"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temper then in earnest. All his nature was on edge in that crisis, and this supine surrender of an able-bodied man whose two hands were needed so desperately was peculiarly exasperating. He leaped out of the boat, ran into the galley, and gave the cook an invigorating beating up with the flat of his hands. The ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... eyes held in a fascination of terror, felt that at any moment he might begin pumping shots into the supine body. She shook off the palsy that held her and almost hurled her soft ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... a people so supine as to endure such waste and oppression. Everything is taxed, and the masses of the people are ground down to the lowest stage compatible with mere animal existence. England and France have been compelled recently to take strong measures ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... your Will create, even as God creates. "He that believeth shall not perish, shall not abide in darkness, shall have the light of life, shall have everlasting life; all things are possible to him that believeth." Come down out of the gallery of supine hero worshippers, get into the arena and be the hero. Quit the drivel of matinee idol longing, and get onto the stage of life and get the bouquets for yourself. The world is waiting to ring up the curtain for ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... generals. The extreme poverty of the government, the utter lack of support from all sections, would have brought dismay to the heart of any man but Washington. He, however, remained firm. Forced by what Roosevelt has termed as the "supine indifference of the people at large," he determined to make one more effort to secure peace, but failing in that, the army of Anthony Wayne should be made ready for ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the night on deck, supine, with a carpet-bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Duesseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine—especially ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... He lay supine, trying not to clench a muscle, seeking to force his surrender to inanition; but he could not get sleep though he implored his soul for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... farce "Dundreary Married;" and the captain, who, it afterwards appeared, had in former years suffered divers things at the hand of an obnoxious mother-in-law, grew more excited than ever, and became furiously indignant, not only at the all-assuming lady, but also at the supine Dundreary, who allowed himself to be thus imposed upon. He grumbled and muttered, and really seemed as if he would make for the stage, as he said, "to give the old creetur a piece of his mind." Even Norman was now uneasy ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the sound is modified in consequence of the lung's resonant qualities. The heart-sounds, as heard through the stethoscope, in valvular disease, will, of course, be more distinctly ascertained at the locality of F, the right ventricle, which is immediately substernal. While the body lies supine, the heart recedes from the forepart of the chest; and the lungs during inspiration expanding around the heart will render its sounds less distinct. In the erect posture, the heart inclines forwards and approaches the anterior wall of the thorax. When the heart is hypertrophied, the lungs ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... cabin. By his side he may have the heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a model of young human beauty. And there will always be the favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a more private hour, and found Tembinok' retired in the house with the favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial ledger. In the last, lying on his belly, he writes from day ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confront and challenge fortitude: And where no outward token could declare The hidden worth congenial heart would hail, Hail with each kindred chord vibrating there;d Since virtue wakes not but when griefs assail, Or travail burthens, or temptations try, Slumbering supine, till roused by adverse gale, In the deep sleep of moral lethargy, Joy's fullest cup, by hope or doubt unstirred, Curdling the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Which when the elder saw, he watched for me As I passed by, and from the chariot-seat Smote full upon my head with the fork'd goad; But got more than he gave; for, by a blow From this right hand, smit with my staff, he fell Instantly rolled out of the car supine. I slew them every one. Now if that stranger Had aught in common with king Laius, What wretch on earth was e'er so lost as I? Whom have the Heavens so followed with their hate? No house of Theban or of foreigner Must any more receive me, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... "If only 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 half-smoked cheroot on the coffee-tray, she took alarm, glided towards the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... an attentive observer might discern some symptoms that threatened the church with a more violent persecution than any which she had yet endured. The zeal and rapid progress of the Christians awakened the Polytheists from their supine indifference in the cause of those deities, whom custom and education had taught them to revere. The mutual provocations of a religious war, which had already continued above two hundred years, exasperated ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... out of her fine eyes, yet the unconscious courage of her graceful poise—erect, with head thrown back so that he could even see the pulse beat in the brown throat—suggested anything but supine surrender to her terror. Before he could reach her she had slipped into the night, and he could not ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... should bring it 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, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... 