"Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to WILDRAKE.] Good Master Wildrake, look more cheerfully!—Come, You do not honour to my wedding-day. How brisk am I! My body moves on springs! My stature gives no inch I throw away; My supple joints play free and sportfully; I'm every atom ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... 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 it and being tumbled in a heap over ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... venture upon her new snow-shoes. The simple breakfast ended, and clad in her woodland suit, Sam taught her how to arrange the magic slippers upon her moccasined feet. How Dane's heart would have thrilled could he have seen her standing before the lodge, her lithe, supple body drawn to its full height, her face aglow, her eyes sparkling, and her furry cap poised lightly upon her head surrounded by a wealth of soft, billowy hair. The rude lodge, the great trees, and the fair girl standing there formed a scene of surpassing charm which many an ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... love 'em, each supple-shanked lad, 'Most as much as—Statistics. To trudge it For them makes my bosom as glad As—Big Surplus, and Popular Budget; And so I should like to secure them a run, Combining snug safety ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... in screaming wild alarms O'er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, Again it moves and speaks, and life informs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... face possesses the crowning charm of expression, whose slightest movement reveals the supple symmetry of her figure—less lovely because she is blessed with a good appetite, and is not ashamed to acknowledge it? With a grace all her own, Cecilia dived under the bed, and produced a basket of jam tarts, a basket of fruit and sweetmeats, a basket of sparkling ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... dunno. Sure it's agin nathur and raison. There's meself gettin' as grey as a badger, and noways that supple as I was. But me father's a terrible cliver man. You'd niver get the better of an argufyment wid him, for he wouldn't listen to a word you'd be sayin'. So you see the way of it was, the two of us is workin' this great while on Mr. Blake's lan', ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... the lime-threads, but for special provisions, would be liable to dry up, to shrivel into stiff and lifeless filaments. But the very opposite happens. At the most scorching times of the day, they continue supple, elastic and more and ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... educated for her great and important function—educated physically, intellectually, morally. Let us forecast her future. She will be well clad in clothes that allow of lithe and even development of the body; she will be taught to run, to play games, to dance, to swim; she will be supple and healthy, finely moulded and knit in limb and organ, beautiful in face and features, splendid and graceful in the native curves of her lissom figure. No cramping conventions will be allowed to cage ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent rosette lily of a red-haired beauty; the head, with hair elaborately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swan-like neck. A curious, at first rather conventional, artificial-looking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of any man who is to write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader in the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable, and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should recognise from the first that he ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had the longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss. With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently Steve Packard's fight. But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe Woods's eyes as again he shook ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... presence of mind, Polly instantly pulled Noddy up on a mound of ground just above the reptile, and caught hold of a long supple branch of wood. In another instant she was whipping the snake until it could not tell from which direction the blows were descending—right, left, front or back! In a moment of indecision, the snake remained quiet and in that second Polly brought down her ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a thousand lawless raids, in a few minutes you will be but a great load of carrion. It cannot be otherwise." Then I swung my lasso and sent it whistling over his head. But not so fast; he was yet far from being subdued, and, before the supple coils had fallen on his neck he seized the noose and, with one fierce chop, cut through its hard thick strands, and dropped it in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... then, as by magic, the loveliest of smiles transfigured the dull, blank features; her round shoulders, pendulous arms, slouching pose, melted into superb symmetry, quickening with grace and youth as she straightened up and faced him, erect, supple, laughing, adorable. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Elliston, Esq. One of Harlow's best portraits: the likeness is admirable, and the tone well accords with Elliston's unguent, supple expression. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... King and Queene: with supple Hams And an ill-boading looke I vow'd to doo't; Yet, lest some choake-peare[205] of State-policy Shoo'd stop my throat and spoyle my drinking-pipe, See (like his cloake) I hung at the Kings elbow Till I had got his ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the average of his tribe. His muscular limbs showed a strength and athletic training that would be the envy of any Yale man or West Pointer. His back was as straight as the proverbial ramrod and as supple as the leaf of the cocoanut palm. His eyes were brown, and fairly danced with good nature and intelligence. They were frank, too, an unusual thing with a native. All in all, he was a perfect model of ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... the elder Beaufort would realise the expectations in which his nephew had been reared. Philip's younger brother had been much with the old gentleman, and appeared to be in high favour: this brother was a man in every respect the opposite to Philip—sober, supple, decorous, ambitious, with a face of smiles and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... skins, which were used for making hats, as well as capes and coats, the following furs and skins were formerly, or are still, exported from Canada. "Buffalo" robes—the carefully rubbed-down hides of the bison, rendered, by shaving and rubbing, so thin and supple that they could be easily folded; reindeer and musk-ox skins treated in the same way; marten or sable skins; mink (a kind of polecat); ermine (the white winter dress of the stoat); the fishing ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... water full an hour before sunrise. Cheery voices and hearty faces greet you, and there seems to be no maimed, or sick, or poor. From the simple fact that you are on the river, there is a brotherhood with every sailor. The mode is supple as the water, not like the stiff fashion of the land. Ships and shipmen soon become the "people." The other folks on shore are, to be sure, pretty numerous, but then they are ashore. Undoubtedly they are useful to provide for us who ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of life, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clay, wax, butter, dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather bed, down, padding, wadding; foam. mollification; softening &c v.. V. render soft &c adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile^, tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious^, inelastic; aluminous^; remollient^. yielding &c v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his primitive race. How many people have jaws like a bull-dog, or heads like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul is a squirrel turned into a man. He has its bright, quick eyes, its old hair, pointed nose, its small, fine, supple, active body, and a certain mysterious resemblance in his general bearing: in fact, a similarity of movements, of gestures, and of bearing which might almost be ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was within its grasp, Dixon rose lithely to his feet. The protecting hood had brought a quick and complete recovery from the devastating effects of the green moon's rays. His muscles were again supple, and his brain ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... nearly the equal of the full grown tiger. The head was large, the body thick yet supple, the limbs robust. In color it was of a rich yellow, with black rings, in which stood black dots, marking ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... amazing new glory of a lover had enveloped him, he had a distinct delight in watching the myriad charming phases of her kind manner, half-sisterly, half-motherly, toward the grave-faced young man. It was all a part of the delicious change which these past few days had wrought in her, this warm and supple softness of mien, of eye and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... that. You've a splendid figure—tall, supple, strong; you're like a Nez Perce girl I knew once.... You're a beautiful thing. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... name was on every one's lips. From out the crowd stepped a slender faun of a youth, slim and supple as a reed. The gaily-colored breech-cloth wound about his loins supported his bolo and small knives, and in his tightly knotted long hair, glistened a creese. With silent dignity he awaited his orders. No curiosity manifested ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... "Olives are not to be despised; oil to the limbs makes them supple; to the stomach it gives gladness. Oil, moreover, bringeth money when sold. But a daughter is the plague of a man's life. First, one has to keep away lovers; and next to find a husband; and when all ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... started, in a hired chaise, by way of Dunstable. The mere mention of the name Amersham Place made every one supple and smiling. It was plainly a great house, and my uncle lived there in style. The fame of it rose as we approached, like a chain of mountains; at Bedford they touched their caps, but in Dunstable they crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the court-house, and then send him to the penitentiary, the house of correction, or some other abominable place, even if it were no worse than a tinker's shop. He was absolutely terrified at the prospect. After all his high hopes, and all his confidence in his supple limbs, the judges, the lawyers, and the constables might fetter his muscles so that he could not get away—so that he could not even run away to sea, which was his ultimate intention, whenever he could make up his ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... rest till the next man goes in! The tired arms lie with every sinew slack On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back, And elbows apt to make the leather spin Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,— In knavish hands a most unkindly knack; But no guile shelters under the boy's black Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. Two ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that 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 ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... soul was more clearly revealed,—the veil of the temple rent wellnigh in twain,—she could read the justification of all her old worship. One of Jack's hands lay outside the sheets,—those strong, supple fingers, once so cunning in workmanship, so frank in friendship, now thinner and whiter than her own. After looking at it for some time, Lizzie gently grasped it. Jack slowly opened his eyes. Lizzie's heart began to throb; it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... knew the youth. He was a handsome, ruddy young fellow of about six and twenty, with a little spiral moustache twisted upwards in betyar fashion, flowing curly locks gathered up into a top-knot, black flashing eyes, and a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... believe the evidence of our senses, yet there stood the cunning scamp before us, with his long limbs and lank body, as supple as ever, and grinning with delight at ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Were it not for the look we have mentioned, and which was perhaps not habitual, his appearance might have been called prepossessing. In his figure there was the grace, in his step the elasticity which come from just proportions and muscular strength. In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick, slight and innocuous to appearance, but weighted at the handle after the fashion of a life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasing to the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dainty white crepe de chine frock made her look anything but a theatrical star. Grace, however, had for once departed from her favorite blue and wore a white chiffon gown whose exquisitely simple lines made the most of her slender, supple figure. The charm of early sixteen radiated from her youthful person, and she looked no older than when she had led the freshman basketball team on to victory ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... meant to cheat; yet he did cheat. Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live himself; and God may have made fools for him to live on;" and many other are the twists of his defence. The poem is as lifelike in its insight into the mind of a supple cheat as it is a brilliant bit of literature; but Browning leaves the matter unconcluded, as he would not have done, I hold, had he been writing poetry. Prince Hohenstiel's defence of expediency in politics is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... himself came in, he, too, in white gown, ready for the operation. He looked so strange; to her nervous vision, supernatural, a being from other worlds, holding the destiny of this one in those strong, supple, incisive fingers. "I don't suppose you'll enjoy this much," he said, "but you'd better get used to them. Karl may need you to do some of this for him, and you wouldn't like it ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the woods, but not far from one another and in a parallel direction, so that they could see each other. Among the ferns between the pine trees could be seen fluttering the vari-colored skirt and yellow kerchief of Kasya. The slender, supple maiden seemed to float amid the berry-laden bushes, mosses and ferns. You would say it was some fairy wila or rusalka of the woods; every moment she stooped and stood erect again, and so, further and further, passing the pine trees, she entered deeper into the ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... by striking the ground with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... he to be the founder of a Literary and Historical Society. Lord Dalhousie—who was a really excellent man—although a blundering governor in Lower Canada, where he had such men as Neilson, Stuart, Papineau and even the supple Vallieres to thwart him—and anxious to benefit the colony as much as he could at once took the hint. He founded it in Quebec, and became its patron. It was founded for the purpose of investigating points of history, immediately ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... —Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... beautiful body so," whispered Chunda Lal, "that is straight and supple as the willow branch. O, Miska"—his voice trembled emotionally and he that had been but a moment since so fierce stood abashed before her—"for you I become as the meanest and the lowest; for ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... Russia had become a supple implement in the hands of the German Kaiser, the sovereign who for nearly twenty years had been striving toward one goal by a hundred ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Book Department—which is to ordinary English bookshops like a liner to a houseboat—that I first realised how intense is the interest which America takes in foreign contemporary literature. In England the translation has a certain vogue —Mrs. Garnett's supple and faithful renderings of Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoievski, and Tchekov have, for example, a great following—but we do not adventure much beyond the French and the Russians; whereas I learn that English versions ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... upon his richly caparisoned steed, pinching at his long, blue-shaven chin with supple fingers, his heavy brows drawn low, of a sudden his narrowed lids widened and his eyes gleamed bright and black as they beheld my Beltane standing in the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... was all Svenson needed. He was putting up the fight of his life. It was a beautiful demonstration of Scandinavian defense methods—one man unarmed against five with knives and clubs! His huge arms were working like flails. His powerful, supple body bent and heaved this way and that with powerful sweeps as he met the incessant attack. As fast as they came at him he sent them ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... said Too-che, moving slim and supple as a panther to sit protectively beside the little cradle of bent ash bows lashed together with strips of hide. "He talks like a man grown, and ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... 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. The other natives delighted in making sport of him, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... until February 1916 that they went abroad. After three months of intensive training they were hardened, supple, and skillful. But their military education was not yet complete. Commanders of armies know that raw or semi-raw troops are worse than useless in modern warfare. Soldiers in these days must know their ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... Praxiteles might have so expressed the Genius of Eternal Repose; but no Greek sculptor would have given that huge girth to the thorax, or have exaggerated the mighty hand with such delight in sinewy force. These qualities, peculiar to Buonarroti's sense of form, do not detract from the languid pose and supple rhythm of the figure, which flows down, a sinuous line of beauty, through the slightly swelling flanks, along the finely moulded thighs, to loveliest feet emerging from the marble. It is impossible, while gazing on this statue, not to hear a strain of intellectual music. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... were a dozen armed men. They wore the same beaked helmets, the supple encasing breast- and back-plates, but their leggings were gray. They, too, carried curved swords, but the weapons were still latched to their belts and they made no move to draw them in spite of the very patent hostility of ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... approach of her distinguished visitor by an advance rendered as obvious as possible by the rustling sweep of the parted curtains and an unwonted emphasis of tread, which avoided the rugs and sought the tesselated floor for this purpose, the supple figure stood erect and in an attitude of questioning deference awaited whatever demonstration might follow this apparently not ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... 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 death, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... Ortega y Gasset, to the sober sentences of the Rector of the University of Salamanca, Miguel de Unamuno, writing with a restraint which is anything but traditionally Castilian, and to the journalistic impressionism of Ramiro de Maeztu, supple and cosmopolitan from long residence abroad. The poets now jettisoned the rotundities of the romantic and emotional schools of Zorrilla and Salvador Rueda, and substituted instead the precise, pictorial line of Ruben Dario, Juan Ramon Jimenez, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... 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 ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... performance would have been too divine for a mortal." Her beauty was so marked, so singular, that wherever she appeared—at the ball, the theatre—it caused a sensation; all turned to look at her and admire in subdued astonishment. Her form was said to be marvellously elegant and supple, her neck of an exquisite perfection, her mouth "deliciously small and pink, her teeth veritable pearls set in coral, her arms splendidly moulded, her eyes full of sweetness and admiration, her nose most attractive in its regularity, her physiognomy candid and spiritual, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... hand be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... classed him amongst the best of the native Princes who go to England for their training, and on that very account, would have feared the more for his future. Shere Ali was now just twenty-four, he was tall, spare of body and wonderfully supple of limbs, and but for a fulness of the lower lip, which was characteristic of his family, would have been reckoned ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... gradually obtained the chairs in the universities, and took the lead in the murder of their fellow creatures through the inquisition. What a temptation to brawling mendicants, too lazy to earn a living, authorized to beg, and the supple tools of political leaders; and all this by a mysterious society, under the guise and pretence of the Christian religion! Laic tools for ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... none of his frinds and relations to lamint iver him, or wake him, but his poor heartbroken mother—Och hone! och hone! that I should ever live to see this day. Get up, my fine bhoy—get up wid ye! Why do you lie there?—owlder folk nor you are abroad in the sunshine.—Get up, and show them how supple you are!" ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... He remained motionless for a moment, then, with nervous haste threw off his shirt, and trousers. Marshal Stone, chancing to look that way, was astonished to see his companion naked, poised at the water's edge. He had time to note with admiration the splendid figure, still supple and strongly muscled despite the four-score years. Then Uncle Dick leaped, and dived. It was long seconds before he reappeared, only to dive again. He paid no attention to the marshal's remonstrances. Only when he was convinced of the ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... attributed to his release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's apprehension bears date March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... and sightless, the other yellow like a fox's; but the fellow was straight, supple, and clean-timbered as a fresh-hewn mast. With a "huh-huh," he gabbled ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... I love this figure's supple swinging In rhythm of its bridal song, Of strength and life-joy daily singing With youthful yearnings deep and long. I love this foot so lightly bearing The glory of sure victory Through youth's domain of merry daring To meet first-love ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... at all decent about it, she would have forgiven me at once; but, ah me! I never saw her move so quickly as when she went out the back door and broke off a supple green apple switch. After making most vigorous use of it she sent me to my room, with the remark, 'It fortunately comes natural ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... such a frankness in his urgency, such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of white dropping down the front, from her delicate ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... health. In cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy organizations where disease was organic instead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and as black as if they had been painted on the ivory of that tempting neck. A plum-colored merino dress, with a plain back and tight sleeves, skillfully made by herself, covered a bust so dainty and supple, that the young girl never wore a corset—for economy's sake. An ease and unusual freedom in the smallest action of the shoulders and body, resembling the facile, undulating motions of a cat, evinced this peculiarity. Imagine a gown fitting tightly to a form rounded and ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... went back to the house, and after a moment or two Frank Halton struggled to a sitting posture, and slipped out on to the grass. He was of medium height and rather slender in build, but the supple ease and grace of his movements gave the impression of great physical strength: even his descent from the hammock was not an awkward performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... or awkward or stiff; especially those produced by the English. Owing to one or the other of these defects, those representations were not true to nature. Now we have, in an English poem, a number of human beings, drawn from the original, whose movements are supple, whose types are as varied as in real life, depicted exactly as they were in their sentiments and in their dress, so that it seems we see them, and when we part the connection is not broken. The acquaintances made at ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... again. They must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour them and make the best of them till they died—and be thankful ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... life fresh and vigorous. It grows rapidly. The shoots are long and straight. The wood is smooth and fair and supple. The leaves are usually large. It is good to see the young trees acquire size ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... strength, of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested, light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... was a student and his tastes were delicate, still he did not frown upon our rude sports, provided they were not low or brutal. "They make the body erect and supple and give strength and elasticity to the muscles. The body should be cultivated as well as the mind. What we want is a sound mind in ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... Contes de la Bcasse and Bel Ami were published were somewhat astonished at his appearance. He was solidly built, rather short and had a resolute, determined air, rather unpolished and without those distinguishing marks of intellect and social position. But his hands were delicate and supple, and beautiful shadows ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... which indeed is a fine quality when natural but not when affected. Sound bodies, with a healthy condition of blood, and strong by exercise, receive their beauty from the very things from which they receive their strength. They are fresh-colored, active, and supple, neither too much nor too little in flesh. Paint and polish them with feminine cosmetics, and admiration ceases; the very pains taken to make them appear more beautiful add to the dislike we conceive for them. Yet a magnificent, and suitable, dress adds authority to ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... is so soft, as it were made on purpose to take hearts, and handle them without hurting! These taper fingers too, and even joints so supple, that methinks I mould them as they pass through mine: nay, in my conscience, though it be nonsense to say it, your hand ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... supple, limber, lithesome, lithe, flexile, malleable; irresolute, yielding, facile, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... again 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
... whom he had to deal, and then assumed them. He practised this art mainly upon personages of exalted station, for his scheme was to govern the world by acquiring dominion over its anointed rulers. A smooth and supple slave in appearance, but, in reality, while his power lasted, the despot of his masters, he exercised boundless control by enacting their parts with such fidelity that they were themselves deceived. It is impossible not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had dressed and dined, he soaked his hands in hot water to make them supple, and played Beethoven till far into ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... over to one of the grand-stand seats, as he spoke, and sat down, leaning on the rail with an easy movement of his supple figure. That was the first characteristic strangers usually noted in him: an exquisite Hellenic grace of strength and faultless proportion. He was a man's beauty, as distinguished from a beauty-man; other men were given to admiring him extravagantly ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a moment longer." Kathleen's slender, supple fingers played with a piece of toast. "You need not bother to conceal the newspapers, Dad," as Whitney surreptitiously tucked the Herald and the Post behind his back. "I read them up in ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Indians in what is almost the very centre of South America. If any traveller or ethnologist knows of a tribe elsewhere that plays a similar game, I wish he would let me know. To play it demands great activity, vigor, skill, and endurance. Looking at the strong, supple bodies of the players, and at the number of children roundabout, it seemed as if the tribe must be in vigorous health; yet the Parecis have decreased in numbers, for measles and smallpox ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Stineli meanwhile quietly replaced every thing in the cupboard; for she knew well enough, without being told, how such work should be done. Then she seated herself by Silvio's bedside, and made shadow pictures on the wall with her supple fingers; and Silvio laughed aloud, and called the names,—"A hare! A beast with horns! A ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... the roses of her spring hat was ravishing. The aunt had never been pretty; 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 was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... into possession of a whole block in the portion of the city known as "New Town." His prosperity did not, however, lessen his activity; he forgot that he was getting old, for his limbs were yet supple and his eyes perfectly clear. He measured off his lumber and drove nails with the strength and accuracy of a young man; yet, as death lurks in every passing breeze, feeling well is no evidence of sound health ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the Indians, the French voyageur on the St. Lawrence had several marked advantages over his English and Dutch neighbors. By temperament he was better adapted than they to be a pioneer of trade. No race was more supple than his own in conforming its ways to the varied demands of place and time. When he was among the Indians, the Frenchman tried to act like one of them, and he soon developed in all the arts of forest life a skill which rivaled that of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious "Judge," for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he had escaped? Had the apostle been like some teachers in the American churches, he might, as a professor ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... riding across the moor behind them. She was mounted on one of the Orme horses, was habited by Redfern, who had done justice to her superb and supple figure, and the sunlight which poured from between the clouds fully revealed the statuesque ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears down on ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... a material fungus without Mind to help him? Is a stiff joint or a contracted muscle as much a result of law as the supple and 161:1 elastic condition of the healthy limb, and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... it. The fact is that the tastes are never so tolerant, so liberal, so generous, so supple as they are at that time of life when they begin, according to your notion, to stiffen, to harden, to contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which had been dormant all through our first and second youth. We ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... he condescended. "Measured by our standard he must needs seem puny—as, indeed, what king of them all, Christian or Pagan, would not?" His manner so far had been in agreement with his supple companion, but suddenly a change came over his temper, and he turned on Hildebrand a frown so coldly menacing that the favorite ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is by my own experience, and by that of several amongst you, as well as by many who are now no more, and with whom I was acquainted. Believe me, gentlemen! to pretend to the favours of fortune it is only necessary to render one's self useful, and to be supple and obsequious to those who are in possession of credit and authority; to be handsome in one's person; to adulate the powerful; to smile, while you suffer from them every kind of ridicule and contempt whenever they shall do you the honour to amuse themselves with you; never to be frightened ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... their chain, did not stir; those who were dead, being prevented from falling, formed an obstruction with their corpses; and the great bronze line widened and contracted in turn, as supple as a serpent, and as impregnable as a wall. The Barbarians would come to re-form behind it, pant for a minute, and then set off again with the fragments of their weapons ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... very bad, almost deprived me of the hopes of his life; but by rest and constant sucking and licking it, which was the only remedy we had to apply, except green leaves chewed, that I laid to it by his direction, to supple and cool it, he soon began to be able to ride upon the muletto, and sometimes ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... life was in it, All its mystery and magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews, And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... altitudes. With the aid of a balancing-rod he walked the rope blindfolded; with baskets on his feet; sometimes he wheeled persons over in a wheelbarrow. He was a man of about thirty, short, but wonderfully muscled and extremely supple. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... face? She swung impatiently from the rail. She hated abstruse problems, and not the least of these was that which would confront her when she returned to America. She began to promenade the deck, still cluttered with luggage over which the Lascar stewards were moiling. Many a glance followed the supple pleasing figure of the girl as she passed round and round the deck. Other promenaders stepped aside or permitted her to pass between. The resolute uplift of the chin, and the staring dark eyes which saw but inner visions, impressed them with ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... top of his speed. To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—technically speaking, drowned—in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; at least in the northern angler. By the banks of the Usk a contemplative man who likes ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and tames with fear and danger A bright beast of a fiery kin, Only to mar, only to change her Sleek supple ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rejecting animals for slaughter is their general condition. This means that they should be of the proper weight,—that is, not emaciated, but with a proper amount of fat,—that the flesh should be firm and elastic and the skin supple. Nor should they be either too young or too old. A prominent example of the first error is in the sale of calves under three weeks old, known as "bob-veal," and while some sanitarians will not object to eating calves under three weeks old, the consensus of opinion is ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... birth and education, Greek also in subtle thought and philosophic insight, in oratorical power and supple statesmanship. Though born almost within the shadow of the mighty temple of Serapis at Alexandria, he shows few signs of Coptic influence. Deep as is his feeling of the mystery of revelation, he has no love of mystery for its own sake, nothing of the Egyptian ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... and flexing of her long, supple body the Violet picked up the business-like copy of the Violet manuscript which Mr. Adolph Meyers had sent her instead of the beribboned, purple "Renunciation of Rosalind," and began to read the first page when the telephone beside her bed rang with a soft tinkle. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... burned to the right when at a distance of about a hundred yards. This was a great disappointment, so the major, rather than be balked altogether, tried a long shot and broke the animal's fore-leg. Then, running after him at a pace which even the supple natives could not equal, he got close up and sent a ball into his head, which stunned him; but it took four additional shots to ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... she was conscious of the theatricalities from which she had emerged, of the man so close beside her, still waiting for her play-acting word of decision. It was only then, too, that she fully understood the adroitness, the smooth and supple alertness, of her ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the sleek and shining young bitch whose beauty had aroused so much enthusiasm in the minds of all judges who had seen her at Shaws. An uninformed outsider would scarcely have recognized her as the satin-coated beauty whose supple grace had so impressed Finn a few months back, in the walled inclosure above ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... of a Dutch china figure. On her left nostril was a little mole, another on the right side of her chin, where curled a few hairs so much like the color of the skin that they could hardly be seen. She was tall, with a well-developed chest and supple waist. Her clear voice sometimes sounded too shrill, but her merry laugh made everyone around her feel happy. She had a way of frequently putting both hands to her forehead, as though to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in an agony. Her foolish words set wasps about his head. "For the love of Allah, let Iskender anger no man, but be supple, politic, and so respected. Now that he is cast off by your Brutestants, there is nothing for it but he must become a dragoman. The Englishman of whom I spoke is but a step. He has need of all men's favour, and must court ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... and wearisome trial, And cares oppressed the constant earl; His lifelong companions were pain and sorrow, And winter-cold weeping: his ways were oft hard, 5 After Nithhad had struck the strong man low, Cut the supple sinew-bands of the sorrowful earl. That has passed ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... is darkness, save the sheen Glazed on it by the moon. Within she lies Her supple shape relaxed, in dreamful rest, And folds contentment babelike to her breast, Whose beauteous heaving, even and serene, Beats mortal time to ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner |
