"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... personal retainers. For nine years they had continued their career unchecked, capturing castle by castle and town by town, defeating such small bodies of troops as took the field against them, England, under a supine and inactive king, giving itself up to private broils and quarrels, while Scotland was being torn piecemeal ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... matter of course ever since they can remember. 'I did not burst on them gloriously. I am glad to say that they think I am a much better mother than I am a writer, and that the family attitude in general has been attentive but not supine. They regard it exactly as a banker's ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... guest. She was not exactly sure how she regarded him, though it was not altogether as a comrade, and she felt there was, in one sense, some justice in his admission that he belonged to her. She had, in all probability, saved his life, and—what was, perhaps, as much—had roused him from supine acquiescence, and inspired him with a sustaining purpose. After the day when she had saved him from abject despair over his ruined dam, he had acquitted himself valiantly, and she had a quiet pride in him. Moreover, she was aware of a natural desire to appear ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... times. In them the man somehow overtops the author. The works of both are full of autobiographical confidences. Like Dante, Milton was forced to become a party by himself. He stands out in marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of the Civil War, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration, a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man. Very much alive he certainly was in his day. Has Mr. Masson made him alive to us again? I fear not. At the same time, while we cannot praise either the style or the method of Mr. Masson's ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... can come before the Congress than this of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce is an absolute and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... that the 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 ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 beneath ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... dog—deserted by that dog. I almost heard her distressed voice as if on the 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 ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... declares, "In the grammar 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 of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... across the fields until her eyes came to rest on a fence bright-splashed with poppies at its base. Billy, who from his supine position had been looking up at her, studying and pleasuring in the pointed oval of her woman's face, reached his hand out slowly ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... outlined by many small emergencies and expedients, was clearly proclaimed. The forward 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 themselves from ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... think they pretend to like one another. It is quite understood. It was all, you know, old Lady Chelford's arrangement: and Dorcas is so supine, I believe she would allow herself to be given away by anyone, and to anyone, rather than be at the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dogma of State sovereignty, which, but for slavery and its imperative demands, would never have seen the light, but have perished stillborn—they have no idea of the freedom of opinion and expression permitted among us, and their minds and consciences have become nerveless and supine to an astonishing degree; or, if thinking and feeling, as very many do, they suffer in silence, not daring to resist the oppressive faction that has ruled them so long. Moral force and courage is not the fruit of subserviency to the principles and ideas ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... but a moment longer. As his adversary drew back from a failed blow, Alister saw Ian's eyes flash, and his left arm shoot out, as it seemed, to twice its length. Sercombe neither reeled nor staggered but fell supine, and lay motionless. The brothers were by ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... 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
... and such were the consolations of Edwin. But far different was the situation, and far other scenes were prepared for his faithful shepherdess. For some time after she had been seized by Roderic, she had remained unconscious and supine. The terrors that had preceded the fatal capture, had overpowered her delicate frame, and sunk her into an alarming and obstinate fit of insensibility. They had now almost reached the palace of the magician, when she discovered the first symptoms of returning life. The colour gradually remounted ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... desires to beckon a person to him he, in common with the other Malayans of the Archipelago, extends his arm toward the person with the hand held prone, not supine as is the custom in America, and closes the hand, also giving a slight inward movement of the hand at the wrist. This manner of beckoning is ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... of modest and submissive affection, of supine and tolerant fidelity, now issued from her mouth in one ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which—" ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... 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 even work ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers of the band that lay supine on those quiet knees. The pipe ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... watching the horizon thoughtfully, with eyes like points of glass set in the puckered bronze of his face. The "Seventh Officer," his only white companion, watched him respectfully. All the Malays were asleep, stretched prone or supine under the forward awning. Only Wing Kat stirred in the smother of his galley below, rattling tin dishes, and repeating, in endless falsetto sing-song, the Hankow ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sprang to death-grapple with the postman, a puny little man, pitched him onto the side of the road and calmly entered into felonious possession of His Majesty's mails. Then finding no letter she cast the whole delivery over the supine and gasping postman and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 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, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... I had been open with papa from the first! But then what an impossible life he would have led me!" Yes. Men were absurd in many ways; lovably like Jasper, impracticably like her father, odiously like that grotesquely supine creature in the chair. Was it possible to talk him over? Perhaps it was not necessary? "Oh! I can't talk to him," she thought. And when Heemskirk, still without looking at her, began resolutely to crush his ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Scythrop had quarrelled, as usual, with Marionetta, and was enclosed in his tower, in a fit of morbid sensibility. Marionetta was comforting herself at the piano, with singing the airs of Nina pazza per amore; and the Honourable Mr Listless was listening to the harmony, as he lay supine on the sofa, with a book in his hand, into which he peeped at intervals. The Reverend Mr Larynx approached the sofa, and ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... the way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her kitten dead, had screamed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... apparently unfavourable situation on which it is principally planted, affords a convincing proof of the superiority, in habits of active industry, of the peasantry of this island over the Portuguese peasants in general. Instead of being indolent and supine, and indisposed to embrace the means of ameliorating and improving their condition, they are, on the contrary, enterprising, hardy, and persevering. The potatoe is chiefly reared on the ascent of Pico Rueva, at an elevation of 6,000 ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... mild 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 disappeared; and these little delicate ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special attraction—that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eider and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and "we, this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... thought that England would 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, and what ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... attitude, together with the weight of bed-clothes, hampers our movements and probably makes us more cowardly. A man will meet pain or danger boldly if he be standing upright—occupying that erect position which is his as Lord of Creation; but his courage does not well so high if he be supine. We are awakened suddenly by the feel that some superhuman Presence is in the room. We are transfixed with terror, we cannot find either the bell-rope or the matches, while we dare not leap out of bed and make a rush for the door lest we should encounter we know not ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... though retaining his supine posture, had half opened his eyes, and turned his head towards the window, whilst his breast heaved with a deep-drawn sigh, for, beneath that thick dome of moist verdure, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 (balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... be justly denominated a supine indolence of mind has been my state of existence since I last returned to Scotland. In a livelier state I had often suffered severely from long intervals of silence on your part; and I had even been chided by you for expressing my uneasiness. I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... describe thee as thou late didst sit, The gater gated and the biter bit, When impious hands at the dead hour of night Forbade the way and made the barriers tight? Next morn I heard their impious voices sing; All up the stairs their blasphemies did ring: "Come forth, O Williams, wherefore thus supine Remain within thy chambers after nine? Come forth, suffer thyself to be admired, And blush not so, coy dean, to be desired." The captive churchman chafes with empty rage, Till some knight-errant free ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... be wrapt in trance, and he saw that there was a person present who had not been of the party when he went to sleep. A young woman, clad in a white robe, with lovely hair flowing down her back, stood by his side and held his supine fingers ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... take further notice that nothing was more fatal to the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the visitation, made no provision for it by laying in store of provisions, or of other necessaries, by which they might have lived retired and within their own houses, as I have observed others did, and who were ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... 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 with ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... justice than he, do we shrink from setting our wit against his? Instead of acting as his preceptor we become his tyrant. Coercion first annihilates the understanding of its victim, and then of him who adopts it. Dressed in the supine prerogatives of a master, he is excused from cultivating the faculties of a man. Coercion begins by producing pain, by violently alienating the mind from the truth with which we wish it to be impressed. It includes ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the earth whereon they dwell, And all the heavens they are inhaling, And powers, whereof I cannot tell— Dark miscreants, supine and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... intellectual and physical resources were powerfully and constantly exerted for the preservation and security of the settlements; and frequently, with astonishing success, under the most inauspicious circumstances. Had they indeed, by nature, been supine and passive, their isolated situation, and the constantly repeated attempts of the Indians, at their extermination, would have aroused them, as it did others, to activity and energy, and brought their every [144] nerve into action. For them, there were no "weak, piping times of peace,"—no respite ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 expedition should be organised for ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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 do you want to be immortal? you ask ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... because "your feet are all the time on a steep incline." Telegraph wires here accompany the track, a survival of the war between the Italian Government and Musolino. On the summit lies a lonely Alp, Campo di Bova, where a herd of cattle were pasturing under the care of a golden-haired youth who lay supine on the grass, gazing at the clouds as they drifted in stately procession across the firmament. Save for a dusky charcoal-burner crouching in a cave, this boy was the only living person we encountered on our march—so deserted are ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... pomp; I hate those linden-bark devices; And as for roses, holy Moses! They can't be got at living prices! Myrtle is good enough for us,— For you, as bearer of my flagon; For me, supine beneath this vine, Doing my best ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... 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 slovenly farming to supply ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... internal management of the corporation it is hard to determine a quarter of a century later; but it was equipped with all essential elements to dominate an art in which after its first efforts it remained practically supine and useless, while other interests forged ahead and reaped both the profit and the glory. Dissensions arose between the representatives of the Field and Edison interests, and in April, 1890, the Railway Company assigned its rights to the Edison patents ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... was 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 ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... 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 never seen ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... attempts to answer, but no one has yet done it. May the British American Colonies be upon their guard; and take care lest by a mutual inattention to the interest of each other, they at length become supine and careless of the grand cause of American Liberty, and finally fall a prey to the MERCILESS HAND ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... a line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait, supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men; and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah, poor Blank seems to have written ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... And indeed a sleep in the open air was almost an essential ingredient 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
... Moslems are curious about sleeping postures and the popular saying is:—Lying upon the right side is proper to Kings; upon the left to Sages, to sleep supine is the position of Allah's Saints and prone upon the belly is peculiar to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Church makes itself felt everywhere, high and low; and by long habit the people have become indolent and supine. The splendid robes of ecclesiastical Rome have a draggled fringe of beggary and vice. What a change there might be, if the energies of the Italians, instead of rotting in idleness, could have a free scope! Industry is the only purification of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... complaint was the supine inattention of the administration to a treason stalking through the land in open day. The present one, that they have crushed it before it was ripe for execution, so that no overt acts can be produced. This last may be true; though I believe it is not. Our information having been chiefly by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... fain to display thy games on length of thy town-bridge! There, too, ready to dance, though fearing the shaking of crazy Logs of the Bridgelet propt on pier-piles newly renewed, Lest supine all sink deep-merged in the marish's hollow, So may the bridge hold good when builded after thy pleasure 5 Where Salisubulus' rites with solemn function are sacred, As thou (Colony!) grant me boon of mightiest laughter. Certain a townsman mine I'd lief see thrown from thy ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... shared the sufferings of Scotland might drink largely of her prosperity. The good Abbot of Scone was invited from his hermitage; and when he heard from the embassadors sent to him, that the brave young warrior whom he had entertained was the resistless Wallace, he no longer thought of the distant and supine Bruce, but centered every wish for his country in the authority of her deliverer. A few days brought him to Stirling; and wishing to remain near the most constant residence of his noble friend, he requested that, instead of being restored to Scone, he might be installed ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... 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 in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 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 ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... attained tall and 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 be repeatedly ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of no use. Intimidation had been worse than hopeless; even bodily force would not avail. She cast one lurid glance at the supine figure, and gave up the quest in that direction as sheer waste of time. With new determination, she again essayed the closet, tossing shoes and rubbers behind her in an unsightly heap, quite heedless ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters. And Joshua, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ground, upon his back, and remained stretched out there, with arms outspread and supine; a stream of blood flowed from his breast, on the left. The sergeant and two soldiers leaped from their horses; the officer bent over and opened his shirt: the ball had entered his left lung. "He is dead!" exclaimed ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Lena yawned. 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... was one vast prison, to which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial gaoler; and the very virtues, which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive and supine. For in that unnatural and bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden. Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition—men desired praetorships and provinces ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... who sign this petition, therefore it is fair to suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have consented to the present form of government. Now, this is assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who think and act, to say nothing of the thousands of intelligent men there who ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sixth of August, we took a very fertile queen, and holding her gently by the wings in a supine position, the whole belly was exposed. She seized the extremity with her second pair of legs, and curved it as much as possible. This seeming an unfavourable position for laying, we forced her to stretch it out. The queen, oppressed with the necessity ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... she 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
... At last he found a stall where oxen stood, And that he rather chose than lie abroad. 'Twas in a farther yard without a door; But, for his ease, well litter'd was the floor. His fellow, who the narrow bed had kept, Was weary, and without a rocker slept: Supine he snored; but in the dead of night He dream'd his friend appear'd before his sight, 230 Who, with a ghastly look and doleful cry, Said, Help me, brother, or this night I die: Arise, and help, before all help be vain, Or in an ox's stall I shall be slain. Roused from his rest, he waken'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and now the gradual loser against Russia's wild, numberless hordes. She has already lost all of Galicia and stands with her back to the Carpathians and has been held off on equal terms by Serbia these four months past. A supine State, she is always defeated, and yet ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... interpretations; for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured to keep my mind ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... 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 ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... something lying obviously before his eyes. You have time for this; events will not take you unawares; the records of the negotiations conducted with you will remain before your eyes. Lay them not from your hands until you are in unity with your selves. Neither let, oh, let not yourselves be made supine by reliance upon others or upon anything whatsoever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet through the unintelligent belief of our time that the epochs of history are made by the agency of some unknown power without ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or two from ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would assert your manliness, not lie there, supine, and—" ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of detail in connection with the Latin and Greek derivatives, the author wishes to call special attention: the Latin and the Greek roots are, as key-words, given in this book in the form of the present infinitive,—the present indicative and the supine being, of course, added. For this there is one sufficient justification, to wit: that the present infinitive is the form in which a Latin or a Greek root is always given in Webster and other received ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... place to lie supine Within a hammock swinging, To watch the sunset, red as wine, To hear the crickets singing; And while the insect world around Is buzzing—by the million— No winged thing above the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... 