"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door of open diplomacy, of continuous and intelligent inquiry, of discussion free from propaganda. To shirk this responsibility on the alleged ground that economic imperialism and organized greed will surely bring the Conference to failure is supine and snobbish. It is one of the factors that may lead the United States to take the wrong course in the parting of ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... lazy ages, 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... explaining to his captors exactly what he thought of them, of their fathers and mothers, their kith and kin, and the supermen were heeding him not the least, when a thunderbolt seemed to smite them asunder, and Joe was glancing mild-eyed from one splendid, supine form ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... clear point of view before the people assembled at the hustings, which he had a right to do, of the prisoners at Derby, of his own conduct towards them, which was most courageous and humane, and of the conduct of the party at Westminster on the same occasion, which was assuredly supine to a frightful degree, to speak in no stronger language. In the midst of the most horrid yelling of the party, from whom he was continually obliged to appeal to the mob below, as Mr. Kinnaird, unused to his new nomenclature, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... labouring with her needle upon a dainty tea-cloth, pausing now and again to hold a whispered and one-sided conversation with Nobby, who lay at inelegant ease supine between us. Perched upon the arm of a deep armchair, my sister was subjecting the space devoted by five daily papers to the announcement of "Situations Required" to a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... beings trapped in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat their heads and hands on the ground, supine before the invaders. Each captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building. Some were hurled out again into the dark, unharmed; a few others were retained. A sorting of prisoners was plainly in progress. There was no question ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... of detail in connection with the Latin and Greek derivatives, the author wishes to call special attention: the Latin and the Greek roots are, as key-words, given in this book in the form of the present infinitive,—the present indicative and the supine being, of course, added. For this there is one sufficient justification, to wit: that the present infinitive is the form in which a Latin or a Greek root is always given in Webster and other received lexicographic ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... vaguely seen at first In the half light, grew presently distinct— Two gnomes or vampires seemed they, or dire imps Straight from the Pit, in guise fantastical Of hose and doublet: one stretched out full length Supine, and one in terror-stricken sort Half toppled forward on the bended knee, Grasping with vise-like grip the other's wrist, As who should say, Arouse thee, sleep no more! But said it not. If they were quick or dead, No sign they gave beyond this sad ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... well as I how much the people were dejected; that if their spirits should be quite sunk they could never be raised; that they must be supported; that I would influence the people; and that he should do what he could with the Parliament, who, in my opinion, ought not to be supine, but to be awakened at a juncture when the King's departure had perfectly drowned their senses, adding that a word in season would infallibly ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... on either side, Tippoo's open alliance with the French rendered it certain that hostilities must commence ere long; and Lord Mornington lost no time in proceeding to make preparations for war. As Lord Cornwallis had done, he found the greatest difficulty in inducing the supine government of Madras to take any steps. They protested that, were they to make any show of activity, Tippoo would descend the ghauts, and at once ravage the whole country; and they declared that they had no force whatever that could withstand ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... between the eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would assert your manliness, not lie there, supine, and—" ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... without moving a finger. Germany thought that the English were blind, and that for the sake of gain we should remain neutral and never lift a finger while she swept over Belgium to crush France; thought, too, that we should be supine while she violated treaties and committed the most fiendish deeds ever committed in the history of the world. But it is not my purpose to speak of these things; I have to tell the story of a commonplace lad ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... that men can be found so stupid as to neglect, than that neglecting they should be unconvinced of such an evident and momentous truth. And yet it is to be feared that too many of parts and leisure, who live in Christian countries, are, merely through a supine and dreadful negligence, sunk into Atheism. Since it is downright impossible that a soul pierced and enlightened with a thorough sense of the omnipresence, holiness, and justice of that Almighty Spirit ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... two away on his left lay another supine figure, elbows on the ground, and hands arched above his brow to shade his eyes, gazing out to sea. He, too, was a tall and powerful man, and when he moved there was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his body was ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... 