"Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slenderness could not at once dispel the milder image. He watched her with pleasure while she talked, but her face interested him only as the vehicle of her ideas—she looked as a girl must look who felt and thought as she did. He was aware that everything about her was quick and fine and supple, and that the muscles of character lay close to the surface of feeling; but the interpenetration of spirit and flesh that made her body seem like the bright projection of her mind left him unconscious of anything but the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... and undoubtedly they manifested phenomena seemingly inexplicable on any naturalistic basis. A contemporary writer, describing events of a few months later, when several recruits had been added to their ranks, states that some "when comatose became supple like a thin piece of lead, so that their body could be bent in every direction, forward, backward, or sideways, till their head touched the ground," and that others showed no sign of pain when struck, pinched, or pricked. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... with a deference that seemed surprising. He did not look like a man who would be supple to an employer, or obsequious to any ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... epigram, when it takes possession of one, goes farther in influencing his thoughts and actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... took her by the hand and descended the staircase with her to the passage where the crippled Fabien waited, she could not forbear glancing back every now and then over her shoulder at the slight, supple, almost aerial figure of the boy, who, noiselessly, and with a light gliding step, followed. And now Madame Patoux came forward;—a bulky, anxious figure of gesticulation ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length with his eye—her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales. . . . The result is a real book — a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn with ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... with ordinary city ambitions to gloze over municipal corruptions, or private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on the high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants,—it is hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious music, or of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy Taylor, can save you from the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... did not spoil him. Luffe would undoubtedly have classed him amongst the best of the native Princes who go to England for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. Shere Ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... waitress, excitedly engrossed in her story, was unconsciously acting out the thrilling scene of her dialogue with the Indian, even imitating his voice and gestures. And Kemper and I listened and watched her breathlessly, fascinated by her lithe and supple grace as well as by the astounding story she was so frankly unfolding with the consummate artlessness of a ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... poised erect in the great calm of the public performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap! the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. The log came instantaneously to rest, quivering ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... also are the donkeys on which the tourists ride. Now here arose a great financial question. The reis or master of the ferry-boat to which the clerical guide applied was a mighty man, some six feet high, graced with a turban, as Arabs are; erect in his bearing, with bold eye, and fine, free, supple limbs—a noble reis for that Nile ferry-boat. But, noble as he was, he wanted too many piastres—twopence-halfpenny a head too much for ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... stretched his supple body in a yawn. "That's all right. Just making up the sleep I lost last night on ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... By danger—the two hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their knot Endures ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Devonshire is gone to Spa; he was stopped for a week by a rash, which those who wished it so, called a miliary fever, but was so far from it that if he does not find immediate benefit from Spa, he is to go to Aix-la-Chapelle, in hopes that the warm baths will supple his skin, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... little window and watch the cowboys ride by. How he came to worship them! They were on their way to the spring roundups. His father had told him all about them. Panhandle would strain his eyes to get a first glimpse of them, to count the shaggy prancing horses, the lithe supple riders with their great sombreros, their bright scarfs, guns and chaps, and boots and spurs. Their lassos! How they fascinated Panhandle! Ropes to whirl and throw at a running steer! That was a game he ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... to go through every trick and quip I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... morning was over she was called up, along with some children considerably younger than herself, to read and spell. The master stood before them, armed with a long, thick strap of horse-hide, prepared by steeping in brine, black and supple with constant use, and cut into fingers at one end, which had ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted into The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and Your breasts, Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence Of leaves. So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges Of ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... that in this picture a row of torch-bearing angels makes the result, if possible, even less Christian, for these delightful creatures, with their ambiguous smiles and supple grace, have all the dangerous attraction of wicked angels. They are Ganymedes, borrowed from ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple combination ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... matches Tausig's in technic and tone. Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years, has many of Henselt's traits—and I am sure he never heard the elder pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened, semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public. Paderewski is thrice as poetic as Henselt—who in the matter of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Bcasse and Bel Ami were published were somewhat astonished at his appearance. He was solidly built, rather short and had a resolute, determined air, rather unpolished and without those distinguishing marks of intellect and social position. But his hands were delicate and supple, and beautiful shadows encircled ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... combatant would, the other remained unthrown. Once Red Murdo got his antagonist by the waist, lifted him clean off the ground and whirled him round like a totum, only to have him alight on his feet. Once, also, the sergeant, by a supple twist of arm and leg, working together, got Red Murdo half down and no more. Really it was a toss-up who should win, or whether there would be a winner ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... permitted to any nayre to assume arms, or to enter into any combat, till he has been armed as a knight. When a nayre becomes seven years old, he is set to learn the use of all kinds of weapons, their masters first pulling and twisting their joints to make them supple, and then teaching them to fence and handle their arms adroitly. Their principal weapons are swords and targets; and these teachers, who are graduates in the use of the weapons, are called Panycaes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... provenance. Son kneeleth down. "Wilt thou have my son, cony?" saith father. "Yea, dear heart," saith she. "'Tis my counterpart, mark you," saith father. "Better than nothing at all," saith she. Benevolent father, supple-kneed son, convenient lady. Here is agreement. And thus it ends.' Again he laughed outright at the steel-blue face of the sky, then jumped in a flash from his seat to the throat of Bertran. Bertran tumbled backwards with a strangled cry, and Richard pegged ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a sudden, she lay still and stretched ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... eyes just one moment, but womanlike she sees much in a glance. She sees that his eyes are of a wonderful dark blue; that his hair is thick and wavy; and that he is tall, straight and strong. How lithe and supple he seems, too, as he runs up the steps and disappears into the house. Has he seen the lady Madonna? She does not know. There is indeed something strange about this dark haired man; something out of the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... unless an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so. There was a desperate attempt visible to combine an American shawl with the habits of a mantilla, and it was always slipping from one shoulder, that was so supple and vivacious as to betray the deficiencies of an education in stays. There was a cluster of black curls around her low forehead, fitting her so closely as to seem to be a part of ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... worth as I did. For several years after his return to liberty I was in close daily contact with this white-haired mild-looking old gentleman—still tolerably active and supple, though—who could blaze up and fight to the death over what he considered a matter of principle. The most admirable feature in his character was that, in all things you ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... provinces, with eyes wilfully closed the while to their acts of depredation. It was in the rich and fantastic habit of a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by Titian at Bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life-work. The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of Ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... perfect curve of a great supple animal, she turned and settled in her lair, under ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... man ostentatiously broke the seal from a new pack of cards, dexterously spreading them across the table. His hands, Gordon saw, were extraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. His companion's were huge and misshapen, but they, too, were surprisingly ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... on a riding-habit, which revealed the lines of her supple figure, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, which encircled her lovely face and auburn hair, and sat down to her writing-desk, at which she wrote to her uncle, M. d'Aigleroche, a farewell letter to be delivered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... explanation of the cause of old age is the gradual disappearance of animal matter in the bones and tissues, and the corresponding increase of the mineral matter in the bones and tissues, amounting to ossification of cartilage, whereby the supple cartilage, losing its animal content, becomes practically bone by deposit of lime particles. This would also account in a common-sense manner for the fragility of the bones of the aged, the brittleness being due ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... the teaching of the hunter," said Venning, wisely. "Deep breathing gives a man deep lungs. That is his teaching. Also this, that a man should keep his skin clean and his muscles supple by hard rubbing after the bath. Therefore, I did ask the bo'sun to turn the hose on us in the morning when they clean down the decks. ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... me of a Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creeping sensualities of his phrase—his one phrase—how descriptive it is of the form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm's muscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning on silver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours of embroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... death in a hundred ways and a hundred forms. His mind was ever occupied with reminiscences of Meriem and the happy years that they had spent together. He realized now to the full what she had meant to him. The sweet face, the tanned, supple, little body, the bright smile that always had welcomed his return from the hunt haunted ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 1869; but in 1893, as then, the type was admirably strong and useful if one wanted only to run on the same lines. Practically the Pennsylvanian forgot his prejudices when he allied his