"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... times notable not merely for their predatory instincts, but for the stay-at-home fashion in which they gave those instincts play. They did not scour the seas for their victims, neither did they till their island. There was no need for so much exertion. They lay supine upon their rocks and waited until a sail appeared above the horizon. Even then they did not stir till nightfall. But after it was dark, they lighted bonfires upon suitable promontories, especially towards Brecqhou and the Gouliot channel, where snags are numerous, and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the woods— Of the terrible mystery masked where the dark everlastingly broods, Be sure he will turn to the bay, with his back to the glen in the range, And glide like a phantom away, with a countenance pallid with change. From the line of dead timber that lies supine at the foot of the glade, The fierce-featured eaglehawk flies—afraid as a dove is afraid; But back in that wilderness dread are a fall and the forks of a ford— Ah! pray and uncover your head, and lean like a child on ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... 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
... cried, "How didst thou say, 'he held'? lives he not still? doth not the sweet light strike his eyes?" When he took note of some delay that I made before answering, he fell again supine, and forth ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... matters—The month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill challenges softened by the distance to music, a score of children played with spades and buckets, innocently composing ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... through every quarter. He so entertained them with his music and facetious humours, that he met with a welcome reception; and was even introduced to the tent of Guthrum, their prince, where he remained some days [y]. He remarked the supine security of the Danes, their contempt of the English, their negligence in foraging and plundering, and their dissolute wasting of what they gained by rapine and violence. Encouraged by these favourable appearances, he secretly ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 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 ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... try to tear it out. And if these forces were not, there would have been no growth of the root. And so with the root of I'shvara, the life within us; were everything around us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. It is the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throw him on a couch with pillows on every side, and bring ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of one of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special attraction—that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eider and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and "we, this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... sleep in the cargo room of a pleasure ship. He was thoroughly trussed up, for Prince Joro's servants had a wholesome respect for the giant's strength. Even in his supine position power was evident in every line of his great torso, revealed through great rents in his blouse. His thighs were as big around as an ordinary man's body, and the smooth pink skin of his mighty arms and shoulders rippled with every ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... victories of Trenton and Princeton restored the failing spirits of the people, and, what was hardly less important, produced a deep impression in Europe in favor of the colonies. The country, which had lost heart, and become supine and almost hostile, revived. The militia again took the field. Outlying parties of the British were attacked and cut off, and recruits once more began to come in to the Continental army. The Revolution was saved. That the English colonies in ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... intellectual fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, he differs strikingly from his equals in age, by his passion for a vigorous intellectual gymnastic, such as the supine character of their minds renders distasteful to most young men, but in which he shows a fearlessness that at times makes me fancy that his ultimate destination may be the military life; for indeed the rigidly logical tendency of his mind always leads him out upon the practical. Don't misunderstand ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... that the majority of Tamil infinitives terminate in ka, 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 ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... sorrow, and such were the consolations of Edwin. But far different was the situation, and far other scenes were prepared for his faithful shepherdess. For some time after she had been seized by Roderic, she had remained unconscious and supine. The terrors that had preceded the fatal capture, had overpowered her delicate frame, and sunk her into an alarming and obstinate fit of insensibility. They had now almost reached the palace of the magician, when she discovered the first symptoms of returning life. The colour ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... and sometimes "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 Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... when they realized that the Boer party were determinedly hostile—organizing very large encroachments upon the privileges of the Uitlanders and designing fresh burdens to be borne by them—and when it became clear that the dangers threatening as a result of their own supine attitude were worse than any disfavour with which they might be viewed on account of political action, that they began to take an active part with others in the agitation for reform. It was not until the Volksraad in ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... makes the work so hard for the Loyalist lawyer is the fact that our folks are all for business and look upon politics as a nuisance, while the other side make politics the principal business of their lives. They are tremendously energetic in this, but wonderfully supine in everything else. In politics they spare neither time nor money, nor (for the matter of that) swearing. The lying that goes on in the Registry Court would astonish Englishmen. The Papist party themselves admit that they are awful liars, but they laugh it off, and plead that all is fair ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... unfavourable situation on which it is principally planted, affords a convincing proof of the superiority, in habits of active industry, of the peasantry of this island over the Portuguese peasants in general. Instead of being indolent and supine, and indisposed to embrace the means of ameliorating and improving their condition, they are, on the contrary, enterprising, hardy, and persevering. The potatoe is chiefly reared on the ascent of Pico Rueva, at an elevation of 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead a mere thread of blood trickled ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... ablest friends here are dead; their survivors supine and superannuated; their connections new Whigs and Reformers, and Associators; myself grown quite indifferent upon the point; and the principal Tories, such as the Duke of Beaufort, &c., and those who would have been active, if they had been ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... vowel before two consonants is generally—short, we find, in some instances, a long vowel in this position. For example, it would appear that the vowel of the supine and cognate parts of the verb is long if the vowel of the present indicative, though short, is followed by a medial (b, g, d, z), as ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... his airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to rest unbroken bows. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... are moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently, and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient glances ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... down in a tavern, and incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke misgivings. He was taken to the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... 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 and of public interest ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... man in black, "is a grand one, with unbounded vitality. Compare it with your Protestantism, and you will see the difference. Popery is ever at work, whilst Protestantism is supine. A pretty church, indeed, the Protestant! Why, it can't even work ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... didst sit, The gater gated and the biter bit, When impious hands at the dead hour of night Forbade the way and made the barriers tight? Next morn I heard their impious voices sing; All up the stairs their blasphemies did ring: "Come forth, O Williams, wherefore thus supine Remain within thy chambers after nine? Come forth, suffer thyself to be admired, And blush not so, coy dean, to be desired." The captive churchman chafes with empty rage, Till some knight-errant free him from his cage. Pale ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... very strange thing indeed, that interlopers should have been permitted to oust the wealth and reputability of Polterham from an Institute which ought to have been one of the bulwarks of Conservatism. Laxity in the original constitution, and a spirit of supine confidence, had led to this sad result. It seemed impossible that Polterham could ever fall from its honourable position among the Conservative strongholds of the country; but the times were corrupt, a revolutionary miasma was spreading to every ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... be contented in almost any circumstances. It was as if the brute in him were forever seeking a lower level, wallowing itself lower and lower into the filth and into the mire, content to be foul, content to be prone, to be inert and supine. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... what could only be cloth, before they met the warmth of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine body of the Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for some sign that the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Sometimes humility o'ercomes disdain, Sometimes 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, As then ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... to look at," he observed, surveying the supine cast, "but awfully difficult to do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... ducking, countering, guarding, and getting away to which Lord Worthington enthusiastically invited her attention, and which elicited alternate jeers and applause from the shilling audience below. She laughed outright when, at the expiration of three minutes, the two dropped supine into chairs at opposite corners of the ring as if they had sustained excessive fatigue. At the end of a minute, some one hoarsely cried "Time!" and they rose and repeated their previous performance for three minutes ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... having recognized you, and I the only one to do so—why was I able to save my son alone? Ought I not also to have rescued the man that I had accepted for a husband, guilty though he were? Yet I let him die! What do I say? Oh, merciful heavens, was I not accessory to his death by my supine insensibility, by my contempt for him, not remembering, or not willing to remember, that it was for my sake he had become a traitor and a perjurer? In what am I benefited by accompanying my son so far, since I now abandon him, and allow him to depart alone to the baneful climate ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on any consideration. I would make it a matter of serious inquiry beforehand, whether my mistress's qualifications, if I heard she was notable, were masculine or feminine ones. If indeed I were an indolent supine mortal, who might be in danger of perhaps choosing to marry for the qualifications of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... better hold of her burden, and glanced backward with a look of appeal. The doctor came forward on that; and his sight caught the face of the old woman. Her eyes were closed, her head had dropped to one side and lay supine upon the girl's shoulder. It appeared to be ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... "Had Arminius been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eyder and the Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and we, this ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... and return his smile. Some even grinned and saluted. They reserved their awe for Scipio. Indeed, there is a legend that when Scipio made his first appearance in Fore Street—he being so tall and the roadway so narrow—he left in his wake two rows of supine children who, parting before him, had gradually tilted back as their gaze climbed up his magnificent and liveried person until the sight of his ebon face toppled ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... at the same time a vague impression that all was not quite right. Gradually I collected my ideas, and at length, when Browne repeated his question the third time, I had formed a pretty correct theory as to the cause of my present supine attitude, and the unpleasant sensations ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... together over an oblong space of a mile long by twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was a towering white cliff overhanging a practically desert beach; and one seagull circled above one solitary, motionless, supine man, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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
... is an example, on a colossal scale, of the pernicious and supine system of officials, as represented by the Board of Trade. Modern liners are so designed that they have no accommodations for more life-boats. Among practical seamen it has long been recognized that the modern passenger ship has ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... weight of bed-clothes, hampers our movements and probably makes us more cowardly. A man will meet pain or danger boldly if he be standing upright—occupying that erect position which is his as Lord of Creation; but his courage does not well so high if he be supine. We are awakened suddenly by the feel that some superhuman Presence is in the room. We are transfixed with terror, we cannot find either the bell-rope or the matches, while we dare not leap out of bed and make a rush for the door ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... noble souls, through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger. And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine No longer. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... because God placed them there, and God placed them there because they are 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
... of a few simple precautions, and the application of proper remedies, will check the unnatural loss in most of these cases very promptly. In the first place, absolute rest, chiefly in a supine position, must be observed not only during the menstrual period, but for a few days previous to its commencement. If this does not restrain the flow, then cool and even cold compresses may be applied to the lower part of the abdomen and to the small of the back. In severe cases no harm ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... is four or five times bigger than the female. Then they don't breed in harems and the male hair seal does not stay on shore. A fur seal swims with his fore flippers, a true seal with his hind flippers. A fur seal stands upright on his fore flippers, a hair seal lies supine. A fur seal has a neck, a hair seal has practically none. A fur seal naturally has fur, the hair seal has no undercoat whatever. A pup fur seal is black, a pup hair seal is white. Different? Obviously! Pity the old name 'sea bear' died out. It would have ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... utensils, and wherever a chance ray made a gleam of light, the magpie was hopping about, uttering short, piercing cries. In the recess of the niche containing the colored prints, sat the old man Vincart, dozing, in his usual supine attitude, his hands spread out, his eyelids drooping, his mouth half open. At the sound of the door, his eyes opened wide. He rather guessed at, than saw, the entrance of the young girl, and his pallid lips began their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a man were at peace within himself, and cried peace, peace, to himself, yet if he be not at peace with God, shall his peace be called peace? Shall it not rather be named supine security? If a man be at variance with himself, and his soul disquieted within, there is more fear than danger if he be at peace with God. It is but a false alarm, that shall end well, but if he have peace ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... little work for either of them in Sandycliffe, but they carried their joint energies further afield. Pierrepoint had a large poor population, and the vicar was old and supine; he accepted gladly the volunteered services of his zealous coadjutors, and, led by his faithful Johnnie, Mr. Ferrers penetrated into the winding alleys, and carried comfort to many a sick and dying bed. And as Mr. Brabazon grew more infirm, it became a rule to Mr. Ferrers to occupy his pulpit on ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... beach stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line. Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless, grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught between rocks and rising shoulder-high above ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... 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 ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... 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 Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... shorten the vowel, as 'doctrine', 'discipline', 'medicine', and 'masculine', while 'genuine', though a later word, followed them, but 'anserine' and 'leonine' did not. Disyllables seem to prefer the stress on the ultima, as 'divine', 'supine', but even these are not consistent. Some critics ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... a full half hour, supine, completely relaxed, only half conscious. Yet he was devoutly thankful. The precious gift of life had been saved, the life that was so young, so strong and so buoyant in him. The sea, immense, immeasurable and savage might leap for him, but it could no longer reach him. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ranch were mortgaged and to the hardest man in seven counties? What though his grandfather had obviously fallen supine before the old man's tempting sin, which is avarice, and was bound to break him? Was fate not playing him ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... 