United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to pass over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one.
In the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently strong. To himself he seems weak; to others, formidable. You are afraid of Grim; but Grim also is afraid of you. You are solicitous of the good-will of the meanest person, uneasy at his ill-will.
The twist of a great wrong in a man's character distorts his vision; and if he has a tender conscience he magnifies his misdeeds. In silence Roscoe and I watched the two ride down the slope. I guessed what had happened: afterwards I was told all. I was glad of it, though the end was not yet promising. When we turned to go towards the house again, a man lounged out of the trees towards us.
One not very large, but extremely curious division of letter-writing closely connected with those most recently mentioned, invites if it does not insist upon a word or two. Many people almost all who have happened to be at any time "in the lime-light" as a modern phrase goes that is to say in positions of publicity must have had experience of the strange appetite of their fellow-creatures for writing them letters without previous acquaintance, without excuse of introduction, and on the most flimsy pretexts of occasion. The present writer once received from Australia a long list of queries on a book of his most if not all of which could have been answered from the ordinary reference-bookshelf in the writing-room of such a club as that never mind whether it was in Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide from which the querist dated his epistle. Indeed, on another occasion somebody demanded a catalogue of "the important references to the medical profession in French literature"! This tendency of humanity sometimes exercises and magnifies itself into really remarkable correspondences. There is perhaps none such in English quite to match those Lettres
There is in all love that element of make-believe. Every woman who is loved is partly the creation of her lover's fancy. He consciously siderealises her, and with open eyes magnifies her importance to his life.
Fear magnifies everything, it dilates the eyes and the heart: it makes a woman mad. "Where is my husband going? What is my husband doing? Why has he left me? Why did he not take me with him?" These four questions are the four cardinal points of the compass of suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies.
The quadrennial period in American politics, set apart and dedicated to the election of presidents, magnifies these evil features in an otherwise admirable system of government. That the whipper-snappers of the vicinage should indulge their propensities comes as the order of their nature. But the party leaders are not far behind them.
To grow stout is not necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies its own defects. The "little more and how much it is" had come upon the unhappy Tristram, once the slimmest of the slim. Life had evidently not gone too well with him.
"If ye understood, mam," said Mike Flannery, "ye would not say that same, for to the flea professor th' flea is as big as a house. He studies him throo a telescope, Mrs. Muldoon, that magnifies th' flea a million times. Th' flea professor will take a dog with a flea on him, mam, and look at th' same with his telescope, and th' flea will be ten times th' size of th' dog."
It magnifies or diminishes things according to the caprice of the moment; and gives a color of sovereign importance to things which in reality are the merest trifles; a word, a look, a sign preoccupies and alarms it; it feasts on suspicion and anxiety, fictitious hopes and deceitful reports; it seizes with avidity on the things that please it, but scarcely is it in possession of the sought for objects when it abandons them with disgust.
Word Of The Day