It is the fragrant lack of practicality that makes high-heeled shoes so fascinating: in terms of static mechanics they induce a so...rt of insecurity which some find titillating. If a woman wears a high-heeled shoe it changes the apparent musculature of the leg so that you get an effect of twanging sinew, of tension needing to be released. Her bottom sticks out like an offering. At the same time, the lofty perch is an expression of vulnerability, she is effectively hobbled and unable to escape. There is something arousing about this declaration that she is prepared to sacrifice function for form.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.... He was fixed in the house of lords,... that hospital of incurables, and his retreat to popularity was cut off; for the confidence of the public, when once great and once lost, is never to be regained.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were t...errible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence..., Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual.... There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer ... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bo...ne and sinew of the country--men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most re...sponsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole th...rough which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,... Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,... With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »