"Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plunged into the river about waist-deep, and facing about presented the point of his espontoon. The bear arrived at the water's edge within twenty feet of him; but as soon as he put himself in this posture of defence, the bear seemed frightened, and wheeling about, retreated with as much precipitation as he had pursued. Very glad to be released from this danger, Captain Lewis returned to the shore, and observed him run with great speed, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... better than I had done for some time past. For a minute or two I lay passively where I was, in the bottom of the canoe, blinking up at the pallid zenith, near which the sun blazed with blinding brilliancy; and then, no one saying me nay, I slowly and painfully raised myself into a sitting posture ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the dangerous side before which other men had quailed. Alison's words recurred to him, "they are afraid of you, they will crush you if they can." Eldon Parr betrayed, at any rate, no sign of fear. If his mental posture were further analyzed, it might be made out to contain an intimation that the rector, by some act, had forfeited the right to the unique privilege of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... done, when two of them, an old man and a boy, came to the door of our tent and prostrated themselves before us, apparently in great alarm, for they answered incoherently, "ooa" (yes) to every question we asked them. At last we raised the old man on his knees, but he would not quit this posture till we gave him a glass of rum, which re-assured him a little, and shortly afterwards he consented to stand on his legs. Having thus gradually gained confidence, he made signs that we had taken his canoe: upon which an order was given to the coxswain ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... in a crouching posture. He believed he saw his opportunity, and, with a gasp of satisfaction, he darted in and caught the lad he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... Ludolf testifieth, it is placed as the Thirteenth Letter. True indeed it may be pronounced by various Placings of the Tongue, yet the common, and most convenient is, that the Tongue should be in its posture of rest; and then being gently stretched forth in the Mouth, it may only lightly, or not at all touch upon the utmost Border of the lower Teeth; if therefore the lower Jaw be drawn downwards, and ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... his entrance brought Paulvitch to his feet, where he stood glowering menacingly at Tarzan. The girl rose falteringly to a sitting posture upon the couch. One hand was at her throat, and her breath came in little gasps. Although disheveled and very pale, Tarzan recognized her as the young woman whom he had caught staring at him on ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... passive congestion. In short, the nervous strain for both pupil and teacher, the need for vigorous stimulation of respiration and circulation, for an outlet for the repressed social and emotional nature, for the correction of posture, and for a change from abstract academic interests, are all largely indicated. Nothing can correct the posture but formal gymnastic work selected and taught for that purpose; but the other conditions may be largely and quickly relieved through the use of games. Even ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... are numerous incidental allusions to passing events without the proper sphere of our Lord's labors, to social customs, and to the present posture of public affairs, civil and ecclesiastical. In all these the severest scrutiny has been able to detect no trace of a later age. This is a weighty testimony to the apostolic origin of the gospels. Had their authors lived in a later age, the fact must have manifested itself in ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff uniformity can add any thing to real grace or dignity, is like supposing that the human body in order to be perfectly graceful, should never deviate from its upright posture. Another mischief of this method is, that it confounds all ranks in literature. Where there is no room for variety, no discrimination, no nicety to be shewn in matching the idea with its proper word, there can be no room for taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... he rides a race; and for tours de force, I consider the short stirrup-leather and the broad stirrup-iron of the East indispensable—they give, in fact, the strength of the standing instead of the sitting posture. The Cossack retains this standing posture even at a trot; few Eastern horsemen allow that pace at all, but make their horses ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... grave. The new king now appears, and the crowd come to do him honour. He is a tall, stout young man—every inch a savage. We look with horror at what we witness—the bodies are dragged up the hill, and thrust into huge ovens. Some of the captives not yet dead are blackened and bound in a sitting posture, and thus, horrible to relate, are placed in the ovens to be ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... called once and twice, "Are ye much hurt?" Then she half lifted her to a sitting posture and ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... deep, and, then facing about, presented the point of an espontoon or kind of spear, which he had carried in his hand. The bear arrived at the water's edge, within twenty feet of him; but, as soon as the captain put himself in this posture of defence, the animal seemed frightened, and, wheeling about, retreated with as much ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... to their blankets Mukoki still remained awake. For a long time he sat beside the fire, his hands gripping the rifle across his knees, his head slightly bowed in that statue-like posture so characteristic of the Indian. For fully an hour he sat motionless, and in his own way he was deeply absorbed in thought. Soon after their discovery of the first golden bullet Wabigoon had whispered a few words into his ear, unknown to Rod; and ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... The girl leaned back in a careless posture, throwing one leg over the other, and watched the smoke ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... met, the assemblage of facts presented in the President's speech, with the multiplied accounts of spoliations by the French West-Indians, appeared, by sundry votes on the address, to incline a majority to put themselves in a posture of war. Under this influence the address was formed, and its spirit would probably have been pursued by corresponding measures, had the events of Europe been of an ordinary train. But this has been so extraordinary, that numbers have ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dream, and all the while she bathed him with intoxicating side glances shot like arrows from the bow of her arching brows. And at last, she came slowly towards him, walking on tiptoe, and attitudinising, placing herself exactly in the posture in which he had seen her first among the poppies on the wall, with one hand on her hip. And she said, lifting her brow, with a smile that stole his reason: Now, then, the idol is ready for the devotee. And at that moment the door opened, and an old Brahman entered through it. And he said slowly: ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... only the captains are put to charges on account of the troops for whom the King makes them responsible, and whom they are obliged to provide in the way of service. Every Saturday the dancing-girls are obliged to go to the palace to dance and posture before the King's idol, which is in the interior of his palace. The people of this country always fast on Saturdays and do not eat all day nor even at night, nor do they drink water, only they may chew a few cloves ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture—holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.—I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot—so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred:—only methought ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... overlook four great marble statues which adorn the public library. They are the gift of Mr. W. J. Clark, one of the distinguished public men of that growing empire. These statues represent, in a sitting posture, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and the Princess of Wales. They are larger than life, and, according to the Australian press, they are admirable works ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... at the Last Supper, leaning on Jesus' breast, shows him to us in the posture in which we think of him most. It is the place of confidence; the bosom is only for those who have a right to closest intimacy. It is the place of love, near the heart. It is the place of safety, for he is in the clasp of the everlasting ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... his brains were beginning to clog. He said he would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall it. "What was that dream? It seemed to unravel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... primitive hillman or woodlander communicates again with old forgotten intimacies and the secret oracular things of lost wisdoms. This is no fanciful challenge of speculation. In the order of psychology it is as logical as in the order of biology is the tracing of our upright posture or the deft and illimitable use of our hands, from unrealizably remote periods wherein the pioneers of man reach slowly forward ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... knew in a vague, impersonal way that his eyebrows were still somewhere in the middle of his forehead, whither they had sprung in the first moment of surprise, and that his jaw, which had dropped, had not yet resumed its normal posture. Before committing himself to speech he made a determined effort ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... beloved, high time now to awake, to look about us, to consider where we are, upon what ground we stand, whether the enemy or we have the advantage, how and in what posture we are to rencounter with deceivers that seek to cheat us out of all our souls, and of the Lord our Righteousness, and draw us off the paths of life, that when we come to die (beside the unspeakably great loss we would thereby be at, even here, in missing the comfortable accesses ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... of genuflection. It had failed at one time, but had again appeared. The young girl fell on her knees, clasped her hands, and remained for about a quarter of an hour in the attitude of contemplation. Then she arose and again resumed her sitting posture. ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... grow in stature; he cries out with a wild joy as if speaking above the heads of all to reach somebody far off) I am right! Therefore I am right! It was all necessary! All! All! (He stands as if petrified in an upward-striving posture) ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the gallery of the commandant's house, the wind blowing her curls back from her shoulders. A bastion of Fort St. Louis was like a balcony in the clouds. The child's lithe, long body made a graceful line in every posture, and her face was vivid with light ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... officers had no Christian zeal. Whence, then, this charge of tampering with their religion? The explanation is to be found in the character of Hinduism. It is intensely outward. It is a matter of rite and ceremony, of meat and drink, of clothing and posture. It may be filched from a man without any act of his own by the act of another, and he may not be aware till informed that the fatal loss has been incurred. Something may be introduced into his food which will deprive him ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... of the gaslights and with four curious pairs of eyes around to look on; to say nothing of the four busy tongues wagging about nothing all the time. I remember what a hush fell upon them the first night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... assembled in the provinces of Antrim, Ulster, Leinster, and Munster, for the pur-pose of consulting on measures proper to be adopted to effect a reform in parliament, and a national convention was appointed to be held at Dublin on the 10th of November. Such was the posture of affairs when the Irish parliament, which had been recently elected, met on the 14th of October. The first measure of this parliament was to vote thanks to the different volunteer corps for their public services; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lying down when this tirade began, slowly raised his head, then placed himself in a sitting posture, and ended by staring at Billy, till Jack gave a more piteous howl than any he had before uttered, when the dog gave vent to one low growling bark, and sprang at ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... beautiful—than like anything else; only that they were a thousand and a million times as big. And, with all this, there was something partly human about them, too. Luckily for Perseus, their faces were completely hidden from him by the posture in which they lay; for, had he but looked one instant at them, he would have fallen heavily out of the air, an ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... recovered himself, and seemed inclined to come on, and Clare, stepping outside the door, put himself in a posture of defence. But his opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at Tess as he passed her, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... something to eat. What a precious economy of things! Men who are over-crammed with everything under the sun, while others, who have a stomach just as importunate as they, a hunger that recurs as regularly as theirs, have not a bite. The worst is the constrained posture to which want pins us down. The needy man does not walk like anybody else; he jumps, he crawls, he wriggles, he limps, he passes his whole life in taking ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... directly to his opposite, and, stumbling over a stone, was wounded on one side of his head before he could recover his attitude. Far from being dispirited at this check, it served only to animate him the more; being endowed with uncommon agility, he retrieved his posture in a moment; and having parried a second thrust, returned the lunge with such incredible speed, that the soldier had not time to resume his guard, but was immediately run through the bend of his right arm; and the sword dropping out of his hand, our ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his chair, her scarlet flannel arm under his head. The youngest boy, Justin, threw himself flat on the hearth-rug, chin propped on elbow, watching the fire; sixteen-year-old Jeff helped himself to a low stool, clasping long arms about long legs as his knees approached his head in this posture; and the eldest son, pausing, drew up a chair and sat down to ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... him with intrepidity. Nor did he sooner see the hoy approaching the vessel, than he ran down again into the cabin, and his rage being perfectly subsided, he tumbled on his knees, and a little too abjectly implored for mercy. I did not suffer a brave man and an old man, to remain a moment in this posture; but I immediately forgave him." It is this incident that Thackeray chooses to complete his picture of the great novelist; adding that memorable comparison between the "noble spirit and unconquerable generosity" of Fielding, and the lives of many unknown ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... honor was bestowed upon me by your Highness. It depends on you alone to take away or not to take away the country out of my hands. In case my honor is not left to me, how shall I be equal to the business of the government? Whoever, with his hands in a supplicating posture, is ready with his life and property, what necessity can there be for him to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... being that of a small grey European variety. Squirrels, as a class, possess much the same peculiarities and habits. Their claws are particularly adapted for life among the trees; their tails are long and bushy, covering over the backs of the animals when in a sitting posture. They are all lithe and quick of movement, and their senses of sight and hearing are especially keen. They are constantly on the alert, and are full of artifice when pursued. Their food consists chiefly of nuts, fruits, and grain, but when pushed ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... a report; Friedel leaped back, staggered, fell; Ebbo started to a sitting posture, with horrified eyes, and a loud shriek, calling on his brother; Moritz sprang to his feet, shouting, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Godfrey was already 'stifling the plot.' A Government official, he was putting Coleman in a posture to fly, and to burn his papers; had he burned all of them, the plot was effectually stifled. Next, Godfrey could not reveal the secret without revealing his own misprision of treason. He would be asked 'how he knew the secret.' Godfrey's ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... caught her in an Amorous Conversation; for tho' he was at such a Distance that he could hear nothing, he imagined strange things from her Airs and Gestures. Sometimes with a serene Look she stepped back in a listning Posture, and brightened into an innocent Smile. Quickly after she swelled into an Air of Majesty and Disdain, then kept her Eyes half shut after a languishing Manner, then covered her Blushes with her Hand, breathed a Sigh, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Marechal de Villeroy almost slipped off his chair. As soon, at least, as he heard the Words, "Superintendence of the King's education," he rested his forehead upon his stick, and remained several moments in that posture. He appeared even to understand nothing of the rest of the speech. Villars and D'Effiat bent their backs like people who had received the last blow. I could see nobody on my own side except the Duc de Guiche, who approved through all his prodigious astonishment. Estrees ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... veering and unsettled, sometimes inclining to arbitrary power, and sometimes towards a pure democracy; but this establishment of a senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept it in a just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings, whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and, on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute. This, according to Aristotle, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... bayonet exercise. The marshals regulated the movements of their respective lines with great accuracy, the one being retired directly the other advanced, so that the relative distance was never altered. After a time both parties suddenly assumed a sitting posture and exchanged howls of defiance, which grew fiercer and fiercer, until a simultaneous rush, as if to engage, finished the performance from which the representatives of barbaric warfare retired amid the hearty ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at it. On the frame of this glass, are seen a gilt pallet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... St. Dunstan, you need not spare me thus!" Alwin cried hotly. "Never have I turned my back on a challenge; and never will I, while the red blood runs in my veins. Get your weapon quickly." He shook the big blade in the air, and threw himself into a posture of defence. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the same day, I think, that one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay. Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents, who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road. The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at the extreme end of the wooden pier that ran some one hundred and fifty yards into the lake. They were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of one of the cells, he whispered to me, in a voice full of entreaty, to put off my shoes; at the same time prostrating himself with a movement and expression of the most abject humility before the door, where he remained, without changing his posture. I stooped involuntarily, and scanned curiously, anxiously, the scene within the cell. There sat the king; and at a sign from him I presently entered, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... England maybe; then she would hang her head as though she dared not look him in the face even at that distance; and anon she would recover herself with a noble exaltation, lifting her head with a fearless mien. And so presently her body drooping gradually to a reflective posture, she falls dreaming again, to rouse herself suddenly at some new prompting of her spirit, and give us all her thoughts, all eagerness for two moments, all melting sweetness the next, with her pretty manner of clinging to her father's arm, and laying her cheek against his shoulder. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... kneel, it should obey instantly, and remain patiently upon the ground until permitted to rise from this uneasy posture. In reality the elephant does not actually kneel upon its fore knees, but only upon those of the hinder legs, while it pushes its fore legs forward and rests its tusks upon the ground. This is a most unnatural position, and ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... time, Cope in America, and Phillips and Huxley, in England, from study of the bones of the Dinosaurs, another great group of extinct reptiles, declared that these were the nearest in structure to birds. In association with the upright posture, the ilium or great haunch-bone of birds extends far forwards in front of the articulation of the thigh-bone, so that the pelvis in this region has a T-shape, the ilium forming the cross-bar of the T, and the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... single animals he joyed, One cat, and eke one dog, his bounty fed; The first the cate-devouring mice destroyed, Thieves heard the last, and from his threshold fled: All in the sunbeams basked the lazy cat, Her mottled length in couchant posture laid; On one accustomed chair while Pompey sat, And loud he barked should Puss his right invade. The human pair oft marked them as they lay, And haply sometimes thought like cat and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the table jammed the hidden dog against his chest. When he sought relief by sitting back over the form, Clem corrected the irregular posture with a pin. At bedtime he undressed in terror lest the creature should jump out and patter on the boards as live things will. But at last the gas was turned off at the main, and he cautiously groped for his pet among his ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Master AEsop's scandalous chronicle, clapped one bear's paw on Faenza's shoulder and another bear's paw across Faenza's mouth, and thus forced him at once, by sheer effort of brute strength, to a sitting posture and to silence. This action on the part of the man whom for the time being he had consented to accept as his general, combined with the cold glance of cruelty and scorn which AEsop gave him, served to cool Faenza's ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be unseen, still passed in and out of the tightly-drawn nostrils. The touch, that would have been reverent to a corpse, was now rough. He shook the fallen man and shouted. He raised him to a sitting posture, but finding that, standing as he did upon soft snow, to lift him was impossible, he laid him again in the self-made grave. That posture at least would be most conducive to the continued ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antick of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... and left the room abruptly. I went to Mrs. Flaxman, and, kneeling beside her, my head on her knee—a posture we both enjoyed—I anxiously asked: "Have I angered ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... corner of the barn and relaxed to a sitting posture on the platform of the pump. It brought him into the sun; but it also brought him where he could see far down the road upon which his returning employer would eventually appear. His eyes ever haunted the far vistas of that road; otherwise he ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... concluded Morgan fought hard to raise himself to a sitting posture; he strained, dragging himself in the sand in an effort to see Harlan's face. But the black desert night had settled over them, and all Morgan could see of Harlan was the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the guilt; inasmuch as this famine was caused by the weevils, a visitation from God, because he, the governor, undertook in the preceding summer an expedition against the Dutch residing on the South River, who maintained themselves in such a good posture of defense, that he could accomplish but little; when he went to the Hoere-kill on the west side of that river, not far from the sea, where also he was not able to do much; but as the people subsisted there only by cultivating wheat, and had at this time a fine and ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... anything but his own boots, and those only dimly owing to the apron being shut and indeed pressing uncomfortably against his head. Yet when Dr. Baumgartner inquired whether that did not make him easier, he said it did. It was not all imagination either; the posture did relieve him; but it was none the less disagreeable to be driven through London by an utter stranger, and not to see the names of the streets or a single landmark. Pocket had not even heard the cabman's instructions where to drive; they had been given after he got in. His ear ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... apartments under their palaces, which the heat of the climate rendered necessary. They are now used as granaries by the country people. While I sat here, from the town of Tents not far off, many of the women flocked in to see me, and we were equally entertained with viewing one another. Their posture in sitting, the colour of their skin, their lank black hair falling on each side their faces, their features, and the shape of their limbs, differ so little from their country-people the baboons, 'tis hard to fancy them a distinct race; I could not help ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... yoke; Wide o'er the field, resistless as the wind, For Troy they fly, and leave their lord behind. Prone on his face he sinks beside the wheel: Atrides o'er him shakes his vengeful steel; The fallen chief in suppliant posture press'd The victor's knees, and thus his ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Jarvis's reposeful posture had become an active one, and he took care that neither peach-coloured skirts nor white ones fluttered against anything on the outside of the car ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... l'age de 51 ans." At the corner of the same street, where a small passage way branches off, is a fine monument to the memory of the great poet and the noblest comic writer of France. The statue is of bronze, in a sitting posture; on each side are figures,—one humorous, the other serious,—both looking at the statue. At the foot of the monument is a basin to receive water, which flows from three lions' heads. This work was put up in 1844, with public services, on which occasion the first men of France ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... and again turned faint, so faint indeed that he did not dare to keep his feet, but sank into a sitting posture, resting his back against the stone ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... and which in effect turned out as I requested; we sat down, and when we had drank to each other's health, Frank requested me to make known to him how I had contrived to free myself from my embarrassments in London, what I had been about since I quitted that city, and the present posture ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig earth's mantle,—and yon quiet bird, That rides the stream, is to me as a brother. The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets, Where Nature stows away her loveliness. But this unnatural posture of my legs Cramps my extended calves, and I must go Where I can coil them in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... speedily to withdraw their forces. Parties of Indians were frequently detached from the main body, as well to obtain a supply of provisions by hunting, as to intercept and cut off any [147] aid, which might be sent to St. Asaph's[15] from the other forts. In this posture of affairs, it was impossible that the garrison could long hold out, unless its military stores could be replenished; and to effect this, under existing circumstances, appeared to be almost impossible. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... youth passed on through the contending sun and shade of the path. "Can they be engaged?" thought Truesdale, upon whom certain fine shades in posture and address were not thrown away; "he looks hardly a junior." He presently met a senior of his acquaintance who told him he understood they were. "Ouf!" commented Truesdale, further; "a mere boy-and-girl affair." And he pleased himself ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... it should be said, extends further than to the sense of beauty in horseflesh simply. It includes trappings and horsemanship as well, so that the correct or reputably beautiful seat or posture is also decided by English usage, as well as the equestrian gait. To show how fortuitous may sometimes be the circumstances which decide what shall be becoming and what not under the pecuniary canon of beauty, it may be noted that this ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... not one of the women was awakened by the report of the rifle so near them, and of the men Dr. Marlowe and Anderson were the only ones who rose to a sitting posture and anxiously inquired the ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Mrs. Montgomery raised 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 hands, as she still knelt before ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... in a 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 above the horizon from the ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... if a stooping position, or a lateral curved posture, is continued for a long time, the spinal column does not easily recover its proper position, for the compressed edges of the cartilages lose their power of reaction, and finally one side of the cartilage becomes thinned, while the other is thickened; and these wedge-shaped cartilages ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... 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 yet what gentle sweetness also in the natural movement ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... that a packet is far superior to a stage- coach, as a means of making men open out to each other. In the latter the uniformity of posture disposes to dozing, and the definitiveness of the period, at which the company will separate, makes each individual think more of those to whom he is going, than of those with whom he is going. But at sea, more curiosity is excited, if only on this account, that the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bottom. His stepmother looked at him and marvelling much said in her mind, "Would Heaven I knew of this froward youth what may be his object!"[FN587] However he never looked at her nor ever turned towards her but he abode quiet in the posture he had chosen. She stared hard at him and at last could no longer refrain from asking him, "Wherefore dost thou on this wise?" He answered, "And why not? I am doing that shall benefit me in the future, but what that is I will never tell thee; no, never." She repeated her question again and again, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a nice boy—it is a pity he is poor," she thought regretfully, and then she suddenly sprang into a sitting posture, all thought of sleep ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... he said, to let the water run out of him; an old, vulgar, and long exploded practice, which has proved in almost every instance fatal. I expostulated, but in vain; I pitied the agonised feelings of the youth, while I struggled to release his father by force from the fatal posture in which he had, although with the best intention, unguardedly and obstinately placed him. He, however, resisted my efforts with personal violence, in spite of the expostulations of the guard. Seeing that I was likely to have my humane intentions frustrated by the young man's obstinacy, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... at his morning's refreshment, a huge plate of oatmeal porridge, with a corresponding allowance of butter-milk. The favourite housekeeper was in attendance, half standing, half resting on the back of a chair, in a posture betwixt freedom and respect. The old gentleman had been remarkably tall in his earlier days, an advantage which he now lost by stooping to such a degree, that at a meeting, where there was some dispute concerning ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hovering off the coast. Laudonniere sent to reconnoitre. The stranger lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine, manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Landonniere sent down La Caille, with thirty soldiers concealed at the bottom of his little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her to come alongside; when, to ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 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 to cling against ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the prison, where, before the jailer's lodge, Marcellina is performing her household duties—ironing the linen, to be specific. Jaquino, who has been watching for an opportunity to speak to her alone (no doubt alarmed at the new posture which his love affair is assuming), resolves to ask her to marry him. The duet, quite in the Mozartian vein, breathes simplicity throughout; plain people, with plain manners, these, who express simple thoughts in ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... has a toe That can't turn out so! I've made the white owl my study for years, And to see such a job almost moves me to tears! Mister Brown, I'm amazed You should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird In that posture absurd! To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness; The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... child and its mother. A feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and this feeling is further indicated here by the half-humorous pathos of the diminutive, rounded shoulders of the child. You may note a like pathetic power in drawings of a young man, seated in a stooping posture, his face in his hands, as in sorrow; of a slave sitting in an uneasy inclined attitude, in some brief interval of rest; of a small Madonna and Child, [115] peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... their last interruption acted by a commission under the Great Seal of England against the same parliament," and that for the prevention of any disorder that might arise they had fallen back upon their ancient rights and usages, and had put themselves in a posture of defence, not for the purpose of acting against parliament, but for it. Whilst offering these explanations the City was anxious that parliament would receive into its House all such members as were still alive and fill up the places of all who were dead. On the 29th the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... behold the ravenous brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... madly, has struggled as man seldom did to put himself in some posture about Leuthen, to get up some defences there. Leuthen itself, the churchyard of it especially, is on the defensive. Men are bringing cannon to the windmills, to the swelling ground on the north side of Leuthen; they dig ditches, build ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... head low, rests his hands on his knees. This is called "Giving a back." The other boy places his hands on the first boy's back and leaps over him, by straddling his legs wide apart on each side like a frog. The second boy then assumes the stooping posture, and the third boy leaps over the first and second, and the fourth over all three, one at ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. The water was long out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees brings an overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache and the wrists faint ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strength and rose to a sitting posture, in order to bow graciously to Monsieur Bianchon, and beg him to accept something else than money for the good news he gave her. She said a few words in her mother's ear, and Madame Sauviat immediately led away the doctors; then Veronique requested the archbishop ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... are exactly delineated. I must confess I am shy of letting people see me at this exercise, because of my flannel waistcoat, and my spectacles, which I am forced to fix on, the better to observe the posture of ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... becoming too acute; because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful malady which physicians call "General Paralysis of the Insane." You remember I took from your hands the newspaper ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... impassable barrier to his imagination. His brush returned involuntarily to hackneyed forms: hands folded themselves in a set attitude; heads dared not make any unusual turn; the very garments turned out commonplace, and would not drape themselves to any unaccustomed posture of the body. And he felt ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... performed every morning at sea, takes nearly two hours; and I had hardly strength enough to get through it. After we had finished, swabbed down, and coiled up the rigging, I sat down on the spars, waiting for seven bells, which was the sign for breakfast. The officer, seeing my lazy posture, ordered me to slush the main-mast, from the royal-mast-head, down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no sustenance for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns," ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... this posture between the belligerents, sometimes war to the knife, sometimes a truce under favour of Cissy's white flag, when one October evening, John Stokes entered the dwelling of his kinswoman to inform her that Edward's apprenticeship had been some ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... have beheld, with complete indifference, Mrs. Travers extended on the floor with her head resting on the edge of the camp bedstead (on which Lingard had never slept), as though she had subsided there from a kneeling posture which is the attitude of prayer, supplication, or defeat. The hours of the night had passed Mrs. Travers by. After flinging herself on her knees, she didn't know why, since she could think of nothing to pray for, had nothing to invoke, and was too far gone for such a futile thing as despair, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and impervious to feeling, reason, or religion—an awful transition from a visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered. At ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... usual posture of the dead is with the feet eastward, and the head towards the west: the fitting attitude of men who look for their Lord, "whose name is The East," and who will come to judgement in the regions of the dawn suddenly. But it was the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various |
