"Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were easy without being tight, or rather they looked tight without being so; there wasn't a bag, a wrinkle, or a crease that there shouldn't be, and strong and storm-defying as they seemed, they were yet as soft and as supple as a lady's glove. They looked more as if his legs had been blown in them than as if such irreproachable garments were the work of man's hands. Many were the nudges, and many the 'look at this chap's trousers,' that were given by ambitious men emulous of his appearance as he passed along, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... thought so well of those doings before," he was saying. "If they've kept you as supple as a willow, in spite of your weight, I should say you'd better keep ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... my arm encircled those soft yielding shoulders; the warm agitated bosom was touching mine; my hands held, and felt within it, the smooth muscles of the white arm—a vision of the whole indefinably supple form swam giddily before me in a suffocating proximity, till I pressed my hands on my eyes, and the thought came involuntarily,—Is ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... to Manuel with pitiable whispered words. They kissed. For an instant Manuel stood motionless. He queerly moved his mouth, as though it were stiff and he were trying to make it more supple. Thereafter Manuel, very sick and desperate looking, did what was requisite. So Niafer went away with Grandfather ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... by describing the calm and simple delights of a country life in the springtime, and, slipping his arm round her supple waist, asked her softly: ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... deftly thrusting the pins through her hat before the oval mirror which had been one of her acquisitions. As she drew on the gloves she turned her supple body to make sure of the satisfactory hang of her skirt. Her good spirits had returned, and she hummed softly as Phil surveyed her. She seemed less indifferent to-day to Phil's admiration. Phil's spirits rose slowly; it was difficult ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... fond of Pompeius Saturninus—our Saturninus, as I may call him—and to admire his intellectual powers, even before I knew him; they were so varied, so supple, so many-sided; but now I am devoted to him body and soul. I have heard him pleading in the Courts, always keen and empassioned, and his addresses are as polished and graceful when they are impromptu as when they have been carefully ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... filial respect. The day of a child's birth was regarded as determining its destiny. The child was brought up on the simplest food, and furnished with scanty clothing, in order that its body might be strong and supple. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... to pay off your creditors. Then, as for your wife, once enlightened as to her character you can rule her. When you loved her you had no power to manage her; not loving her, you will have an unconquerable force. I will undertake, myself, to make your mother-in-law as supple as a glove; for you must recover the use of the hundred and fifty thousand francs a year those two women ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... his head pressed against the high mantelpiece, and his fingers stretching and closing mechanically to supple the stiffened joints. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... curious pin; A love-knot in the greater end there was. His head was bald, and shone as any glass, And eke his face, as it had been anoint; He was a lord full fat and in good point; His eyen steep,* and rolling in his head, *deep-set That steamed as a furnace of a lead. His bootes supple, his horse in great estate, Now certainly he was a fair prelate; He was not pale as a forpined* ghost; *wasted A fat swan lov'd he best of any roast. His palfrey was as brown as is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the low mullioned windows. Perhaps on the day following market day he sometimes lay an hour longer; but his stern rule of life spared none, and himself least of all. If at sixty his powerful limbs were less supple than of old, if his Jove-like head with its flowing beard had become tipped with the hoar frost, he had relaxed nothing of his rigid self-government on that account. When the clock in the kitchen had struck ten at night, Angus ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious protest against the dictator. And yet, on the whole, perhaps, the incident played into Lincoln's hands. At least, it silenced the Jacobins. With the Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine of the supple politicians, how certain that their only course for the moment was to lie low. A time came, to be sure, when they thought it safe to resume their own creed; but ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... when Squeers, having refreshed himself with his dinner and further strengthened himself by an extra libation or so, made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new—in short, purchased that ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... tags that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always carried on some portion of her wiry frame. She was the toughest, most supple, and most versatile creature I ever saw, of any color or clime. The baby was disposed decorously across her knees on this occasion, and she was one of the five auditors who had brought along their own crickets or chairs. She ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... of protestations of delight at beholding his intercessor and ransomer. Drusus could hardly recognize in the supple-limbed, fair-complexioned, vivacious lad before him, the wretched creature whom Alfidius had driven through the streets. Agias's message was short, but quite long enough to make Drusus's pale cheeks flush with new life, his sunken eyes rekindle, and his languor vanish into energy. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... as she sat coatless, torn from David's sheltering embrace. They had given her elfish reminders of how soft, how pink, how perfumed was that woman's tender flesh. Then as she looked the blue eyes glazed with agony, the supple body grew rigid with cold, and down, down, through miles of water, sank the man they ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness, branched veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshortened, rolled and shrunk up into a squat thickness, languid, and borne up from between his thighs, by its globular appendage, that wondrous treasure bag of nature's sweets, which revelled round, and pursed up in the only wrinkles ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... other needle? No, you need not look for it; I must find it myself. I have to be careful where I leave my things, so that I can put my hand on them the moment I want them. Oh, here it is," picking it up with his long supple fingers, and rolling it securely up ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... scented flower, The young tree's supple bough, And leave my human feelings In their ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... amazingly, being keenly alive not merely to the crowd's admiration, but to the rare charm of that which he was trying to paint. Some six paces before him there leant against one of the granite pillars a woman of exceeding beauty: her figure tall, supple, full of strength, in every line, her face brown and broad-browed, with a heavy chin that gave character to the rest of her features, and large eyes, black as sloes, that regarded the artist and the group at his elbow with a sombre disdain. The ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life had many other consequences. It led to an increased freedom of movement of the thigh on the hip joint, to muscular arrangements for balancing the body on the leg, to making the backbone a supple yet stable curved pillar, to a strongly developed collar-bone which is only found well-formed when the fore-limb is used for more than support, and to a power of "opposing" the thumb and the big toe to ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... type of brunette with startling black hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She had left her ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in Greece and antique Asia. The great toe, a little apart like the thumb of a bird, the other toes, slightly long, and all ranged in charming symmetry, the nails well shaped and brilliant as agates, the ankles well rounded and supple, the heel slightly tinted with a rosy hue—nothing was wanting to the perfection of the little member. The leg attached to this foot, and which gleamed like polished marble under the lamp-light, was irreproachable in the purity of its outlines and ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... Mephistophelian expression when he smiles, and his whole appearance and manner have a sort of Jesuitical elegance and ease. His hands are very narrow, with long and slender fingers that look as if they had twice as many joints as other people's. They are so flexible and supple that it makes you nervous to look at them. Anything like the polish of his manner I never saw. When he got up to leave the box, for instance, after his adieux to the ladies, he laid his hand on his heart and made his final bow—not with affectation, or in mere ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... On no account may the women sit at the loom till their legs grow cramped, otherwise their husbands will likewise be stiff in their joints and unable to rise up quickly or to run away from the foe. So in order to keep their husbands' joints supple the women often vary their labours at the loom by walking up and down the verandah. Further, they may not cover up their faces, or the men would not to be able to find their way through the tall grass or ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... standing at a window that commanded the terrace. The evening was beautiful, and the walk crouded. There were assembled persons of all sexes and of different ranks. All appeared gaiety and splendour. The supple courtier and the haughty country gentleman seemed equally at their ease. There was thoughtless youth and narrative old age. The company passed along, and object succeeded ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Her supple waist, her arm from Venus came, Hebe her nose and lip confess, And, looking in her eyes, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... by, and he did not move from his position in the ship. But the ship had crossed the great gulf, and was speeding through the galaxy now. He was near the end. At a reckless speed, he sat motionless before the controls, save for slight movements of supple fingers that directed the ship at a mad pace about some gigantic sun and its family of planets. Suns flashed, grew to discs, and were left behind in the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... from the darkness into the circle of light, and with swift, supple steps gained the camp-fire before any of the travelers had time to move. They were Indians, and the brandishing of their tomahawks ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... councils the moderate Republicans proved triumphant. With a supple dexterity, Thiers knew how to steer between the Democratic-Republican party and the Monarchists. When Gambetta endeavored to establish a "league of Republican towns," the attempt was forbidden as illegal; and when the decree of banishment against the Bourbon ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... work. But, for my own part, I like the rapier. It's a gentleman's weapon. You heard of my bout with the Chevalier d'Eon? I had him at my sword-point for forty minutes at Angelo's. He was one of the best blades in Europe, but I was a little too supple in the wrist for him. 'I thank God there was a button on your Highness's foil,' said he, when we had finished our breather. By the way, you're a bit of a duellist yourself, Tregellis. How ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... these pages, and his character has been elaborately pourtrayed. Were it possible to conceive of an Italian or Spaniard of illustrious birth in the sixteenth century, educated in the school of Machiavelli, at the feet of Philip, as anything but the supple slave of a master and the blind instrument of a Church, one might for a moment regret that so many gifts of genius and valour had been thrown away or at least lost to mankind. Could the light of truth ever ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cried exultantly. He reached out his fingers—and then something shot from the car, something lithe and supple, something that gripped the little man by the throat and hurled him back ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... twigs of birch, Of birch so supple and keen, And daintily ties them up into rods The finest ...
— King Winter • Anonymous
... in the city, within closed doors, I saw a young slave-girl dancing. She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple; she danced like a reed in the wind; but her eyes were weary as death, and her white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled, and the men laughed at her. She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that she would fain ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... knowledge of their splendor. The young widow across the table was also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the saddle, then dropped him a courtesy as good as he had sent, and answered, "Fair sir, I ride 'cross country on my own business." And she gathered up the bridle in her supple little hand. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... too, She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill, The pliant series of her slippery song; ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... time I had ever been in a room with her alone. The embarrassing sense of her position had heightened her color and brightened her eyes. She stood, leaning one hand on the table, confused and irresolute, her firm and supple figure falling into an attitude of unsought grace which it was literally a luxury to look at. I said nothing; my eyes confessed my admiration; the writing materials lay untouched before me on the table. How long the silence might have lasted I cannot say. She ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... raven hair, Weave the supple tress, Deck the maiden fair In her loveliness; Paint the pretty face, Dye the coral lip, Emphasise the grace Of her ladyship! Art and nature, thus allied, Go to make a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... and ready to submit, The supple Gaul was born a parasite: Still to his interest true where'er he goes, Wit, bravery, worth, his lavish tongue bestows; In every face a thousand graces shine, From every tongue flows harmony divine. These arts in vain our rugged natives try, Strain out, with faltering ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... "Supple as a willow twig, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I have made whistles out of willows before now, and hallo! ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... his hole. He put up his feelers to find those horrible horns, but they were gone, and his devil form fell off him like a mask. He had wings, jewelled wings! on his back now. Out he came to fluff the newfound wings awhile, and when they were spread and supple he flew into the joyful night, one of the noblest of all the things that fly, gorgeous in gold and velvet, body and wings; filled with the joy of life and flight, he went careering through the soft splendour of the coming night. ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... steps holding herself stiffly erect, head uptilted—a striking figure, graceful, supple, almost commanding. In fact, so attractive was the picture she made as she stood a moment on the sidewalk, that a passing policeman, seized by a gallant impulse, opened the door of the waiting taxicab and held it ajar while ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... save them when they were down. Amidst so many ranters and scribblers whose logic is mere words and whose rage is blind, who grind out phrases like a hand-organ, or are wound up for murder, his intellect, always capacious and supple, went right to facts, not to disfigure and pervert them, but to accept them, to adapt himself to them, and to comprehend them. With a mind of this quality one goes far no matter in what direction; nothing remains but to choose one's path. Mandrin, under the ancient regime, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... out his aged white hand, and Tito immediately placed his dark but delicate and supple fingers within it. Bardo's cramped fingers closed over them, and he held them for a few minutes in silence. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... ripples of hair to wave out in jaunty glory. In the higher light it seemed to Anthony that her personality was infinitely softer—she seemed so young, scarcely eighteen; her form under the tight sheath, known then as a hobble-skirt, was amazingly supple and slender, and her hands, neither "artistic" nor stubby, were small as a child's hands ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... by the hall door. She is of middle height, supple, and delicately built. Somewhat sunburnt. Dressed in a tourist costume, with skirt caught up for walking, a sailor's collar open at the throat, and a small sailor hat on her head. Knapsack on back, plaid ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... sisterhood were all seated at table—the servitors, marshalled by the supple purveyor, made their appearance, bearing the expected banquet in large covered dishes. A hasty grace was muttered, and then every eye was turned to the covers. The abbess had ordered the sturgeon to be served ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... hand took him by the throat, long, supple, muscular fingers stopping his wind. He saw a face upraised to his—an expressionless yellow face, with glittering, slanting eyes. He drew up his club for the blow. The slender fingers were probing upward, behind his jawbone, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the necessary notice of the German adept, who occupied the front seat of the carriage, which is usually conferred upon dependants or inferiors. The ready grin and supple inclination with which his salutation, though slight, was answered by the foreigner, increased the internal dislike which Lovel had already conceived towards him; and it was plain, from the lower of the Antiquary's shaggy eye-brow, that he too looked with displeasure ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... set near together in the small plot of grass. The little trees of the orchard shut them in. He began to notice things about her that he had not noticed before, the shape and color of her finger nails, the modeling of her supple wrists, the way her ears were curved and laid close to her rather broad head. He saw that her skin was milk-white at the throat, and honey-white at her ears, and green-white, the white of an elder flower, at the roots of her ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... bodies of the convulsionists, the assistants employed weapons of considerable volume, having flat or rounded surfaces, cylindrical or blunted. But the action of such physical agents is not to be compared, as regards its danger, with that of thongs, switches, or other supple and flexible instruments with distinct edges. Finally, the contact and the repeated impression of the blows produced on the convulsionists the effect of a sort of salutary pounding, and rendered less poignant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... garden because he did not choose to have her mingle with that world. She was not taught French because he vowed he hated France and the French and all their ways. She was taught to curtsy and to dance because it pleased him to have a woman walk well and he believed dancing kept the figure supple. She was taught needlework because he thought it seemly for a woman to sew and he liked the line of the head and neck bent over an embroidery frame. She was taught to knit because he remembered that his mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily polished by an hour's ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... first camp was opened, the colleges, military schools, and high schools of the country poured out a stream of young men whose minds had been trained in the classroom and whose bodies had been made supple and virile on the athletic field. They came with intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm and, under a course of intensive training, rapidly took on the added discipline and capacities necessary to equip them for the duties of officers. They have taken their places in the training ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... chief object of the player should be to make his attack in the fewest possible motions. For this reason a slightly bent arm is necessary when on guard. Of course if the arm is unduly bent the elbow will be exposed, but a little practice will soon enable any moderately supple man to so hold his arm as to be ready to cut direct from his guard and yet keep his elbow out of peril. And this brings me to a question often discussed amongst players, viz. which is the better guard, the upright or the hanging guard, for general purposes. Although I have been taught ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... light spear of the latter description is sometimes thrown with a short cylindrical stick ornamented at one end with a large bunch of twisted human hair. The spears of the second class are shafted with reed. The smallest, which is no bigger than an arrow, is propelled by a large flat and supple throwing-stick to a great distance, but not with much precision. Of the larger ones (from eight to twelve feet in length) the two most remarkable are headed with a pointed, sharp-edged, flatly-triangular piece of quartz or fine-grained basalt, procured from the mountains ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... himself, supple and stealthy, with curious sideways movements of his head and unexpected elongations of his thick body, glanced out of the corners of his eyes in the direction of the door, and finally leaned back against ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... I ought not to be sentenced, because the Fugitive Slave Law, under which I am torn from my family and business by the supple tools of the Slave Power, the slave-breeder and the slave-hunter, is at variance with both the spirit and letter of the Constitution. Sir, I place myself upon the Constitution, in the presence of a nation who have the Declaration ...
— Speech of John Hossack, Convicted of a Violation of the Fugitive Slave Law • John Hossack
... almost the only girl in her set who knew how to walk and had the energy for it. In her movement there was the fluent, untamed grace that expressed a soul not yet stunted by the claims of convention. The golden little head was carried buoyantly. In her step was the rhythm of perfect ease. The supple resilience of her was another expression of the spiritual quality that spoke in ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... profession is by no means as easy and pleasant as it seems to the first glance. It demands long experience, constant practice, slow and painful apprenticeship. It comprises in itself hundreds of supple, skilful processes that the cleverest juggler cannot compass. That I may not give you only empty words, gentlemen, I will perform a few experiments before you now. I ask you to have every confidence in the demonstrators. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... frame of Greaves seemed to contract and burst. His spring was that of an animal in terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke Jean's hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift, he got to his, knees. He had his gun out when Jean reached him again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough. Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung the bowie. Greaves's strength went ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... was meant to be capable, and is capable, of something more than the helpless please don't of a village constable; they have executive and administrative officers that are not mere puppet-figures to go through the motions of an objectless activity, but arms and hands that become supple to do the will of the people so soon as that will becomes conscious and defines its purpose. It is time that we turned up our definitions in some more trustworthy dictionary than that of avowed disunionists and their more dangerous because more timid and cunning accomplices. Rebellion ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... fighter—is there as supple and strong as a Damascus blade. One is always aware of the "something dangerous," for all his princely manners and scholarly ways. One is never left in doubt as to how this Hamlet will play the man. It is all too easy for him to draw his sword and make ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... faltered with a hasty glance at the three stolid faces, the post of Daddy's bed supporting the supple young form. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La Sylphine before ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... what a business it is, that getting up! Your shoulders are cramped and your back is stiff; and as for your legs underneath you, you wonder if they will really ever get supple and strong again. First you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms, and—ooch!—how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you begin to roll from one side to the other, ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... Terra's supple body wended through the tangled undergrowth of the jungle, followed by the four cubs, who growled, whimpered and gamboled ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... are in every way to be preferred to the tight knee- breeches which often impede the proper circulation of the blood; and finally, the soft leather boots which could be worn above or below the knee, are more supple, and give consequently more freedom, than the stiff Hessian which Mr. Huyshe so praises. I say nothing about the question of grace and picturesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even Mr. Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to a Vandyke, or the third George ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... tied together at the small ends with buffalo-hide, then raised until the frame resembles a cone, over which buffalo-skins are placed, very skilfully fitted and made soft by having been dubbed by the women—that is, scraped to the requisite thinness, and made supple by rubbing with the brains of the animal that wore it. They are sewed together with sinews of the buffalo, generally of the long and powerful muscle that holds up the ponderous head of the shaggy beast, a narrow strip running towards the bump. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was by no means a match either for his host, or for parson Supple, at his cups that evening; for which the violent fatigue of mind as well as body that he had undergone, may very well account, without the least derogation from his honour. He was indeed, according to the vulgar phrase, whistle drunk; for before he had swallowed the third bottle, he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... astonished her husband, with her new neighbors. Apparently she was not over twenty-five. Her chestnut hair was a marvel for brightness and profusion, her broad brow smooth and white, her figure, as Winston had described it to his sister, rounded, even to voluptuousness, yet supple as it had been at fifteen. In her cheeks, too, the blushes fluctuated readily and softly, and when she smiled, her teeth showed like those of a little child in size and purity. Her voice matched her beauty well, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... speaks of the Russian Gipsies in the language of fiction in his "Interpreter" as follows:—"The morning sun smiles upon a motley troop journeying towards the Danube. Two or three lithe, supple urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and bright black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the advanced guard. Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the whole property of the tribe. The main body consists of sinewy, active-looking men, and strikingly handsome girls, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... there might be a foul odour. This precaution, however, was not necessary, as there was no smell perceptible, they were as fresh, so to speak, as if they were still alive. We remarked especially that the body of Brother Jean Marie, (the lay Brother) was supple. I touched it myself, and saw that it was really so, for while I held him his legs swayed as would those of a person ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... time he experienced a lively relief. He might have been dealing with a hideous old crone, and Hyacinthe, as he immediately began to call her, was desirable. Thirty-three at most, not pretty, but peculiar; blonde, slight and supple, with no hips, she seemed thin because she was small-boned. The face, mediocre, spoiled by too big a nose, but the lips incandescent, the teeth superb, her complexion ever so faint a rose in the slightly bluish milk white of rice water a ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... visiting us, we could not recognise any of those we saw on the southern water. One of the natives was a very amusing little fellow, rather less than five feet high, having a very peculiar and comical countenance and antics that would have eclipsed Liston in his best days, and as supple in the movements of his joints as any clown on the stage. He imitated every movement we made, and burlesqued them to a very high degree, causing great laughter to his companions and us. He seems to be the buffoon of the tribe. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... So did the dance. Wave followed on ripple, sea on wave, and on the sea the foaming, far-flung billow. Limb after limb, the whole supple body of the blind dancer came into play; yet there was no visible tension. Never dead, never hard, but limp,—as limp as flowing, rushing water,—she whirled and swayed through all the emotions until, at the highest pitch of the mounting music, she fell ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the railroads, or a policy of nonpreparedness for war when Germany first began acting up—Grover Cleveland Bergdoll felt the same way about it and so did Ma Bergdoll;—and I, for one, have no doubt that Mr. Bryan will be just as supple, mentally and physically, three years hence when, if he runs true to form, he will be advocating yet another of that series of those immemorial Jeffersonian principles of the fathers, which he thinks up, to order, right out of his own head, when a campaign ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... words of comment had left her lips unthinkingly, for she made no attempt to reply; merely stood there directly facing him, her clear eyes gazing frankly into his own. He seemed to actually see her now for the first time, fairly—a supple, slender figure, simply dressed, with wonderfully excessive brown eyes, a perfect wealth of dark hair, a clear complexion with slight olive tinge to it, a strong, intelligent face, not strictly beautiful, yet strangely attractive, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... of 'free' Europe. These latter need potatoes to fill their stomach, and a few rags to cover their nakedness; whilst coal or a stream of water stills the hunger of the former, and a little grease suffices to keep their joints supple. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... we want no assistance, as you say. I am his match, myself, if that were all; but it is not strength which is required. He is as little and supple as an eel, and as difficult to hold, that I am certain of. If we were to use our rifles, there would be no difficulty, but to hold him would give some trouble to two of us, and if once he breaks loose, he will be too fleet for any ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... never loved to lead; One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, Not lured by any cheat of birth, But by his clear-grained human worth, And brave old wisdom of sincerity! They knew that outward grace is dust; They could not choose but trust In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, And supple-tempered will That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. His was no lonely mountain peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea mark now, now lost in vapor's blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... impulse. Strictly speaking, all of the letters which really belong as such to literature come under this last head. The result of a perfect fusion of the two other styles, they exhibit a sparkle, a pungency, and lightness of touch, which take the curse from mere gossip, supple the joints of intellectual disquisition, and mark unmistakably the epistolary artist. The letter-writer, no less than the poet, is born, not made, and his art, though for the most part unconscious, is no less an art. The expression of every sentiment, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... master Dick, taking one of the coils from his pocket; "the best riding-switch in the world. All the whips that ever were made are nothing to it. Only see how strong it is, how light, and how supple! You may twist it a thousand ways without breaking. It won't break, do what you will. Each of these, now, is worth half-a-crown or three shillings, for they are the scarcest things possible. They grow up at a little distance from the root of an old tree, like a sucker from a rose-bush. ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... the best of the native Princes who go to England for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. Shere Ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... carried, together with an assortment of native weapons from various countries—assegais, spears, boomerangs, throwing sticks, sjamboks and South Sea Island clubs and shields. A special nail held Jim's own stockwhip, to which Norah always attended after he had gone away, lest the supple thong should become harsh through disuse. Then there were weapons of peace—hockey sticks, rackets, cricket-bats—the latter an assortment of all Jim had used, from the tiny one he had begun with at the age of eight to the full sized beauty that had split honourably in an inter-State ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the paper had been marked in pencil. Varvara Pavlovna gazed at him with still greater humility. She was superb at that moment. Her grey Parisian gown clung gracefully round her supple, almost girlish figure; her slender, soft neck, encircled by a white collar, her bosom gently stirred by her even breathing, her hands innocent of bracelets and rings—her whole figure, from her shining hair to the tip of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... answer, except to continue to caress her. He did not say good night until she had become supple ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... little and little, the Salts disengaging from the Sulphurs, manifest themselves, the Acid appears, which is the fruitful Source of Chronick Diseases. The Ligaments, the Tendons, and the Cartilages have scarce any of the Unctuosity left, which render'd them so supple and so pliant in Youth. The Skin grows wrinkled as well within as without; in a word, all the solid Parts grow ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into an apple-tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the ground with the same supple grace that charms us in a squirrel. The elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness or effort from her movements. She played about upon the grass, rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... astonished eyes had a view of his captors. One of them was an old man, a giant in physique, with a long gray beard and grayish yellow hair that fell to his shoulders. His companion was scarcely more than a boy, yet in his supple body, as he moved about, Philip recognized the animal-like strength of the forest breed. A word spoken in a whisper by the boy revealed the fact that the two were father and son. From that side of the room which ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... round ones. The round waist is a sign of strength; but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the round waist is inflexible ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvellous indeed was his sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was afflicted with blindness, and this in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... pioneer work of the church are easily to be recognized the Methodists and the Baptists, one the most solidly organized of the Protestant sects, the other the most uncompact and individualist; the first by virtue of the supple military organization of its great corps of itinerants, the other by the simplicity and popular apprehensibleness of its distinctive tenets and arguments and the aggressive ardor with which it inspires all its converts, and both by their facility ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and, moreover, her bloom had gone, but she was well dressed, and her thin figure was full of grace. She sat in her chair with delicate erectness, the folds of her gray gown was disposed over her supple length of limb with charming effect. She also had a sort of eager, almost appealing amiability. It ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Milton had not written the choruses of Samson Agonistes and Shakespeare his songs, nobody would be so absurd as to suggest that they adopted this five-foot line and spent their mighty artistry in sending supple and flowing variety through its external uniformity, because they could not manage any other. They used it because they found that its rhythm perfectly expressed their poetic emotion, and because the formal relation of one line to another satisfied the instinct for co-ordination, and for the ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that I should not ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her, insinuating and supple, like the serpent with the first woman, murmured in her ear, as if afraid lest his words, in being spoken aloud, would lose their ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... crooked knife advanced a little, accompanied by another man, a tall, supple-looking knave, into whose ear ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... she rode up close and dropped off her horse. She was attired in a soft white waist and white riding breeches, but there was about her none of the tomboy so easily suggested by such togs. In spite of the masculinity of her attire the long, supple lines of her body were exquisitely feminine. And she was as relieved at the sight of him as he was glad ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... now, at the end of my days, I begin to cherish, not what would lead me from these, but what would precede them, and, above all, what would somewhat surpass them." We had attained the summit of a plateau in the "pays de Caux," in Normandy, which is supple as an English park, but natural and limitless. It is one of the rare spots on the globe where nature reveals herself to us unfailingly wholesome and green. A little further to the north the country is threatened with barrenness, a little further to the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... killed, have supple feet. If young, the windpipe and beak can be easily broken by pressure of the thumb and forefinger. Young birds also have soft, white fat, tender skin, yellow feet, and legs ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have followed the pencil of Botticelli—those little hollows in the cheeks, that slight exaggeration of the pointed chin, that silky, rippling brown hair. There was no touch of artifice; it was an unpainted young face; hair brushed and knotted simply; the very carriage of the body was alien; supple, unconscious, restrained. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... longer animated the body from without, because that animation took place on the earth itself; but it became united with the body, and enabled it to grow. Of course a certain limit was set to that growth. Through the separation of the moon, the human body had for a time become supple; but the more it continued to grow on the earth, the more the solidifying forces got the upper hand. At length the share borne by the soul in the organization of the body grew less and less, and ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... slender, barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief. The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliant turban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggings delicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasined foot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskin from which hung a hunting knife, a revolver and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Riderhood and no other, or it is the outer husk and shell of Riderhood and no other, that is borne into Miss Abbey's first-floor bedroom. Supple to twist and turn as the Rogue has ever been, he is sufficiently rigid now; and not without much shuffling of attendant feet, and tilting of his bier this way and that way, and peril even of his sliding off ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various |