interests. He then became supple in action and large in motive, whatever he thought of his colleagues. When he happened to be right — which was, of course, whenever one agreed with him — he was the strongest American in America. As an ally he was worth all the rest, because he understood ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... billowed out, full of wind, pulling hard at the clew-line, which was made fast to the gunwhale beside Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... written in that era which professors still persist in calling the Great Age, hardly stimulated Des Esseintes. With its carefully premeditated style, its sameness, its stripping of supple syntax, its poverty of color and nuance, this language, pruned of all the rugged and often rich expressions of the preceding ages, was confined to the enunciation of the majestic banalities, the empty commonplaces tiresomely reiterated by the rhetoricians and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... last, in the fullness of time, arrived,—the execrable Squeers receiving, instead of administering, a frightful beating, in the presence of the whole school; having carefully provided himself beforehand, as all were rejoiced to remember, with "a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new!" ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... she is slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... moment, the heavy back of a chair in supple hands descended out of space behind him with a thud; and a great tall fellow, staggering backward with the unexpected pain of that stroke, for the moment obstructed his comrades. For Henry had followed where he could not ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... brunette with startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She had left ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... It was made sweet with flowers too. A basket of pink tulips set in moss occupied the central position on the supper-table, and some pots of primulas, fully in bloom, were on the window-seats; above that window upon the corner of whose seat Miss Deleah Day liked to sit, her slight and supple body curled into as small as possible a space in order not to incommode the primulas, a brass birdcage ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... shapely hand and supple, rounded wrist as she stroked the pony's neck. Swiftly she turned from the horse and faced him. "What, Collie?" There was laughter in her eyes, a laughter that challenged more than his serious mood. Her lips were smiling. Her chin was ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... always short enough, have little or no plot, and the characters are barely sketched. But, in these simple frames, he has confined the power of an art which is prolific, supple and profoundly living. Let us take, for example, "The Friends." Dancing Foot and The One Who Hopes are ordinary thieves, the terror of the villagers whose gardens they rob. One day, when they are especially desperate, they steal a thin horse which ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and turn to the letters which the great Humanist of Rotterdam wrote from Cambridge and London four hundred years ago when young Henry VIII had just suddenly (in 1514) plunged into war. One reads them to-day with vivid interest, for here in the supple and sensitive brain of the old scholar we see mirrored precisely the same thoughts and the same problems which exercise the more scholarly brains of to-day. Erasmus, as his Pan-German friends liked to remind him, was a sort of German, but ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Milton had not written the choruses of Samson Agonistes and Shakespeare his songs, nobody would be so absurd as to suggest that they adopted this five-foot line and spent their mighty artistry in sending supple and flowing variety through its external uniformity, because they could not manage any other. They used it because they found that its rhythm perfectly expressed their poetic emotion, and because the formal relation of one ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... the feel of the rapier in his hand. He had always loved these encounters with the sword, whether in play or earnest. He had not lacked training of a certain rude sort, and his wrist was strong and supple, his eye wary and keen; moreover, he had length of reach and strength of muscle. After the first bout Lord Claud gave him an approving nod, and, looking at the man ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I have never seen," he continued, blowing a thick cloud from his meerschaum pipe. "Big L was a strapping fellow, with clumsy arms and legs and a big fat head; [1] Little L was like a willow switch, so slender and supple. He had a small, fine head, and light, wavy hair that curled of itself, and a delicate nose like a young eagle's, but above all—he was ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... awake. Every sense of right and justice inherited and taught came flocking forward. Horror unspeakable filled her, and wrath, that such a dreadful thing should come to her. There was no time to think. She brought her two strong supple hands up and beat him in the face, mouth, cheeks, and eyes, with all her might, until he turned blinded; and then she struggled away crying, "You are a wicked man!" and fled ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... don't say it amongst your people." M. Pichard relates several unknown and hidden things which the demon revealed, and that he performed several feats which it is not possible for any person, however agile and supple he may be, to achieve by natural strength or power; such as crawling on the ground without making use of hands or feet, appearing to have the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... for all that God and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Vaucheray: Gilbert, a young fellow of twenty or twenty-two, with an attractive cast of features and a supple and sinewy frame; Vaucheray, older, shorter, with grizzled hair and a ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... commercial campaigns the German prime movers had carried out their operations more or less openly. But where interests affecting the defences of the Empire were concerned, caution was the first condition of success, and, as usual, the Teutons proved supple and adaptable. By way of levying an attack against the shipbuilding industry, they pushed shaky Russian concerns into the foreground, while studiously keeping themselves out of view. Thus in one case new Russian banks were founded, and old ones in a state ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... who was none other than Black Bruin, was holding up a section between his paws, while with his supple red tongue he licked out the contents. Although the bees were swarming about him in a black cloud and doing their best to punish the thief, he paid little attention to them but licked away for ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... of protestations of delight at beholding his intercessor and ransomer. Drusus could hardly recognize in the supple-limbed, fair-complexioned, vivacious lad before him, the wretched creature whom Alfidius had driven through the streets. Agias's message was short, but quite long enough to make Drusus's pale cheeks flush with new life, his sunken eyes rekindle, and his languor ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... that I noted her amazingly delicate complexion, fair as her hair was golden; her deep blue eyes, round face, and the girlish supple figure; or her robe-like garments of very soft, white material. For she commenced almost instantly ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... supple implement in the hands of the German Kaiser, the sovereign who for nearly twenty years had been striving toward one goal by ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... group a tall warrior with a long, heavy spear. A cry was raised at his approach, and a space was cleared. He stood before the captive and poised his spear, swinging it backward and forward, to make his arm supple before he thrust, like a bowler before he delivers a ball at a cricket match. Feversham glanced wildly about him, and seeing no escape, suddenly flung out his breast to meet the blow. But the spear never reached him. For as the warrior lunged from the shoulder, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... of rumbling wheels, And clink of chiming bridles in the stall; Then more and more to love his master's voice Caressing, or loud hand that claps his neck. Ay, thus far let him learn to dare, when first Weaned from his mother, and his mouth at times Yield to the supple halter, even while yet Weak, tottering-limbed, and ignorant of life. But, three years ended, when the fourth arrives, Now let him tarry not to run the ring With rhythmic hoof-beat echoing, and now learn Alternately to curve each bending leg, And be like one that struggleth; then at last Challenge ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... fierce storm that assails it bends the young, supple tree with its green budding leaves before its furious blast, so did the first love of Apollo bend low his adoring heart. All day as he held the golden reins of his chariot, until evening when its fiery ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... itself to new conditions and organizes itself in every part of the country. It is not a little thing, in spite of unfriendly public opinion and of great and numerous obstacles, in spite of the burden which high achievements impose and of the lack of easy and supple movement which gathering years imply, to enter new fields, to bend one's self to unaccustomed work, and to struggle for the right to live in the midst of a generation heedless of the good, and mindful only of the evil which has been associated ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the morning there was life and movement on every farm. The doors of the cattle sheds were thrown wide open and the cows were let out. They were prettily coloured, small, supple and sprightly, and so sure-footed that they made the most comic leaps and bounds. After them came the calves and sheep, and it was plainly to be seen that they, too, were in the best ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... all the organs, as well as their individual functions, must go on elastically without any pressure or cramped action. Their interplay must be powerful yet supple, that the breath which produces the tone may be diffused as it flows from one to another of the manifold and complicated organs (such as the ventricles of Morgagni), supporting itself on others, being caught in still others, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... the Gods, and in the morning God shall grant the power to whom he may. But give me now the polished bow, and let me in your presence prove my skill and power and see if I have yet such vigor left as once there was within my supple limbs, or whether wanderings and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... when she is a perfect beggar, but it is a second heaven to dance with her. She has the go of a wild animal in her. She is a little like a panther—so round, so sleek, so agile in her spring. I told her just now I should like to paint her—yellow eyes, hair like an aureole, supple form and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and son were constantly together. He had early become a great comfort and help to her, God blessing her in this vital respect, though her lot seemed hard in other ways. Thus, while he had the heart and courage of a man, he also had the quick, supple hand and gentle bearing of a woman, when occasion required. As proof of his skill, a tempting meal from the simplest materials was placed smoking on the table, and the little girls were soon chatting contentedly ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... from the camel's teeth. Uncertain, unforgiving brutes are camels—ungrateful for the toil men put them to. For an hour after that she was only dimly conscious of being laid on something soft, and of supple, tireless women's hands that kneaded her, and kneaded her, taking the weary muscles one by one and coaxing them ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... for the reins. She had held the black horse before. Besides, she had driven her Cousin Tom's pair of big draught horses up in the Michigan woods, and Mr. Henry Sherwood's half-wild roan ponies, as well. Her wrists were strong and supple, ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time. Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America. Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how much poorer the English language would ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... younger than Richard Crashaw, and the alexandrine is to be found—to be found by searching—in Crashaw; and he took precisely the same care as Cowley that the long wand of that line should not give way in the middle—should be strong and supple and should last. Here are four of his ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... a beautiful woman; tall, supple, erect; with a positive splendor of health and color. Her dress was that of the Fife fisher-girl; a blue flannel jacket, a very short white and yellow petticoat, and a white cap drawn over her hair, and tied down with a lilac kerchief ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... was a startling object to contemplate on a first view of him. His shaven head, tied up in an old yellow silk handkerchief; his tawny, haggard cheeks; his bright brown eyes, preternaturally large and wild; his rough black beard; his long, supple, sinewy fingers, wasted by suffering till they looked like claws—all tended to discompose the rector at the outset of the interview. When the first feeling of surprise had worn off, the impression that followed it was not ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... house on the left hand is a painted recess where the women cling on with their hands in order better to stretch and loosen their bodies and legs; there they teach them to make the whole body supple, in order to make their dancing more graceful. At the other end, on the right, in the place where the king places himself to watch them dancing, all the floors and walls where he sits are covered with gold, and in the middle of the wall is a golden image of a woman of ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... pilot fairy, tying the supple rudder about the wrist of Maud, 'that is my wedding gift to you and Albert. Give him the half of it if he pouts; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Indian stood erect plying a long pole which sent their clumsy looking crafts forward at surprising speed. Magnificent savages they were, not one less than six feet tall, framed like athletes, and lithe and supple as panthers. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the intellect has been formed, by an uninterrupted progress, along a line which ascends through the vertebrate series up to man. It shows us in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living beings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... certainly those three young ladies in their Savoy-cake skirts and nougat waists were not as pretty as little Maria in her simple brown frock. How she improved from day to day! It seemed to Amedee as if he never had seen her before until this minute. Where had she found that supple, round waist, that mass of reddish hair which she twisted upon the top of her head, that lovely complexion, that mouth, and those eyes that smiled with the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... WARD'S next novel will be a minutely analytical study of the contrasted temperaments of ESAU and JACOB, the one standing for revolt and the other for a rather smooth and supple orthodoxy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... she was being condemned and despised, and to none is that a cheering feeling. Stephen sat up suddenly, and then bent over, clasping his hands round her waist, lithe and supple even in her rough clothing, and ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... own eyes beheld, Lord Henry tells us how Sir John leapt to snatch a weapon from the armoured walls; how Sakr-el-Bahr barked out a single word in Arabic, and how at that word a half-dozen of his supple blackamoors sprang upon the knight like greyhounds upon a hare and bore ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... itself proved the source of a mysterious attraction to her, and she may have found it a singular pleasure to converse with her Prime Minister in her mother tongue as a compatriot and friend. To all this must be added the mind and manners of Mazarin—supple and insinuating, always master of himself, of an unchangeable serenity amidst the gravest circumstances, full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing that confidence around him. It must also be remembered that Cardinal although he was, Mazarin was not a priest; that imbued with the maxims which ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to do with the play's success, though Sarah Haddon would never admit it. "Splendour" was what is known as a period play. The famous dress was of black velvet, made with a quaint, full-gathered skirt that made Haddon's slim waist seem fairylike and exquisitely supple. The black velvet bodice outlined the delicate swell of the bust. A rope of pearls enhanced the whiteness of her throat. Her hair, done in old-time scallops about her forehead, was a gleaming marvel of simplicity, and the despair of every woman who tried to ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... He went to the hedge and drew out a long supple twig of hazel, stripped it of its leaves, and once more tried, with it, to tie up his parcel. But the angle was too acute, and just as the twig tightened satisfactorily it snapped, and this time the razor slid out sideways into a single minute ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... most out of the way places, and the most lovely countries, and spent months and months at sea, and plunged into every kind of dissipation and debauchery. But neither the supple backs nor the luxurious gestures of the bayaderes, nor the large, passive eyes of the Creoles, nor flirtations with English missives with hair the color of new cider, nor nights of waking dreams, when he saw new ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... to the ship, while he still saw the furrows free of the earthborn men. And all round his comrades heartened him with their shouts. And in the helmet he drew from the river's stream and quenched his thirst with the water. Then he bent his knees till they grew supple, and filled his mighty heart with courage, raging like a boar, when it sharpens its teeth against the hunters, while from its wrathful mouth plenteous foam drips to the ground. By now the earthborn men were springing up over all the field; ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... very food, even the meat, would have to be eaten raw, and as knives and forks would be unknown, it would have to be devoured with hands and teeth. We read that the Tartar horseman will put a beefsteak under his saddle, and supple and cook it in a ten-mile ride; but we cannot all follow his example, and many would think the game was not worth the candle. But not only should we be obliged to eat our food uncooked; we should enjoy none of the blessings and comforts bestowed upon us by science, which absolutely ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... They conducted themselves as those supposed to suffer under maladies created by such influence were accustomed to do. They stiffened their necks so hard at one time that the joints could not be moved; at another time their necks were so flexible and supple that it seemed the bone was dissolved. They had violent convulsions, in which their jaws snapped with the force of a spring-trap set for vermin. Their limbs were curiously contorted, and to those who had a taste for the marvellous, seemed ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... childish pout, looks as if it could bite or suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent and violent change. That which has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mademoiselle alone. It was the Bouvard water-colour, but living and moving. Her lithe, slender body seemed light as air. Every gesture, every pose, was full of a grave dignity. In the dark theatre there was complete silence. All eyes were centred on the supple, graceful form of the dancer. Music, life, and colour were in harmony. Gradually the full orchestra took up the strain again—Mademoiselle, panting, flung herself into the ready arms of Augustin, and the stillness was broken ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... imagination, but regard it as quite unimportant. Their good nature, freed from all taint of snobbishness and from the fear of seeming too friendly, grown independent, in fact, has the ease, the grace of movement of a trained gymnast each of whose supple limbs will carry out precisely the movement that is required without any clumsy participation by the rest of his body. The simple and elementary gestures used by a man of the world when he courteously holds out his hand to the unknown youth who is being introduced to him, and when he bows discreetly ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... River. No part of his person was covered with armor. And instead of the rich and formal dress then worn by the Huguenots even in the wilderness, he wore a complete suit of hunter's buckskin which gave his supple muscles a freedom beautiful to see. His young face was freshly shaved, showing the clean fine texture of the skin. For having nearly finished his journey from the head of Fundy Bay, he had that morning prepared himself to appear what he was in Fort St. John—a man of good birth ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... movement of the supple limbs, when he uttered an exclamation of horror. At the very moment Victor was gathering his muscles for the leap, and when close to the edge, the dripping stone caused his foot to slip. He fell sideways, let go of his rifle, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... natural but not when affected. Sound bodies, with a healthy condition of blood, and strong by exercise, receive their beauty from the very things from which they receive their strength. They are fresh-colored, active, and supple, neither too much nor too little in flesh. Paint and polish them with feminine cosmetics, and admiration ceases; the very pains taken to make them appear more beautiful add to the dislike we conceive for them. Yet a magnificent, and suitable, dress adds authority to man; but an effeminate dress, ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... hardly believe his senses. He was conscious, as he gazed into the depths of two marvellous eyes, of a tall supple figure all in black, a crimson rose in her dark hair lending a touch of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... into their arms. Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt every movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The girl was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck. The young fellows were very anxious ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not easily appeased. Without ceremony, and with a rough hand, he twirled the supple Gamut around on his heel, and more than once affirmed that the Hurons had done themselves great credit in the fashion of his costume. Then, seizing the hand of the other, he squeezed it with a grip that brought tears into the eyes of the placid David, and wished him ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... she? where from, I wonder?" "My! but wasn't that a nobby traveling suit, and such a fit!" "Katherine Minturn—pretty name, isn't it?" "Does anybody know anything more about her?" were some of the comments and queries that slipped from those supple instruments with a tendency towards perpetual motion, which, sometimes, are described as organs that are hung in the middle and wag at ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... first time Philip's astonished eyes had a view of his captors. One of them was an old man, a giant in physique, with a long gray beard and grayish yellow hair that fell to his shoulders. His companion was scarcely more than a boy, yet in his supple body, as he moved about, Philip recognized the animal-like strength of the forest breed. A word spoken in a whisper by the boy revealed the fact that the two were father and son. From that side of the room which was at Philip's back they dragged forth a long pine box, and were engaged in ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... sensation of heavy pressure on the top of your head and an impression of magnificently cynical untidiness. She leaned forward, hugging herself with crossed legs; a dingy, amber- coloured, flounced wrapper of some thin stuff revealed the young supple body drawn together tensely in the deep low seat as if crouching for a spring. I detected a slight, quivering start or two, which looked uncommonly like bounding away. They were followed ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... delighted at finding such an opportunity to pay his court; but scarcely was Rizzio in her service than Mary discovered that music was the least of his gifts, that he possessed, besides that, education if not profound at least varied, a supple mind, a lively imagination, gentle ways, and at the same time much boldness and presumption. He reminded her of those Italian artists whom she had seen at the French court, and spoke to her the tongue of Marot and Ronsard, whose most beautiful poems he knew by heart: this was more than enough ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tolerably With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping me. Wait, heart! Time moves. Thou lithe young Western Night, Just-crowned King, slow riding to thy right, Would God that I might straddle mutiny Calm as thou sitt'st yon never-managed sea, Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his flight, Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy brow, Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn Yea, would I rode these mad contentious brawls, No damage taking from their If and How, Nor no result save ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... spiritually. What with the open door into his father's room, whence you could hear the thin frettings made by the man who had lain these ten years with chronic rheumatism, and the untuneful whistlings of whittling Tom, the big brother, the shapely supple giant whose mind had never grown since the fall from the barn room when he was eight years old, and the acrid complaints of the tall gaunt mother, stepping about getting their inadequate supper, in her gray wrapper, with the ugly little blue shawl pinned round her shoulders, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this ceremony had been completed did he appear to notice Orme. But now he turned, widening his face into a smile and extending his hand, which Orme took rather dubiously—it was supple ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... Parts of the Blood are dissipated by little and little, the Salts disengaging from the Sulphurs, manifest themselves, the Acid appears, which is the fruitful Source of Chronick Diseases. The Ligaments, the Tendons, and the Cartilages have scarce any of the Unctuosity left, which render'd them so supple and so pliant in Youth. The Skin grows wrinkled as well within as without; in a word, all the solid Parts ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... years. 'Tis always so with genius. I have ever felt myself a chosen spirit, and I am sure I am destined to become the greatest actress that has yet charmed and captivated the world. Am I not tall, surpassingly beautiful, lithe and supple as a reed—graceful as a lily? But that is not all. In me is reincarnated the spirit of the ancient East, and it is my mission to interpret that spirit to the modern world. I will help you, dear, to realize that same spirit, and then one day, in a grand burst of inspiration you shall write ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... toward the frying-pan, no one seemed really apprehensive that he would keep them waiting. The youth had an oval, almost childish face; his skin was dark, clear, and softly coloured as any girl's; his hair fell in black, loose curls over his forehead. He was tall, slender without being thin, very supple; but his languid attitudes fell short of grace, and were only tolerable because they were comic. When he reached out his hand for the handle of the frying-pan he held the attention of the whole company by ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... went to say good night to Jevons we found Viola sitting on the arm of his chair with the little dish in her hand, feeding him with chocolate nougat. Her posture was one of supple contrition, and we heard ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... insinuating and supple, like the serpent with the first woman, murmured in her ear, as if afraid lest his words, in being spoken aloud, would lose their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as feet, human feet; But these she does not use; Firm and supple, white and sweet, Softly graceful, lightly fleet, For comfort, beauty, service meet— There are feet, human feet, These she does ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... down below, as the sailors express it; and we may remark, in passing, that the expression, in this particular case, was not inappropriate, for Mivins, as we have elsewhere said, was remarkably agile and supple, and gave beholders a sort of impression that he went head-foremost at everything. O'Riley followed at a more reasonable rate, and in a few minutes the crew of the Dolphin were seated at supper in the cabin, eating with as much zest, and laughing and chatting as blithely, as if ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... off, as he himself would have said, like a shot, and on gaining the beach almost ran into the arms of a young coast-guard-man named Supple Rodger, to whom he breathlessly told ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... the day in her reclining chair, showed in its redundance the splendor of its tint and quality; her face, lately so wan and lean and ghastly, was roseate, and the lines had strangely filled out in soft curves to their wonted contour; her hands lay supple and white and quiet in her lap, with not a tense ligament, not a throbbing fibre—delicate, beautiful hands—it seemed odd to her companions to think how they had seen her wring them in woe and clench them in despair. Her black gown with ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... dry, and as he tested his muscles he found them supple and strong. Now he took precautions, thinking he had let the fire burn as long as was safe. He scattered the coals with a stick, and then softly crushed out each under the stout heel of his moccasin. With the minute ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the bath, once established, should never be broken off, it must be kept up all through life. I value it not only on grounds of cleanliness and present health, but also as a wholesome means of making the muscles supple, and accustoming them to bear without risk or effort extremes of heat and cold. As he gets older I would have the child trained to bathe occasionally in hot water of every bearable degree, and often ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... when it had been, the instrument of uncommon strength, and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest; and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... proposed that they should wander in the garden, and off they started by various paths and bypaths all leading eventually to the little curved bridge at the