"Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued our route, Lion going on just before me, and turning round frequently to see if I was following. By his conduct, I was very sure that he understood the object of our expedition. We kept as much as possible under cover; occasionally when we came to open ground we ran across it in a stooping posture, so that, should we be seen by those at a distance, we might be mistaken for animals. We had gone nearly a league without observing a human being, when we caught sight of a small hamlet in the distance, with a wood on one side, and ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon their knees. One after another the recalcitrant members grovelled in the dust before him, and begged that he would show them mercy. This was the sort of ceremony that the monarch loved. He kept his enemies in their humble posture till his vanity was glutted, and then declared that he would go before the diet ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Phurnutus, and other authors have said on the subject, explains the story of Cinyras and Myrrha in the following manner. Cynnor, or Cinyras, the grandfather of Adonis, having one day drank to excess, fell asleep in a posture which violated the rules of decency. Mor, or Myrrha, his daughter-in-law, the wife of Ammon, together with her son Adonis, seeing him in that condition, acquainted her husband with her father's lapse. On his repeating this to Cinyras, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the entrance of the cave till the spray mingled with her long, white locks, and the light falling upon her brow, revealed a sharp beautiful outline of face scarcely touched by years, white, even ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... clotted with paint, in the same manner as the hair on their heads. In other respects, they are well-proportioned; though the belly seems rather projecting. This may be owing to the want of compression there, which few nations do not use, more or less. The posture of which they seem fondest, is to stand with one side forward, or the upper part of the body gently reclined, and one hand grasping (across the back) the opposite arm, which hangs down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... old Adam fresh from his Maker's hand. A servant of the house, or farm-labourer, perhaps!—fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like golden stuff high in all the corners of the place. A serf! But what unserflike ease, how lordly, or godlike rather, in the posture! Could one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich, warm, white limbs; in the haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a mystic knot, fallen down across the inspired brow? And ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... were fired into the room, wounding John Taylor and killing Hiram Smith. Joseph Smith now attempted to escape by jumping out of the second-story window; but the fall so stunned him that he was unable to rise, and being placed by the conspirators in a sitting posture, they despatched him by four balls shot through ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of his fingers, and kept them there. He uttered not a word, but held his head slantwise and steadfast, as if listening. Only for a few seconds did he remain in this attitude; and then, as if suddenly satisfied with the examination, he rose from his stooping posture, exclaiming as he ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... known me a little longer. But a death like that, suffocated in that mud, that filthy, dirty water that smells so bad, doesn't at all appeal to me. If it were some green, transparent Swiss lake!... I want beauty even in death; I'm concerned with the 'final posture,' like the Romans, and I was afraid of perishing here like a rat in a sewer.... And nevertheless, I couldn't help laughing at my aunt and our poor servants to see the fright they were in!... Now the water is no longer rising, and the house is strong. Our ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... building, where a subject was to be drawn, had been accurately ruled with squares, the figures were introduced, and fitted to this mechanical arrangement. The members were appended to the body, and these squares regulated their form and distribution, in whatever posture ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... "Worship, mostly of the silent sort," worship, that finds no expression in word or gesture,—worship away from pealing organs and chants of praise, or the simpler music of the human voice, where no hands are uplifted, nor tongues loosened, nor posture of reverence assumed, becomes with most mortals a vague, aimless reverie, a course of distraction, dreaminess, and vacancy of mind, no more worth than the meditations of the Lancashire stone-breaker, who was asked what he thought ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Such was the posture of affairs at home, and at Mr. Sherwin's, when I went to see Margaret for the last time in my old character, on the last night which yet remained to separate us from ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... having saluted her, and taking care not to surprise her, he said, Thecla, my spouse, why sittest thou in this melancholy posture? What strange impressions are made upon thee? Turn ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... says: "I think the main design of Comedy is to make us laugh." (Abel Boyer, Letters of Wit, Politicks, and Morality, London, 1701, p. 362). But, she adds, since Collier has taught religion to the "Rhiming Trade, the Comick Muse in Tragick Posture sat" until she discovered Farquhar, whose language is amusing but decorous and whose plots are virtuous. This insistence on decorum and virtue indicates a concession to Collier and to the public. Thus ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... having bundled up these they threw them down upon the floor, tied their ankles to one another, and left them hanging, one on one side, and the other on the other side of the parlour door; in which posture they were found the next day at noon, at the very point of expiring, their blood having stagnated about their necks, which put them ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... with his thin chest up, and he managed to maintain this posture as the trail turned down over the rim. Then he grasped the pommel in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... prisoner struggled up to a standing posture, and pressing both hands to his head, he stared wildly ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in my chamber and call in and invite God and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... thin patches of soil, with here and there a shrub, and here and there a tree. Striking his heels into the soil, and catching at whatever branch or stem presented itself, he took the plunge. Clinging, sliding, falling, he arrived at the bottom. In a posture half sitting, half standing, and considerably jarred, he found himself face to face with Bruin. The animal had settled down on all fours, and now, with his surly, depressed head turned sullenly to one side, he looked at Penn, and growled. Penn looked at him, and said nothing. He had heard ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... disappointments, of his wayward youth: he got up from the bed: threw open the window, and looked out into the night: and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a good one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and flinging himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for some time in that posture of hope and submission. When he rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeating, mechanically, some little words which he had been accustomed to repeat as a child at his mother's side, after the saying of which she would softly take him to his bed and close ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unscrambled himself and resumed a normal posture, from his immediate rear there rent the quiet morning air a clear and musical laugh. It floated out on the breeze and hit ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... limitation to set out for a particular place. The fun is in the going. You keep right along with the procession until old age gets you. The thing is just to keep it up as long as you can." He swung himself into a sitting posture on the edge of the desk and noted that the slight pucker had not left his partner's eyes. "What's the idea?" he wished affectionately ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... slipped down on the deck into a sitting posture beside him, and placed her soft, ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... raising himself from his reclining posture, and staring Morrice in the face, gravely ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... or three days, the child is perfectly well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... came out, when Jack, in few words, told them what had happened. Some of the servants ran in, and a young lady made her appearance, while the others were helping the old lady out of the carriage, who had recovered her senses, but had been so much frightened that she had remained in the posture in ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... 385. Ward. Posture of defence; a technical term in fencing. Cf. Falstaff's "Thou knowest my old ward" (1 Hen. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... doorway at the far end of the shop appeared Emma with her two visitors. Mrs. Orton-Wells stopped and said something to a girl at a machine, and her very posture and smile reeked of an offensive kindliness, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... the fire, for the evening was a little cool, and, as we came in, roused herself from her sad posture to give me welcome. How white her face was! It was grievous to see such a young spirit so blanched,—so utterly unelastic. If she could receive tidings of his death, she would reconcile herself to the inevitable; but this wearing, gnawing pain, this grief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... was now slower than ever. Several times the deer had looked up, apparently suspecting that danger was near; but still Uncle Jeff advanced, in a stooping posture, unwilling to stir even the smallest twig for fear of alarming the wary herd. I moved on more rapidly; the panther was now not more than twenty yards from us, and would in a few seconds make his ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... eternal in the grace of simple airs or in the Christian innocence of Mozart was apparent, nay, had increased, in her features as the days in passing had added to them not only experience but also revelation and security. She was serene. The posture of her head was high, and her body, which was visibly informed by an immortal spirit, had in its carriage a large, a regal, an uplifted bearing which even now as I write of it, after so many years, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... competent, ordinarily very good-tempered; but there was red in his hair. When he got sufficiently near he tucked the speaking-trumpet under his arm, where it looked uncommonly like a fat cotton umbrella, himself suggesting a farmer inspecting an intended purchase, and in this posture delivered to us a stump speech on our shortcomings. This, I fear, I will have to leave to the reader's imagination. It would require innumerable dashes, and even so the emphasis would be lost. My relief had cause to be pleased ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... commonwealth. I think I see a path, as clear and as direct as a ray of light, which leads to the attainment of that object. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality, are necessary to make us a great and happy people. Happily, the present posture of affairs, and the prevailing disposition of my countrymen, promise to co-operate in establishing those four great and essential pillars of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... with the whole of their religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person, but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of the sacred number seven in its component ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... but the grass and his gun, he nevertheless was not troubled, for he thought that he had miscalculated the distance. He searched still further; but to his surprise the game-bag was still missing. He now raised himself up in a sitting posture, and rubbing his eyes vigorously, he searched the ground closely. But his eyes, usually so good, must have been dimmed by some enchantment, for he could perceive neither the hares nor the partridges, which he could ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we have ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... artificial wants; but the necessities of the Indian are few, and provided for by nature almost spontaneously. He detests labor, and will sometimes sit for whole days together without uttering a word or changing his posture. Neither the hope of reward nor the prospect of future want can overcome this ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... awful developments. The eyelids remained opened, disclosing two great, dull eyes like poorly polished agates, which stared expressionlessly at him. There was a convulsion like a minor earthquake, and the mass shortened and heightened its bulk, raising itself to a sitting posture. The three hinged, irregular arms suddenly extended themselves to the full in a thrust that barely missed him. They were tipped, those arms, with immense claws, like interlocking, rough-hewn stone fingers. They crashed emptily together within a few feet of Harley. Then, and not till then, did ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... formed into a half-circle, and shot at him with barbed arrows, six feet long. By this time a few of his guards had climbed up the wall, and were coming down to his help, at the moment when an arrow pierced his breast, and he sank down in a kneeling posture, with his brow on the rim of his shield, while his men held their shields over him till the rest could come to their aid, and he was taken up as one dead, and carried out on his shield, while all within the fort were slaughtered in the rage of the Macedonians. When the king had been ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the young huntsman kindled with rapture. He essayed to speak, but the words died upon his tongue. Falling on his knees, he seized the count's hand, and pressed it to his lips and heart. Tekeli raised him from his humble posture. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... were often performed. The lower or "knoll" mounds were used as the sepulchres of the dead. They yield up to the modern antiquary numberless skulls, of a type distinctly different from those of the Red Indians. The Mound-Builders buried their dead, most often, in a sitting posture, adorned with shell beads and ivory ornaments. Sometimes the dead were burned. Finally, the mounds were employed ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Hadj made a sudden, though slight, movement, as if the thing inside it had shivered. Irena noticed it with her half-closed eyes. Domini leaned forward and held out the money, then drew back startled. Irena had changed her posture abruptly. Instead of keeping her head thrown back and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward. Her meagre bosom almost disappeared as she bent over. Her arms fell to her sides. Her eyes opened wide and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... show me the Zeno Chapel; but I declined, preferring the church, where I found the space before the high altar filled with market-people come to hear the early mass. As I passed out of the church, I witnessed the partial awaking of a Venetian gentleman who had spent the night in a sitting posture, between the columns of the main entrance. He looked puffy, scornful, and uncomfortable, and at the moment of falling back to slumber, tried to smoke an unlighted cigarette, which he held between his lips. I found none of the shops open as I passed through ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... their eye by faith on Jesus, as only able to do their business, to bear up their head, to carry them through discouragements, to apply cordials to their fainting hearts, and remain fixed in that posture and resolution, looking for strengthening and encouraging life from him, and from him alone; and thus declare, that, (1.) They are unable of themselves to stand out such storms of discouragements, and to wrestle through such difficulties. (2.) They believe he is only able to bear them ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... before he could even discover the stage. He observed that every person in the theatre carried a long black glass, which he kept perpetually fixed to his eye. To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is in Vraibleusia called ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... somewhat resemble those of bronchitis, later they are quite distinctive. Cough is very markedly paroxysmal in character, and though severe is intermittent, the patient being entirely free for many hours at the time. The effect of posture is very marked. If the patient lie on the affected side, he may be free from cough the whole night, but if he turn to the sound side, or if he rises and bends forward, he brings up large quantities of bronchial secretion. The expectoration is characterized by its abundance and manner of expulsion. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and coming to where she, who was the unwitting cause of all this, yet lay, stopped all at once, for it seemed to him that her posture was altered; her habit had become more decorous, and yet the lashes, so dark in contrast to her hair, those shadowy lashes yet curled upon her cheek. Therefore, very presently, Barnabas stooped, and raising her in his arms bore her away through the wood towards the dim ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... satisfied with these conditions and terms," replied Don Quixote; and so saying, they betook themselves to where their squires lay, and found them snoring, and in the same posture they were in when sleep fell upon them. They roused them up, and bade them get the horses ready, as at sunrise they were to engage in a bloody and arduous single combat; at which intelligence Sancho was aghast and thunderstruck, trembling ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a sitting posture was interesting enough—like a T upside down, with a globe for a head and a cross-bar for arms. The hands had three fingers each, but there were only two toes ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... air, that, to please him, I yielded to his entreaties and lay down, wrapped in its warm folds. The good-natured fellow then wished me a "Buon riposo, signor!" and descended to his own resting-place, humming a gay tune as he went. From my recumbent posture on the deck I stared upward at the myriad stars that twinkled softly in the warm violet skies—stared long and fixedly till it seemed to me that our ship had also become a star, and was sailing through space with its glittering companions. What inhabitants peopled those fair planets, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have been the shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought him out of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on his feet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-face into the crowning railroad horror ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... like a sunny garden which one could only reach by squeezing oneself through some painfully narrow aperture. The fountains, the flowers, the lawns were still hers—if she would stoop and crawl; and for Imogen the mere imagining of herself in such a posture brought a hot blush to her forehead. Not only would she have scorned such means of reaching the life of ample ease and rich benevolence, but they were impossible to her nature. A garden that one must crouch to enter was a prison. Better, far better, her barren, dusty, lonely life than such ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is a large family comprising the various forms of monkeys, baboons, man-apes, such as the gibbon, gorilla, chimpanzee, orang-outang, etc., all of which have big jaws, small brains, and a stooping posture. This family also includes MAN, with his big brain and erect posture, and his many races depending upon shape of skull, color of skin, character of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the bench]. At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... idea. They believe the evil spirit, "Mungia," is a black spectre dwelling in the woods. They think the souls of the good and brave enter beautiful birds and feed on delicious fruits, while cowardly souls become dirty reptiles. Polygamy is common. They bury in the sitting posture, with the hammock of the deceased wrapped around him. The very old men are buried with the mouth downward. They make use of a narcotic drink called Ayahuasca, which produces effects similar to those of opium. The Zaparos are pacific and hospitable, but there is little social life ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... attempting to do them any farther hurt, they recovered their canoe, and hauled in their wounded companions. They set them both upon their feet to see if they could stand, and finding they could not, they tried whether they could sit upright: One of them could, and him they supported in that posture, but perceiving that the other was quite dead, they laid the body along at the bottom of the canoe. After this some of the canoes went ashore, and others returned again to the ship to traffic, which is a proof that our conduct ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... lingered, and seemed waiting for his father to go with him. Platt had sunk very rapidly, and this day had made a great change. Margaret had taken the moaning and restless child on her lap, for the ease of change of posture: and she was now shading from his eyes with her shawl, the last level rays of the sun which shone in upon her from the window. She was unwilling to change her seat, for it seemed as if the slightest movement would quench the lingering life of the child: and there was no one to draw ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... other.—THIRD, Silesian War lies handy to us, and is the only kind of Offensive War that does; Country bordering on our frontier, and with the Oder running through it as a sure high-road for everything. FOURTH, "What suddenly turned the balance," or at least what kept it steady in that posture,—"news of the Czarina's death arrives:" Russia has ceased to count against us; and become a manageable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... must rise upon his hind legs and look in front of him. This posture was not hard, for in his native jungle, he had often thus obtained a breakfast of venison for his wife and family. But oh, to stand a half hour on two legs only, when he had four, and would gladly have used all of them, was ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... If it please Him to make Himself known, He can make the heart conscious of His presence. Our posture must be that of holy reverence, of quiet ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... sitting-room; two figures were outlined in strong relief against the dark teak walls, both absorbed in conversation. Ma Chit presented a particularly attractive picture, with her rose-crowned head, graceful posture, and waving hands; even as they gazed, her rippling ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... him by the arm, dragging himself slowly into a sitting posture. "I'll hang myself if you let them get me," he urged hysterically. " I'll hang myself in gaol rather than let them do it. I can't face it all I can't—I can't. It isn't grandpa I mind; I'm not afraid of him. He was a devil. But it's the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... thought I! Though this humble posture so little affects this proud beauty, she knows not how much I have obtained of others of her sex, nor how often I have been forgiven for the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... oaks, she perceived the figure of a young man sitting in her favourite alcove. His back was turned towards the side upon which she was. Having finished the air, he threw his flute carelesly from him, and folded his arms in a posture the most disconsolate that can be imagined. He rose and advanced a little with an irregular step. "Ah lovely mistress of my soul," cried he, "thou little regardest the anguish that must for ever be an inmate of this breast! While ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... devil in the most saintly disposition, and that which slumbered in the breast of the young Shawanoe now flamed to a white heat. Swinging back to the upright posture he called: ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... warning received in a dream,[664] counterfeited, once a year, the beggar, sitting before the gate of his palace with his hand hollowed and stretched out for charity. A statue formerly in the villa Borghese, and which should be now at Paris, represents the Emperor in that posture of supplication. The object of that self-degradation was the appeasement of Nemesis, the perpetual attendant on good fortune, of whose power the Roman conquerors were also reminded by certain symbols attached to their cars of triumph. The symbols were the whip ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... undertook at the beginning of my child H.'s ninth month to experiment with her with a view to arriving at the exact state of her colour perception, and also to investigate her sense of distance. The arrangements consisted in this instance in giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a band passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back of her chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their movements. Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed before her, at varying distances, front, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... Gerald rose from his squatting posture at the stern of the boat, while Phil and Jack amiably made way for the newcomer at the edge of the wharf, where, for some unexplained reason, men always like to stand. Claud, finding himself between Gerald and his father, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... whatever of Toovey. He sat about a minute longer in his familiar posture, looking before him, his little round hands on his little round knees. Then ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... let you go; you are either mad or drunk—incapable of taking care of yourself," said a low, clear voice; and Tom was lifted to a standing posture by the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans, with an angry gleam in them, she said, in a deeply-shaken voice ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... foes than like two teams before a cricket-match, or two wrestlers who shake hands and afterwards grin amicably as they move in circles seeking for a hitch. As I lay, however, the bathing-place could only be brought into view by craning my neck beyond the tent-door: and my posture was too well chosen to be shifted. Moreover, I had a more singular example of these amenities in face of me, on the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pugilism. There were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextricable knots, wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his neighbor's toes, some little boys ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reputations! Ay, just as he is a keeper of secrets, another virtue that he sets up for in the same manner. For the rogue will speak aloud in the posture of a whisper, and deny a woman's name while he gives you the marks of her person. He will forswear receiving a letter from her, and at the same time show you her hand in the superscription: and yet perhaps he has counterfeited the hand too, and sworn to a truth; but he hopes not to be believed, and ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... face. "I had not suspected you of so much diplomacy," she observed, dryly; "but, after all, Miriam, how does this change the posture of affairs to me? I shall be all the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a wrestling-match, a foot-race, a lance-fight, a disk-hurling, a strife of archery and of darters. AEneas, on the first anniversary of his father's funeral, proposes five trials of skill—for the chariot-race of Homer, suitably to the posture of the Trojan affairs, a sailing-match; then, the foot-race, the terrible cestus, archery, and lastly, the beautiful equestrian tournament of Young Troy. The English Homer of the Dunces treads in the footsteps of his august predecessors, and celebrates, with imitated solemnities, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I have been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence, impelled me to abandon ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... keep Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep, May the repose unbroken be, Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to thee, While thou enjoy'st along with it That which no art, or craft, could ever hit, Or counterfeit to mortal sense, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... found himself squatted behind the vat, and Bouvard lay like one who had fallen over a stool. For ten minutes they remained in this posture, not daring to venture on a single movement, pale with terror, in the midst of broken glass. When they were able to recover the power of speech, they asked themselves what was the cause of so many misfortunes, and of the last above all? And they ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and still he sat there before the fire, head bent forward, as though he had an audience. I shrank back closer into the shadows, drawing my coat collar more snugly about my throat. It was incredible that he should play a part before her—and now alone! His very posture suggested a martyred, deserted old man. I felt myself in the presence of something inexplicable.—Then, in a frenzy of suppressed rancor, such as I had never felt before, I climbed the hill, the lumps of mud and ice seeming ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... engagements be observed in their genuine sense; but in my opinion it is unnecessary, and would be unwise, to extend them. Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies." In a previous part of the same letter Washington makes the following admirable and just remark: "The nation which indulges towards ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... stunned seconds he dragged himself to a sitting posture; his head throbbed cruelly, and when he put his hand to his forehead he found that it was bleeding. He tried to stand, but when he placed his weight upon his left foot it gave him ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... selfishness which our present institutions inspire, such questions are wonderfully endearing. I answered him that I had found a friend, whose principles were as liberal and enlarged as they were uncommon; and that I would take an early occasion to give him an account of my present designs, and the posture of my affairs. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris: meditating much on this singular posture of things: but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire being ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a little girl, endeavoured to steady herself by holding to one of the thin pieces of grating; it broke, and her arm fell through and struck the water, and in an instant she gave a dull, smothered wail. Palu, the woman, seized her by her hair and pulled the child up to a sitting posture, and then shrieked with terror—the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... thenceforward was destined to prove a continued justification of their high opinion of him. He was of an active, mercurial turn, and, as might have been seen, was not inclined to remain long in one place or posture. He had now thrown aside his rapid pen, and, with a quick, light step and deeply-cogitating air, was traversing back and forth the open space between his table, in front of the president, and the closed door of the apartment. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... went to the American mission school and see the native children settin' flat on the floor. Josiah wuz awful worked up to see 'em settin' down in such a oncomfortable posture, and he said to me that if he had some tools and lumber he would make 'em some seats. But that is their way of settin' ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... decide in my mind whether the elevated chin posture of the passenger was the result of pride, bravado or a boil on the Adam's apple, when the scudding comet reached the shelter of the protecting bank in which was located the chiselled dog kennel that I occupied. As the machine came to halt, the superior chin depressed itself ninety degrees, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... into a flood of tears, and quitted the room, as my lord raised up Harry Esmond from his kneeling posture, put his broad hand on the lad's shoulder, and spoke kindly to him. Then, suddenly remembering that Harry might have brought the infection with him, he stepped back suddenly, saying, "Keep off, Harry, my boy; there is no good in running into ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the Queen and Empress, have now been almost a fortnight at Aranjuez, to their great content, and also of this Court, to hear his Majesty is so vigorous there, as at one time to have set on horseback a matter of three hours, and in that posture to have killed a wolf from his own hands; whereas, before his going hence, it was doubted by many whether he had sufficient health and strength to perform the journey, though but seven leagues, in a coach or litter, and that in two ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... which is preserved in the Vatican, mentions that Francis, having directed the body of Brother Peter to be removed sometime afterwards, it was found that it was turned and kneeling, the head bowed down, and in the posture of one who obeys a command given him. To mark the value of obedience and the respect due to it, God was pleased to permit a dead person to obey the orders of a superior, as ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... its work. With that, he declared that he was too brave a man to suffer any longer. He seized a tomahawk and raised it over the head of the prisoner: still a muscle did not move. He did not even change his posture. The blow was given, and ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... comfortable posture, I watched him till he fell asleep, his placid countenance, notwithstanding the dangers he had been in, showing a mind at rest and nerves unshaken. I found, on going on deck, that we had already risen the sails of the stranger ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... relaxed hand of the old clergyman who had fallen in a sitting posture on the bed, slipped from his wounded head which he had clasped just before he died, and for a moment seemed to point at him. He shivered, but still he could not stir. How dreadful and solemn was that face! And those eyes, how they searched out the black record of his heart! The quiet ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the front room of the little drab cottage at the edge of town. That was limned upon his brain in startlingly perfect detail still—that and one other thing. The memory of John Anderson's pitifully wasted form huddled slack upon the high stool, arms outstretched and silvered head bowed in a posture of utter weariness, remained with him, too, clinging in spite of every effort to ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the servants, but instantly fell down dead; suffocated, I imagine by some gross and noxious vapor. As soon as it was light again, which was not until the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and free from any sign of violence, exactly in the same posture that he fell, so that he looked more like ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... religious mood. Speaking in his diary of a weakness and fluttering at the heart, from which he had suffered, he says, "It is an awful sensation, and would have made an enthusiast of me, had I indulged my imagination on religious subjects. I have been always careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume, during my private exercises of devotion."[39] And in this avoidance of indulging the imagination on religious, or even spiritual subjects, Scott goes far beyond Shakespeare. I do not think there is ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the corner of the flagstaff, a young girl came suddenly into sight by the jutting edge of sandstone bluff near the High Wickham; and Herbert, jumping up at once from his reclining posture, raised his bat to her with stately politeness, and moved forward in his courtly graceful manner to meet her as she approached. 'Well, Selah,' he said, taking her hand a little warmly (judged at least by Herbert Le Breton's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the door." A certain Miss Finnegan, who served a brief apprenticeship in the household, acquired lasting fame in the garrison for the mimetic power which enabled her to portray "Mrs. Gineral's" instantaneous change from a posture of fury to one of rapt devotion. She could look like Hecate Hibernicized, and in one comprehensive second drop into a chair, "smooth her wrinkled front" and side curls, shake out her rumpled draperies, and rise from an instant's searching of the Scriptures ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... known that an armament was fitting out at New York many suspected that the southern States were to be assailed, and such was the unhappy posture of American affairs at that time, that no sanguine expectations of a successful resistance could be reasonably entertained. The magazines of the Union were everywhere almost empty, and Congress had neither ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to make their difference appeare more cleerly, let us suppose one man endued with an excellent naturall use, and dexterity in handling his armes; and another to have added to that dexterity, an acquired Science, of where he can offend, or be offended by his adversarie, in every possible posture, or guard: The ability of the former, would be to the ability of the later, as Prudence to Sapience; both usefull; but the later infallible. But they that trusting onely to the authority of books, follow the blind blindly, are like him that trusting to the false rules of the master ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... said the fat boy, Slipping down until he had assumed a sitting posture. He lay down and was asleep in a short time. Stacy woke with a start when another giant rock smote the wall just above their cave, exploding into thousands of pieces from ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... herself to a sitting posture, and, lifting both hands to her face, pushed back the hair from her forehead and temples, with a gesture which Ellen knew meant that she was making up her mind to some disagreeable or painful effort. Then taking both Ellen's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... sun. "Fling away ambition," mourns old Cardinal Wolsely in Henry VIII; "by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?" "It often puts men upon doing the meanest offices," says Swift, "as climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping." It has been aptly called by Sir ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... early and warmer part of the night, served to melt the icy covering of the mother earth just under him. When the cold increased, this was again frozen, rendering the portion of the body nearest to the ground almost benumbed. By frequently reversing the posture a little, some relief from suffering was obtained, but not sufficient to reach a degree which could be called comfortable, or, in the least, be claimed as desirable. Every member of this expedition can truthfully assert that they have experienced a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... look upwards, the sun began to grow hot, and the light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me, but in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... as I entered the chamber, I saw her sitting on a sofa in a pensive posture, and tears in her eyes. I asked her what she thought of Lucy Sterling's advice, and whether it would not have been better to have followed it than suffer her conduct to be exposed ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... satisfaction arising out of the effect they made, kept pace with the emotions of the reader. At first, Mr Nadgett sat with his spectacles low down upon his nose, looking over them at his employer, and nervously rubbing his hands. After a little while, he changed his posture in his chair for one of greater ease, and leisurely perused the next document he held ready as if an occasional glance at his employer's face were now enough and all occasion for anxiety or doubt were gone. And finally he rose and looked out of the window, where he stood with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... lazulites, were crowded in the form of bracelets and chains, and his feet rested on a golden basin. The grandees of the realm lay prostrate on the ground, with their heads covered with dust. A hundred complainers and accused persons were in a similar posture; behind them twenty executioners, with drawn sabres in their hands waited the royal signal, which generally terminated each cause, by the decapitation of one ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... building the lads swiftly passed. In all but one they found ghastly occupants, some stretched out in the posture of sleep, some sitting at table like the first seen, but all showing that death had come suddenly ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... [62] The posture of respect, as to stand motionless like a statue, the eyes fixed on the ground, and the arms ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... the potion, put the cup on the mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to submerge the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting the sweet influence of the remedy. The girls, out of a nice modesty, turned away, for Mr. Povey must not swallow the medicine, and they preferred to leave him unhampered in the solution ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to. You left England undefended that you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return asks nothing—God have mercy on us!—save that you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... tired now of disappointments, that I must talk a little with my padre in their defiance, and in a manner now, thank God! out of their reach. Ah, how long will letters be any safer than meetings! The little world I see all give me hope and comfort from the posture of affairs but I am too deeply interested to dare be sanguine while ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... one rose at length, as by a sudden effort, to the sitting posture. For a few moments it turned its yellowish skull to this side and that; then, heedless of its neighbour, got upon its feet by grasping the spokes of the hind wheel. Half erected thus, it stood with its back to ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... as Barbara looked again she saw the Mexican rising to a sitting posture and with his hand to his head look around in a dazed manner as though awakening out of a deep sleep. The young woman drew a long breath of relief and, with a faint smile, said to the surveyor, who had drawn nearer: "I'm sorry I came, Abe. I'm afraid you'll think ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... of economics, his position seems to me unassailable; but it is a position which suggests the posture of a lecturer in front of his black-board rather than that of a shepherd seeking the lost sheep of his flock. If the socialist must think again, at least we may ask that the Bishop should sometimes raise his crook to defend the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... to act," rejoined the other, as she forsook the kneeling posture, with an abruptness not common to devotees; "only tell me how. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... them it was a question just where he might find room to sleep. Not that the swamp boy was at all particular; for he could have snuggled down on deck, or found rest in a sitting posture; for he was used to ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... that we were not being deceived, we instituted a strict overhaul of the gunyahs, in hopes of finding something that might give us a clue to the fate of the missing men. When we broke up our circle for this purpose, the component parts of the "heap" assumed an upright posture, and it was remarkable to witness the awe with which they regarded Lizzie. At first they seemed afraid to approach her, and stood some five yards distant, watching her whilst she puffed out the smoke from her relighted pipe, and posed herself in an attitude of becoming superiority, for she saw ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden |
