"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then in earnest. All his nature was on edge in that crisis, and this supine surrender of an able-bodied man whose two hands were needed so desperately was peculiarly exasperating. He leaped out of the boat, ran into the galley, and gave the cook an invigorating beating up with the flat of his hands. The cook clutched his cat more firmly, braced himself on ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... always no fault to find. How could the colonel suppose anything was wrong? Life had become a dull, sad story to him; why should it be different to anybody else? Nay, the colonel would not have said that in words; it was rather the supine condition into which he had lapsed, than any conclusion of his intelligence; but the fact was, he had no realization of the fact that a child's life ought to be bright and gay. He accepted Esther's sedate unvarying tone and manner as quite the right thing, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... they had a bridle placed in their mouths, keep a resolute silence, in which they rather resemble their shadows than themselves. These, like those men who cast nativities or interpret the oracles of the sibyl, compose their countenances to a sort of gravity, and then make money of their supine drowsiness. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... question of cowardice. It is a question of common sense. A few country lads cannot oppose a government. With what weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... times notable not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... comrade's that had puzzled him. Lawrence, although he had keener intelligence, was not quite so fine a type as his father, and in consequence stood rough wear better. But he too, in spite of his physical courage, now and then showed a supine carelessness and tried to avoid, instead of boldly grappling with, things ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... morning the party would be starting for the hunt—a hunt from which, he felt sure, they would never return. Then it was certain that a treacherous attack would be made upon the ship and the island, and yet here he lay supine, knowing all this, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... afterwards appeared, had in former years suffered divers things at the hand of an obnoxious mother-in-law, grew more excited than ever, and became furiously indignant, not only at the all-assuming lady, but also at the supine Dundreary, who allowed himself to be thus imposed upon. He grumbled and muttered, and really seemed as if he would make for the stage, as he said, "to give the old creetur a piece of his mind." Even Norman was now uneasy lest he should make more demonstration than was meet, while Douglas did ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... defense, the new plans marked a great advance; but when judged in the light of the possible necessity of repelling American invasion, they were plainly inadequate. A burst of criticism followed from England; press and politicians joined in denouncing the blind and supine colonials. Did they not know that invasion by the United States was inevitable? "If the people of the North fail," declared a noble lord, "they will attack Canada as a compensation for their losses; if they succeed, they ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... left alone, gazed upon the sleeper. John Law, the failure, lay there, supine, abased, cast-down, undone, shorn utterly of his old arrogance of mind and mien. Fortune, wealth, even the boon of physical well-being—all had fled from him. The pride of a superb manhood had departed from the lines of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... that the game. Technique crumbled. For a moment he imagined her in love, dissolved, helpless; then hastily changed the subject. He liked women to be strong—having long since abandoned his earlier ideal of the supine adorant—but not too strong. Certainly not stronger than himself. He had met a good many "strong" women in the last twelve years, swathed, more often than not, in disarming femininity. A man hadn't a chance with them, man's strength ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of the state of this country, which his querulous eloquence, aided by the arbitrary dominion he assumes over fact, is capable of exhibiting. Had he attributed our misfortunes to their true cause, the injudicious tampering of bold, improvident, and visionary ministers at one period, or to their supine negligence and traitorous dissensions at another, the complaint had been just, and might have been useful. But far the greater and much the worst part of the state which he exhibits is owing, according to his representation, not to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to her success are the apathy and faithlessness of her own selfish children, and the supine indifference of the world. In the roar and crush and hurry of life and business, and the tumult and uproar of politics, the quiet voice of Masonry is unheard and unheeded. The first lesson which one learns, who engages ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... if it were not for the powers of the lamp act, feeble as they are, whether the many-headed-public, ever watchful of prey, would not in another century, devour whole streets, and totally prevent the passenger. Thus a supine jurisdiction ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... please Providence to call them; and their dismay was now such as might occur at the Mint if the great stamp were suddenly and of its own accord to cease its coinage of double-eagles and to sink into a silence of supine idleness. His wife and children acknowledged, indeed, his head and his hands—those it were impossible to overlook; but his head stopped with the rim of his collar, while his hands—those long, lean hands, freckled, tufted goldishly between joints and knuckles—they never followed beyond the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... volume and density, spread and spread, and in a few minutes the south wing of my wife's army was as supine as ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... to the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... house protects him, savoury viands sustain:- But loose his neck and off he goes again: So stole our Vagrant from his warm retreat, To rove a prowler and be deemed a cheat. Hard was his fare; for him at length we saw In cart convey'd and laid supine on straw. His feeble voice now spoke a sinking heart; His groans now told the motions of the cart: And when it stopp'd, he tried in vain to stand; Closed was his eye, and clench'd his clammy hand: Life ebb'd apace, and our best aid no more Could his weak sense or dying heart ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... the black still form of Samoval supine, his white face staring up into the heavens, and beside him knelt Tremayne, whilst in the balcony above leaned her ladyship. The rope ladder, Sir Terence's swift glance ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... being opposite him, Ned violently pushed forward the table so as to carry the tutor over backward in his chair. His head and back struck the floor heavily, and he lay supine ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... time that lady had extended a supine hand it had been to offer him one of the most serious affronts that can befall a self-respecting landlord; now the hand contained only cordiality, and in that ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... her heart knew tenderness like mine! Grant vengeance on the guilty; grant but that, I ask no more; my hand, my crown, is thine. Fulfil the justice of offended heaven, Assert the sacred rights of royalty, Come not in vain, crush the rebellious crew, Crush, I implore, the indifferent and supine. ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... leap over abysses and spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, they must ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... movement had begun. A fresh and powerful impulse was imparted after the termination of Lord Ripon's viceroyalty. The open aggression which characterised the Russian frontier policy of '84 and '85 had been met by a supine apathy and indifference to the interests of the State, which deserved, and which, had the issues been less important, might have received actual punishment. It was natural that his immediate successors should strive to dissociate ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... as summer, without summer's passion, and without spring's impulses of hope and action. A quiet day; the air was still; the light was mellow, not brilliant; the sky was clear, but no longer of an intense blue; the little racks of cloud were lying supine on its calm depths, apparently having nowhere to go and nothing to do. The driving, sweeping, changing forms of vapour, which in spring had come with rain and in summer had come with thunder, had all ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... what the unknown would do next, brought the sweat to his brow and limbs and set him trembling like one with an ague. Not a breath disturbed the bushes, yet he felt that the man was there—there across the opening in the forest with his eyes fixed upon the supine figure near the fire. Had he not been warned by that mysterious feeling which had kept his eyes open and his nerves alert he, Enoch Harding, might now be lying unconscious with a deadly weapon ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... Ulysses bore their fate, Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state; For, gorg'd with flesh, and drunk with human wine While fast asleep the giant lay supine, Snoring aloud, and belching from his maw His indigested foam, and morsels raw; We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround The monstrous body, stretch'd along the ground: Each, as he could approach ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... horrour, that I do not think of them but in extremis. I was, however, driven to them, last night, for refuge, and, having taken the usual quantity, durst not go to bed, for fear of that uneasiness to which a supine posture exposes me, but rested all night in a chair, with much relief, and have been, to-day, more warm, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... furnace, out of his arms The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!— Toppled the crags down after him. He lay Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots And buried him beneath it. His broad breast Heaved, like that other giant in his heart, And through the crater burst his fiery breath, But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay Breathing in agony ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... have the thought that if I die Gerard will not even possess enough to live on, for he is incapable of effecting the miracle which I renew each day, in order to keep the house up on a decent footing.... Ah! I know him, so supine, so sickly, in spite of his proud bearing, unable to do anything, even conduct himself. And so what will become of him; will he not fall ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... away, its wearer Would need it nevermore, By a sword thrust learning the secrets God keeps on yonder shore; And you wore your grief like glory, You would not yield supine, Who wrought in your patient ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... about it—this is Religion. Young as I was at the time I now speak of, ignorant and dumb as I was, I had my moments of exultation and humility,—moments so wild that I was transported out of myself. I left my body supine in its narrow bed and soared above the stars. At such times, in an aether so deep that the blue of it looked like water, I seemed to see the Gods themselves, a shining row of them, upon the battlements ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... in Morocco. It is hard to guess the age of some of the featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Sale, but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto of ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... smoke. He amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree, moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire. The movement frightened the lizard, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... She was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off the high-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. "Come here, Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair." She began to draw her fingers slowly through ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... his shoulder of Ivana's supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his lungs, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... lad's intellectual fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, he differs strikingly from his equals in age, by his passion for a vigorous intellectual gymnastic, such as the supine character of their minds renders distasteful to most young men, but in which he shows a fearlessness that at times makes me fancy that his ultimate destination may be the military life; for indeed the rigidly logical ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... him in a clear point of view before the people assembled at the hustings, which he had a right to do, of the prisoners at Derby, of his own conduct towards them, which was most courageous and humane, and of the conduct of the party at Westminster on the same occasion, which was assuredly supine to a frightful degree, to speak in no stronger language. In the midst of the most horrid yelling of the party, from whom he was continually obliged to appeal to the mob below, as Mr. Kinnaird, unused to his new nomenclature, called them, Mr. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... raise voice or a hand to interfere with them. It has been explained why, though it should be added that in the way of firearms there was only the single worthless Springfield rifle in the house. It was mother and daughter who held the three lads supine. Had they been left free they would have acted immediately on first learning of the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... or two away on his left lay another supine figure, elbows on the ground, and hands arched above his brow to shade his eyes, gazing out to sea. He, too, was a tall and powerful man, and when he moved there was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his body was cased, and from the steel casque ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... verge of resentful tears calling to the dog, the unsympathetic dog. Perhaps she had not the power of evoking sympathy, that personal gift of direct appeal to the feelings. I said to Fyne, mistrusting the supine attitude of the dog: ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed slender slits of white. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... flag of England were waving now over the whole world," said Stella, with an involuntary sigh; "I long for peace and rest, but since those who have the power are supine or indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow-creatures, it must be left to individuals to attempt the task of redressing the wronged, and restoring freedom to ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... long ranges to measure the wind for prone riflemen. "Lying prone on the back," by the way, is a phrase which creeps into many newspapers during Bisley week. It would clearly not do to speak of a "supine" rifle-shot. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management of our home life and conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show certain high ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... should expect a son's deference from me in waiting first on him. But, galled and stung by a sense of my follies and demerit, I strove to throw the blame on others. We kept nightly orgies in Palazzo Carega. To sleepless, riotous nights, followed listless, supine mornings. At the Ave Maria we showed our dainty persons in the streets, scoffing at the sober citizens, casting insolent glances on the shrinking women. Juliet was not among them—no, no; if she had been there, shame ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... not suffered as he has suffered? did I not live in exile as he did? Have I not made sacrifices for my king and for my ideals? Why should I suffer in the future as well as in the past? Why, because my king is powerless or supine in giving me back what was filched from my father, should that be taken from me which alone gives me incentive to live . . . you, Crystal," he added as once again he knelt beside her. He encircled her shoulders with his arms, then he seized her two hands and covered them with kisses. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... contributed more to the rapid advance of the province than the institution of the Agricultural Society, and from it we are already reaping the most beneficial results. It has stirred up a spirit of emulation in a large class of people, who were very supine in their method of cultivating their lands; who, instead of improving them, and making them produce not only the largest quantity of grain, but that of the best quality, were quite contented if they reaped enough from their ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... within me glows, And yearns its energy to fling On war, or some yet grander thing. See there the foe, with vain hope flushed! Their lights are scant, their stations hushed: Unnerved by slumber and by wine Their bravest chiefs are stretched supine. Now to my doubting thought give heed And listen where its motions lead. Our Trojan comrades, one and all, Cry loud, Aeneas to recall, And where, they say, the men to go And let him of our peril know? Now if the meed I ask they swear To give you—nay, I claim ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... nonsense! I'd have them amaranths all, or made of paper. Here, wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. Brackett, punctual man, is ringing The curfew bell; 't is nine o'clock already. 'T is early bedtime, yet methinks 't were joy On mattress cool to stretch supine. At midnight, Were it winter, I were less fatigued, less sleepy. Sleep! I invoke thee, "comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled waves of life, And hushest them to peace." All hail the man Who first invented ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... high places, and the indolent ones in low, whose selfishness brings, and whose blundering blindness allows to continue, the conditions that are fatal to life—on these the guilt of blood lies. Violence slays its thousands, but supine negligence slays its ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... right eyelid, a little wound so small that it was not worth a dressing. Yet that little piece of obus lodged somewhere inside his skull, above his left ear, so the radiographist says, and he's paralyzed. Paralyzed all down the other side, and one supine hand flops about, and one supine leg flops about, in jerks. One bleary eye stays open, and the other eyelid stays shut, over the other bleary eye. Meningitis has set in and it won't be long now, before we'll have another empty bed. Yellow foam flows down ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... were dejected; that if their spirits should be quite sunk they could never be raised; that they must be supported; that I would influence the people; and that he should do what he could with the Parliament, who, in my opinion, ought not to be supine, but to be awakened at a juncture when the King's departure had perfectly drowned their senses, adding that a word in season would ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... terror of his arms. His public declarations were skilfully mitigated by his private assurances; he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the Goths; and the courts of Ravenna and Toulouse, mutually suspicious of each other's intentions, beheld with supine indifference the approach of their common enemy. Aetius was the sole guardian of the public safety; but his wisest measures were embarrassed by a faction which, since the death of Placidia, infested the imperial palace; the youth of Italy trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... with a people so supine as to endure such waste and oppression. Everything is taxed, and the masses of the people are ground down to the lowest stage compatible with mere animal existence. England and France have been compelled recently to take ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... to work; and we have the following testimony to his industry by a fellow-prisoner, Mr. Wilson, the Baptist minister, and of Charles Doe, who visited him in prison:—'Nor did he, while he was in prison, spend his time in a supine and careless manner, nor eat the bread of idleness; for there have I been witness that his own hands have ministered to his and his family's necessities, making many hundred gross of long tagged laces, to fill up the vacancies ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Antwerp, might also keep back the Zealanders at Lille, as in fact it did. So signal an instance of neglect could only have occurred in a government, which, without dignity of independence, was guided by the tumultuous multitude it ought to have governed. The more supine, however, they were themselves in opposing the enemy, the more violently did their rage boil against Gianibelli, whom the frantic mob would have torn in pieces if they could have caught him. For two days the engineer was in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass; the sergeant smoking and staring up at the sky, the corporal, with his sound