far end, where Nancy had hung two large yellow lanterns on the ends of supple ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... student and his tastes were delicate, still he did not frown upon our rude sports, provided they were not low or brutal. "They make the body erect and supple and give strength and elasticity to the muscles. The body should be cultivated as well as the mind. What we want is a sound mind ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... with all the strength of her lithe and supple body. Above his cheek-bone a red streak leaped out where the sharp ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Field Book Department—which is to ordinary English bookshops like a liner to a houseboat—that I first realised how intense is the interest which America takes in foreign contemporary literature. In England the translation has a certain vogue —Mrs. Garnett's supple and faithful renderings of Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoievski, and Tchekov have, for example, a great following—but we do not adventure much beyond the French and the Russians; whereas I learn that ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... cuts twigs of birch, Of birch so supple and keen, And daintily ties them up into rods The finest ...
— King Winter • Anonymous
... all the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La Sylphine before ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... across the table was also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... mystery, accordingly, with respect, lying in wait for hints from it, and frequently reversing in his turn patiently prepared plans of action, with a prompt speed impossible to a less supple mind,—impossible at all, quite often, to any process of conscious thought. To have these intuitions—that was his touch of femininity; to risk largely upon them was the gambler in him; his swift appropriation of the subject's temperament betrayed the artist ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... slender brown hand stole out from the white coverlet and touched his. Its outline, long and supple and graceful, spoke of patrician origin. It was hard for the man of wealth and pride to realize that it was the hand of the child of the common people, the people who ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... from one of its pillars. In a corner sat Nathan; serious, dignified, scraping out a monotonous but rhythmic minor strain to which two young negroes from the lower quarters—famous dancers—were keeping time in marvelous shuffling and pigeon-wings; twisting their supple joints into astonishing contortions and the sweat rolling from their black visages. A crowd of darkies stood at a respectful distance an appreciative and encouraging audience. And seated on the broad rail of the veranda were Melicent and Gregoire, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... pain, the least unhappiness. If she is a woman of a proud, independent temper, particularly if she belongs to the militant type, she will leave her husband in a huff, regardless of consequences. But if she is a woman of the gentler, more pliable, more supple (and I may also say more subtle) type, and if she really loves her husband, she will overlook his little foibles, peccadilloes and transgressions—and she may live quite happily. And the time will come when the husband ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... always "grouse" at this occupation, as I believe all drivers do on active service. We don't polish steel, but there is a wonderful lot of hard work in rubbing dubbin into all the leather. It is absolutely necessary to keep it supple, especially such parts as the collar, girths, stirrup-leathers, reins, etc. Grazing again all the afternoon. The horses have been on half rations of oats since we came here, so I suppose it is necessary. I was sitting writing by my horses, when a cart rattled by. Some one shouted, "Anything ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... flattery's fawning face, To grandeur with his wise grimace, To upstart wealth's averted eye, To supple office low and high, To crowded halls, to court and street, To frozen hearts and hasting feet, To those who go and those who come,— Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home, I am going to my own hearth-stone Bosomed in yon green hills, alone, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... manner, by their own necessity, as the Pirates did. For these first took the leather, and sliced it in pieces. Then did they beat it between two stones and rub it, often dipping it in the water of the river, to render it by these means supple and tender. Lastly they scraped off the hair, and roasted or broiled it upon the fire. And being thus cooked they cut it into small morsels, and eat it, helping it down with frequent gulps of water, which by good fortune they had ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... On the 22d of July, 1703, the wife was inspected by the said physicians and surgeons and by two matrons; the result of which was that they observed no visciousness of conformation in her womb: the valvula were circular and the carunclæ myrtiformes, placed in the neck of the vagina, were soft, supple, flexible, entire, and did not seem to have suffered any violence or displacing, and the cavity of the womb-pipe was free and without any obstacle. Therefore they are of opinion that she is not capable of the conjugal act, and that there has been no ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... the distinguished officers by his tall, straight figure and quick movements, was the Chevalier La Corne St. Luc, supple as an Indian, and almost as dark, from exposure to the weather and incessant campaigning. He was fresh from the blood and desolation of Acadia, where France, indeed, lost her ancient colony, but St. Luc reaped a full sheaf of glory at Grand Pre, in the Bay of Minas, by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... above and Shefford assisting Jane as she climbed, she was finally gotten up without mishap. When Lassiter reached the level they rested a little while and then faced the great slide of jumbled rocks. Fay led the way, light, supple, tireless, and Shefford never ceased looking at her. At last they surmounted the long slope and, winding along the rim, reached the point where Fay had led ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey |
