deptford paying the ordinary there; ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... temples and sharply-defined features, the tightened skin, the hectic flush, the emaciation and shortness of breathing, and the constant cough, all told their sad tale of rapid decline and decay. Too late—she knew it well—for any human skill to arrest those symptoms; no earthly care and love could preserve that ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gentleman's excuse, yet I will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. They who think too well of their own performances are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... one another, both tugging hard, both intensely watchful of the slightest initiative on the part of the other. Mr. Polly wished brooms were longer, twelve or thirteen feet, for example; Uncle Jim was clearly for shortness in brooms. He wasted breath in saying what was to happen shortly, sanguinary, oriental soul-blenching things, when the broom no longer separated them. Mr. Polly thought he had never seen an uglier person. Suddenly Uncle Jim flashed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... merely a few words addressed to men whom he knew well enough to recognize their weak points and strike at them with the holy boldness of love. His person, his example, were themselves a sermon, and he spoke only of that which he had himself experienced, proclaiming repentance, the shortness of life, a future retribution, the necessity of arriving at gospel perfection.[1] It is not easy to realize how many waiting souls there are in this world. The greater number of men pass through life with souls asleep. They are like virgins of the sanctuary ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier |
