"Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the unwearied compiler of tables of natural history. When he is a lawyer, he seems only a lawyer. If he had not been the author of the Instauratio, his life would not have looked very different from that of any other of the shrewd and supple lawyers who hung on to the Tudor and Stuart Courts, and who unscrupulously pushed their way to preferment. He claimed to be, in spite of the misgivings of Elizabeth and her ministers, as devoted to public work and as capable of it as any of them. He was ready for ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... said the sage, as he shook his gray locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box— Allow me to ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... head, rubbing his eyeglasses briskly, while Sofya looked at her, her large eyes wide open and the forgotten cigarette burning to ashes. She sat half turned from the piano, supple and shapely, at times touching the keys lightly with the slender fingers of her right hand. The pensive chord blended delicately with the speech of the mother, as she quickly invested her new feelings and thoughts in simple, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... 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!" ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... magnanimous resignation to the duties of his office was the captain's signal of readiness. He knew exactly the method of fighting which Angelo must adopt, and he saw that his adversary was supple, and sinewy, and very keen of eye. But, what can well compensate for even one additional inch of steel? A superior weapon wielded by a trained wrist in perfect coolness means victory, by every reasonable reckoning. In the present instance, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vile, Too much to one, but double how endur'd, 780 To one and to his image now proclaim'd? But what if better counsels might erect Our minds and teach us to cast off this Yoke? Will ye submit your necks, and chuse to bend The supple knee? ye will not, if I trust To know ye right, or if ye know your selves Natives and Sons of Heav'n possest before By none, and if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for Orders and Degrees Jarr not with liberty, but well consist. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... voluminous folds of gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil of wondrous fineness and a Nabob's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to break the cords and crawl out of his hole. He put up his feelers to find those horrible horns, but they were gone, and his devil form fell off him like a mask. He had wings, jewelled wings! on his back now. Out he came to fluff the newfound wings awhile, and when they were spread and supple he flew into the joyful night, one of the noblest of all the things that fly, gorgeous in gold and velvet, body and wings; filled with the joy of life and flight, he went careering through the soft splendour of the coming ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the forest are on ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... a quarter of a comfortable income. If you are as clever as I suppose, you can go to Paris at his expense. There, run along, my little doe; go and twist him round your finger. Only, mind this: be as supple as silk; at every word take a double turn round him and make a knot. He is a man to fear scandal, and if he has given you a chance to put him in the pillory—in short, understand; threaten him with the ladies of the Maternity Hospital. Besides, he's ambitious. A ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... walk there. It rises and falls so gently, that no one need get out of breath; indeed, it seems to go along with one all the time, in mere friendliness, whispering: "Take it easy. Take your time. Have a good rest here." And so on it goes, winding in among the tree-trunks, slender and supple ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... ill cause; but the dauntless utterances of men who would rather perish than fail to keep faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives, and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of Massachusetts ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... hints to her father's and the host's experienced advice; but, do what he could, it was another's image that haunted him. It was the winning one of the aristocratic singer. Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her shimmering golden curls. And whatever the sounds in the street, where there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual, were overpowered and formed the burden to the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... 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 ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... ruefully, Hermia thought, and took her place upon the mat, where, under Luigi's direction, she went through the exercises which were to keep her young limbs supple for the approaching performances. It was the familiar thing—the slow bending of the back until the palms of the hands touched the ground, in which position the child walked backward and forward, the contortions ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... it a cat he resembled, crouching there in front of her? No, there was nothing domestic about him though she had a feeling that he could purr when he was pleased. Yes, there was undoubtedly something feline about him, a supple grace, a noiselessness, a guile, that made her aware of the necessity for caution in her dealings with him. This was a man of many subtleties—she knew it instinctively—a man of tigerish temperament, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... inspecting eyes of her hostess, but the amatory glances of the youthful Emile, had been fastened upon her window until the light disappeared, and even the Holy Mission Church of San Jose had assured itself of the dear child's safety with a large and supple ear at her keyhole. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... from the sea and sky,—and her beautiful face, with its clear-cut features and cold pallor, might have been carved out of ivory, for all the interest or emotion expressed upon it. Gloria came straight towards her, then stopped. With her erect supple form, proud head and fair features, she looked the living embodiment of sovereign womanhood,—and the Queen, meeting the full starry glance of her eyes, stirred among her Royal draperies, and raised herself with ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... as any glass, And eke his face, as it had been anoint; He was a lord full fat and in good point; His eyen steep,* and rolling in his head, *deep-set That steamed as a furnace of a lead. His bootes supple, his horse in great estate, Now certainly he was a fair prelate; He was not pale as a forpined* ghost; *wasted A fat swan lov'd he best of any roast. His palfrey was as ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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 night when his ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... fashion and the others soon followed. I had taken a fiddler to my room and had learned the dance from Brandon; and was able to teach it also, though I lacked practice to make my step perfect. The princess had needed no practice, but had danced beautifully from the first, her strong young limbs and supple body taking as naturally to anything requiring grace of movement as ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... genius, but I have had to wait long, bitter 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, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, I found its age to be no less than 255 years. Another specimen about the same height, with a trunk six inches in diameter, I found to be 426 years old, forty years ago; and one of its supple branchlets hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the bark, was seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam and seasoned by storms that I tied it in knots like ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... Walter found Julia marching swiftly and haughtily up and down upon the terrace of Clifford Hall, and he could not help admiring the haughty magnificence of her walk. The reason soon appeared. She was in a passion. She was always tall, but now she seemed lofty, and to combine the supple panther with the erect peacock in her ireful march. Such a fine woman as Julia really awes a man with her carriage at such a time. The poor soul thinks he sees before him the indignation of the just; when very likely it is only what in a ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... arm encircled those soft yielding shoulders; the warm agitated bosom was touching mine; my hands held, and felt within it, the smooth muscles of the white arm—a vision of the whole indefinably supple form swam giddily before me in a suffocating proximity, till I pressed my hands on my eyes, and the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... By hatred— 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was dark save for a night-light. In the dim glimmer he saw a little white-clad figure, slight and supple, taking short steps and swinging its arm in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the man had plainly been in his fight for life, the clean, supple strength and the invincible courage of him still shone in his eye and trod in his bearing. It was even now the salient thing about him, though he had but come, alive and no more, from ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... rein: he is continually tossing his head after a minute or two of 'good manners and action,' and saying, 'Shakespeare was the best of them, anyhow'; 'Chaucer beats Ovid to a standstill.' It is a gesture with which all decent people sympathise and when it is made in language so supple as Dryden's prose it has a lasting charm. Dryden's heart was in the right place, and he was not afraid of showing it; but that does not make him a critic, much less a critic to be set as a superior in the company of ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... great as might be imagined, and many fine players drive their best balls with stiff clubs. It must always be remembered that when the stroke is not made perfectly there is a much greater tendency to slice with a supple shaft than with a stiff one, and the disadvantages of the former are especially pronounced on a windy day. It is all a matter of preference and predilection, and when these are absent the best thing to do is to strike the happy medium and select a shaft that is fairly ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... nature, this morning at dawn I saw many errors. Ah! to attain that glorious result, I have studied to their depths the masters of color. I have analyzed and lifted, layer by layer, the colors of Titian, king of light. Like him, great sovereign of art, I have sketched my figure in light clear tones of supple yet solid color; for shadow is but an accident,—remember that, young man. Then I worked backward, as it were; and by means of half-tints, and glazings whose transparency I kept diminishing little by little, I was able to cast strong shadows deepening almost to blackness. The shadows ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... cousin, the handsomest man in all England—indeed, in all the world, I thought. He was tall and slight, with wavy hair, light brown, almost golden, in the sunlight. His eyes were gray, a lovely shade, though those who hated him swore 'twas green. A clever supple swordsman, and to the fore in all the rough games that men delight in. His face was very winsome, yet often swept by varying moods. I have seen it hard and stern, and again alight with the keenest appreciation of one of my Lord Kenneth's ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... my litter and made my bearers trot all the way round by the big and little Coelian Hills to the Querquetulan Gate. We passed on this route many cheap shops. From one I bought a pair of horseman's high boots, soft and supple and mud-proof. All the way I enjoyed hugely my outing and the sights and sounds around me. From another shop one of my reliefs brought me an umbrella hat which fitted me and a voluminous horseman's raincloak which could not but protect ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Malay, thirst and hunger have also made their marks upon him; but not as with those of Occidental race. It may be that his bronze skin does not show so plainly the pallor of suffering; but, at all events, he still looks lithe and life-like, supple and sinewy, as if he could yet take a spell at the oar, and keep alive as long as skin and bone held together. If all are destined to die in that open boat, he will certainly be the last. He with the hollow eyes looks as if he ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Kennon thought as he rolled over in his bed and watched her standing before the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. She pivoted slowly before the glass, eying herself critically, raising her arms over her head, holding them at her sides, flexing her supple spine and tightening muscles that moved like silken cords ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... 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 ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... turn. His walk was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as powerful. On his face dwelt an expression that was not to be read by the indifferent—a waiting in the midst of work, as of a man to whom the sense of the temporary was always present, but present with the constant ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... luminous brown eyes set well apart in a face which won the prompt confidence of women, children and dogs. He was splendidly built for an out-door life, and moved with a long, supple stride, a gait which people mistook for lounging until they walked with him, and found that the pace was something over four miles an hour. Add to these personal traits the fact that he had dwelt in Roxton exactly two days and a half, and was already ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Corona's face that afternoon when they drove up the valley together, and she remarked what wonderful effect a little variety had upon her companion's spirits—she could not say upon her health, for Corona seemed made of velvet and steel, so smooth and dark, and yet so supple and strong. Corona smiled brightly as she looked far up at the beetling crags behind which ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... that beautiful body so," whispered Chunda Lal, "that is straight and supple as the willow branch. O, Miska"—his voice trembled emotionally and he that had been but a moment since so fierce stood abashed before her—"for you I become as the meanest and the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... then My mind was hard, as muscles of the back Grow hard resisting cold or shock or strain And need the osteopath to be made supple, To give the nerves and streams of life a chance. Hosea Job was just the osteopath To loose, relax my mood. And so I said ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... when I was as young and supple as the boy Bill, there—though I was older than him by some years—I was serving my apprenticeship to the trade aboard the sloop Lively Nan. There were not such big vessels in the trade then, mates, as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... Jones. In a four room cottage at 726 Lindsey Avenue, the aged Civil War Veteran lives alone with the care of Mr. Jones' niece, who resides next door to him. He has managed to survive his ninety-fifth year. It is almost a miracle to see a man at his age as suple [SP: supple] as he. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... many other consequences. It led to an increased freedom of movement of the thigh on the hip joint, to muscular arrangements for balancing the body on the leg, to making the backbone a supple yet stable curved pillar, to a strongly developed collar-bone which is only found well-formed when the fore-limb is used for more than support, and to a power of "opposing" the thumb and the big toe to the other digits of the hand and foot—an obvious ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... made it my business to study them even as I have studied men. But this woman who sat under the sacred snakes in her golden half-castle on the mammoth's back, fairly baffled me. Of her thoughts I could read no single syllable. I could see a body slight, supple, and beautifully moulded; in figure rather small. Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair, too, beyond belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... might have come from a country hound or two baying for sheer melancholy, or after a cat: only there were neither hounds nor cats on the Caraquet road. I felt Paulette stiffen through all her supple body. She whispered to herself sharply, as if she were swearing—only afterwards I knew better, and put the word she used where it belonged: "The devil! Oh, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... so soft, as it were made on purpose to take hearts, and handle them without hurting! These taper fingers too, and even joints so supple, that methinks I mould them as they pass through mine: nay, in my conscience, though it be nonsense to say it, your hand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... show you," he said, taking up two rifles and handing one to Dorn. "Come. It is so—and so—a trick. The boches can't face cold steel.... Ah, monsieur, you have the supple wrists of a juggler! You have the arms of a giant! You have the eyes of a duelist! You will be one ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... approaching her, insinuating and supple, like the serpent with the first woman, murmured in her ear, as if afraid lest his words, in being spoken aloud, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... subjects which had neither hieroglyphic, nor historical, nor scientific; for there were representations of small scenes taken from nature, in which the stiff profile outlines, so common with Egyptian artists, were exchanged for supple and natural attitudes; groups of persons were given in perspective, and cut in deeper relief than I should have supposed anything but ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... a daze. She was not like any woman he had ever dreamed of, nor was she the woman he had thought. In the night, when she was singing, she had seemed slender and ethereal with her swan's neck and piled up hair; but now she was different, a glorious human animal, strong and supple yet with the lines of a girl. And her eyes were still the eyes of a child, big and round and ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... indeed, in his arms, but his very roughness was a proof of the intensity of his love. For an instant she lay palpitating against him, and as long as he lives he will remember the first exquisite touch of her firm but supple figure and the marvellous communion of her lips. A current from the great store that was in her, pent up and all unknown, ran through him, and then she had struggled out of his arms and fled, leaving him standing alone ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple, and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby was disposed decorously across her knees on this occasion, and she was one of the five auditors who had brought along their own crickets or chairs. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... father. 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 ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... ... a mouse," Colibri said hurriedly, and suddenly to Kuzma Vassilyevitch's complete surprise, flung her smooth, supple arms round his neck and a rapid kiss burned his cheek ... as though a red-hot ember had ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the garrison, too supple, Surrendered so piteously After the first blurt of explosion From the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and he and Shep set to work, with Whopper helping them. Giant passed up some branches which had fallen to the ground, and also some long, pliable withes to be used as rope. Fortunately some of the branches left on the trees were long and supple and could be twisted around one another ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... Among the Atjeh, again, according to Jacobs (as quoted by Ploss), the young of both sexes masturbate and the elder girls use an artificial penis of wax. In China, also, the artificial penis—made of rosin, supple and (like the classical instrument described by Herondas) rose-colored—is publicly sold and widely used ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the day; but the sun itself, it is said, has spots, and the princes do not disdain to resemble the sun. The child dazzled the court with his fine mien; but there were shadows here and there which did not escape the piercing eye of love or envy. Supple, agile, and adroit in all kinds of bodily exercises, Charming had an indolent mind. He lacked application, and had taken a fancy that he ought to know everything without studying. It is true that governesses, courtiers, and servants had continually repeated to him that work was not made for ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... embroideries, gleaming jewels—these are the never-failing accessories of his compositions. Yet while he loved rich draperies, he was also a careful student of the nude. Examples of his work range from the supple and youthful torso of Icarus to the huge muscular body of the beggar receiving St. Martin's cloak. The modelling of the Saviour's body in the Crucifixion and the Pieta shows both ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill, The pliant series of her slippery song; Then starts ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... remark was owned by all; had it been the height of tyranny, the supple knaves would have agreed with me quite as politely. They only replied that "Young Prince," being a man of years and dignity, would be dishonoured by dismissal empty- handed, and they represented him as my future host when ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... freckles, tell each other where their skin marks were situated, dispute whose complexion was the clearest, whose hair the prettiest colour, and whose figure the best. You can imagine that among these figures sanctified to God there were fine ones, stout ones, lank ones, thin ones, plump ones, supple ones, shrunken ones, and figures of all kinds. Then they would quarrel amongst themselves as to who took the least to make a girdle, and she who spanned the least was pleased without knowing why. At times they would ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Superlative (gram.) superlativo. Supernatural supernatura. Supernumerary ekstrulo. Superscription surskribo. Supersede anstatauxi. Superstition supersticxo. Superstitious supersticxa. Supervise observi. Supper noktomangxo. Supplant anstatauxi, uzurpi. Supple fleksebla. Supplement aldono. Supplement aldoni. Supplementary aldona. Supplicate petegi. Supply provizi. Support subteni. Support (prop) subportilo. Supporter partiano. Suppose supozi, konjekti. Suppress subpremi. Supremacy superegeco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... not the least brave of my campaigns (as the soldiers say) that I should have done as I was here bidden and gone forthright to the house by Dean. But the old lady was now entirely changed, and supple as a glove. By what means Miss Grant had brought this round I could never guess; I am sure, at least, she dared not to appear openly in the affair, for her papa was compromised in it pretty deep. It was he, indeed, who had persuaded Catriona to leave, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... 