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 nation; and as the fertile and luxuriant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... they were still in the same position. At last the tremendous and incessant blows, dealt by the most active member of the trio, seemed actually to have exhausted the immense vitality of the great bowhead, for he lay supine upon the surface. Then the three joined their forces, and succeeded in dragging open his cavernous mouth, into which they freely entered, devouring his tongue. This, then, had been their sole object, for as ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... announcement pointed out that the mission would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British lion in these parts, and it was more than time that he should open his sleepy eyes upon what was going on. As to the young officer who was to command the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of cowardice. It is a question of common sense. A few country lads cannot oppose a government. With what weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant to death — ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... unreveng'd Ulysses bore their fate, Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state; For, gorg'd with flesh, and drunk with human wine While fast asleep the giant lay supine, Snoring aloud, and belching from his maw His indigested foam, and morsels raw; We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround The monstrous body, stretch'd along the ground: Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand To bore his eyeball with ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the problem of democracy and imperialism. This spectacle shows the Swiss democracy its path and its mission." Above all, let Switzerland reject the new evangel, made in Germany, of a democracy supine before the will of a politico-economic power, a democracy which tends in home policy to class rule, and in foreign policy to imperialism! "We need a new orientation which shall deliver democratic thought from national ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... hot and soft-stroking against leaves. Or a Pleistocene man, smallest of all the males, whose supine acceptance ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... present events. The image of Vittoria, the traitress, floated over the soldiery marching on Milan through her treachery. Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible. He had to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened, in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies undisturbed—if only men will have the faith, and will teach ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... polished bow.[6] That bow, the laden brows of a wild goat Salacious had supplied; him on a day Forth-issuing from his cave, in ambush placed 125 He wounded with an arrow to his breast Dispatch'd, and on the rock supine he fell. Each horn had from his head tall growth attain'd, Full sixteen palms; them shaven smooth the smith Had aptly join'd, and tipt their points with gold. 130 That bow he strung, then, stooping, planted firm The nether horn, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... 128). These burials were extended with an 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
... Erinnys 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 no more "A rival love, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. Brackett, punctual man, is ringing The curfew bell; 't is nine o'clock already. 'T is early bedtime, yet methinks 't were joy On mattress cool to stretch supine. At midnight, Were it winter, I were less fatigued, less sleepy. Sleep! I invoke thee, "comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled waves of life, And hushest them to peace." All hail the man Who first invented bed! O, wondrous soft This pillow to my weary ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... supine joined to a verb of motion is equivalent to the future as before stated in the second mode of the infinitive; but should there be no verb of movement with the gerund in dum, the particle betzuai, for, is used, as this suffices for payment, (hoc ad solvendum ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... great Rajah Bhoj, or according to others, of the Maharajah of Kanoj. Under the title Lizzat al-Nisa (The Pleasures—or enjoying—of Women) it has been translated into all the languages of the Moslem East, from Hindustani to Arabic. It divides postures into five great divisions: (1) the woman lying supine, of which there are eleven subdivisions; (2) lying on her side, right or left, with three varieties; (3) sitting, which has ten, (4) standing, with three subdivisions, and (5) lying prone, with two. This total of twenty- nine, with three forms of "Purushayit," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 any great work of reform or beneficence, is, that men are essentially ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... down with long strides, while I remained crushed on my knees; my head was hanging supine, tears flowed from ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... 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, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... to free his shoulder of Ivana's supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his lungs, and nursed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... be more contrary than such a philosophy (the academic or sceptical) to the supine indolence of the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions, and its superstitious credulity."—Fifth Essay, p. 68, 12mo; p. ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place and the use of chorus): "I see not then, but we ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... a full half hour, supine, completely relaxed, only half conscious. Yet he was devoutly thankful. The precious gift of life had been saved, the life that was so young, so strong and so buoyant in him. The sea, immense, immeasurable and savage might leap for him, but it could no longer reach him. He was ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thoughts reverted to her. Now that he was helpless, he could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel, giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun and tramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through the mesh, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked him ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... in the case of verbs the supine stem will suggest to you the meaning of the Latin through some English derivative, which ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... his father's highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders—as here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,—that many folk had presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Urge on her frozen roots to coloured bloom, No clouds enrobe her nakedness—her days, Once golden in the dance, are bent on doom. A loathing throngs the vision, and the face Of Man is stone and ashen, fallen supine. How long with Light and Love I warmed his race! Now iron crowns of Ruin and ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... 