hand clasping his wounded one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily between his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired breach ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... body—Spiritualism and Materialism in one! It is life, and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love would fain give us wings wherewith to fly; but the wretched body lies prone—supine; it cannot soar ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Darius lay supine before them, physically and spiritually abased, accepting, like a victim who is too weak even to be ashamed, the cooings and strokings and prayers and optimistic mendacities of Auntie Hamps, and the tearful ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a miserable prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day—and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane. The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... young man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhock), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... to call for assistance, the wedged-in horse did so all the more loudly. Supine and unable to free himself from his uncomfortable position, he repeatedly uttered that terrified scream which one never hears from this noble and reticent beast except in dire extremity. Whoever has heard such a cry will readily admit that ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... him out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise—erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat—suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror. Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and he could not ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... be no hilarious splashing nor swimming, but the silent immersion was most refreshing. It was while supine on my back with only my nose and toes above water that I received my first alarm for that morning. My position being recumbent I was staring up at the sky and in the direction of up-stream, and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... facetiae across its mouth to a damsel who was removing the remains of some private luncheon; and a fourth sat in one of the windows reading "Bell's Life." Roger took it all in at a glance, while to one of the giants supine, or rather to a perpendicular pair of white stockings, he preferred his request for a basin and a sponge. Once more he was informed that he would find what he wanted in the scullery. There was no time to waste on unavailing demands, therefore he only begged further to be ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line. Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless, grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught between rocks and rising ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Halfman handled the gentry, was as heedless as his inferiors, and was therefore taken too much by surprise to offer the slightest resistance when Evander, suddenly springing from between his guards, snatched from his supine arms the captured sword that had been intrusted to his keeping. Before he or any other of the astonished spectators could take any action Evander had leaped lightly into the alcove of the window, and, dragging by main force the heavy table in front ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... smiles for me, no more my rays Urge on her frozen roots to coloured bloom, No clouds enrobe her nakedness—her days, Once golden in the dance, are bent on doom. A loathing throngs the vision, and the face Of Man is stone and ashen, fallen supine. How long with Light and Love I warmed his race! Now iron crowns of ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... old defender of freedom? The classrooms are mine no more; the campus is a departed glory; I shall no longer sing the 'Alma Mater' with you when the chimes ring at ten. The whole challenge of the city is missing. Nothing opposes me, there is no task for me to do. I must be supine, acquiescent, smiling, non-essential. I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for the speeding, finds that no race is on. But I've no business to be surprised. I knew it would be like this, didn't I? the one thing is to make and keep mummy happy. She needs ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Roosevelt used his voice and his pen with all his native energy and fire to convince the American people of three things that righteousness demanded that the United States forsake its supine neutrality and act; that the United States should prepare itself thoroughly for any emergency that might arise; and that the hyphenated Americanism of those who, while enjoying the benefits of American citizenship, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... his room, as though the idea that he was "TRES comme il faut" had impressed even her. For myself, I had so little knowledge of the minor details of the affair, and took part in it so much as a supine spectator, that I have forgotten most of what passed on this occasion. I only remember that Blanche and the Widow figured at it, not as "de Cominges," but as "du Placet." Why they had hitherto been "de Cominges" I do not ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... feminine, &c.), the second to teach the irregularities of nouns as to number (i. e. which want the singular, which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (i. e. their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the supine): this is what they profess to teach. Suppose then their professions realised, what is the result? Why that you have laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly which, if it do actually occur, could not possibly cost more trouble to explain at the time of its occurrence ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... There is no essay, nothing strictly didactic. Facts are given: inferences are left entirely with the reader. Few books are more wearisome than those which are thoroughly exhaustive, which point a moral and adorn a tale on every page. Imagination and thought must sit supine, despairing of new conquests. Their work has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... much greater oppressions to complain of: that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions, suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties were but a handful in comparison of the natives: that they lived in the most supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in inconsiderable divisions through out the whole kingdom: that a great body of men, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... with me, though having at the same time a vague impression that all was not quite right. Gradually I collected my ideas, and at length, when Browne repeated his question the third time, I had formed a pretty correct theory as to the cause of my present supine attitude, and the unpleasant ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... to rejoice in thine. As, hungering for his mother's face and eyes, The child throws wide the door, back to the wall, I run to thee, the refuge from poor lies: Lean dogs behind me whimper, yelp, and whine; Life lieth ever sick, Death's writhing thrall, In slavery endless, hopeless, and supine. ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... allow her to crush France and Russia without moving a finger. Germany thought that the English were blind, and that for the sake of gain we should remain neutral and never lift a finger while she swept over Belgium to crush France; thought, too, that we should be supine while she violated treaties and committed the most fiendish deeds ever committed in the history of the world. But it is not my purpose to speak of these things; I have to tell the story of a commonplace lad in a workaday town, ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... with a paternal smile, waving the boy on his way while he betook himself to the bluff side and there supine, continued at intervals to direct the operation ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... they maintain the station of independent communities, they will have frequent occasions to recall, and to exert their vigour. Even under popular governments, men sometimes drop the consideration of their political rights, and appear at times remiss or supine; but if they have reserved the power to defend themselves, the intermission of its exercise cannot be of long duration. Political rights, when neglected, are always invaded; and alarms from this quarter must frequently come to renew the attention ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... that made the success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... the hope of success in her mission of atonement had given her the courage for the venture. She realized now that the will which had kept her buoyant through two arduous days and nights had suddenly forsaken her and left her supine, without hope or initiative. The actions of the man at the doorway below had frightened her. He had been so uncompromising in his ugliness. The shock of her awakening had been rudely unexpected, and had bewildered her with its brutal significance. She was a prisoner in this ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Then with an effort of the will he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself for an idiot strode on. Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself!—the body of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... a while, "that Mrs. Graham will once more tell us to let ourselves go with the tide and not worry. Thank God, I never was a supine jelly-fish, and I can't start being ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... pop—eyed daub Of Shakespeare, very like the hired man Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: "Whether to lie supine and let a clique Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain Our little hoards for hazards on the price Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath The shadow of a spire upreared to curb A breed of lackeys and to serve the bank ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... or pence, in merits chair, They dose and dream supine 0; But how the devil they came there, That neither ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... offspring, doom'd to try, Like a caged eagle panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... suffering as her youth and buoyant nature would permit; but as the years slipped by she felt inclined to personify that pride and burn a candle beneath it. Even before her mind had awakened, the energy and strength of her character had cured her of love for a man as supine as Jack Emory. He was charming and well read, all that she could desire in a brother, but as a husband he would be intolerable. As his love cooled she liked him better still, particularly as his loyalty would ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... and in a case where the edict violates principles which almost all of us only a short time ago held to be almost sacred, the expectation is worse than merely idle. A nation which could instantly get itself into the frame of mind necessary for such supine submission would be a nation fit for servitude, not freedom. But in the case of the Prohibition Amendment, and of the Volstead act for its enforcement, there enters another element which must inevitably and most powerfully affect the feelings of men toward the law. Everybody knows that the ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... of the people is absolute, ignorant, and therefore supine. The cattle have a scourge, but the loss of money makes men active. When the rinderpest appears, governors issue proclamations. When horses show the glanders, quarantine is established. But when a father's flock ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... call Ephialtes.—I, modestly, state it to mean the Night-Mare, for the information of the Ladies. The chief symptom by which this affliction is vulgarly known, is a heavy pressure upon the stomach, when lying in a supine posture in bed. It would terrify some of my fair readers, who never experience'd this characteristick of the Incubus, were I to dwell on its effects; and it would irritate others, who are in the habit ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... Bible always with him,—never the will of Christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus satisfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, without any distracting occupation, the thing ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... use it against porters, and waiters, and officials. There's nothing like it. I have observed a good deal. It has a magic sound, like Orpheus' lyre; the stiffest back becomes supine at the first ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... I, intent, adore; And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands In adoration, cry aloud and soar In spirit, high above the supine lands And the low caves of mortal things, and flee To the last fields of the universe untrod, Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea, And the contented soul is ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I might not dispense with that great labour, and concluded eventually that I might, and so sank supine into a luxury of calm before ninety-nine out of a hundred of the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... her Hungarian Majesty, and her Bartensteins and Ministries, heard enough of those Prussian rumors, interior Military activities, and enigmatic movements; but they seem strangely supine on the matter; indeed, they seem strangely supine on such matters; and lean at ease upon the Sea-Powers, upon Pragmatic Sanction and other Laws of Nature. But at length even they become painfully interested as to Friedrich's intentions; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in a new light also. For the first time he seemed like an old man, sitting there, supine, garrulous, in the midst of those self-contained people. "Gosh! how he did talk! He took too much wine, I reckon, but that didn't make all the difference." In truth, his imperiousness, his contempt, had been melted ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of the chest is increased by raising the arms above the head, holding them by the elbows, and thus dragging upon and elevating the ribs, the chest being emptied by lowering the arms against the sides of the chest and exerting lateral pressure on the thorax. The patient is in the supine position—but first the water must have been drained from the mouth and nose by keeping the body in the prone position. The tongue must be kept forward by transfixing ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... later, indignant at the then apparently supine attitude of the British Government in the matter of the Abyssinian captives, George Yule wrote a letter (necessarily published without his name, as he was then on the Governor-General's Council), to the editor of an influential Indian paper, proposing a private ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ways I had elected to face nothing. The discovery of new values in life is a very chaotic experience; there is a tremendous amount of jostling and confusion and a momentary feeling of darkness. I let my spirit float supine ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... and submissive affection, of supine and tolerant fidelity, now issued from her mouth in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... which are not commonly far asunder. Governments of all kinds are administered only by men; and great mistakes, tending to inflame these discontents, may concur. The indecision of those who happen to rule at the critical time, their supine neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention, may aggravate the public misfortunes. In such a state of things, the principles, now only sown, will shoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance. In such circumstances the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland, a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man may see her, though any woman may. She stays in a hut or shelter specially made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine. She may not see the sun, and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down, otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased. During her seclusion she may eat nothing that lives in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Antonia go away down the road, suggesting supine submission rather than a friend in need, her heart failed her. Had she done wisely? Fectnor had never stepped aside for any man. He seemed actually to believe that none must deny him the things he wanted. He seemed an insane creature when you thwarted him. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... trapped in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat their heads and hands on the ground, supine before the invaders. Each captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building. Some were hurled out again into the dark, unharmed; a few others were retained. A sorting of prisoners was plainly in progress. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... these were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the King; and the praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the King's; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater cheerfulness ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... inhabitants. It was a strange thing, a very strange thing indeed, that interlopers should have been permitted to oust the wealth and reputability of Polterham from an Institute which ought to have been one of the bulwarks of Conservatism. Laxity in the original constitution, and a spirit of supine confidence, had led to this sad result. It seemed impossible that Polterham could ever fall from its honourable position among the Conservative strongholds of the country; but the times were corrupt, a revolutionary miasma was spreading ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... in black, 'is a grand one, with unbounded vitality. Compare it with your Protestantism, and you will see the difference. Popery is ever at work, whilst Protestantism is supine. A pretty Church, indeed, the Protestant! Why it can't ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... government boat which was surveying Plum Point bars, Doss showed his teeth like an indignant cat. Five or six miles below he offered the supine and ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... of her brow, and stirs the plumes of her gallant. But the very breeze is laden with heat, and the fountain's noise does but whet the thirst of the grass, the flowers, the trees. The earth sulks under the burden of the unmerciful sun. Love itself, one had said, would be languid here, pale and supine, and, faintly sighing for things past or for future things, would sink into siesta. But behold! these are no ordinary lovers. The gushing fountains are likelier to run dry there in the grotto than they ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... leader on the announcement pointed out that the mission would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British lion in these parts, and it was more than time that he should open his ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... corn, but the cultivators have fled, and there is none to gather the harvest. Cities are deserted and depopulated. Fierce foreign mercenaries, for whom the barons have no pay, pillage the farms and the monasteries. The bishops, for the most part, rest supine amid all this storm of tyranny. When they rouse themselves they increase rather than mitigate the miseries of the people. Milo, Earl of Hereford, has demanded money of the Bishop of Hereford to pay his troops. The Bishop refuses, and Milo seizes his lands and goods. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... N. Massa, was destined to become more conspicuous in the labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers were less solicitous in the personal study ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... On the wall hung a large wooden crucifix; and his eyes wandered slowly to its face; but with no appeal in them, only a dim wonder at this supine and patient God that had no thunderbolt for a priest ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... noble son, for wiles renown'd! Lift, or be lifted, and let Jove decide. He said, and heaved Ulysses. Then, his wiles Forgat not he, but on the ham behind Chopp'd him; the limbs of Ajax at the stroke 905 Disabled sank; he fell supine, and bore Ulysses close adhering to his chest Down with him. Wonder riveted all eyes. Then brave Ulysses from the ground awhile Him lifted in his turn, but ere he stood, 910 Inserting his own knee the knees between[21] Of Ajax, threw him. To the earth they fell Both, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... "Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eyder and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and we, this great English nation, whose race and language ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... of the disease and of its non-heredity are extremely important and supremely suggestive. Tuberculosis takes only the quitters and the supine. Anyone who will fight bravely against the disease can always resist its ravages for many years, if not to the extent of living out ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... dinghy was barely to be discerned in the mist, and the fat man was breathing in such a manner that his sighs might almost have been heard on the banks. Racksole wanted violently to do something, but there was nothing to do; he could only sit supine by Hazell's side in the stern-sheets. Gradually they began again to overtake the dinghy, whose one-man crew was evidently tiring. As they came up, hand over fist, the dinghy's nose swerved aside, and the tiny craft passed ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... so, the cause of justice demands that this man's crime should be brought to light. I am something of Shakspeare's opinion; I cannot but believe that 'murder will out,' somehow or other, sooner or later. But I think that, in this business, the police have been culpably supine. It seems as if they feared to handle the case to closely, lest the clue they followed should ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... recrudescence of the old classic vs. romantic conflict. Stendhal has written that a classicist is a dead romanticist. It still holds good. But here in America, "the colourless shadow land of fiction," is there no tragedy in Gilead for souls not supine? Some years ago Mr. James Lane Allen, who cannot be accused of any hankerings after the flesh-pots of Zola, made an energetic protest against what he denominated the "feminine principle" in our fiction. He did not mean the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... basket of soiled clothes on her shoulder,—her son Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her. Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in a little while he lay supine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... not stay to discriminate them, satisfied with a rough sketch. He saw indolence roused by a love of humour, or rather bodily fun; sensuality and prodigality with a vein of generosity running through it; a contempt of danger with gross superstition; supine senses, only to be kept alive by noisy, tumultuous pleasures, or that kind of novelty which borders on absurdity: this formed the common outline, and the rest ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... which shall be the work of my pupils, there shall be found no nouns, no pronouns, no articles, no participles, no verbs, no prepositions, no conjunctions, no adverbs, no interjections, no gerunds, not even one single supine. Unmercifully shall they be banished from it."—Neef's Method ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... were beneath serious consideration; it was the lives to come, the lingering doubt of which power led her on, which restrained and filled her mind. A flicker of rage darted through her calm questioning; her mental processes again faded. With her right arm across the supine body and enveloping the face in her left sleeve a single twist and Nettie Vollar would choke in a cloud of thick satin made gay with unfading flowers and the embroidered symbol of long life. She felt her body grow rigid with purpose when ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of Wales has requested Fuseli to paint from 'The Corsair'—leaving to him the choice of any passage for the subject: so Mr. Locke tells me. Tired, jaded, selfish, and supine—must ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... strove to rouse him from this state of supine despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less potency, Ronald strove to inspire him with his own strong love for literature. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... exceedingly supine proportions, wore pinks and blues and an invariable necklace of pink paste pearls to fine advantage, and a fuzz of yellow bangs that fell down over her eyes, only to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Never supine lie they, the steeds of our folk, to the sting, Praying for deadness of nerve, their wounds the shame of the sun; They strive, but they strive for this: the fullness of passionate nerve; They pant, but they pant for this: the speed ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... celomic epithelium, besides that of the mesogastrium, are capable of forming splenic tissue. Jameson reports a case of double spleen and kidneys. Bainbrigge mentions a case of supernumerary spleen causing death from the patient being placed in the supine position in consequence of fracture of the thigh. Peevor mentions an instance of second spleen. Beclard and Guy-Patin have seen the spleen congenitally misplaced on the right side and the liver on the left; Borellus and Bartholinus with others have ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... is what all say, and will continue to say, and yet the time comes not. There is never any time like the present. All around me are thousands of men, once free and now chained into slavery—and chained, perhaps, more through their own indolence than by the power of their masters; and yet they lie supine, and call upon each other to wait! And to-morrow there will be a thousand such in the arena, and instead of rising up together in their strength, they will fight only with each other. What might not that thousand accomplish, were they to act together in brave and earnest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, Her rushing wings—Oh! ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... in, but there was no response. In a passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge; not a man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont to welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The gunners only, men of that noble force the Company's Horse-Artillery, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the evening breeze. He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learned that day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before. Then, perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of the whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused and whirling. Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear voices that called him to "wake," and in the midst of it he ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... pillow where that head was lying. Then she crept back and sat down on the side of the bed, so close to the unconscious sleeper that her shadow fell across him. Slowly, as if she had been touching a serpent, her hand crept stealthily toward that which lay in the supine carelessness of sleep on the white counterpane. She touched it at last, but started back. A blood-red stain from the curtain fell across it as her bending form let the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... in her cage lay the spotted leopardess, apparently asleep or lifeless. The Little Ones paused a moment to look at her. She leaped up rampant against the cage. The horses reared and plunged; the elephants retreated a step. The next instant she fell supine, writhed in quivering spasms, and lay motionless. We rode ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh!" with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy, block-headly supine. As I say to her, ass in praesenti rarely makes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... resentment and is sending delegations and messages and protests to the poor old wabbly Chinese Government, urging it to "act." To act; that is, to tell the French Government to hand back to China this "acquired" land. What the outcome will be, I don't know. Apparently the supine, terror-stricken Chinese Government cannot act, doesn't dare. Three days have now passed, and the French are still sitting tight, holding to their fruits of victory, facing an enraged but helpless country. And they will probably continue ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... and ablest friends here are dead; their survivors supine and superannuated; their connections new Whigs and Reformers, and Associators; myself grown quite indifferent upon the point; and the principal Tories, such as the Duke of Beaufort, &c., and those who would ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... falls on his knee. She takes his cheeks in her hands: turns up his face: and adds] We are greatly pleased. [She slaps his cheek coquettishly: he bows almost to his knee.] The petit lever is over. [She turns to go into the cabinet, and stumbles against the supine Patiomkin.] Ach! [Edstaston springs to her assistance, seizing Patiomkin's heels and shifting him out of the Empress's path.] We thank ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... to take the road. The horses were prepared and mounted; and being lightened of a great part of their burdens, were able to move with celerity. As to the worthy convive of the preceding evening, he was carefully gathered up from the hunter's couch on which he lay, repentant and supine, and, being packed upon one of the horses, was hurried forward with the convoy, groaning and ejaculating ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... to her, he found a creature that quivered at his touch and shrank from it, fatigued, averted; a creature pitifully supine, with arms too weary to enforce their own repulse. He took her in his arms and she gave a cry, little and low, like a child's whimper. It went to his heart and struck cold there. It was incredible that Jinny should have given such ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... when I found him arched up one morning, writing by himself—with difficulty, it is true. His first message to the world was, 'I hold that the supine viewpoint is seldom downward!'" ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... Possessed neither of self-command, obedience, nor fortitude, he was ever ready to dash at splendid actions, but was without resources in the day of peril. He was too vain of his wit and companionable talents to submit to the command of others, and too supine, dissipated, and rash, either to improve opportunities of action, or to defeat the views of the enemy. Such was the leader under whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the ranch were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven counties? What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to break him? Was fate not playing him ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... means whereby commerce is conducted, and this carrying trade, an industry once of vastly greater importance to our people than all shipbuilding has been, is now, or ever can be, is a business that Congress by its supine neglect has deliberately thrown into the hands of Europeans, and sacrificed American shipowners at the instigation of ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... the solemn majesty of Night—that season of awesome stillness when tired mankind lies supine in that strange inertia so like death; when the soul, quitting the wearied body for ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... base the affirmation of immortality upon the insecure and slippery foundation of the desire for immortality; but to condemn this desire on the ground that we believe it to have been proved to be unattainable, without undertaking the proof, is merely supine. I am dreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it ...? And wherefore ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... down in supine idleness, and mourn over her sad fate. True, at times she gave way to her feelings, when the hopelessness of her situation came upon her, as she strove to penetrate the future, in all its crushing force; and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... [142] Questum, the supine, 'in order to complain' [143] 'The war previously undertaken had turned out unsuccessfully.' About secus, ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... Tityrus, you supine and careless laid, Play on your pipe beneath yon beechen shade; While wretched we about the world must roam, And leave our pleasing fields, and native home; Here at your ease you sing your amorous flame, And the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... of a week, more or less, Tembarom's feeling for her would have been exactly that of his two hall-bedroom neighbors, but that his nature, though a practical one, was not inclined to any supine degree of resignation. He was a sensible youth, however, and gave no trouble. Even Joseph Hutchinson, who of course resented furiously any "nonsense" of which his daughter and possession was the object, became sufficiently ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... than any other man he stood for true Americanism, and showed a bewildered country the straight path toward the light of patriotism. He was among the first to condemn the German outrages, to silence the voices of supine pacifists and plead for action on the part of the American Government. He was the staunchest advocate of national preparedness, and we may say that the military training camps that gave America officers for ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... in coitus, with the female partner lying supine, is so widespread throughout the world that it may fairly be termed the most typically human attitude in sexual congress. It is found represented in Egyptian graves at Benihassan, belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty; it is regarded ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... either side, Tippoo's open alliance with the French rendered it certain that hostilities must commence ere long; and Lord Mornington lost no time in proceeding to make preparations for war. As Lord Cornwallis had done, he found the greatest difficulty in inducing the supine government of Madras to take any steps. They protested that, were they to make any show of activity, Tippoo would descend the ghauts, and at once ravage the whole country; and they declared that they had no force whatever that ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... of a holiday such as Cosmo had been accustomed to make of his birthday: constantly active as his mind was, perhaps in part because of that activity, he was ready to fall asleep any moment when warm and supine. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... measures. It was only when they realized that the Boer party were determinedly hostile—organizing very large encroachments upon the privileges of the Uitlanders and designing fresh burdens to be borne by them—and when it became clear that the dangers threatening as a result of their own supine attitude were worse than any disfavour with which they might be viewed on account of political action, that they began to take an active part with others in the agitation for reform. It was not until ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... faced her noisy group of barefooted children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very voice and intonation ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland |
