"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hired man Of Christian Dallman, brow and pointed beard, Upon a drab proscenium outward stared, Sat Harmon Whitney, to that eminence, By merit raised in ribaldry and guile, And to the assembled rebels thus he spake: "Whether to lie supine and let a clique Cold-blooded, scheming, hungry, singing psalms, Devour our substance, wreck our banks and drain Our little hoards for hazards on the price Of wheat or pork, or yet to cower beneath The shadow of a spire upreared to curb A breed ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... can be more contrary than such a philosophy (the academic or sceptical) to the supine indolence of the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions, and its superstitious credulity."—Fifth Essay, p. 68, 12mo; ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... in the town wailed and ran, or lay and beat their heads and hands on the ground, supine before the invaders. Each captive was dragged back to a knot of aliens near the main building. Some were hurled out again into the dark, unharmed; a few others were retained. A sorting of prisoners was plainly in progress. There was no question that the ship people had followed through into this ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... activity to take the road. The horses were prepared and mounted; and being lightened of a great part of their burdens, were able to move with celerity. As to the worthy convive of the preceding evening, he was carefully gathered up from the hunter's couch on which he lay, repentant and supine, and, being packed upon one of the horses, was hurried forward with the convoy, groaning and ejaculating ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... and incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke misgivings. He was taken to the cells, where he broke down, and with crapulous tears confessed ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to rouse the supine Elisha, who chewed his quid like a placid beast of the field, and showed no sign of a ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... like a deep sigh, which was the regular, inarticulate speech of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the evening breeze. He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learned that day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before. Then, perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of the whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused and whirling. Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear voices that called him ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... I. e. throwing herself on her back with feet upward. If it is meant that she counterfeits death, then of course the parallel with the pankratiast will only hold good to the extent of the supine posture.] ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... chosen curtains and blinds had not been drawn—Sypher, pink and shiny, his silk hat (which he wore) a resplendent miracle of valetry, looked an urban yet roseate personification of Dawn. He seemed as eager as Septimus was supine. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... reciting of the few lessons she did with her father, there was always no fault to find. How could the colonel suppose anything was wrong? Life had become a dull, sad story to him; why should it be different to anybody else? Nay, the colonel would not have said that in words; it was rather the supine condition into which he had lapsed, than any conclusion of his intelligence; but the fact was, he had no realization of the fact that a child's life ought to be bright and gay. He accepted Esther's sedate unvarying tone and manner as quite the right thing, and found it suit him perfectly. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... demon eyes! Corinthians, see! My sweet bride withers at their potency." 290 "Fool!" said the sophist, in an under-tone Gruff with contempt; which a death-nighing moan From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost, He sank supine beside the aching ghost. "Fool! Fool!" repeated he, while his eyes still Relented not, nor mov'd; "from every ill Of life have I preserv'd thee to this day, And shall I see thee made a serpent's prey?" Then Lamia breath'd death breath; the sophist's eye, Like a sharp ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... Discipline, was a desperate way of Engaging. But France still went upon the old Politick Scheme to gain Advantages upon the Continent by dilatory Proceedings in King James's Affairs; for unless this was their Prospect, was it not a supine Piece of Management to suffer a Body of near Thirty Thousand brave Men to lie unarm'd in the Field above half a Year, when France had Magazines and Stores to furnish above a Million of Soldiers? But as King James ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... understanding very clearly what was the matter with me, though having at the same time a vague impression that all was not quite right. Gradually I collected my ideas, and at length, when Browne repeated his question the third time, I had formed a pretty correct theory as to the cause of my present supine attitude, and the unpleasant ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... hand to interfere with them. It has been explained why, though it should be added that in the way of firearms there was only the single worthless Springfield rifle in the house. It was mother and daughter who held the three lads supine. Had they been left free they would have acted immediately on first learning of ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... or according to others, of the Maharajah of Kanoj. Under the title Lizzat al-Nisa (The Pleasures—or enjoying—of Women) it has been translated into all the languages of the Moslem East, from Hindustani to Arabic. It divides postures into five great divisions: (1) the woman lying supine, of which there are eleven subdivisions; (2) lying on her side, right or left, with three varieties; (3) sitting, which has ten, (4) standing, with three subdivisions, and (5) lying prone, with two. This total of twenty- nine, with three forms of "Purushayit," when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... regretfully: "If only I had been open with papa from the first! But then what an impossible life he would have led me!" Yes. Men were absurd in many ways; lovably like Jasper, impracticably like her father, odiously like that grotesquely supine creature in the chair. Was it possible to talk him over? Perhaps it was not necessary? "Oh! I can't talk to him," she thought. And when Heemskirk, still without looking at her, began resolutely to crush ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... citizens and as men of truth, they would, by uniting, soon sweep away the serious discredit to our country and to Republican Institutions, the festering corruption of this city and of the State; yet it is to their supine, nay wicked tolerance of the evil that we owe the specimens of judicial corruption by which we are robbed and dishonored. Can it be said that any system of education can be sound, which shall fail to demonstrate, ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... you, supine and careless laid, Play on your pipe beneath this beechen shade; While wretched we about the world must roam, And leave our pleasing fields and native home, Here at your ease you sing your amorous flame, And the wood rings ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... did not effect their re-entrance into Venice, the ruling classes of the Republic allowed themselves to be drugged by the prevalent narcotic. Venice, too, was fighting for her life in the Adriatic and the Levant, while her nobles became daily more supine in aristocratic leisure, more papalizing in their private sympathies. Thus the last years of Sarpi's life were overclouded by a deep discouragement, which did not, indeed, extinguish his trust in the divine Providence or his certain belief that the right would ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... peak; my heart was weak, yet on and on I pressed. Skyward I strained until I gained its dazzling silver crest; And there I found, with all around a world supine and stark, Swept clean of snow, a flat plateau, and on it ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... stirred to free his shoulder of Ivana's supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his lungs, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... indolent ones in low, whose selfishness brings, and whose blundering blindness allows to continue, the conditions that are fatal to life—on these the guilt of blood lies. Violence slays its thousands, but supine negligence slays its tens ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... compound' | Ex'port export' | Ref'use refuse' Com'press compress' | Ex'tract extract' | Re'tail retail' Con'cert concert' | Fer'ment ferment' | Sub'ject subject' Con'crete concrete' | Fore'cast forecast' | Su'pine supine' Con'duct conduct' | Fore'taste foretaste'| Sur'vey survey' Con fine confine' | Fre'quent frequent' | Tor'ment torment' Con'flict conflict' | Im'part impart' | Tra'ject traject' Con'serve conserve' | Im'port import' | Trans'fer transfer' Con'sort consort' | ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... pioneering. It is fitting that we should pay our homage in words; but we must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management of our home life and conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show certain high and fine ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... bore their fate, Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state; For, gorg'd with flesh, and drunk with human wine While fast asleep the giant lay supine, Snoring aloud, and belching from his maw His indigested foam, and morsels raw; We pray; we cast the lots, and then surround The monstrous body, stretch'd along the ground: Each, as he could approach ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... captain, who, it afterwards appeared, had in former years suffered divers things at the hand of an obnoxious mother-in-law, grew more excited than ever, and became furiously indignant, not only at the all-assuming lady, but also at the supine Dundreary, who allowed himself to be thus imposed upon. He grumbled and muttered, and really seemed as if he would make for the stage, as he said, "to give the old creetur a piece of his mind." Even Norman was now uneasy lest he should make ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the featureless houses propping each other's flanks in old Fez or old Sale, but people rich enough to rebuild have always done so, and the passion for building seems allied, in this country of inconsequences, to the supine indifference that lets existing constructions crumble back to clay. "Dust to dust" should have been the motto ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... clerkly colleague, had set the original match to the magazine by inciting the late Mr. Dearman's coolies. Apparently a relentless, terrible fanatic and bitter hater of the English, for his councils were all of blood and fire, rapine and slaughter, he taunted his hearers with their supine cowardice in that the Military Prison still held out, its handful of defenders still manned its walls, nay, from time to time, made sallies and terrible reprisals upon a ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... in harems and the male hair seal does not stay on shore. A fur seal swims with his fore flippers, a true seal with his hind flippers. A fur seal stands upright on his fore flippers, a hair seal lies supine. A fur seal has a neck, a hair seal has practically none. A fur seal naturally has fur, the hair seal has no undercoat whatever. A pup fur seal is black, a pup hair seal is white. Different? Obviously! Pity the old name 'sea ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... are left entirely with the reader. Few books are more wearisome than those which are thoroughly exhaustive, which point a moral and adorn a tale on every page. Imagination and thought must sit supine, despairing of new conquests. Their work has all been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... line of exhausted volcanoes. They had taken office when they were full of mighty aspirations; they had poured forth measures of all sorts with prodigal vigour; and at last they were reduced to wait, supine and helpless, for the inevitable swing of the political pendulum. A similar process of exhaustion goes on among literary men; and there are certain symptoms which cause expert persons to say, "Ah, poor Blank seems to have written himself out!" I have occasionally alluded to this most distressing ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of the Madonna at S. Lorenzo in her magnificent repose and passionate cascade of fallen draperies; the repulsive but superabundantly powerful profile of a goat-like faun. These, and the stupendous studies of the Albertina Collection at Vienna, including the supine man with thorax violently raised, are worked with careful hatchings, stroke upon stroke, effecting a suggestion of plastic roundness. But we discover quite a different use of the pen in some large simple outlines of seated female figures at the Louvre; in thick, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... his name, Whence I so fully answer'd. He at once Exclaim'd, up starting, "How! said'st thou he HAD? No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye The blessed daylight?" Then of some delay I made ere my reply aware, down fell Supine, not after forth ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... department. The work was of the same character as that which he had just been engaged on, but with the greater directness which surgery has than medicine; and a larger proportion of the patients suffered from those two diseases which a supine public allows, in its prudishness, to be spread broadcast. The assistant-surgeon for whom Philip dressed was called Jacobs. He was a short, fat man, with an exuberant joviality, a bald head, and a loud voice; he had a cockney accent, and was ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the man in black, "is a grand one, with unbounded vitality. Compare it with your Protestantism, and you will see the difference. Popery is ever at work, whilst Protestantism is supine. A pretty church, indeed, the Protestant! Why, it can't even work ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... furnace, out of his arms The splendour suddenly melted, and a roll Of thunder split the dream, and headlong down He fell, from heaven to earth; while, overhead The young and scornful gods—he heard them laugh!— Toppled the crags down after him. He lay Supine. They plucked up Etna by the roots And buried him beneath it. His broad breast Heaved, like that other giant in his heart, And through the crater burst his fiery breath, But could not burst his bonds. And so he lay Breathing in agony thrice ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... supine in his chair, knew the preliminary stages of the process well. They took longer than usual to-night; both of them were unkeyed and had to compose themselves to the affair. But at last the visible world, the wall before him, commenced to dislimn; it shifted; it became mist, writhing ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Derrick, a vulgar lad, aping gentility, behind her. Closer and closer came the waters; a shark's gray hide glittered a few feet from him. Death, sure of his prey, nibbled and played with it; in a little while he lay supine and unconscious. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... "Not altogether supine yet," Mr. Fentolin observed, "yet even this last generation has seen weakening. We have lost so much self-reliance. Perhaps it is having these grown-up children who we think can take care of us—Canada and Australia, and the others. However, we will not talk of politics. It bores you, I ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... airy hut, at eve, retires, Clasps to his open breast his buxom spouse, Basks in his faggot's blaze, his passions fires, And strait supine to rest ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... souls, through dust and heat, Rise from disaster and defeat The stronger. And conscious still of the divine Within them, lie on earth supine No longer. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... is admirably written and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the unities of time and place and the ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Tiffany and envious admiration of the manner in which Halfman handled the gentry, was as heedless as his inferiors, and was therefore taken too much by surprise to offer the slightest resistance when Evander, suddenly springing from between his guards, snatched from his supine arms the captured sword that had been intrusted to his keeping. Before he or any other of the astonished spectators could take any action Evander had leaped lightly into the alcove of the window, and, dragging by main force the heavy table in front of him, so as to blockade his corner, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the death from which we cannot move, And humbled groan beneath the hand of Jove. His ample maw with human carnage fill'd, A milky deluge next the giant swill'd; Then stretch'd in length o'er half the cavern'd rock, Lay senseless, and supine, amidst the flock. To seize the time, and with a sudden wound To fix the slumbering monster to the ground, My soul impels me! and in act I stand To draw the sword; but wisdom held my hand. A deed so rash had finished all our fate, No mortal forces from the lofty gate ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... a full half hour, supine, completely relaxed, only half conscious. Yet he was devoutly thankful. The precious gift of life had been saved, the life that was so young, so strong and so buoyant in him. The sea, immense, immeasurable ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... earlier sun, hot and soft-stroking against leaves. Or a Pleistocene man, smallest of all the males, whose supine acceptance had ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... of bed-clothes, hampers our movements and probably makes us more cowardly. A man will meet pain or danger boldly if he be standing upright—occupying that erect position which is his as Lord of Creation; but his courage does not well so high if he be supine. We are awakened suddenly by the feel that some superhuman Presence is in the room. We are transfixed with terror, we cannot find either the bell-rope or the matches, while we dare not leap out of bed and make ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... in pleasure could be indulged: but the world was one vast prison, to which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial gaoler; and the very virtues, which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive and supine. For in that unnatural and bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden. Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest of flattery and craft. Avarice had become the sole ambition—men desired praetorships and provinces ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... bloom of the eglantine,— Of the pointed thistle and brier; And follow the track of the wandering vine, Whether it trail on the earth, supine, Or round the aspiring tree-top twine, And reach for a ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... detail in connection with the Latin and Greek derivatives, the author wishes to call special attention: the Latin and the Greek roots are, as key-words, given in this book in the form of the present infinitive,—the present indicative and the supine being, of course, added. For this there is one sufficient justification, to wit: that the present infinitive is the form in which a Latin or a Greek root is always given in Webster and other received lexicographic authorities. It is a curious fact, that, ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... suffering as her youth and buoyant nature would permit; but as the years slipped by she felt inclined to personify that pride and burn a candle beneath it. Even before her mind had awakened, the energy and strength of her character had cured her of love for a man as supine as Jack Emory. He was charming and well read, all that she could desire in a brother, but as a husband he would be intolerable. As his love cooled she liked him better still, particularly as his loyalty would not permit him to acknowledge even to himself that he could change; but its passing ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the balustrade, Idly notes how the blossoms fade In the sun's caress; then crosses where The shadow shelters a carven chair. Within its curve, supine she lies, And wearily closes her tired eyes. The minstrel beseeches his silver strings, And holding the lady spellbound, sings: — Down the road to Avignon, The long, long road to Avignon, Across the bridge to Avignon, One morning in ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... "I am lying supine in bed, forbidden to speak or make any exertion whatever. But I can't resist the temptation of dropping you a line, in the hope of calling forth a score or ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... determinedly hostile—organizing very large encroachments upon the privileges of the Uitlanders and designing fresh burdens to be borne by them—and when it became clear that the dangers threatening as a result of their own supine attitude were worse than any disfavour with which they might be viewed on account of political action, that they began to take an active part with others in the agitation for reform. It was not until the Volksraad in the Session of 1895 revealed their ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... no question of cowardice. It is a question of common sense. A few country lads cannot oppose a government. With what weapons can they do so? Courage I honour; without it all active virtues are supine; but it is not courage to attempt the impossible, to lead the ignorant to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, benignant gaze. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... prove a miserable prophet or almanac maker, for my predictions are seldom verified. I thought the present session likely to be a very supine one, but unless the evening varies extremely from the morning, it will be a tempestuous day—and yet it was a very southerly and calm wind that began the hurricane. The King's Speech was so tame, that, as George Montagu said of the earthquake, you might have stroked it.(726) Beckford (whom I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the Second Empire. The Franco-German war interrupted this issue of the story, and publication in book form did not take place until the latter half of 1871, a time when both the war and the Commune had left Paris exhausted, supine, with little or no interest in anything. No more unfavourable moment for the issue of an ambitious work of fiction could have been found. Some two or three years went by, as I well remember, before anything like a revival of literature and of public interest ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... his due, Dan begins to refine. However, I wish, honest comrade of mine, You would really on Thursday leave St. Catharine,[1] Where I hear you are cramm'd every day like a swine; With me you'll no more have a stomach to dine, Nor after your victuals lie sleeping supine; So I wish you were toothless, like Lord Masserine. But were you as wicked as lewd Aretine,[2] I wish you would tell me which way you incline. If when you return your road you don't line, On Thursday I'll pay my respects at your shrine, Wherever ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started, as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sparkle, its mobility, its translucence excite the fancy, as wine does the blood—it combines those elements which produce at once awe and ecstasy in the soul—the unknown, the resistless, the beautiful. One may be melancholy by the sea, but never morbid or supine. Between it and the land there are no gradations; you do not come imperceptibly under its influence, as, in ascending a mountain, you come into the cooler atmosphere; as you approach, you are suddenly enveloped and animated by a crystalline, vivifying element: this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... This knew I, who so long was left in night, That from such prayers had disappear'd my light; Till I, who sought her still, nor found, alas! Even her shade, nor of her feet a sign, Outwearied and supine, As one who midway sleeps, upon the grass Threw me, and there, accusing the brief ray, Of bitter tears I loosed the prison'd flood, To flow and fall, to them as seem'd it good. Ne'er vanish'd snow before the sun away, As then to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... so—why was I able to save my son alone? Ought I not also to have rescued the man that I had accepted for a husband, guilty though he were? Yet I let him die! What do I say? Oh, merciful heavens, was I not accessory to his death by my supine insensibility, by my contempt for him, not remembering, or not willing to remember, that it was for my sake he had become a traitor and a perjurer? In what am I benefited by accompanying my son so far, since I now abandon him, and allow him to depart alone to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... snore supine, Where the old monarch kept his wine; No Welch ox roasting, horns and all, Adorns his throng'd and laughing hall; But where he pray'd, and told his beads, A thriving ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... dejected; that if their spirits should be quite sunk they could never be raised; that they must be supported; that I would influence the people; and that he should do what he could with the Parliament, who, in my opinion, ought not to be supine, but to be awakened at a juncture when the King's departure had perfectly drowned their senses, adding that a word in season would infallibly produce this ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... with long strides, while I remained crushed on my knees; my head was hanging supine, tears flowed from ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... all, or made of paper. Here, wring my neckcloth, and rub down my hair! Now Mr. Brackett, punctual man, is ringing The curfew bell; 't is nine o'clock already. 'T is early bedtime, yet methinks 't were joy On mattress cool to stretch supine. At midnight, Were it winter, I were less fatigued, less sleepy. Sleep! I invoke thee, "comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled waves of life, And hushest them to peace." All hail the man Who first invented bed! O, wondrous soft This pillow to my weary head! right ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... me a burden and a curse. No more she smiles for me, no more my rays Urge on her frozen roots to coloured bloom, No clouds enrobe her nakedness—her days, Once golden in the dance, are bent on doom. A loathing throngs the vision, and the face Of Man is stone and ashen, fallen supine. How long with Light and Love I warmed his race! Now iron crowns of Ruin and ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... to-day. You are citizens of no mean city, members of no common state, heirs of no supine empire. You will many of you exercise influence over your fellow men: some will study and interpret our laws, and so become a power; others will again be in a position to solace and exalt, as destined to be doctors and clergymen, and ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... paled, slightly. But it was not through cowardice. Rage, passion unspeakable, a sudden and animal hate of this lick-spittle and supine toady shook him to the heart's core. Yet he managed to control himself, not through any personal apprehension, but because of the great work he knew still lay before him. At all hazards, come what might, he must stay on, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... bodies down among the tangled bush, and returned to Nelson rejoicing exceedingly over the simple and easy means by which they had possessed themselves of several hundred pounds. Of course they calculated on the usual supine indifference to other people's affairs, which prevails in busy gold-seeking communities; but in this instance the public seemed to be suddenly seized by a violent and inconvenient curiosity to find out what had become of the four ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... never lays down its tools, always has a new plan when the old is crushed out—that is the real patience! You call me a despot—you are unjust! It is only that you don't understand, I do not want to rule for the sake of power, but because people are so supine they will not learn to rule without being pushed into it. I do want to learn to shape circumstances, but not to control Littleton. I do wish to teach them what self-government really means, though. And see how I am ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... beach stretched an unbroken line of wreckage. Here and there, things, humanly shaped, lay prone or supine or twisted into crazy attitudes. Some had been flung far up the slope beyond the water-line. Others, rolling back in the torrent of the tide, engaged in a ceaseless, grotesque frolic with the foamy waters. Out of a mass of wood caught ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... of the images, supine, Deathstill, lifesweet, with folded palms she lay: And kneeling there as at a sacred shrine A young man wan and worn who seemed to pray: 40 A crucifix of dim and ghostly white Surmounted the large altar ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach to all his tribe, who must, no ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a paternal smile, waving the boy on his way while he betook himself to the bluff side and there supine, continued at intervals to ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... consequences that may follow. I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples ... as being otherwise than friendly ... there is no calamity ... which equals that which follows a supine submission ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the luxury of defiance, I swam my fastest and most furious racing-stroke, till my breath gave out with a gasp, my breast felt like bursting, and my heart beat heavily on my ribs. So I lay supine upon the water, closed my eyes, and derived a surfeit of joy from ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... would be starting for the hunt—a hunt from which, he felt sure, they would never return. Then it was certain that a treacherous attack would be made upon the ship and the island, and yet here he lay supine, knowing all this, and yet unable ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... heaped together over an oblong space of a mile long by twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was a towering white cliff overhanging a practically desert beach; and one seagull circled above one solitary, motionless, supine man, really ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... when he came to her, he found a creature that quivered at his touch and shrank from it, fatigued, averted; a creature pitifully supine, with arms too weary to enforce their own repulse. He took her in his arms and she gave a cry, little and low, like a child's whimper. It went to his heart and struck cold there. It was incredible that Jinny should have given ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... being opposite him, Ned violently pushed forward the table so as to carry the tutor over backward in his chair. His head and back struck the floor heavily, and he lay supine beneath the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... strangely supine. Each day the enemy was the better forewarned, and each day the quarrels of Templar and Hospitaller grew more envenomed, and yet he sat patiently twiddling his thumbs, as if all time lay before him and not a man's brief life. And ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... view before the people assembled at the hustings, which he had a right to do, of the prisoners at Derby, of his own conduct towards them, which was most courageous and humane, and of the conduct of the party at Westminster on the same occasion, which was assuredly supine to a frightful degree, to speak in no stronger language. In the midst of the most horrid yelling of the party, from whom he was continually obliged to appeal to the mob below, as Mr. Kinnaird, unused to his new nomenclature, called them, Mr. Hunt mentioned that the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... labours of R. Columbus, G. Fallopius and Eustachius. While Italy, however, was thus advancing the progress of science, the other nations of Europe were either in profound ignorance or in the most supine indifference to the brilliant career of their zealous neighbours. The 16th century had commenced before France began to acquire anatomical distinction in the names of Jacques Dubois, Jean Fernel and Charles Etienne; and even these celebrated teachers ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hoc quod ist offere: idest offeret (It will be that he is to offer, or he will offer),' it is clear that the aguru coto is classified as an infinitive because of its semantic equivalence to offere. The same is true of the latter supine. If the form in Latin is closely associated with such constructions as 'easy to,' or 'difficult to,' the semantically similar form which appears as the element iomi in iominicui 'difficult to read,' must be classed as the latter supine. Rodriguez in his Arte Breve of 1620—unknown to ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... outward token could declare The hidden worth congenial heart would hail, Hail with each kindred chord vibrating there;d Since virtue wakes not but when griefs assail, Or travail burthens, or temptations try, Slumbering supine, till roused by adverse gale, In the deep sleep of moral lethargy, Joy's fullest cup, by hope or doubt unstirred, Curdling the while ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... had suffered a good deal, to be sure. The flowers lay supine, their faces beaten into the mud; the greensward was littered with fallen leaves and twigs—and even in one or two places whole branches had been broken from the trees; on the ground about each rose-bush a snow of pink rose-petals ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until they seemed ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... to be crowded with French privateers, and men were enlisted in the city for the French army. Thus re-enforced and supported, Massena, who commanded the republicans, at length made a general attack on the confederates, assisted by Generals Scherer and Serrurier. The allies were so supine that they were not aware of his movements till a cannon-ball, at sunrise of the 23rd of November, aroused them from their lethargy. The French general's great object was to get between the Austrians and Piedmontese, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which the vigorous development of individual life and character depends. Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity. Without it we resort to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... a temper so timid or so supine as to suffer these preparations to advance without interruption. She ordered Drake to sail immediately for the coast of Spain, and put in practice against her enemy every possible mode of injury and annoyance. To the four great ships which she allotted to him for this service, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... mother's face and eyes, The child throws wide the door, back to the wall, I run to thee, the refuge from poor lies: Lean dogs behind me whimper, yelp, and whine; Life lieth ever sick, Death's writhing thrall, In slavery endless, hopeless, and supine. ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... was almost an essential ingredient of a holiday such as Cosmo had been accustomed to make of his birthday: constantly active as his mind was, perhaps in part because of that activity, he was ready to fall asleep any moment when warm and supine. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... two other general forms which may probably occur to the reader's mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof), which is a corner laid on its back, or sloping,—a supine corner, decorated in a very different manner from a stiff upright corner: and the point, which is a concentrated corner, and has wonderfully elaborate decorations all to its insignificant self, finials, and spikes, and I know not what more. But both these conditions ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Never supine lie they, the steeds of our folk, to the sting, Praying for deadness of nerve, their wounds the shame of the sun; They strive, but they strive for this: the fullness of passionate nerve; They pant, but they pant for this: the speed that outstrips ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... marching on Milan through her treachery. Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible. He had to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened, in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies undisturbed—if only men will have the faith, and will teach themselves to know that the inspiration ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed, hideously revealed slender slits of white. More blood discoloured his right temple, welling ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... doubtful good; and the thought of him lying dead was so unwelcome that it pursued him, like a vision, with every circumstance of colour and sound. Incessantly, he had before him the image of that great mass of man stricken down in varying attitudes and with varying wounds; fallen prone, fallen supine, fallen on his side; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxing fingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thud of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this building up of circumstance was like a ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... failure and impugning motives. They can work for the opened door of open diplomacy, of continuous and intelligent inquiry, of discussion free from propaganda. To shirk this responsibility on the alleged ground that economic imperialism and organized greed will surely bring the Conference to failure is supine and snobbish. It is one of the factors that may lead the United States to take the wrong course in the parting ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... tumultuous, riotous intoxication: that is a bacchanal; they have been drinking, those magnificent brutes, there is wine firing their blood and weighing down their heads. But here all is different, in this so-called Bacchanal of Mantegna. This heavy Silenus is supine like a mass of marble; these fauns are shy and mute; these youths are grave and sombre; there is no wine in the cups, there are no lees in the vat, there is no life in these magnificent colossal forms; there is no blood ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... restrained my tears and passions as much as I could. I spared him my exhortations and fruitless efforts at conversion too, for I saw it was all in vain: God might awaken that heart, supine and stupefied with self-indulgence, and remove the film of sensual darkness from his eyes, but I could not. His injustice and ill-humour towards his inferiors, who could not defend themselves, I still resented ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... save where supine The dozing goatherd lay, Or, at a rude and broken shrine, The peasant knelt to pray; Or where athwart the distant blue Thin saffron clouds ascend, As Carbonari, hid from view, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... population they would long since have shared the fate of the house tax and been abolished. They have so long been kept up only because, with a few exceptions, they press almost exclusively upon that passive and supine class of landlords, the natural prey of Chancellors of the Exchequer, whom it seems generally impossible by any exertions, or the advent of any danger how urgent soever, to rouse to any common measure of defence. It no doubt sounds well to say ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various |