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 ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the unfortunate peasant. He shouted; then wheeled, and ran back blindly. He shrieked wildly as he ran—mad with fear, unaware what he was doing. There was a death-like hush over the snow-laden earth that lay supine beneath the cloud-ridden moon. The frenzied ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless scene of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... auguries. It was clear beyond denial, that for a century after the death of Edward VI. the bishops were the tools of court-bigotry, and often owed their highest promotions to base subservience. After the Revolution, the Episcopal order (on a rough and general view) might be described as a body of supine persons, known to the public only as a dead weight against all change that was distasteful to the Government. In the last century and a half, the nation was often afflicted with sensual royalty, bloody wars, venal statesmen, corrupt constituencies, bribery and violence at elections, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... her last glimpses of life. In a few seconds would come utter blankness again; her last chance would be gone for saving Roger and herself. Should she make a struggle for it and die fighting? Or was it better to continue her supine pretence and quietly allow the needle to reduce her once more to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... it, but did not 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 presence ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... to the Argive maid. Before her eyes, within her breast she dwelt A secret torment, and in terror drove Her exil'd through the world. 'Twas thou, O Nile! Her tedious wandering ended. On thy banks Weary'd she kneel'd, and on her back, supine Her neck she lean'd:—her sad face to the skies, What could she more?—she lifted. Unto Jove By groans, and tears, and mournful lows she plain'd, And begg'd her woes might end. The mighty god Around his consort's neck embracing hung. And pray'd her wrath might finish. "Fear ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Maury 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 ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... east-west orientation corresponding to the axis of the fissure; the foot bones were to the west, at the mouth of the cave, and the crania were in the tapered interior. The published report does not indicate whether placement was prone or supine. ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... the year's end he will be my master," said Burke, "and I shall believe him, however untrue and improbable his story may be;" and if, whilst the Anti-corn-law League can display such perseverance, determination, and system, its opponents obstinately remain supine and silent, can any one wonder if such progress be not made by the League, in their demoralizing and revolutionary enterprize, that it will soon be too late to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... abhorrence; but, as for beetles of all kinds, from my boyhood up, they had been an abomination unto me, and a cockroach is the most abominable of all beetles; so between the two I was speedily roused from my state of supine, or rather dogged endurance; and, forgetting the geography of my position, I sprung to my feet, whereby I nearly fractured my skull against the low deck above. I first tried the skylight; it was ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Russia has soldiers enough to spare so long such a mass of troops standing fast, and simultaneously to prosecute the invasion of a first-rate power with approximately equal numbers. France at the cost of 150,000 men would be holding supine on her frontier double the number of Germans—surely ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... himself on his sofa, and burst into a violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started, as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brass in fusion, glow, Nor the earth, with heat, as hard as iron grow, Let not our pastures and our meads of hay, For our supine neglect ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... 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
... half past seven. The child lay supine; heavy-lidded eyes half opened upon this tormentress who had somehow succeeded in calling him back into the dimly lighted room from the shadows of Lethe's alluring banks. Miss Beaver, kneeling beside young Frank's bed, talked tenderly to him in a soft ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... yes; but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A quiet spirit sees its own expression, a harmony of self with external form, in the even lines and flat spaces of some Dutch etching. Or a vigorous, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... 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 tendency of his mind always leads him out upon the practical. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass, And bordered with the strange intelligence Of myriad loving eyes among the flowers, That watched me with a curious, calm delight, As rows of wayside cherubim may watch A new soul, walking into Paradise. I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine Lay rocking on the ocean like a god, And threw his weary arms far up the sky, And with vermilion-tinted fingers toyed With the long tresses of the evening star. I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all— Dreams that were music, perfume, vision, bliss,— Blent ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... with ripened 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... circumstances. It was as if the brute in him were forever seeking a lower level, wallowing itself lower and lower into the filth and into the mire, content to be foul, content to be prone, to be inert and supine. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... prove 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the course of the late war; and this mutual succor is, indeed, a principal end of our political association. If the power of affording it be placed under the direction of the Union, there will be no danger of a supine and listless inattention to the dangers of a neighbor, till its near approach had superadded the incitements of self-preservation to the too feeble ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... decided here, in a trial before a jury, that my conduct has been the opposite of his. {224} And I am afraid—afraid, I say, for I will speak all my mind to you—that though when the time comes you may drag me in spite of my entire innocence to the same ruin with them, you are now utterly supine. For, men of Athens, you appear to me to be altogether unstrung, waiting to suffer the horrors which others are suffering before your eyes, and taking no precautions, no thought for the city, which for so long has been exposed to destruction in many a ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... was not of a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer these preparations to advance without interruption. She ordered Drake to sail immediately for the coast of Spain, and put in practice against her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the four great ships which ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Enchanted Land! 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 John Grayrock, dead of a gunshot wound, and still ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... time, impatient of repose, My swelling heart 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? ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... associated for the purpose of watching over his interests, more particularly with regard to the operation of the law. But during the period of repose which followed the first anti-slavery triumph, a portion of this body, losing its original activity, had become comparatively supine. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... 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
... 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
... dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger. And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine No longer. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... by assuming that other parts of the 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 |