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 lofty gate Could roll ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... crush France and Russia without moving a finger. Germany thought that the English were blind, and that for the sake of gain we should remain neutral and never lift a finger while she swept over Belgium to crush France; thought, too, that we should be supine while she violated treaties and committed the most fiendish deeds ever committed in the history of the world. But it is not my purpose to speak of these things; I have to tell the story of a commonplace lad in a workaday town, and what influence the ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... fell sidewise behind the rocks and a bullet clipped the edge of his barricade. Remaining supine, he fastened his handkerchief to the end of his whip and waved it above the rampart. Having thus manifested his peaceful intent, he rose, still holding the flag of truce above his head, and remained motionless. Brick Willock stared at him for a moment ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... to her, he found a creature that quivered at his touch and shrank from it, fatigued, averted; a creature pitifully supine, with arms too weary to enforce their own repulse. He took her in his arms and she gave a cry, little and low, like a child's whimper. It went to his heart and struck cold there. It was incredible that Jinny should ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... his knights, aided only by their personal retainers. For nine years they had continued their career unchecked, capturing castle by castle and town by town, defeating such small bodies of troops as took the field against them, England, under a supine and inactive king, giving itself up to private broils and quarrels, while Scotland was being ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... of a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer these preparations to advance without interruption. She ordered Drake to sail immediately for the coast of Spain, and put in practice against her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the four great ships which she allotted to him for this service, the English ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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 Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... systems, and tried them on little roulette wheels at home; but nearly all went away defeated. The form of the long, high mountain called the Tete de Chien looked to Vanno like a giant man lying face down in despair, the shape of his head, his back, and supine legs tragic in desperate abandon. "That's a symbol," Vanno said, half aloud, and felt no longer the strange pulling at his heartstrings which for a moment had drawn him, too, under the influence. He thought of himself as one of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... another. When they fell in love they were apt to lose their heads, and with that the game. Technique crumbled. For a moment he imagined her in love, dissolved, helpless; then hastily changed the subject. He liked women to be strong—having long since abandoned his earlier ideal of the supine adorant—but not too strong. Certainly not stronger than himself. He had met a good many "strong" women in the last twelve years, swathed, more often than not, in disarming femininity. A man hadn't a chance with them, man's strength as a rule being all on the outside. Women grew ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Erinnys to the Argive maid. Before her eyes, within her breast she dwelt A secret torment, and in terror drove Her exil'd through the world. 'Twas thou, O Nile! Her tedious wandering ended. On thy banks Weary'd she kneel'd, and on her back, supine Her neck she lean'd:—her sad face to the skies, What could she more?—she lifted. Unto Jove By groans, and tears, and mournful lows she plain'd, And begg'd her woes might end. The mighty god Around his consort's neck embracing hung. And pray'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... him—always silent and supine, except when suspicious persons came into the yard—baying softly to himself, plainly (to her) voicing the weariness of his unhappy life. She sat up in bed and listened to him, and to his master shouting ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... of Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland, a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man may see her, though any woman may. She stays in a hut or shelter specially made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine. She may not see the sun, and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down, otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased. During her seclusion she may eat nothing that lives in salt water, or a snake would kill her. An old woman ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Land! Then with an effort of the will he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself for an idiot strode on. Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself!—the body of John Grayrock, dead of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... highway. But the road was bordered by so many wonders—as here a bright pebble and there an anemone, say, and, just beyond, a brook which babbled an entreaty to be tasted,—that many folk had presently overtaken and had passed the loitering Foolish Prince. First came a grandee, supine in his gilded coach, with half-shut eyes, uneagerly meditant upon yesterday's statecraft or to-morrow's gallantry; and now three yokels, with ruddy cheeks and much dust upon their shoulders; now a haggard man in black, who constantly glanced backward; and now a corporal with an ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... night on deck, supine, with a carpet-bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Duesseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and burned her alive ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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
... stroke was given, and the 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 ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... with him,—never the will of Christ. But although he could dispose of the question thus satisfactorily, yet, as he lay ill, supine, without any distracting occupation, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... voice as if on the verge of resentful tears calling to the dog, the unsympathetic dog. Perhaps she had not the power of evoking sympathy, that personal gift of direct appeal to the feelings. I said to Fyne, mistrusting the supine attitude ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters. And Joshua, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... these generals Orange met, hampered with lack of arms, men, funds, moral support; with mercenary troops, unreliable and mutinous, hired much of the time with moneys raised by mortgaging his own estates, and backed up by a supine and a divided people, himself clothed with no authority compelling subordination, and, with the exception of his brother Louis (who was slain at the battle of Mookerheyde), without a single captain of generous military capacity,—with such odds, seemingly ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... at the then apparently supine attitude of the British Government in the matter of the Abyssinian captives, George Yule wrote a letter (necessarily published without his name, as he was then on the Governor-General's Council), to the editor of an influential Indian paper, proposing a private expedition should be organised ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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 ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the 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
... from "sinking with their subject," as Dutch painters have been said to do. He seems never to let himself go either in the direction of Greuze's literary and sentimental manipulation of his homely material, or in the direction of supine satisfaction with this material, unrelieved and unelevated by an individual point of view, illustrated by the Brauers and Steens and Ostades. One perceives that what he cared for was really art itself, for the aesthetic aspect and significance ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... stirred 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
... flew; Passed the high headlands of each clustering isle, To gain their port—long—long ere morning smile: And soon the night-glass through the narrow bay Discovers where the Pacha's galleys lay. Count they each sail, and mark how there supine The lights in vain o'er heedless Moslem shine. Secure, unnoted, Conrad's prow passed by, And anchored where his ambush meant to lie; 600 Screened from espial by the jutting cape, That rears on high its rude fantastic shape.[206] Then rose his band to duty—not from sleep— Equipped ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... actions were much the same, but in reverse, for he thrust first, and equally successfully; while Denis sat supine, the feeling upon him strong that he was a helpless heavy log to his companions, and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... afterwards appeared, had in former years suffered divers things at the hand of an obnoxious mother-in-law, grew more excited than ever, and became furiously indignant, not only at the all-assuming lady, but also at the supine Dundreary, who allowed himself to be thus imposed upon. He grumbled and muttered, and really seemed as if he would make for the stage, as he said, "to give the old creetur a piece of his mind." Even Norman was now uneasy lest he should make more demonstration than was meet, while Douglas did his ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... foot caught Melchard between jaw and shoulder, shooting him supine and headlong upon the polished floor until his head hit the corner of the stone kerb about the hearth; while the left knee simultaneously struck the cockney, who fell, with Dick's crouching weight full upon him, heavily ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... 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
... tall and exceedingly supine proportions, wore pinks and blues and an invariable necklace of pink paste pearls to fine advantage, and a fuzz of yellow bangs that fell down over her eyes, only to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... rouse him from this state of supine despondency. The active employment, the all-engrossing interest which would have medicined his unslumbering sorrow, were remedial agents denied by his father's unwise decree. As a substitute, though of less potency, Ronald strove to inspire him with his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the revolt that he led he had not reckoned upon the might and vigour of the new Farnese Pontiff. He had conceived, perhaps, that one pope must be as supine as another, and that Paul III would prove no more redoubtable than Clement VIII. To his bitter cost did he discover his mistake. Beyond the Po he was surprised by the Pontifical army under Ferrante Orsini, and there his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... and soft-stroking against leaves. Or a Pleistocene man, smallest of all the males, whose supine ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... down, floor, fell. Adj. horizontal, level, even, plane; flat &c. 251; flat as a billiard table, flat as a bowling green; alluvial; calm, calm as a mill pond; smooth, smooth as glass. recumbent, decumbent, procumbent, accumbent[obs3]; lying &c. v.; prone, supine, couchant, jacent[obs3], prostrate, recubant[obs3]. Adv. horizontally &c. adj.; on one's back, on all fours, on its ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... I was met by a steward who ministered to me until such a time as I was able to leave the rail and with his help to drag my exhausted frame to the privacy of my stateroom where I remained in a state of semi-collapse, and quite supine, for the greater part ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow. I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples ... as being otherwise than friendly ... there is no calamity ... which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the ground, upon his back, and remained stretched out there, with arms outspread and supine; a stream of blood flowed from his breast, on the left. The sergeant and two soldiers leaped from their horses; the officer bent over and opened his shirt: the ball had entered his left lung. "He is dead!" exclaimed ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... of cowardice. It is a question of common sense. A few country lads cannot oppose a government. With what weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant to death — ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... Gwendolen and Alice, daughters of James Cartaret, the Vicar of Garth, were sitting there in the dining-room behind the yellow blind, doing nothing. In their supine, motionless attitudes they seemed to be waiting for something to happen, to happen so soon that, if there had been anything to do, it was not worth their ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... in dum, and supine joined to a verb of motion is equivalent to the future as before stated in the second mode of the infinitive; but should there be no verb of movement with the gerund in dum, the particle betzuai, for, is used, as this suffices for payment, (hoc ad solvendum sufficit,) Veride hasem ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... suddenly melted, and a roll Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!— Toppled the crags down after him. He lay Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots And buried him beneath it. His broad breast Heaved, like that other giant in his heart, And through the crater burst his fiery breath, But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay Breathing in agony ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the cultivators have fled, and there is none to gather the harvest. Cities are deserted and depopulated. Fierce foreign mercenaries, for whom the barons have no pay, pillage the farms and the monasteries. The bishops, for the most part, rest supine amid all this storm of tyranny. When they rouse themselves they increase rather than mitigate the miseries of the people. Milo, Earl of Hereford, has demanded money of the Bishop of Hereford to pay his troops. The Bishop refuses, and Milo seizes his lands and goods. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... in deep tones, smiling full into Josephine's face, as if she were going to produce it by some sleight of hand. Then he wheeled round to the table, and was soon pouring beer down his throat as down a pipe. Then he dropped supine again. Cyril Scott was ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... her last glimpses of life. In a few seconds would come utter blankness again; her last chance would be gone for saving Roger and herself. Should she make a struggle for it and die fighting? Or was it better to continue her supine pretence and quietly allow the needle to reduce her once more to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... legal language meant to make a joint claim by the symbolical act of each claimant laying a hand on the property (or some representation of it) in court. But it also meant "to join hands in war." Hence its equivocal use in this passage. Consertum is a supine, and some such word as eunt must be ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this moment, a new man within him, armed with energy to break through every obstacle which might oppose him. His feeble, suffering companion demanded an effort for her relief, and such a demand even his supine nature could ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... She lay supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining her warm hold of Jude's hand. He reclined on ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... definite sense of personal danger. She was not timorous by nature, and the hope of 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 ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... opposite him, Ned violently pushed forward the table so as to carry the tutor over backward in his chair. His head and back struck the floor heavily, and he lay supine beneath ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... or to remain quiet, but brags about and talks words of overwhelming insolence, as they tell us. He is not such a character as to rest with the possessions which he has conquered, but is always compassing something else, and at every point hedging us, dallying and supine, in narrower and narrower circles. When, then, Athenians, when will you do what you ought? As soon as something happens? As soon, great Jove! as necessity compels you? Why, what does necessity compel you to think now of your ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... be found among us: it is rather Stand by, for I am holier than thou. Oh! that their christian virtues, constant fidelity, unfeigned love and unbiassed loyalty to Zion's King and Lord, could awaken us from our neutrality and supine security, wherein instead of imitating the goodness and virtuous dispositions of these our ancestors, we have by our defections and vicious courses invited neglect and contempt on ourselves, being (as a philosopher once observed ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 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 ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... night before the revellers, weary with overmuch cheer, returned. But the extra twinkle in Rubinstein's gay eyes, and the joyous grin on the flushed face of Laroche, disappeared when, lighting a candle to guide them through the darkened antechamber, they entered the living-room to find Ivan supine on the divan, sunk into a heavy slumber, the mottled white and red of his stained cheeks betraying a secret never afterwards referred to by his kindly discoverers. For Ivan's persistent faith had come to naught. Michael Gregoriev still denied ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of middle state between waking and sleeping; in which, though our eyes are open, our senses seem to be entirely shut up, and we are quite insensible of every thing about us, yet we are all the while engaged in a musing indolence of thought, or a supine and lolling kind of roving from one fairy scene to another, without any self-command; from which, if any noise or accident rouse us, we wake as from a real dream, and are often as much at a loss ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... road. The horses were prepared and mounted; and being lightened of a great part of their burdens, were able to move with celerity. As to the worthy convive of the preceding evening, he was carefully gathered up from the hunter's couch on which he lay, repentant and supine, and, being packed upon one of the horses, was hurried forward with the convoy, groaning ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... palms and their shadows that fell upon the marvel black. Black were the birds that flew low from roof to roof, black the wading camels, black the meeting leaves of the tall lebbek-trees that formed a tunnel from where I stood to Mena House. And presently a huge black Pyramid lay supine on the gold, and near it a shadowy brother seemed more humble than it, but scarcely less mysterious. The gold deepened, glowed more fiercely. In the sky above the Pyramids hung tiny cloud wreaths of rose red, delicate and airy as the gossamers of Tunis. As I turned, far off in Cairo I saw the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... of the 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 a ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... desperate nature of the situation, he sprang at his antagonist, thrusting the remnants of the chair in his face and, following hard and fast upon him, pushed him backward and still backward till, tripping once more, he fell supine among the pots and pans. Seizing the axe that had dropped from his enemy's hand, Cameron hurled it far beyond the wood pile and then stood waiting, a cold and deadly rage ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... 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 ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... placid tranquillity of destruction,—a horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,—a devastation voiceless, passionless, and supine. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte |