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, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... regarded him, though it was not altogether as a comrade, and she felt there was, in one sense, some justice in his admission that he belonged to her. She had, in all probability, saved his life, and—what was, perhaps, as much—had roused him from supine acquiescence, and inspired him with a sustaining purpose. After the day when she had saved him from abject despair over his ruined dam, he had acquitted himself valiantly, and she had a quiet pride in him. Moreover, she was aware ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... dulled, it may be, for a last good-bye, Too comfortless for any one to soothe, A helpless charmless spectacle of ruth Through long last hours, so long while yet they fly. So long to those who hopeless in their fear Watch the slow breath and look for what they dread: While I supine, with ears that cease to hear, With eyes that glaze, with heart-pulse running down, (Alas! no saint rejoicing on her bed), May miss the goal at last, may miss ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... life. In a few seconds would come utter blankness again; her last chance would be gone for saving Roger and herself. Should she make a struggle for it and die fighting? Or was it better to continue her supine pretence and quietly allow the needle to reduce her once ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 lock-jaws ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... me a keen look and went to the door and winked. I was no longer supine under such invitations. I rose and followed him. "Look a' here, major," said he, when we were alone, coughed. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... enormous iron bolt. He 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 ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... leader on the announcement pointed out that the mission would be concerned with important frontier questions, still more with the revival of the prestige of England in regions where a supine government had allowed it to wither unaccountably. Other powers had been playing a filching and encroaching game at the expense of the British lion in these parts, and it was more than time that ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... apparently asleep or lifeless. The Little Ones paused a moment to look at her. She leaped up rampant against the cage. The horses reared and plunged; the elephants retreated a step. The next instant she fell supine, writhed in quivering spasms, and lay motionless. We ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... on at Loango. He elaborated and detailed to all interested, and to some whom it did not concern, many excuses for his delay in returning to his expedition, lying supine and attendant at Msala. It was by now an open secret on the coast that a great trading expedition was about to ascend the Ogowe river, with, it was whispered, a fortune awaiting it in the dim ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... with Banks. During the Romney expedition the latter had been posted at Frederick with 16,000 men, and a more enterprising commander would at least have endeavoured to thwart the Confederate movements. Banks, supine in his camps, made neither threat nor demonstration. Throughout the winter, Ashby's troopers had ridden unmolested along the bank of the Potomac. Lander alone had worried the Confederate outposts, driven in their advanced detachments, and drawn supplies from ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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
... to see him, in a general way, acting up to their general conception of him. That was what Messrs. Lloyd Osbourne and Austin Strong forgot in their otherwise clever play, The Exile. It is useless to prove, historically, that at a given moment he was passive, supine, unconscious, while people around him were eagerly plotting his escape and restoration. That may have been so; but it is not what an audience wants to see. It wants to see Napoleon Napoleonizing. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... success in her mission of atonement had given her the courage for the venture. She realized now that the will which had kept her buoyant through two arduous days and nights had suddenly forsaken her and left her supine, without hope or initiative. The actions of the man at the doorway below had frightened her. He had been so uncompromising in his ugliness. The shock of her awakening had been rudely unexpected, and had bewildered her with ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... from the way; 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 ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... new plan when the old is crushed out—that is the real patience! You call me a despot—you are unjust! It is only that you don't understand, I do not want to rule for the sake of power, but because people are so supine they will not learn to rule without being pushed into it. I do want to learn to shape circumstances, but not to control Littleton. I do wish to teach them what self-government really means, though. And see how I am placed. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Ned violently pushed forward the table so as to carry the tutor over backward in his chair. His head and back struck the floor heavily, and he lay supine beneath ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, he differs strikingly from his equals in age, by his passion for a vigorous intellectual gymnastic, such as the supine character of their minds renders distasteful to most young men, but in which he shows a fearlessness that at times makes me fancy that his ultimate destination may be the military life; for indeed the rigidly logical tendency of his mind always leads him out upon ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... 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, and yet ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... 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
... ever have the thought that if I die Gerard will not even possess enough to live on, for he is incapable of effecting the miracle which I renew each day, in order to keep the house up on a decent footing.... Ah! I know him, so supine, so sickly, in spite of his proud bearing, unable to do anything, even conduct himself. And so what will become of him; will he not fall ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... lizard who was investigating a folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree, moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... and N. Massa, was destined to become more conspicuous in the labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers were less solicitous in the personal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... invested the social compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which the vigorous development of individual life and character depends. Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity. Without it we resort to jejune amusement, and from amusement we are hurried on to dissipation, to the card table and dram ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... indignant with a people so supine as to endure such waste and oppression. Everything is taxed, and the masses of the people are ground down to the lowest stage compatible with mere animal existence. England and France have been compelled recently to take strong measures in order to prevent impending ruin. The Khedive not long ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... wonder: 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
... 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 gathered in their ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... fathers was a serious object to the rest of Europe—as represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of corruption. We convulsed a continent for our independence only to become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the helpless victims of scoundrels ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Nor entrails, flesh, nor solid bone remains. We see the death from which we cannot move, And humbled groan beneath the hand of Jove. His ample maw with human carnage fill'd, A milky deluge next the giant swill'd; Then stretch'd in length o'er half the cavern'd rock, Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock. To seize the time, and with a sudden wound To fix the slumbering monster to the ground, My soul impels me! and in act I stand To draw the sword; but wisdom held my hand. A deed so rash had finished all our fate, No mortal forces from ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... closed gates of Iffley lock, the water gushed down, eager for the sacrament of the sea. Among the supine in the field hard by, there was one whose breast bore a faint-gleaming star. And bending over him, looking down at him with much love and pity in her eyes, was the shade of Nellie O'Mora, that "fairest witch," to whose memory ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... ground of complaint was the supine inattention of the administration to a treason stalking through the land in open day. The present one, that they have crushed it before it was ripe for execution, so that no overt acts can be produced. This last may be true; though I believe ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to Ingres' Odalisque, supine, Defying prurient modesty turned she, Displaying in her beauty candidly Wonder of curve ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... furnace, out of his arms The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!— Toppled the crags down after him. He lay Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots And buried him beneath it. His broad breast Heaved, like that other giant in his heart, And through the crater burst his fiery breath, But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay Breathing in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... safe in my own keeping. Dearest," in a low, vibrating tone full of tenderness, "if I ever grow supine or forgetful in my great happiness, and the memory of these long years of misery and unrest fade away, you must bring me ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... life, and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love would fain give us wings wherewith to fly; but the wretched body lies prone—supine; it cannot ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... August, we took a very fertile queen, and holding her gently by the wings in a supine position, the whole belly was exposed. She seized the extremity with her second pair of legs, and curved it as much as possible. This seeming an unfavourable position for laying, we forced her to stretch it out. The queen, oppressed with the necessity ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... Every hour that passes seems to give the people fresh spirit. The meetings at the palais are more numerous and more violent. Nothing less than a revolution in the government and a free constitution is talked of by all ranks of people; but the supine stupidity of the court is without example. The king's offers of negotiation have been rejected. He changes his mind ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... 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 a snow of pink rose-petals lay scattered; in the paths there were hundreds of little ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Volante, but one fashioned out of her own characteristics; supine, but shapely; heavy, but handsome; slow, but specious. Susan, with hair escaping in roguish curls beneath her little cap; her taper waist encompassed by a page's tunic; the trim contour of her figure frankly revealed by her vestment, was truly ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the bodies down among the tangled bush, and returned to Nelson rejoicing exceedingly over the simple and easy means by which they had possessed themselves of several hundred pounds. Of course they calculated on the usual supine indifference to other people's affairs, which prevails in busy gold-seeking communities; but in this instance the public seemed to be suddenly seized by a violent and inconvenient curiosity to find out what had become of the four men ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... inflames it to worse 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 before the sun away, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place and ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... life, a spirit, which, even though misdirected, must never be unreservedly deplored. To his mind it were better to fight a battle, however wrong be the prompting instinct, than to run for the shelter of supine ineptitude. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, benignant gaze. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... familiar association. It might have been a place into which he had wandered by accident, where he didn't belong, wouldn't stay. It was inconceivable that, above him, his wife and children were sleeping; the ceiling, the supine heavy bodies, seemed to sag until they rested on his shoulders; he was, like Atlas, holding the whole house up. It was with acute difficulty that he shook off the illusion, the weight. From outside came the thin howling of a dog, and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... life, and how, when Mr. Pride condescended, for a few moments, to decline from Lady Lawless upon herself, she was even pleasant to him, making him talk about Mr. Vandewaters, and relishing the enthusiastic loyalty of the supine young man. She, like Lady Lawless, had learned to see behind the firm bold exterior, not merely a notable energy, force, self-reliance, and masterfulness, but a native courtesy, simplicity, and refinement which surprised her. Of all the men she knew not a half-dozen had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their work and to make frantic lunges at each other at the vital spot. This was the time of breathless and instinctive pressing forward from the back rows. Somebody cried out, "Cebu!" or "Down in front!" and then again, "Patai!" which means "dead." One of the warriors at this cue flopped supine on the stage, and the suppressed excitement broke. The victor, not content with mere manslaughter, plied his sword so energetically as quickly to reduce his victim to a state of hash. At this point his Satanic majesty, the curtain manager, saw fit to intervene, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... disputing the sixth Henry's sway had he held the sceptre firmly and played the part of king, to any purpose. But his health and temperament were alike feeble: he inherited the fatal malady of his grandsire of France, and was subject to fits of mental illness which made him utterly helpless and supine. His strong-minded queen was detested by the nobles and unpopular with the mass of the people, whilst the ambition of the powerful barons and peers had made civil strife ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... with sandal's precious scent And gay with golden ornament. His fiery eyes in slumber closed, In glittering robes the king reposed Like Mandar's mighty hill asleep With flowery trees that clothe his steep. Near and more near the Vanar The monarch of the fiends to view, And saw the giant stretched supine Fatigued with play and drunk with wine. While, shaking all the monstrous frame, His breath like hissing serpents' came. With gold and glittering bracelets gay His mighty arms extended lay Huge as the towering shafts that bear The flag of Indra high in air. Scars by Airavat's tusk ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... to be examined, and determinations which comprised no perplexing contrarieties of interest, or multiplicity of circumstances, they were equally liable with ourselves to be supine and negligent, to sink into security, or be surprised by haste. That the clause now before us was enacted by them, must be ascribed merely to the hurry of the session in which it was brought before them; a time in which so many inquiries of the highest importance were to be made, and great diversity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... no feet. It can not go from place to place, but must remain supine wherever it is put. It is a poor "shut-in." Who will pity its helplessness and give it feet, that it ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Straightway he uncased his well-polished bow, made from [the horn of] a wild, bounding goat, which he indeed surprising once on a time in ambush, as it was coming out of a cavern, struck, aiming at it beneath the breast; but it fell supine on the rock. Its horns had grown sixteen palms from its head; and these the horn-polishing artist, having duly prepared, fitted together, and when he had well smoothed all, added a golden tip. And having bent the bow, he aptly lowered ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... way of the supine, she had put it off and put it off until her negligence had culminated in the frightful scene of this same very early morning, when Leonie, waking in the day nursery to find her kitten dead, had screamed and shrieked hour ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Rec'ord record' Com'pound compound' | Ex'port export' | Ref'use refuse' Com'press compress' | Ex'tract extract' | Re'tail retail' Con'cert concert' | Fer'ment ferment' | Sub'ject subject' Con'crete concrete' | Fore'cast forecast' | Su'pine supine' Con'duct conduct' | Fore'taste foretaste'| Sur'vey survey' Con fine confine' | Fre'quent frequent' | Tor'ment torment' Con'flict conflict' | Im'part impart' | Tra'ject traject' Con'serve conserve' ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... during the tumult I caught sight of them, 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 soon as they had finished their barbarous feast they departed, leaving him ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sill, the importunate robin lay supine, his little heart beating no more behind the shabby finery of his breast, but his glazing eyes half-open as though even in death he were still questioning. Above him and all around him brooded the genius of ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very voice and ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Sale, but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... she crept back and sat down on the side of the bed, so close to the unconscious sleeper that her shadow fell across him. Slowly, as if she had been touching a serpent, her hand crept stealthily toward that which lay in the supine carelessness of sleep on the white counterpane. She touched it at last, but started back. A blood-red stain from the curtain fell across it as her bending form let the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... not without fighting for Its victory. At least I would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way—where? Where was that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... perhaps, as strong an indignation as those who did, but they were entangled in politics with the hierarchs, or had business connections that would be destroyed. These men, in course of time, became the most dangerous opponents of our progress. (The average Mormon is obedient and supine enough in the presence of his Prophets, but he is a man of personal independence compared with the sycophantic Gentile who accepts political or commercial favors from the Church chiefs and yet continues to deny the existence of the very power to which he bends the knee.) Of ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... comrade crawling near Observed his most supine behaviour, And crept towards him, 'Hey! what cheer? Buck up,' said he, 'I've ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 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
... supposed this ka to be identical in origin with k, the dative-accusative case-sign of the Hindi, and concluded that the Dravidian infinitive was the accusative of a verbal noun. It is true that the Sanskrit infinitive and Latin supine in tum is correctly regarded as an accusative, and that our English infinitive to do, is the dative of a verbal noun; it is also true that the Dravidian infinitive is a verbal noun in origin, and never altogether loses that character; nevertheless, the supposition that the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Never supine lie they, the steeds of our folk, to the sting, Praying for deadness of nerve, their wounds the shame of the sun; They strive, but they strive for this: the fullness of passionate nerve; They pant, but they pant for this: the ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... horseman, throwing up his hands, grasped the limb which projected over, while his horse passed from under him. He held on for a moment to the branch, while a groan of deepest agony broke from his lips, when he fell supine to the ground. At that moment, the moon shone forth unimpeded and unobscured by a single cloud. The person of the wounded man was fully apparent to the sight. He struggled, but spoke not; and the hand of Rivers was again uplifted, when ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... curability of the disease and of its non-heredity are extremely important and supremely suggestive. Tuberculosis takes only the quitters and the supine. Anyone who will fight bravely against the disease can always resist its ravages for many years, if not to the extent of living out ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... not wish to conceal it from the children,' he answered, with his scrupulous candour. He was supine when thought more ill of than he deserved, but he always defended ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into this improper manner of acting, by an erroneous notion that the grant of a license was not an act of favour, but of justice; a mistake into which he could not have fallen, but from a supine inattention to the design of the statute, which was only to bring poets into subjection and dependence, not to encourage good writers, but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... supine and careless laid, Play on your pipe beneath this beechen shade; While wretched we about the world must roam, And leave our pleasing fields and native home, Here at your ease you sing your amorous flame, And the wood ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of the wine (Strong the red Caecuban bowl!) From its slumber, deep, supine, Panted ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which—" ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... not of a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer these preparations to advance without interruption. She ordered Drake to sail immediately for the coast of Spain, and put in practice against her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... artisan classes in many of the villages so that when the clash came only such Bolshevik forces as were definitely put to the task of disarming them were actually hostile. The easy-going and friendly Russian peasant, supine under the violent political changes, is a traditional friend and an unwilling enemy. This characteristic, which the Allied Governments have harshly criticized, may be counted upon to work to the advantage of the Allies under any fair scheme for economic aid and peaceful penetration ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... the royal psalmist for the general term of mortality; when the infirmities of age would no longer permit him the free exercise of those faculties, which he had hitherto so advantageously employed in the service of the community, far from sinking into a supine indolence, or assuming a supercilious disregard of the world, he still continued his application, even in the decline of life, to the improvement of physic, ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... something lying obviously before his eyes. You have time for this; events will not take you unawares; the records of the negotiations conducted with you will remain before your eyes. Lay them not from your hands until you are in unity with your selves. Neither let, oh, let not yourselves be made supine by reliance upon others or upon anything whatsoever that lies outside yourselves, nor yet through the unintelligent belief of our time that the epochs of history are made by the agency of some unknown power without any aid from man. These ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... 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 Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in earnest. All his nature was on edge in that crisis, and this supine surrender of an able-bodied man whose two hands were needed so desperately was peculiarly exasperating. He leaped out of the boat, ran into the galley, and gave the cook an invigorating beating up with the flat of his hands. The cook clutched his cat ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... acceptance as a squire of dames. For the first time in his life he felt the grinding lack of money. Being a man of resource, he set about swiftly supplying this need. In the dull days of inaction, when the armies lay supine and only occasionally the monotony was broken by the engagement of distant skirmishers or a picket line was driven in on the main body, he had learned to play a game at cards much in vogue at that period, though for ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... demand, I ween, That last perfection Phidian chisels gave. Dimly the soft and musing Form is seen In the hush'd, shelly, shadowy, lone concave.— As sleeps her pure, tho' darkling fountain there, I love to recollect her, stretch'd supine Upon its mossy brink, with pendent hair, As dripping o'er the flood.—Ah! well combine Such gentle graces, modest, pensive, fair, To aid the magic ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... content to be silent; lying on the flat of his back, at the bottom of the punt, staring at the sky, and declining the overtures, and parrying the attacks, of Vick, who, having taken advantage of his supine position to mount upon his chest, now stands there wagging her tail, and wasting herself in efforts, mostly futile, but occasionally successful, to lick the end of his nose. A period of quiet elapses, during which, for the sake of appearances, I turn ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined necessarily by contrasts. A quiet spirit sees its own expression, a harmony of self with external form, in the even lines and flat spaces of some Dutch etching. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... but beyond the cellar the galleries ramified by the score, and we walked so rapidly and chose between them with such apparent lack of method that I lost count. My one consolation was the memory of a burly figure in scarlet supine beneath a wine-tun. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... miles beyond this focalpoint, its convict settlement long abandoned, was Easter Island, Rapa Nui, home of the great monoliths whose origin had ever been a puzzle. Erect or supine, these colossal statues were strewn all over the island. Anthropologists and archaeologists still came to give them cursory inspection and it was on such a visit an unmistakable clump of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... few lessons she did with her father, there 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
... 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 it, prayed God ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... with them, his voice sounding shrilly from the 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 to day ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her performance with an interest that caused him some cynical amusement. But in a moment he had surrendered to her once more as a creature of inexhaustible surprise. The musicians, watching her, began to play more slowly. Concha, her arms still supine, her head lifted, her eyes half veiled, began to dance in a stately and measured fashion that seemed to powder her hair and dissolve the partitions before an endless vista of rooms. Rezanov had a sudden vision ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... hand to interfere with them. It has been explained why, though it should be added that in the way of firearms there was only the single worthless Springfield rifle in the house. It was mother and daughter who held the three lads supine. Had they been left free they would have acted immediately on first learning of ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... lay supine. There was no news from Otsego. One man fell dead in camp of heart disease. The cattle-guard was fired on. On the 15th a corporal and four privates, while herding our cattle, were fired on, the Senecas killing and scalping one and wounding another. On the 16th came a runner from Clinton ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... hard on Bagshot Heath to try Unclos'd to keep the weary eye; But ah! Oblivion's nod to get In rattling coach is harder yet. Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 5 Who lovest with limbs supine to lie; Soother sweet of toil and care Listen, listen to my prayer; And to thy votary dispense Thy soporific influence! 10 What tho' around thy drowsy head The seven-fold cap of night be spread, Yet lift that drowsy head awhile And yawn propitiously a smile; In drizzly rains poppean dews 15 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... sea like that cast by a waning fire of embers upon a midnight hearth; while along the entire east the invisible sun sent pallid intimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves languid; the stars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed supine with the long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded expectation of the sun. This was the critical hour to catch Rodondo in his perfect mood. The twilight was just enough to reveal every striking point, without tearing away the dim investiture ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... hit the ground with an audible thump. The first guy leaped forward just as the victim of his attack sat up, rubbed his belly ruefully, and drew a hunting knife with his other hand. The first guy took a running dive at the supine one, who swung the hunting knife in a vicious arc. The point hit the chest of the man coming through the air but it stopped as though the man had been wearing plate armor. You could dig the return shock that stunned the knife-wielder's arm when the point turned. All it did was rip the ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... skies, like brass in fusion, glow, Nor the earth, with heat, as hard as iron grow, Let not our pastures and our meads of hay, For our supine ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... clutched her throat, a guttural noise. Then she would throw herself on her back and thrust her arms and legs about to the no small danger of those around her. Then becoming comparatively quiet and supine she would quiver all over while her eyelids trembled with great rapidity. This state perhaps would be followed by general convulsive movements in which she would put herself into the most grotesque postures and make the most unlovely grimaces. At last the fit ended, and exhausted ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... which could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led. Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system, which her own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried; and that Susan was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 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
... God, 'mid leaf and bud, Passed on with a weary air, Till lo! he came to a pool of mud, And some hogs were rolling there. Then in he plunged with gleeful cries, And down he lay supine; For they had no mud in paradise, And they ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... ingredient of a holiday such as Cosmo had been accustomed to make of his birthday: constantly active as his mind was, perhaps in part because of that activity, he was ready to fall asleep any moment when warm and supine. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Archbishop of Canterbury (subsequently known as Saint Edmund of Pontigny) aspired to become a second Becket, and appealed to the Pope to do away with state patronage, which he of course considered ought to be vested in the Primate. King Henry, supine as he was, was roused at last, and sent a message to Rome to the effect that the appeal of the Archbishop was contrary to his royal dignity. The Pope declined to entertain the appeal: and the King, we are told (by a monk) "became more tyrannical than ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... manner and contemptuous indifference to Clarence's surroundings which should wound his vanity ended in his lolling back at full length in the chair with his eyes on the ceiling. But, remembering suddenly that he was really the bearer of a message to Clarence, it struck him that his supine position was, from a theatrical view-point, infelicitous. In his experiences of the stage he had never delivered a message in that way. He rose awkwardly ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... he rather chose than lie abroad. 'Twas in a farther yard without a door; But, for his ease, well litter'd was the floor. His fellow, who the narrow bed had kept, Was weary, and without a rocker slept: Supine he snored; but in the dead of night He dream'd his friend appear'd before his sight, 230 Who, with a ghastly look and doleful cry, Said, Help me, brother, or this night I die: Arise, and help, before all help be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... manner in which Halfman handled the gentry, was as heedless as his inferiors, and was therefore taken too much by surprise to offer the slightest resistance when Evander, suddenly springing from between his guards, snatched from his supine arms the captured sword that had been intrusted to his keeping. Before he or any other of the astonished spectators could take any action Evander had leaped lightly into the alcove of the window, and, dragging by main force the heavy table in front of him, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... prove a miserable prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day—and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane. The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked it.(726) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... supine security be not catching, and whether numbers running the same risk, as they lessen the caution, may ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... failure. It did not procure that 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 service noticeable until after the Revolution, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... much convulsed. Dr. Heberden recommends opiates, of which I have such horrour, that I do not think of them but in extremis. I was, however, driven to them, last night, for refuge, and, having taken the usual quantity, durst not go to bed, for fear of that uneasiness to which a supine posture exposes me, but rested all night in a chair, with much relief, and have been, to-day, more warm, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... fifth interest in it and that's all you deserve. I'll show you whether or not you can sacrifice my career, you ——! ——! ——! you!" And with which tirade the beautiful Violet stormed up and down the veranda of Highcliff in front of the supine figure of her manager, which was clad in immaculate white flannel, suede and linen, with a blue silk scarf knotted at the base of his lean, bronze throat, which matched the blue of his keen eyes under their gray-sprinkled brows, as the only ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have consented to the present form of government. Now, this is assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who think and act, to say nothing of the thousands of intelligent men there who believe in the same doctrine. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of course, copied her fashionable standards from older lands. While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities. The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their "imported amusements" as having a specific claim on fashionable favour. So it came about that the fascinating innovation ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... heard her distressed voice as if on the verge of resentful tears calling to the dog, the unsympathetic dog. Perhaps she had not the power of evoking sympathy, that personal gift of direct appeal to the feelings. I said to Fyne, mistrusting the supine attitude of the dog: ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... no hilarious splashing nor swimming, but the silent immersion was most refreshing. It was while supine on my back with only my nose and toes above water that I received my first alarm for that morning. My position being recumbent I was staring up at the sky and in the direction of up-stream, and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... constantly with me, and I now ask myself whether the poodle be not a man, and men poodles. I am not led to this thought by the animal propensities which we have in common, such as eating, drinking, &c., but by those of a more refined character. He too is cheerful and dejected, excited and supine, playful and morose, gentle and bold, caressing and snappish, patient and refractory; just like us men in all things, even in his dreams! This likeness is not to me at all discouraging; on the contrary, it suggests a pleasing hope that this flesh and blood which plagues and fetters ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... "Dialectics," so flexible is symbolism. "Fidelity" has a dog with a fine trustful head. To my weary eye the finest of the groups is that of Mars and Neptune, with flying cherubs, which is superbly drawn and coloured. Nothing but a chaise-longue on which to lie supine, at ease, can make the study of these wonderful ceilings anything but a distressing source ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... grown supine, Chained to their task in sightless mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free, In thunderous throes of life divine Leaps the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... other over their camp-fires upon the probable prospects of the next day. It was a question with them whether I should continue the march. Mostly all were of opinion that, since the master was sick, there would be no march. A superlative obstinacy, however, impelled me on, merely to spite their supine souls; but when I sallied out of my tent to call them to get ready, I found that at least twenty were missing; and Livingstone's letter-carrier, "Kaif-Halek"—or, How-do-ye-do?—had not arrived with Dr. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... mother's work has been a matter of course ever since they can remember. 'I did not burst on them gloriously. I am glad to say that they think I am a much better mother than I am a writer, and that the family attitude in general has been attentive but not supine. They regard it exactly as a banker's family ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... enough, and his wife hung over him supplying his needs; but he was thinking more of the perils of his fellow citizens, and of the supine conduct of the Mayor, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hot that Mollie could not be bothered to move. She was half-sitting, half-lying on a bed of bracken, and around her she could see the supine forms of four other children—Prudence and Grizzel, Dick and Jerry—all lying in various attitudes of exhaustion and apparently all asleep. Mollie was too lazy to turn her head, but she could see that ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... but the absurdity of the use of alcoholic stimulants is not less puerile. The time will come when it will be told with pitying wonder how men of this day stupidly ignore the ghastly results of the liquor traffic to themselves and others, and with supine meanness bow their necks to the yoke which it fastens upon them. They will believe the most barefaced lies, assent to the shallowest sophisms of the liquor-dealers, and turn a deaf ear to the most evident dictates of common sense, justice, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... their country, the colonists of Jamaica ran the most imminent hazard of being extirpated by a domestic enemy. The negro slaves of that island, grown insolent in the contemplation of their own formidable numbers, or by observing the supine indolence of their masters, or stimulated by that appetite for liberty so natural to the mind of man, began, in the course of this year, to entertain thoughts of shaking off the yoke by means of a general insurrection. Assemblies were held and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and Foster began to understand certain traits of his comrade's that had puzzled him. Lawrence, although he had keener intelligence, was not quite so fine a type as his father, and in consequence stood rough wear better. But he too, in spite of his physical courage, now and then showed a supine carelessness and tried to avoid, instead of boldly grappling with, things ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... misery, but can only learn that it always has been so. I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich without generosity. The decay of manufactures since the last century must have reduced many families to indigence. These have been able to subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the evil, instead of endeavouring to ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... sense or pence, in merits chair, They dose and dream supine 0; But how the devil they came there, That neither you ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... he will be my master," said Burke, "and I shall believe him, however untrue and improbable his story may be;" and if, whilst the Anti-corn-law League can display such perseverance, determination, and system, its opponents obstinately remain supine and silent, can any one wonder if such progress be not made by the League, in their demoralizing and revolutionary enterprize, that it will soon be too late ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of a week, more or less, Tembarom's feeling for her would have been exactly that of his two hall-bedroom neighbors, but that his nature, though a practical one, was not inclined to any supine degree of resignation. He was a sensible youth, however, and gave no trouble. Even Joseph Hutchinson, who of course resented furiously any "nonsense" of which his daughter and possession was the object, became sufficiently mollified ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... kingdom without further hesitation. Religion was still mingled in all political disputes. The high churchmen complained that impiety and heresy daily gained ground from the connivance, or at least the supine negligence, of the whig prelates. The lower house of convocation had, before the queen's death, declared that a book published by Dr. Samuel Clarke, under the title of "The Scripture Doctrine of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of most influence in Paris in those days of the Second Empire. The Franco-German war interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no interest in anything. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of literature ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... contributed more to the rapid advance of the province than the institution of the Agricultural Society, and from it we are already reaping the most beneficial results. It has stirred up a spirit of emulation in a large class of people, who were very supine in their method of cultivating their lands; who, instead of improving them, and making them produce not only the largest quantity of grain, but that of the best quality, were quite contented if they reaped enough from their slovenly farming ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Viscount had shown both loyalty and spirit, when these were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the King; and the praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been leading; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the King's; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... civil," Male Dicis Maledicis, p. 9. I neither argued the one nor the other; they are both, Sir, of your own forging. But this is not your first allegation of this kind. I sometime admire what oscitancy or supine negligence (to judge it no worse) this can be, to fancy to yourself that I have said what you would, and then to bring forth your own apprehensions for ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... 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
... son Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her. Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in a little while he lay supine and unconscious. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were at length roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the Emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... spirit to-day. You are citizens of no mean city, members of no common state, heirs of no supine empire. You will many of you exercise influence over your fellow men: some will study and interpret our laws, and so become a power; others will again be in a position to solace and exalt, as destined to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Hungarian Majesty, and her Bartensteins and Ministries, heard enough of those Prussian rumors, interior Military activities, and enigmatic movements; but they seem strangely supine on the matter; indeed, they seem strangely supine on such matters; and lean at ease upon the Sea-Powers, upon Pragmatic Sanction and other Laws of Nature. But at length even they become painfully interested as to Friedrich's intentions; and despatch an Envoy to sift him a little: an expert Marchese ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