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 grow ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... moment longer." Kathleen's slender, supple fingers played with a piece of toast. "You need not bother to conceal the newspapers, Dad," as Whitney surreptitiously tucked the Herald and the Post behind his back. "I read them up in ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... large, yet hath Claudia a choice for her maiden. Confusion will take the buoyancy from her supple limbs, and so drawn will her arms be to her face to hide its shame, that the sensuous swing thou dost desire will be stiff as the scabbard on thy wall. Lest she be veiled my maiden can not dance to ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... be added 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 mythology, not from ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... CHOOSE DUCKS—A young duck should have supple feet, breast and belly hard and thick. A tame duck has dusky yellow feet. They should be ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the Metropolitan Police sleeps on no bed of roses. He must be as supple as willow, as rigid as steel, must possess the tact of a diplomatist, with the ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... my presence naturally, with no obtrusive kindness; she was at a necessitous task—putting a broad gray patch, the best available from the resources at home, on Jimmy Kirtland's brown jacket, doing it deftly with her supple hands. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... there and champagne and made all the peasants there drunk on it, and all the women and girls. I sent the thousands flying. In three days' time I was stripped bare, but a hero. Do you suppose the hero had gained his end? Not a sign of it from her. I tell you that rogue, Grushenka, has a supple curve all over her body. You can see it in her little foot, even in her little toe. I saw it, and kissed it, but that was all, I swear! 'I'll marry you if you like,' she said, 'you're a beggar, you know. Say that you won't beat me, and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her face nor shoes upon her feet, and the flimsy mauve robe clung to the supple body as she restlessly swung, until she clapped her hands to summon her breakfast, and clapped them again sharply so that a figure ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... 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 more ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... work of the church are easily to be recognized the Methodists and the Baptists, one the most solidly organized of the Protestant sects, the other the most uncompact and individualist; the first by virtue of the supple military organization of its great corps of itinerants, the other by the simplicity and popular apprehensibleness of its distinctive tenets and arguments and the aggressive ardor with which it inspires all its converts, and both by their facility in recruiting ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... work. Varka leaves the cradle, and runs to the shed for firewood. She is glad. When one moves and runs about, one is not so sleepy as when one is sitting down. She brings the wood, heats the stove, and feels that her wooden face is getting supple again, and that her thoughts are ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... everyday look of apathetic indifference, nobody could have guessed of the double load she carried under the visible burden of the tray piled up high with cakes manufactured by the thrifty hands of Bulangi's wives. In that supple figure straight as an arrow, so graceful and free in its walk, behind those soft eyes that spoke of nothing but of unconscious resignation, there slept all feelings and all passions, all hopes and all fears, the curse of life and the consolation ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... at her admiringly, at the thin supple body and long light arms that could reach so far among the cotton bolls. He untied the bags and proceeded to fill the gin. A girl who could pick two hundred and seventy-five pounds of cotton a day was a person of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Democrats. In all parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious protest against the dictator. And yet, on the whole, perhaps, the incident played into Lincoln's hands. At least, it silenced the Jacobins. With the Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine of the supple politicians, how certain that their only course for the moment was to lie low. A time came, to be sure, when they thought it safe to resume their own creed; but that ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... like a white Greek maid Leaf-dappled through the dancing shade, Where many a green-veined leaf imprints Breast and limb with emerald tints, That softly net her silken shape But let the splendour still escape, While rosy ghosts of roses flow Over the supple rose and snow. ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Having expressed himself upon these general subjects, this person now makes a last and respectfully-considered desire, which it is his deliberate wish should be carried to the proper deities as his final expression of opinion: That Yang Hu may grow as supple as the dried juice of the bending-palm, and as straight as the most vigorous bamboo from the forests of the North. That he may increase beyond the prolificness of the white-necked crow and cover the ground after the fashion of the binding grass. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... good old king saw this—saw that the prince, The apple of his eye, dearer than life, Stately in form, supple and strong in limb, Quick to learn every art of peace and war, Displaying and excelling every grace And attribute of his most royal line, Whom all would follow whereso'er he led, So fit to rule the world if ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... different from all the others. He was a part of herself. She did not know why, but he stood alone, whenever she thought of him, wonderfully strange, and strong, and enduring, as much Toby as she was Sally. She did not fear him. In some ways she despised him, for being so little pliable, so little supple in his way of managing the world. But she adored him as a man, and as a simple-minded baby who unerringly made her happy by his assurance, and flighted her by behaving as though she was something belonging solely to himself. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... swung passionately into the arena. With a bound she stood erect, one foot upon each of her supple, plunging Arabs; and at once I knew that my fate was sealed, my chapter closed, and the Bride of the Desert was the one bride for me. Black was her raiment, great silver stars shone through it, caught in the dusky twilight of her gauze; black as her own hair were the two mighty ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... island race was sound and clean. The supple round limbs were made bright and strong by the constant bath and the temperate breeze. They were not cumbered with clothing; they wore no long, sweating gowns, but their smooth, shining skins reflected back their sun, which gave them such ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... crooked knife advanced a little, accompanied by another man, a tall, supple-looking knave, into whose ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... not agree to that. Slim, supple, simply graceful in every movement, Eunice's figure, in the charm of first youth, only waited its perfect development. Most men, looking at her as she stood at the other end of the room with her back toward us, would have guessed her ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... great braid of shining chestnut hair, showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth—a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild sweetness, as of a flower growing in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flexing of her long, supple body the Violet picked up the business-like copy of the Violet manuscript which Mr. Adolph Meyers had sent her instead of the beribboned, purple "Renunciation of Rosalind," and began to read the first page when ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and he did not move from his position in the ship. But the ship had crossed the great gulf, and was speeding through the galaxy now. He was near the end. At a reckless speed, he sat motionless before the controls, save for slight movements of supple fingers that directed the ship at a mad pace about some gigantic sun and its family of planets. Suns flashed, grew to discs, and were left behind in the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... "Olives are not to be despised; oil to the limbs makes them supple; to the stomach it gives gladness. Oil, moreover, bringeth money when sold. But a daughter is the plague of a man's life. First, one has to keep away lovers; and next to find a husband; and when all is done, one has to put one's hand in one's chest, and pay a tall fellow like ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he moved a step forward and laid ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... they spent some time in making circular wooden discs by slicing the trunk of a pine-tree across. When darkness had fallen, they kindled the bonfire, and then, as it blazed up, they lighted the discs at it, and, after swinging them to and fro at the end of a stout and supple hazel-wand, they hurled them one after the other, whizzing and flaming, into the air, where they described great arcs of fire, to fall at length, like shooting-stars, at the foot of the mountain.[411] In many parts of Alsace and Lorraine the midsummer fires still blaze annually or ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... broke frightful on his ear, He, bathed in icy sweat, would start in fear, Trembling and pale; then did his glances seem Sad as the sun's last, conscious, farewell gleam Upon the eve of judgment. Such appear His days and nights whom hope has ceased to cheer But grov'llers know it not. The supple slave Whose worthiest record is a nameless grave, Whose truckling spirit bends and bids him kneel, And fawn and vilely kiss a patron's heel— Even he can cast the cursed suspicious eye, Inquire the cause of this—the reason why? And stab the sufferer. Then, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life, uplifted at the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the ecstasy of his religion, forgetting that love and passion and life ran just as riotously in his supple perfect body. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... moved on as he spoke, and the Doctor moved with him, for his arm was still clasped by the stranger's strong supple fingers. But ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... the founder of the Numidian kingdom; and seldom has choice or accident hit upon a man so thoroughly fitted for his post. In body sound and supple up to extreme old age; temperate and sober like an Arab; capable of enduring any fatigue, of standing on the same spot from morning to evening, and of sitting four-and-twenty hours on horseback; tried alike as a soldier and a general amidst the romantic vicissitudes of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... years, The fatal curse should only rest Upon this firm, though guilty breast? Yet, tendering from thy vessel's freight Offerings of such exceeding weight, And free thee from one earthly chain! Envy and over-weening hate Would on thy orphan greatness wait; Folly that supple nature bend For parasites to scorn thy friend; And pamper'd vanity incline To ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... in the day she had resorted to the wood, but soon tiring of playing the part of modest nymph with her friends, she wandered off to more solitary places. Her head, generally so erect, was bowed under the weight of depression or preoccupation; her flexible, supple figure moved from side to side like the body of a bedouin; those dark African eyes, the most precious ornament of the noble city of Lancia, were fixed upon the ground, and the very deep line on her forehead testified to the fixed, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... preserved health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers |
