"Smallness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 public opinion at Athens was gravitating ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... a kind of small-fry man who dislikes the idea of mental development among women. He is a mouselike kind of creature, so thoroughly conscious of his own smallness, so thoroughly in love with his own importance, that he dreads the intellectual woman, who makes him ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... bores—he bored holes in your self-complacency, and riddled your patience through and through; to put up with him was hard, to put him down was impossible, (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet, he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement, and then gather up his opima spolia, and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance, on convicting you of assigning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Ford, "though now I recall it, I used often to hear my father speak of Miss Hester Stanbrook." Then he was going on to say that trite thing about the smallness of the world when ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... who was persuaded that such a tent as he had asked for was beyond all possibility, was in great surprise at the prince's speedy return. He took the tent, but after he had admired its smallness, his amazement was so great that he could not recover himself when he had set it up in the great plain before-mentioned, and found it large enough to shelter an army twice as large as he could bring into the field. Regarding this excess in its dimension ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... locust bridge-builder. I know that flocks of long envelopes are coming back, bringing their tales behind them, but one day I shall hear a jubilant note in the klip-klup of Lizzie's hoofs and Uncle Robert will hand me an envelope of bewitching smallness, with a tiny typed letter inside.... "It is with ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... of this genus to the Pinnotheridae is tolerably obvious, in the smallness of the antennae, the direction and arrangement of the eyes, and particularly in the form of the oral aperture, and of the external footjaws. I shall not, however, enter upon the consideration of these relations, as I am about ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... followed it eagerly, but never took hold, on the first day; afterwards they would not look at it at all. The Vade Mecum man, like Dr. Hamilton, recommends a light fly for a light day, a dark fly for a dark day and dark weather; others hold the converse opinion. Every one agrees that the smallness of the flies should be in proportion to the lowness of the water and the advance ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... not Laura? She was small and she was pretty and she was pathetic, and he liked women to be so. Why was it that with all her feminine smallness and prettiness and pathos he had ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of refraction of the liquid. On the other hand, owing to the smallness of eq. 12 as compared ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... wolf-pit, and Bram meant that he should reach the cabin before he gave the pack the freedom of the corral. He tried to conceal the excitement in his face as he turned toward the cabin. From the gate to the door ran a path worn by many footprints, and his heart beat faster as he noted the smallness of the moccasin tracks. Even then his mind fought against the possibility of the thing. Probably it was an Indian woman who lived with Bram, or an Eskimo girl he had brought down from ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... would have broke my eye-strings; cracked them, but To look upon him; till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have turn'd mine ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... our politics is a lack of generosity. Smallness, meanness, extreme partisanship, littleness of any kind —these are not in accord with the American conception of an American leader. A clever thing may gratify a man's own immediate partisan following, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... untrod by a British soldier, there was a still broader field for the arms and the triumphs of England. But his eloquence had more effect in exposing the errors, than in reducing the numbers of his opponents, and the smallness of his majority would have made a feebler mind resign on the spot. The announcement of the numbers was received with an insulting cheer by the minority, and the cabinet was already ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... attractive to men in spite of her smallness and leanness and incisiveness of manner. She was called mighty smart and dry, which was the shop synonym for witty, and her favors, possibly because she never granted them, were accounted valuable. Abby ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... surroundings bewildered her—the sofa upholstered in slippery American cloth and hard as a board to her aching limbs, the waxen atrocity beneath its glass shade standing on a rickety table at the foot of the couch, the smallness of the room in ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the Flood. It is said that Nimroud did not place his iron hoof on this sacred spot. The daughters of the Saint marry away, only the sons remain in the oasis, and some of these emigrate, which accounts for the smallness of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... impassable swamps, through which progress at the rate of a mile an hour was difficult. Along the north and east shores of Graham Island, I saw but little timber of sufficient size and in bodies large enough to warrant the erection of a saw mill. The smallness and obstruction of the streams and the absence of harbors, renders its profitable utilization difficult. There is but little of the yellow cedar or cypress growing in the ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... with little neatness; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustrious walls,—a circumstance more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces—perhaps seven or eight—take ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... till about 1250, when, as usually happened, the clergy became dissatisfied with the smallness of their choir, and a new one was projected on a much larger scale. Its length was to be equal to the nave, while in height and breadth it was to be greater. The increased length allowed room for the ritual choir on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... given at the back of a music-hall, which has the same entrance, and which is only separated from the concert-room by a small passage, so that the roaring choruses of a danse du venire may mingle with an adagio of Beethoven's or a scene from the Tetralogy. Worse than this, the smallness of the place into which these concerts have been crammed has been a serious obstacle in the way of making them popular. Nevertheless, in the promenade and galleries of the Nouveau Theatre, in later years, arose what may be called a little war over concertos. ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... dried mica, did not get so good a result as to smallness of residual charge as the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... 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, Knowledge, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... cushion the effects of the atrophy are noted in the smallness of the organ, in its becoming whiter in colour than normal, and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... its outlying island of Zipangu (Japan), that Columbus sought to reach by sailing westward, penetrated as he was by his intense conviction of the smallness of the earth, and of the vast extension of Asia eastward; and to the day of his death he was full of the imagination of the proximity of the domain of the great khan to the islands and coasts which he had discovered. And such imaginations are curiously embodied in some ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... would re-engage to go further. Yet in Chungking Laokwang the cook had declared that he was prepared to go with me all the way to Talifu. But now he feared the loneliness of the road to Chaotong. The way, he said, was mountainous and little trodden, and robbers would see the smallness of our party and "come down and stab us." I was then glad that I had not paid him the retaining fee he had asked in Chungking to ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time, 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 colony, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 cutting away of the niches may have suggested the curving of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... creatures grow to be men, the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children, they escape because of their smallness. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to all as the pair moved together up to the altar rails, and that was the size of the bridegroom as contrasted with the smallness of his bride. He looked like a great rough bear and she like a silver fairy. There was something intensely pathetic in the curve of his broad shoulders as he bent over the little hand to place in its proud position the diminutive golden ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the pink of the sea-shell, or the softest shade of the rose leaf: but in either it was so transparent, that you doubted which became her the most. To these attractions, add a throat, a bust of the most dazzling whiteness, and the justest proportions; a foot, whose least beauty was its smallness, and a waist narrow—not the narrowness of tenuity or constraint;—but round, gradual, insensibly less in its compression:—and the person of Constance Vernon, in the bloom of her youth, is ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the two temporals into two, which, with the two parietals, make fifteen plates in all—the vomer and ethmoid not being ossified at birth. The bones of the head are not only disunited, but are more or less overlapped at birth, in consequence of the largeness of the Caucasian child's head and the smallness of its mother's pelvis, giving the head an elongated form, and an irregular, knotty feel to the touch. The negro infant, however, is born with a small, hard, smooth, round head like a gourd. Instead ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the whole empire was to be kept together, and possibly another added to it, he felt convinced that his mercenaries did not make up for the smallness of their numbers by their superiority to the subject peoples. Therefore he must keep together those brave warriors, to whom with heaven's help the victory was due, and he must take all care that they did not lose their valour, hardihood, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... where the traits or lines of the landlord's face were irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical propriety. The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose, the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed before he entered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... agricultural classes of landlord and tenant was modified by commerce, capitalism, and competition, nobles adapted themselves to the change with some facility. They took to sheep-farming and commercial speculations, just as later on they took to keeping dairy-shops. It is the smallness rather than the source of his profits that excites social prejudice against the shopkeeper in England. On the Continent, however, class feeling prevented the governing classes from participating in the expansion ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... tone, and then another bosky-looking spot, which you learn to be about the same amount of manorial umbrage belonging to Lord Some-One-Else. And to right and left of these, in shaded stretches, lie other estates of equal consequence. It was therefore not the smallness but the vastness of the country that struck me, and I was not at all in the mood of a certain American who once, in my hearing, burst out laughing at an English answer to my inquiry as to whether my interlocutor often saw Mr. B——. "Oh no," the answer had been, "we never see him: he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... that smallness sometimes renders a thing inconvenient, and this young man, doubtless, still felicitates himself upon his intimate acquaintance ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... all; but these were of eleven different ages, from fifteen to twenty-five, all averaged 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... than any other way? he asked himself: because it is the shortest way. As if that mattered, he added, and as soon as he reached the top of the Mount of Olives he looked over the desert and was surprised by the smallness of the hills; like the people who lived among them, they seemed to him to have dwindled. The world is much smaller than I thought, he said. That is it, the world seems to have dwindled into a sort ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... my little periagua was finished, yet the size of it was not at all answerable to the design which I had in view, when I made the first; I mean of venturing over to the Terra Firma, where it was above forty miles broad; accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted to put an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. But as I had a boat, my next design was to make a tour round the island: for as I had been on the other side, in one place, crossing, as I have already described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... himself; and (3) that the tiny view shown on the portrait engraving of Dr. Thorpe that forms the frontispiece to his "Registrum Roffense," agrees with it well when we take into consideration the smallness of its scale. The tower was square, without either battlements or corner pinnacles, and the spire rose directly from it. On the west side, it will be noticed, the blind arcading under a string course at the height of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... language of Scripture. I venture to make answer that this is done by its recognition of a special faculty we are all conscious of possessing, that of thinking and speaking of time (and space also) as indefinitely extended. (The mathematician knows that without the supposition, whether as to greatness or smallness, of ad libitum extent of space and time, he is unable to conduct his reasoning.) On this principle Scripture speaks of duration through 'ages, and ages,' because by such emphatic reference to ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and the land of the Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his discoveries, these were but accidents of his great theory. It was the intense conviction he had acquired of the absolute smallness of the Earth, of the vast extension of Asia eastward, and of the consequent narrowness of the Western Ocean, on which his life's project was based. This conviction he seems to have derived chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. But ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... that, owing to the smallness of the house-party, luncheon was served in the breakfast-room. The dining-room at Selwoode is very rarely used, because Margaret declares its size makes a meal there ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... in "little people" that live in deep woods and peep and snicker at travellers who pass. This belief is thought to go back to the earliest times, and to hint at the smallness of the original Hawaiians, for one may take with a grain of salt these tales of the giant size of their kings and fighters. The first "little people" were grandchildren of Nuu, or Noah, and the big ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... more food except a biscuit and a little milk and water during the rest of the day. In the early morning, the special worm medicine is given, and over and over again I have known the worm to be brought away completely after many previous failures. When the smallness of the joints shows that the greater part of the worm has been thrown off, and that little more than the head remains, it is necessary to have recourse to the unpleasant proceeding of mixing the evacuations with water, and then straining them through muslin, in order that ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... him," said Leonardo Donato, "and there is one fault. It limits his power to achieve; it increases his absolutism. It is near-sightedness—smallness of vision." ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the Press,—to the so-called 'air we breathe, not having which we die!' Would modern Friends of Progress believe it? Because, in former stages of this War, the Berlin Newspapers have had offensive expressions (scarcely noticeable to the microscope in our day, and below calculation for smallness) upon the Russian and Austrian Sovereigns or Peoples,—the Able Editors (there are only Two) shall now in person, here in the market-place of Berlin, actually run the gantlet for it,—'run the rods (GASSEN-LAUFEN'), as the fashion now is; which is worse than ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gazing before her with blind eyes. Sir John she had dismissed already from her mind; she hated him, that was enough; for whatever Seraphina hated or contemned fell instantly to Lilliputian smallness, and was thenceforward steadily ignored in thought. And now she had matter for concern indeed. Her interview with Otto, which she had never yet forgiven him, began to appear before her in a very different light. He had come to her, still thrilling under recent insult, and not yet breathed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with darker hair. The great difficulty was my hands and feet; but the different shape of a boy's shoes made my feet pass; and I crumpled my hands up and kept them out of sight as much as possible. But they are not of a degenerated smallness," she added, looking at them critically; "it is more their shape. However, when I dressed myself and put on that long ulster, I saw the disguise would pass and felt pretty safe. But isn't it surprising the difference dress makes? I should hardly have thought it possible to convert a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... illustrated into the bargain, and still leave room for much more. And the whole would cost less! Why England is so poorly and pettily served in the matter of monthly magazines is something of a mystery; but part of the cause is the rivalry of the papers, and part the smallness of our population. But I shall always hold that we deserve more good magazines than we ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... her attention to his smallness with a flush which never failed to touch the face of Donnegan when he thought of his size; and he seemed to swell and grow greater in the very instant she glanced ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... 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 stated ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... irritation. His star of Destiny rode at its zenith. Every venture turned under his Midas hand to gold and increased power. He mounted to succeeding heights until it seemed that like Alexander he must soon brood over the smallness of the world's opportunity. Colossal mergers grouped themselves into structures of stupendous strength. His pride was bloated with successes, yet all the while across his own table he must encounter ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... of which was still unpolluted by types, furnished an immense bonfire. From monasteries, temples, and public offices, the fury of the multitude turned to private dwellings. Several houses were pillaged and destroyed: but the smallness of the booty disappointed the plunderers; and soon a rumour was spread that the most valuable effects of the Papists had been placed under the care of the foreign Ambassadors. To the savage and ignorant populace ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the courses flowing after the usual time, the causes are, thickness of the blood, and the smallness of its quantity, with the stoutness of the passage, and weakness of the expulsive faculties. Either of these singly may stop the courses, but if they all concur, they render the distemper worse. If the blood abounds not in such ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Ptolemy; it was four hundred and twenty feet long, and if it were broad and deep in proportion, its burden must have been upwards of seven thousand tons, more than three times the burden of one of our first rates; but it is probable that it was both flat bottomed and narrow. Of the general smallness of the Greek and Roman ships, we need no other proof, than that they were accustomed to draw them on land when in port, and during the winter; and that they were often conveyed for a considerable space over land. They were sometimes ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... to you the manner how, and the place where, those vicars of Jesus Christ handled the living members of Jesus Christ, and show you how they proceeded for their healing. You descend into the vaults by very narrow stairs. A narrow corridor leads you to the several cells, which, for smallness and stench, are a hundred times more horrible than the dens of lions and tigers in the Colosseum. Wandering in this labyrinth of most fearful prisons, that may be called 'graves for the living,' I came to a cell full of skeletons without skulls, buried in lime, and the skulls, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Bendigeid Vran began to discourse; and behold it seemed to Bendigeid Vran, while they talked, that Matholwch was not so cheerful as he had been before. And he thought that the chieftain might be sad because of the smallness of the atonement which he had, for the wrong that had been done him. "Oh man," said Bendigeid Vran, "thou dost not discourse to-night so cheerfully as thou wert wont. And if it be because of the smallness of the atonement, thou shalt add thereunto whatsoever ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Cumming, and the 2d Georgia Regiment, commanded by Colonel Holmes. The creek was comparatively straight by this bridge. He formed his regiments along the creek in more open order than was desirable on account of the smallness of his number. Subsequently the 50th Georgia, with scarcely 100 men, was placed under his command. Colonel Eubanks' battery was by order of General Longstreet placed in his rear. The enemy opened on his position on Tuesday evening, the 16th of September. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... State to keep its place in the march of civilization. The picture is very valuable (particularly just now, when there is so great a disposition to revel in the consciousness of vast numbers), as calling attention to the smallness of the area within which, after all, the sources of national greatness and progress are to be sought. The mind which keeps the mass in motion, which saves and glorifies it, would most probably, if we could lay bare the secret of ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... thing could a dream be about than this? It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away. The making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand things ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... eyeless venom'd worm] The serpent, which we, from the smallness of his eyes, call the blind worm, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... invisible fields of aero-aqueous solution. The height of these shooting stars has not yet been ascertained by sufficient observation; Dr. Blagden thinks their situation is lower down in the atmosphere than that of fireballs, which he conjectures from their swift apparent motion, and ascribes their smallness to the more minute division of the electric matter of which they are supposed to consist, owing to the greater resistance of the denser medium through which they pass, than that in which the fire-balls exist. Mr. Brydone observed that the shooting stars appeared to him to be as high ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... even whilst I did it, and longing to put my spunk in the right place. I used to catch it in one hand, whilst I frigged with the other, then fling the spunk up towards the girls' legs. It was madness; for although the feet of the women were not three feet above my head, yet the smallness of the quantity thrown (after what stuck to my fingers), and the iron bars above, seemed to make it impossible that any of it should reach its intended destination; but I think it did one day. A ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... gloomy colouring, grays warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon. The plains have a grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing but a contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was light and stimulating, there was not one good circumstance in ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a signal from him, the men rose up and smartly bent their bows for practice, while the knight was greatly astonished at the smallness of the their targets. A wand was set up, far down the glade, and thereon was balanced a garland of roses. Whosoever failed to speed his shaft through the garland, without knocking it off the wand, was to submit to a buffet from the hand ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the resurgences of memory from a previous incarnation. There was no tenderness in her thoughts of the past, no sentiment clung to her recollections of what was now a dead phase of her life. She was slightly impatient of its contented smallness, of her satisfaction with such things as her sewing, her cake making, her childish conferences with girl friends on the vine-grown porch. They seemed strangely trivial and unmeaning compared to the exhilarating present. She was living now, feeling the force of a rising growth, her horizon ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... in the villages themselves. A troop of the 5th Punjaub Cavalry advanced to attack them, with orders, if possible, to tempt them out on to the plain. This was well managed. The enemy, seeing the smallness of the force, poured out of the villages, when Major Bulkeley with the 10th Hussars swept down upon them, and the Afghans fled and took ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... place of my dreams I distressed myself by visualising the scenes of the life I dreaded—the Meat Market, the dusty shadows of the gymnasium, the sombre reticence of the great hall. All that my lost tranquillity had given me was a keener sense of my own being; my smallness, my ugliness, my helplessness in the face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve a dogged calm; now I was horribly conscious of my physical sensations, and, above all, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... feeling a little cheap at his smallness in having tried to rob Peter of his farewell. The next moment he was rapidly overtaking ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... difficulty of making them be what it might. Messrs. Leadham and Loiter had thought that they might be justified in offering her certain terms for a novel,—terms not very high indeed, and those contingent on the approval of the manuscript by their reader. The smallness of the sum offered, and the want of certainty, and the pain of the work in her present circumstances, had all been felt by her to be very hard. But she had persevered, and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... pleasure, were the celebrated statues ascribed to Phidias, on the Monte Cavallo. The action of the human figure appeared to him so majestic, that it seemed to throw, as it were, a visible kind of awe into the very atmosphere, and over all the surrounding buildings. But the smallness of the horse struck him as exceedingly preposterous. He had often examined it before the idea occurred to him that it was probably reduced according to some unknown principle of antient art; and in this notion he was confirmed, by observing something of the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... looked uneasily about. Now that his eyes were turned away, Vic could study him at leisure, and he wondered at the smallness of the man. Suppose one were able to lay hands on him ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... vote is challenged and refused, he does not dream of saying: "I shall not pay my tax," and the assessor never inquires whether he votes or desires to vote. The men in the District of Columbia do not find their unfranchised condition assuaged by the smallness of their account with the assessor. Neither do they realize or believe that they are governed without their consent, or exempt from police or military duty. This is a striking proof that the vote is not a reward for ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... love for Albert was checked a little by her feeling that there was no perfect sympathy between him and her. But upon Katy she had lavished all her mother's love. People are apt to think that a love which is not intelligent is not real; there could be no greater mistake. And the very smallness of the area covered by Mrs. Plausaby's mind made her grief for Kate all the more passionate. Katy occupied Albert's mind jointly with Miss Minorkey, with ambition, with benevolence, with science, with literature, and with ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... she was struck by the smallness of the hands; and it must be admitted that, although the statue as a whole was slightly above the average female height, the arms from the elbow downwards, and particularly the hands, were by no means in proportion, and almost justified Miss Parkinson's objection, ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... out in poorly restrained explosions—a quarter-hour of wrath, a half-hour of tears and a half-day of almost incapacitating headache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at her limitations, especially as she grew to realize the smallness and emptiness of the home-life. She resented her sister's superior attitude, her officious poise, her college-education authority. But the damning defect was the remorseless grip of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through ignorant training, she was afraid in the dark, even afraid ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... respected of their Akals. The Sheikh Beshir has the reputation of being generous, and of faithfully defending those who have put themselves under his protection. The Emir Beshir, on the contrary, is said to be avaricious; but this may be a necessary consequence of the smallness of his income. He is an amiable man, and if any Levantine can be called the friend of an European nation, he certainly is the friend of the English. He dwells on no topic with so much satisfaction as upon that of his alliance with Sir Sidney Smith, during that officer's command ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... inclination in that direction. The best thought in Ireland has always preferred civilisation to war, and we have no wealth to waste on expensive stupidities of any kind. In addition we are handicapped on sea by the smallness of our official navy which, so far as I can gather, consists of the Granuaile, a pleasure-boat owned by the Congested Districts Board. In land operations, we are still more seriously hampered by the non-existence of our army. And although, in ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... herself to this man did not seriously occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together, his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... partial success; and when the two armies, at a late hour of the evening, retreated to their respective camps, neither of them could claim the honors, or the effects, of a decisive victory. The real loss was more severely felt by the Romans, in proportion to the smallness of their numbers; but the Goths were so deeply confounded and dismayed by this vigorous, and perhaps unexpected, resistance, that they remained seven days within the circle of their fortifications. Such funeral rites, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... entirely to the north of China and stretching to the Arctic Sea. It was Cathay, with its outlying island of Zipangu, that Columbus sought to reach by sailing westward, penetrated as he was by his intense conviction of the smallness of the earth and of the vast extension of Asia to the eastward. To the day of his death he was full of the imagination of the proximity of the domain of the grand khan to the islands and coasts which he had discovered. And such imaginations are curiously embodied in some maps of the early sixteenth ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... training were now Christians, and working in the villages around. Two, sons of the most powerful chiefs in the district, took the reading and another was the speaker. It was not much to boast of perhaps. "I feel the smallness of the returns" she said, "but is the labour lost? ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... a lot of Vicksburg. I remember, Colonel, that, despite its smallness, it is one of the great river towns ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... beautiful object. Having concluded his list, he remarks that these are in his opinion the qualities upon which beauty depends and which are the least liable to caprice and confusion. But "comparative smallness, delicate structure, colouring vivid but not too much so," are all mere empirical observations of no more value than those of Hogarth, with whom Burke must be classed as an aesthetician. Their works are spoken of as "classics." ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... garret, (one school in New York has thirty Chickerings,) and that almost every couple that sets up housekeeping on a respectable scale considers a piano only less indispensable than a kitchen range, we are rather inclined to wonder at the smallness than at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... royal harem. One would think that this beauty might have caused them to hate Fox Sprite, but such was not the case. They admired the plumpness of Fox Sprite's body, the fairness of Fox Sprite's complexion, the fire in Fox Sprite's eyes, but most of all they wondered at the smallness of Fox Sprite's feet, for, you remember, the supposed Ta-ki now had fox's feet instead of those ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... for a familiar, two-story building along the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM'S CASH STORE. Martin Eden got off at this corner. He stared up for a moment at the sign. It carried a message to him beyond its mere wording. A personality of smallness and egotism and petty underhandedness seemed to emanate from the letters themselves. Bernard Higginbotham had married his sister, and he knew him well. He let himself in with a latch-key and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here lived his brother-in-law. The grocery was below. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... call for this Convention was signed by the representatives of twenty-five States; that for, the Woman's Rights Convention, in 1850, was signed by those of but six, yet Ohio and Rhode Island were two of that number. I do not blush at the smallness of my State, but I rejoice in its prominence in this movement. I am glad to claim her as the only State which stands as a unit in the Senate of the United States in favor of giving the ballot to woman. Messrs. Sprague and Anthony, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... chiseled features, the smallness of his feet, the whiteness and smoothness of his hands. He had seen boys like this before, but he had never before touched one, never had one of them dependent on him, as it were, as this fellow appeared to ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... manner, their wounds fresh from the battle-field, and all were patient and quiet; not a groan or complaint escaped them, though I saw some faces twisted into strange contortions with the agony of their wounds. I commenced distributing my oranges right and left, but soon realized the smallness of my basket and the largeness of the demand, and sadly passed by all but the worst cases. In the third car that we entered we found the Colonel, Lieutenant-Colonel, and Adjutant of the Twenty-ninth Ohio, all severely wounded. We stopped and talked awhile. Mindful of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... was inimical to stays; he only condemned them when too tightly laced. He deplored the fact that women should have no sense of the harmony of line; that they should associate with smallness of the waist an idea of grace and beauty, not realizing that their beauty resided wholly in those modulations through which the body, having displayed the superb expansion of chest and bosom, tapers off gradually below the thorax, to glorify itself in the calm and generous width ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... mist to the tropical deluge. It has often been asked how it is that clouds and mists are able to float about when water is so much heavier (800 times heavier) than air. The answer to this is easy. It depends on the resistance or viscosity of fluids, and on the smallness of the particles concerned. Bodies falling far through fluids acquire a "terminal velocity," at which they are in stable equilibrium—their weight being exactly equal to the resistance—and this terminal velocity is greater for large particles than for small; consequently ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... 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 ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Micromegas was on site, which makes him a reliable witness, and I do not want to contradict anyone. Micromegas, after having toured around, arrived at the planet Saturn. As accustomed as he was to seeing new things, he could not, upon seeing the smallness of the planet and its inhabitants, stop himself from smiling with the superiority that occasionally escapes the wisest of us. For in the end Saturn is hardly nine times bigger than Earth, and the citizens of this country are dwarfs, no more than a thousand fathoms tall, ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... whole year; the races have been going on for three days, and there have been a few balls; but as a general rule, the society may be said to be extremely stagnant. No dinner-parties are ever given—I imagine, on account of the smallness of the houses and the inefficiency of the servants; but every now and then there is an assembly ball arranged, in the same way, I believe, as at watering-places in England only, of course, on a much smaller scale. I have been ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... honey-suckled, rose-entwined brick houses, with small, flat, pan-tiled roofs, and lattice-windows; and, hard by, a large hay-stack, three times the size of the house, or a desolate barn, half as big as all the rest of the buildings. From the smallness of the holdings, the farmhouses are dotted about as thickly, and at such varying distances from the roads, as to look like inferior 'villas,' falling out of rank; most of them have a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... I made seemed not to fit the wonderful bird, or help to give it a name that would lead us to its history in the books. The summer went by, several schoolmates saw the Wonderbird, and added stories of its marvellous smallness and mysterious habits. Its body, they said, was of green velvet with a satin-white throat; it had a long beak—at least an inch long—a fan-tail of many feathers, two long plumes from its head, "the littlest feet you ever have seen," and large lustrous eyes ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... course, Ellen did not come to Haworth while Charlotte was away. Branwell, too, was absent. His first engagement was as usher in a school; but, mortified by the boys' sarcasms on his red hair and "downcast smallness," he speedily threw up his situation and returned to Haworth to confide his wounded vanity to the tender mercies of the rough and valiant Emily, or to loaf about ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... that the motive of Judas was totally different from the one hitherto supposed: it was not filthy lucre. The smallness of the price for which he sold his Master—it was less than four pounds of our money, though the value of this sum was much greater then—proves that there must have been another motive. The traditional conception ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... insignificant in this battle. The most remarkable feature in Caesar's campaigns, and that which indicates most clearly his greatness as a commander, was the smallness of the number of men that he ever lost, either by the sword or by wear and tear. No general was ever so ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought, although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest; it did not color one word that he wrote; the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... time, but supped and passed that night with her. I made her all my own by the power of my love, and by buying her such things as she most needed, such as linen, dresses, etc. It cost me about a hundred louis, and in spite of the smallness of my means I thought I had made a good bargain. Agatha, whom I told of my good luck, was delighted to have ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the ponds; besides which, the captain had given strict orders that no shots should be fired, lest the sound might be heard by any of the bands of Indians prowling in the vicinity, who thus might have been induced, on discovering the smallness of our party, to attack us. Captain Norton was anxious, if possible, to avoid an encounter with the enemy; for although we might have succeeded in driving them off, it would have been almost impossible ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... unprincipled, it wears away his spirits and his health together. I think there is nothing analogous to this moral connection between teacher and pupil unless it be in the case of a parent and child. And here, on account of the comparative smallness of the number under the parent's care, the evil is so much diminished ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... superfluous to call attention again to the wonderful smallness of the means, the minuteness of the physical enginry, as compared with more modern manifestations, especially in our own land and epoch, by which so stupendous a result had been reached. In the midst of an age in which regal and sacerdotal despotism had seemed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... time the first of the gunboats reached the squadron, and the young men of the steerage were intensely amused at the smallness of the vessel. A midshipman from the flagship visited the "Reefer." He went alongside of her in the barge, and, not knowing any better, stepped over her port-quarter. Lieutenant Sterrett, in command, said in his least gentle ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... shore. As we passed along, a quantity of seaweed was seen, and the colour of the water indicated soundings. But there was no appearance of an inlet, unless near the rock just mentioned; and that, from its smallness, did not promise a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... telltale foot-gear; but why should he not have put on shoes of the ordinary type? If he had time to prepare the boards,—the whole affair shows premeditation, —clearly he had time to change his boots. The Chinese are usually small, and this might easily account for the smallness of the hand as shown by your cast. These are the pros and cons of the only clue that suggests itself to me. By the way, Maitland, it's a shame we did not try, before it was too late, to track this fellow down ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... friendly. So friendly was he, that he blamed her for inattention, and took her once to task about a melodious accent in which she vulgarized the vowels. All the flattery of the Branciani dress could not keep Emilia from her feeling of smallness. Was it possible that he loved her? She watched him as eagerly as her shyness would permit. Any shadow of a change was spied for. Getting no softness from him, or superadded kindness, no shadow of a change in that direction, she stumbled in her reading purposely, to draw down ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exhibited in perfection by our actinic clouds, the only condition necessary to its production being the smallness of the particles. In all cases, and with all substances, the cloud formed at the commencement, when the precipitated particles are sufficiently fine, is blue. In all cases, moreover, this fine blue cloud polarizes perfectly the beam which illuminates it, the direction of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... $25,000, with the income I told you of, $1,700 a year for each of us. You made a mistake about my house costing $2,700—it was $1,700. The $22,000 Congress gave me I spent for house and furniture, which, owing to the smallness of my income, I was obliged to leave. I mention about the division of the estate to you, dear Lizzie, because when it is done the papers will harp upon it. You can explain everything in New York; please do so to every one. Please see H. G., if it should come out ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the Queen received the Address of the Commons. She conducts herself with surprising dignity: the dignity which proceeds from self-possession and deliberation. The smallness of her stature is quite forgotten in the majesty and gracefulness of ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... considerable extent of ground, and would at first sight induce the belief of a much greater population than it actually contains. This is attributable to two circumstances, the largeness of the leases, which in most instances possess sufficient space for a garden, and the smallness of the houses erected in them, which in general do not exceed one story. From these two causes it happens, that this town does not contain above seven thousand souls, whereas one that covered the same extent of ground in ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... annihilate the presumptuous Englishman. But she was fortunately engaged in stilling the cries of the poor infant, who, in return for the pains she took in addressing it, began to give full evidence that the weakness of its lungs was not at all proportionate to the smallness of its size. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... mathematical perfection of a law, which in the abstract is true; but which he does not know is rigidly exact when applied to physical phenomena. From the immense distance of the planets and the smallness of the earth, man is unable to command a base line sufficiently long, to make the horizontal parallax a sensible angle for the more distant planets; and there are difficulties of no small magnitude to contend with, with those that are the nearest. ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... is singular, grotesque and 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, contained 20 ships of the line, besides ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 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 ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman, a little over fifty, and took the chair of State provided for her, the House rising to receive the Queen whom it was trying. The trial, in its miserable details of gross folly well-nigh incredible, lasted from July to November—four months of burning excitement—when it collapsed from the smallness of the majority (nine) that voted for the second reading of the bill. The animus of the prosecution and the unworthy means taken to accomplish its purpose, defeated the end in view. It is said that had it been otherwise the country ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... carried on by way of the cape of Buena Esperanza, it would be quite possible that the Chinese—who, in order to go to Manila, have to sail, both in the open and among islands, with some risk and danger because of the smallness of their craft—after seeing that the Spanish ships had to make a way-station at Malaca or Xava, would go from the river of Canton, which is the gateway from which the Chinese ships set out, coasting from land to land along their own country, and would change the bulk of their trade to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... in the world is like a mustard-seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants as a mustard-seed falls ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of the tiniest things known to man—things so small that nobody really can think of their smallness. These little pieces of electricity are called electrons, and for all their smallness, scientists have been able to find out a good deal about them. They have managed to get one electron all by itself on a droplet of oil and they have seen how it made the oil ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... difficulty yet remains: How to explain the seemingly miraculous powers of the supposed engineers? Here recourse is had once more to the relative smallness of the planet. We have remarked that the force of gravity on Mars is only thirty-eight per cent of that on the earth. A steam-shovel driven by a certain horse-power would be nearly three times as effective there as here. A man of our stature on Mars would find his effective strength increased ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... of a long conference he enumerated many other grounds of dissatisfaction, the principal of which were our want of attention to him as chief, the weakness of the rum formerly sent to him, the smallness of the present now offered, and the want of the chief's clothing, which he had been accustomed to receive at Fort Providence every spring. He concluded by refusing to receive the goods ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... known cause for winter losses are: Queenlessness, smallness of number of bees in colonies, insufficient food, improper food, dampness, bad air, the breaking of the clusters, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... wore a red flannel shirt, woollen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian. When, afterward, he had occasion to take off his shoes and stockings, I was struck with the smallness of his feet. He had worked a good deal as a lumberman, and appeared to identify himself with that class. He was the only one of the party who possessed an India-rubber jacket. The top strip or edge of his canoe was worn nearly through by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... average of 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 ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... be written, in spirit at least, except to a whole human race. The final question with regard to every book that comes to a publisher to-day is what mine shall it be written in, which public shall it burrow for? A book that belongs to a whole human race, which cannot be classified or damned into smallness, would only be left by itself on the top of the ground in the sunlight. The next great book that comes will have to take a long trip, a kind of drummer's route around life, from mind to mind, and now in one place ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... unsatisfactory pursuits. Business will suffer, and lovers and friends will complain of the smallness of affection. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... parietals, make fifteen plates in all—the vomer and ethmoid not being ossified at birth. The bones of the head are not only disunited, but are more or less overlapped at birth, in consequence of the largeness of the Caucasian child's head and the smallness of its mother's pelvis, giving the head an elongated form, and an irregular, knotty feel to the touch. The negro infant, however, is born with a small, hard, smooth, round head like a gourd. Instead of the frontal and temporal ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... no social entertainment are the guests so dependent upon one another for mutual entertainment as at a dinner, both by reason of its smallness and the compactness of arrangement, it will be seen that an equal care devolves upon the hostess in seating as in ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... spoken to spirits whose wanderings have surpassed the path of Mars. Nearly half of Argola you shall find covered with forests, which though very dense are no deeper than moss, and the elephants in them are not larger than beetles. You shall see many wonders of smallness in this world of Argola, which I desire in especial to show you, since it is the orb with which we who study the Art are most familiar, of all the worlds that the vulgar have not known. It is indeed the prize of our traffic ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... six months ago the horizon of my domestic happiness looked so clear and comforting. Not even a cloud of the traditional smallness of a man's hand marred its serenity. Little Fred was pegging away at Leggatt & Paine's with commendable steadiness all day, and, though he was apt to dance all night by way of making up for it, I was comforted in my solicitude regarding ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... 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 biggest stars are ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... when silkworm gut (now so important a feature of the angler's equipment) was introduced is obscure. Pepys, in his Diary (1667), mentions "a gut string varnished over" which "is beyond any hair for strength and smallness" as a new angling secret which he likes "mightily." In the third edition (1700) of Chetham's Vade-Mecum, already cited, appears an advertisement of the "East India weed, which is the only thing for trout, carp and bottom-fishing." Again, in the third edition of Nobbes's Art of Trolling (1805), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... Now, because of his smallness, and because he was found dead in the autumn (from which you may assume that he was full-grown), he was sent to the museum men; and the museum men examined his teeth, and rubbed their hands with glee, for they found that his upper ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English |