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 ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... here are dead; their survivors supine and superannuated; their connections new Whigs and Reformers, and Associators; myself grown quite indifferent upon the point; and the principal Tories, such as the Duke of Beaufort, &c., and those who ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... his teacup on the cabin roof, 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 ditty ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... take and return his smile. Some even grinned and saluted. They reserved their awe for Scipio. Indeed, there is a legend that when Scipio made his first appearance in Fore Street—he being so tall and the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... erected for their reception. The notary appeared in a magnificent and mysterious habit, explained the inscription by a version and commentary, [24] and descanted with eloquence and zeal on the ancient glories of the senate and people, from whom all legal authority was derived. The supine ignorance of the nobles was incapable of discerning the serious tendency of such representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows the plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse the company with his threats and predictions; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... it between her fingers she lay supine, following the spirals of smoke with inattentive eyes. By-and-by the lengthening ash fell, powdering her, and she threw the cigarette into the grate, flicked the ashes from her bare, round arm, and, clasping her hands under her neck, turned over ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day—and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane. The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 lexicographic authorities. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... 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, benignant gaze. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... abysses and spring from rock to rock; but you are lazy and infected with the disease of neutrality. You cannot hear the voices saying: 'Where is the enemy? On, on, for God, the Kaiser, and the Fatherland!'" Even Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who is, according to Bettina, merely a supine hero, fails to elude her electric grasp: "Come, flee with me across the Alps to the Tyrolese. There will we whet our swords and forget thy rabble of comedians; and as for all thy darling mistresses, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... they had a bridle placed in their mouths, keep a resolute silence, in which they rather resemble their shadows than themselves. These, like those men who cast nativities or interpret the oracles of the sibyl, compose their countenances to a sort of gravity, and then make money of their supine drowsiness. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... before the people assembled at the hustings, which he had a right to do, of the prisoners at Derby, of his own conduct towards them, which was most courageous and humane, and of the conduct of the party at Westminster on the same occasion, which was assuredly supine to a frightful degree, to speak in no stronger language. In the midst of the most horrid yelling of the party, from whom he was continually obliged to appeal to the mob below, as Mr. Kinnaird, unused to his new nomenclature, called them, Mr. Hunt mentioned that the party in Westminster ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... we say of dreams, if our eyes could but once have been opened upon the bright intellectual fancies, and anticipations; or upon the spiritual movements, of some of those by the side of whose supine and deserted forms it may have been our privilege to watch; but who, on waking into restored consciousness, remember not what they may have seen, or imagined, or may perhaps have accomplished, in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... sun, and it had become cool and pleasant. Here and there, among the copper utensils, and wherever a chance ray made a gleam of light, the magpie was hopping about, uttering short, piercing cries. In the recess of the niche containing the colored prints, sat the old man Vincart, dozing, in his usual supine attitude, his hands spread out, his eyelids drooping, his mouth half open. At the sound of the door, his eyes opened wide. He rather guessed at, than saw, the entrance of the young girl, and his pallid lips began their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... brow, and stirs the plumes of her gallant. But the very breeze is laden with heat, and the fountain's noise does but whet the thirst of the grass, the flowers, the trees. The earth sulks under the burden of the unmerciful sun. Love itself, one had said, would be languid here, pale and supine, and, faintly sighing for things past or for future things, would sink into siesta. But behold! these are no ordinary lovers. The gushing fountains are likelier to run dry there in the grotto than they to falter in their ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Pallura, won't you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead a mere thread of blood trickled down over his temples; at the corners ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... Nor even the infant in his mother's womb Unconscious. Perish universal Troy Unpitied, till her place be found no more![5] So saying, his brother's mind the Hero turn'd, Advising him aright; he with his hand 75 Thrust back Adrastus, and himself, the King, His bowels pierced. Supine Adrastus fell, And Agamemnon, with his foot the corse Impressing firm, pluck'd forth his ashen spear. Then Nestor, raising high his voice, exclaim'd. 80 Friends, Heroes, Grecians, ministers of Mars! ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of punishment read me his name, Whence I so fully answer'd. He at once Exclaim'd, up starting, "How! said'st thou he HAD? No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye The blessed daylight?" Then of some delay I made ere my reply aware, down fell Supine, not after forth appear'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Mary, Gwendolen and Alice, daughters of James Cartaret, the Vicar of Garth, were sitting there in the dining-room behind the yellow blind, doing nothing. In their supine, motionless attitudes they seemed to be waiting for something to happen, to happen so soon that, if there had been anything to do, it was not ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... lost in sleep and ease, No action leave to busy chronicles: Such, whose supine felicity but makes In story chasms, in epoch's mistakes; O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down, Till, with his silent sickle, they are mown. 110 Such is not Charles' too, too active age, Which, govern'd by the wild distemper'd rage Of some black star infecting all the skies, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... is an example, on a colossal scale, of the pernicious and supine system of officials, as represented by the Board of Trade. Modern liners are so designed that they have no accommodations for more life-boats. Among practical seamen it has long been recognized ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... through Cande and Chateau-Gontier, and had without difficulty driven out the Republican force stationed at Laval. L'Echelle, the commander-in-chief, was profoundly ignorant, supine, and cowardly; and owed his position solely to the fact that he belonged to the lower class, and was not, like Biron and the other commanders-in-chief, of good family. Remaining always at a distance from the scene of operations, he confused the ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... imbittered by the reflection, that he was abandoned, betrayed, and perhaps devoted to destruction, by those who were bound to assist him, by every tie of honor and fidelity. Marcellus, master-general of the cavalry in Gaul, interpreting too strictly the jealous orders of the court, beheld with supine indifference the distress of Julian, and had restrained the troops under his command from marching to the relief of Sens. If the Caesar had dissembled in silence so dangerous an insult, his person and authority would have been exposed to the contempt of the world; and if an action so ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 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. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the Bible always with him,—never the will of Christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus satisfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, without any distracting occupation, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... then? Would they have got their old guns down from over the doors? Or do they so want peace and so think that they can have peace always that they've lost their spine? Have they really been Bryanized, Fordized, Janeaddamsized, Sundayschooled, and Chautauquaed into supine creatures to whom the United States and the ideals of the Fathers mean nothing? Who think a German is as good as an Englishman? Who have no particular aims or aspirations for our country and for democracy? When T.R. was in the White House he surely was an active fellow. He called us to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,—"Are we to sit supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to make every effort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: "Whether to lie supine and let a clique Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain Our little hoards for hazards on the price Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath The shadow of a spire upreared to curb A breed of ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... 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 and my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... rouse and arm, And kill the Serpent ere we feel it sting, And fall the Victims of its painful Poison? Oh! could our Fathers from their Country see Their ancient Rights encroach'd upon and ravag'd, And we their Children slow, supine, and careless To keep the Liberty and Land they left us, And tamely fall a Sacrifice to Knaves! How would their Bosoms glow with patriot Shame, To see their Offspring so unlike themselves? They dared all Dangers ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... read me his name, Whence I so fully answer'd. He at once Exclaim'd' up starting, "How! said'st thou' he HAD? No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye The blessed daylight?" Then, of some delay I made ere my reply, aware, down fell Supine, nor after forth appear'd ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... a single life were beneath serious consideration; it was the lives to come, the lingering doubt of which power led her on, which restrained and filled her mind. A flicker of rage darted through her calm questioning; her mental processes again faded. With her right arm across the supine body and enveloping the face in her left sleeve a single twist and Nettie Vollar would choke in a cloud of thick satin made gay with unfading flowers and the embroidered symbol of long life. She felt her body grow rigid with purpose when the sound of a footfall below held ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... immemorial times notable not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and the Gouliot channel, where snags are numerous, and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... neglected to call for assistance, the wedged-in horse did so all the more loudly. Supine and unable to free himself from his uncomfortable position, he repeatedly uttered that terrified scream which one never hears from this noble and reticent beast except in dire extremity. Whoever has heard such a cry will readily admit that it is far more terrible than any merely ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... have the thought that if I die Gerard will not even possess enough to live on, for he is incapable of effecting the miracle which I renew each day, in order to keep the house up on a decent footing.... Ah! I know him, so supine, so sickly, in spite of his proud bearing, unable to do anything, even conduct himself. And so what will become of him; will he not fall into ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... morning the party would be starting for the hunt—a hunt from which, he felt sure, they would never return. Then it was certain that a treacherous attack would be made upon the ship and the island, and yet here he lay supine, knowing all this, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... 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 any aid from man. These addresses have never wearied in impressing upon you that absolutely ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of a confirmed beach-comber she had rather a hard time of it. But for all that she was so plaintive and so supine, there was a certain quality of force within her, and she insisted upon some provision for the future. They were living in the interior at that time, not too far in, and Rivers had come down to Shanghai to negotiate some transactions for a certain ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the answer, notwithstanding that the doubt which he had expressed had given me a momentary shock. Once again, however, indifference overlaid that feeling, and I remained so entirely absent-minded and supine that, the very moment after I had been examined (a mere formality for me, as it turned out) I was making a dinner appointment with Baron Z. When called out with Ikonin, I smoothed the creases in my uniform, and walked up to the examiner's table ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 the right thing, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the 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!" ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... work so hard for the Loyalist lawyer is the fact that our folks are all for business and look upon politics as a nuisance, while the other side make politics the principal business of their lives. They are tremendously energetic in this, but wonderfully supine in everything else. In politics they spare neither time nor money, nor (for the matter of that) swearing. The lying that goes on in the Registry Court would astonish Englishmen. The Papist party themselves admit that they are awful liars, but ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... I, intent, adore; And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands In adoration, cry aloud and soar In spirit, high above the supine lands And the low caves of mortal things, and flee To the last fields of the universe untrod, Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea, And the contented soul ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sorrow, 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. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... sympathy that united him to them. To him the world 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. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... 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 dreadful ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... nobles were wearing away in civil strife and were seeing their castles shot to pieces by cannon, just as the clergy were wasting in supine indolence and were riddled by the mockery of humanists, there arose a new class, eager and able to take the helm of civilization, the moneyed men of city and of trade. Nouveaux riches as they were, they had an ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... veritable history, and his own [20] spiritual discernment, this man must have risen above worldly schemes, human theorems or hypotheses, to conclusions which reason too supine or misemployed cannot fasten upon. He spake inspired; he touched a tone of Truth that will continue to reverberate and renew [25] its emphasis throughout the entire centuries, into ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they seemed mirrored ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger. And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... uniformity in the public worship of God which it declared was so desirable; it prevented no scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreverent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of the Church ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... are represented as stunted trees lacerated by the beaks of foul harpies. The violent lie supine on a plain of dry and dense sand, upon which descend flakes of fire like "snow in the Alps, without a wind." Usurers—should we call them profiteers?—suffer also from a rain of fire and carry about their necks money bags stamped with armorial designs. Thieves, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!— Toppled the crags down after him. He lay Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots And buried him beneath it. His broad breast Heaved, like that other giant in his heart, And through the crater burst his fiery breath, But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay Breathing in agony ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... 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 was willing to take advantage ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... tavern, and incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke misgivings. He was taken to the cells, where he broke down, and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... shouldn't wonder! If you'll just keep everybody away from me awhile, yourself included, I will lie down," said the unnerved commander, and presently, alone and supine, softly asked himself with grim humor, "Which chunk ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... conspicuous in the labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers were less solicitous in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... like a wedge into negro-land. Physically they were of a higher type than the people of Calabar. They were taller and more muscular, their nose was higher, the mouth and chin were firmer, their eye was more fearless and piercing, and their general bearing contrasted strongly with that of the supine negro ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... we built and equipped vessels. Originally we had no force at all on these waters, while several vessels were opposed to us. It is a matter of wonder that the British and Canadian governments should have been so supine as to permit their existing force to go badly armed, and so unenterprising as to build but one additional ship, when they could easily have ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management of our home life and conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show certain high and fine qualities ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... with overmuch cheer, returned. But the extra twinkle in Rubinstein's gay eyes, and the joyous grin on the flushed face of Laroche, disappeared when, lighting a candle to guide them through the darkened antechamber, they entered the living-room to find Ivan supine on the divan, sunk into a heavy slumber, the mottled white and red of his stained cheeks betraying a secret never afterwards referred to by his kindly discoverers. For Ivan's persistent faith had come to naught. Michael Gregoriev still ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... make, mine to rejoice in thine. As, hungering for his mother's face and eyes, The child throws wide the door, back to the wall, I run to thee, the refuge from poor lies: Lean dogs behind me whimper, yelp, and whine; Life lieth ever sick, Death's writhing thrall, In slavery endless, hopeless, and supine. ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... investigators, is commerce. The carrying trade is the means whereby commerce is conducted, and this carrying trade, an industry once of vastly greater importance to our people than all shipbuilding has been, is now, or ever can be, is a business that Congress by its supine neglect has deliberately thrown into the hands of Europeans, and sacrificed American shipowners at the instigation of ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... the 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 disguises, and to assemble ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... hero. Possessed neither of self-command, obedience, nor fortitude, he was ever ready to dash at splendid actions, but was without resources in the day of peril. He was too vain of his wit and companionable talents to submit to the command of others, and too supine, dissipated, and rash, either to improve opportunities of action, or to defeat the views of the enemy. Such was the leader under whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript of all ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... good deal, to be sure. The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... The classrooms are mine no more; the campus is a departed glory; I shall no longer sing the 'Alma Mater' with you when the chimes ring at ten. The whole challenge of the city is missing. Nothing opposes me, there is no task for me to do. I must be supine, acquiescent, smiling, non-essential. I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for the speeding, finds that no race is on. But I've no business to be surprised. I knew it would be like this, didn't I? the one thing is to make and keep mummy happy. She needs me so much. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... did not give up doing what she might: she floated supine a long while, and then, when she had gathered a little strength, turned over again and struck out, still steering her by the stars. But she had scarce made three strokes ere her arms met something hard and rough; and at first in her forlornness she deemed ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... contented in almost any 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
... 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
... far asunder. Governments of all kinds are administered only by men; and great mistakes, tending to inflame these discontents, may concur. The indecision of those who happen to rule at the critical time, their supine neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention, may aggravate the public misfortunes. In such a state of things, the principles, now only sown, will shoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance. In such circumstances the minds of the people become sore and ulcerated. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... been left standing at Alexandria, after having suffered much from neglect, in the midst of its mean and filthy surroundings, was presented to the American Government by the Khedive of Egypt. But that Government acted in the same supine spirit in which our own had acted; and it was left to the ability of Captain Corringe as engineer, and to the liberality of the millionaire Vanderbilt, who paid the expenses incurred, amounting to L20,000, to bring the obelisk in the hold of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... started to rise; the sharp links of the chain cut his ankle as the great ball rolled away from him. With a cry of madness he flung himself on the harsh pine pallet, groaning his heart out in bitter anguish and maledictions. In time food was brought him, but he sat supine, staring ghastly at the dull-eyed orderly, silent, unquestioning. Dim banners of light fell across the corridor. They were broken at regular intervals by the passing figure of a sentry. The night wore on. There was a lull in the monotonous tramp. Steps came toward Jack's cell—stopped; ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... fell. Adj. horizontal, level, even, plane; flat &c 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent^; lying &c v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent^, prostrate, recubant^. Adv. horizontally &c adj.; on one's back, on all fours, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... maintain the station of independent communities, they will have frequent occasions to recall, and to exert their vigour. Even under popular governments, men sometimes drop the consideration of their political rights, and appear at times remiss or supine; but if they have reserved the power to defend themselves, the intermission of its exercise cannot be of long duration. Political rights, when neglected, are always invaded; and alarms from this ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... sea-catch is four or five times bigger than the female. Then they don't breed in harems and the male hair seal does not stay on shore. A fur seal swims with his fore flippers, a true seal with his hind flippers. A fur seal stands upright on his fore flippers, a hair seal lies supine. A fur seal has a neck, a hair seal has practically none. A fur seal naturally has fur, the hair seal has no undercoat whatever. A pup fur seal is black, a pup hair seal is white. Different? Obviously! Pity the old name 'sea bear' died out. It would have prevented confusion between ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... spite again; This knew I, who so long was left in night, That from such prayers had disappear'd my light; Till I, who sought her still, nor found, alas! Even her shade, nor of her feet a sign, Outwearied and supine, As one who midway sleeps, upon the grass Threw me, and there, accusing the brief ray, Of bitter tears I loosed the prison'd flood, To flow and fall, to them as seem'd it good. Ne'er vanish'd snow ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... regard to the future—probably net looking ahead to the condition of the country when the forests are exhausted, any more than he does to the condition when the mine is worked out. I do not blame these men nearly as much as I blame the supine public opinion, the indifferent public opinion, which permits their action to go unchecked. Of course to check the waste of timber means that there must be on the part of the public the acceptance of a temporary ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... manner that so often presides over the destinies of American banks, but he was a philosophical financier who understood perfectly the strength and weakness of the system under which he worked, and who, while he wondered at the supine idiocy of the people that would permit of the prevailing Dick Turpin methods of high finance, never took his eye from the horizon of public action, where daily he expected to see "the cloud no bigger than ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... clearly what was the matter with me, though having at the same time a vague impression that all was not quite right. Gradually I collected my ideas, and at length, when Browne repeated his question the third time, I had formed a pretty correct theory as to the cause of my present supine attitude, and the unpleasant sensations which ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... forces were steadily augmenting: Had the provinces followed his advice, instead of quarreling among themselves, they would have had a powerful army on foot to second the efforts of Anjou, and subsequently to save Tournay. They had remained supine and stolid, even while the cannonading against these beautiful cities was in their very ears. No man seemed to think himself interested in public affair, save when his own province or village was directly attacked. The general interests ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... 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
... against the forces which try to tear it out. And if these forces were not, there would have been no growth of the root. And so with the root of I'shvara, the life within us; were everything around us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. It is the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throw him on a couch with pillows on every side, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... the beach stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line. Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless, grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught between ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore |
