"Supine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more, he sank down upon the mossy turf of the floor and lay supine to gaze upward, to follow line to blended line until ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... their own virtues. It was, to his mind, the spirit of the fighter in the game of life, a spirit, which, even though misdirected, must never be unreservedly deplored. To his mind it were better to fight a battle, however wrong be the prompting instinct, than to run for the shelter of supine ineptitude. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... pawnbroker in spirit and manner that so often presides over the destinies of American banks, but he was a philosophical financier who understood perfectly the strength and weakness of the system under which he worked, and who, while he wondered at the supine idiocy of the people that would permit of the prevailing Dick Turpin methods of high finance, never took his eye from the horizon of public action, where daily he expected to see "the cloud no bigger than a man's hand" that was to expand into the storm that ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... lethargy; I could nor forget my woes: they haunted me with unintermitted and demoniac malice. Cruel, inexorable policy of human affairs, that condemns a man to torture like this; that sanctions it, and knows not what is done under its sanction; that is too supine and unfeeling to enquire into these petty details; that calls this the ordeal of innocence, and the protector of freedom! A thousand times I could have dashed my brains against the walls of my dungeon; a thousand times I ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... 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; p. 41, ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... emulous. The Saxons dragged heavily arear; the French Detachment (a poor 5,000 under Polastron, all that a captious Broglio could be persuaded to grant) would not rush at all, but paused on the very frontier of Moravia, Broglio so ordering, and there hung supine, or indeed went home. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... way; Which when the elder saw, he watched for me As I passed by, and from the chariot-seat Smote full upon my head with the fork'd goad; But got more than he gave; for, by a blow From this right hand, smit with my staff, he fell Instantly rolled out of the car supine. I slew them every one. Now if that stranger Had aught in common with king Laius, What wretch on earth was e'er so lost as I? Whom have the Heavens so followed with their hate? No house of Theban or of foreigner Must any more receive me, none henceforth Must speak to me, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... wonder: I, intent, adore; And, O Melampus, reaching forth my hands In adoration, cry aloud and soar In spirit, high above the supine lands And the low caves of mortal things, and flee To the last fields of the universe untrod, Where is no man, nor any earth, nor sea, And the contented soul is all ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can come before the Congress than this of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the poodle be not a man, and men poodles. I am not led to this thought by the animal propensities which we have in common, such as eating, drinking, &c., but by those of a more refined character. He too is cheerful and dejected, excited and supine, playful and morose, gentle and bold, caressing and snappish, patient and refractory; just like us men in all things, even in his dreams! This likeness is not to me at all discouraging; on the contrary, it suggests a pleasing hope that this flesh and blood which plagues and fetters us, is not ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... his progress. He came—no word was spoken—a single stroke was given, and the horseman, throwing up his hands, grasped the limb which projected over, while his horse passed from under him. He held on for a moment to the branch, while a groan of deepest agony broke from his lips, when he fell supine to the ground. At that moment, the moon shone forth unimpeded and unobscured by a single cloud. The person of the wounded man was fully apparent to the sight. He struggled, but spoke not; and the hand of Rivers was again uplifted, when Munro ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... voice as if on the verge of resentful tears calling to the dog, the unsympathetic dog. Perhaps she had not the power of evoking sympathy, that personal gift of direct appeal to the feelings. I said to Fyne, mistrusting the supine attitude of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... bring it in, but there was no response. In a passion of soldierly wrath, the veteran commanded a bayonet charge; not a man sprang forward at the summons which British soldiers are wont to welcome with cheers. The cowed infantry remained supine, when their officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge!' which so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The gunners only, men of that noble force the ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... infatuate he Listening, uncased at once his polished bow.[6] That bow, the laden brows of a wild goat Salacious had supplied; him on a day Forth-issuing from his cave, in ambush placed 125 He wounded with an arrow to his breast Dispatch'd, and on the rock supine he fell. Each horn had from his head tall growth attain'd, Full sixteen palms; them shaven smooth the smith Had aptly join'd, and tipt their points with gold. 130 That bow he strung, then, stooping, planted firm The nether horn, his comrades bold the while Screening him close ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... lasted but a moment longer. As his adversary drew back from a failed blow, Alister saw Ian's eyes flash, and his left arm shoot out, as it seemed, to twice its length. Sercombe neither reeled nor staggered but fell supine, and lay motionless. The brothers were by his side ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... flaring bunting, and the pennons blowing all down the long ranges to measure the wind for prone riflemen. "Lying prone on the back," by the way, is a phrase which creeps into many newspapers during Bisley week. It would clearly not do to speak of a "supine" rifle-shot. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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 ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... walks to 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 ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... half hour, supine, completely relaxed, only half conscious. Yet he was devoutly thankful. The precious gift of life had been saved, the life that was so young, so strong and so buoyant in him. The sea, immense, immeasurable and savage might leap for him, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 tossed from him; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... had been left standing at Alexandria, after having suffered much from neglect, in the midst of its mean and filthy surroundings, was presented to the American Government by the Khedive of Egypt. But that Government acted in the same supine spirit in which our own had acted; and it was left to the ability of Captain Corringe as engineer, and to the liberality of the millionaire Vanderbilt, who paid the expenses incurred, amounting to L20,000, to bring the obelisk in the hold of a ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... sun, hot and soft-stroking against leaves. Or a Pleistocene man, smallest of all the males, whose supine acceptance ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... Bagshot Heath to try Unclos'd to keep the weary eye; But ah! Oblivion's nod to get In rattling coach is harder yet. Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 5 Who lovest with limbs supine to lie; Soother sweet of toil and care Listen, listen to my prayer; And to thy votary dispense Thy soporific influence! 10 What tho' around thy drowsy head The seven-fold cap of night be spread, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the wine (Strong the red Caecuban bowl!) From its slumber, deep, supine, Panted up the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... supine, Chained to their task in sightless mine: Above, the bland day smiles benign, Birds carol free, In thunderous throes of life divine ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to constitute the chief food of the natives. The apparently unfavourable situation on which it is principally planted, affords a convincing proof of the superiority, in habits of active industry, of the peasantry of this island over the Portuguese peasants in general. Instead of being indolent and supine, and indisposed to embrace the means of ameliorating and improving their condition, they are, on the contrary, enterprising, hardy, and persevering. The potatoe is chiefly reared on the ascent of Pico Rueva, at an elevation ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... away on his left lay another supine figure, elbows on the ground, and hands arched above his brow to shade his eyes, gazing out to sea. He, too, was a tall and powerful man, and when he moved there was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the ravings of an impious charlatan? What had the gold-star mothers of Western City to say to this? What did the local post of the Mobland Brigade propose to do to save the fair name of their city? Said the "Times": "If our supine authorities refuse to meet this emergency, we believe there are enough 100% Americans still among us to protect the cause of public decency, and to assert the right of Christian people to worship their God without interference from the ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... could only be cloth, before they met the warmth of flesh. And he half threw himself against the supine body of the Survey officer, groping awkwardly for heartbeat, for some sign that the other was ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... acquaintance with Banks. During the Romney expedition the latter had been posted at Frederick with 16,000 men, and a more enterprising commander would at least have endeavoured to thwart the Confederate movements. Banks, supine in his camps, made neither threat nor demonstration. Throughout the winter, Ashby's troopers had ridden unmolested along the bank of the Potomac. Lander alone had worried the Confederate outposts, driven in their advanced detachments, and drawn supplies from ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... comport' | Ex'ile exile' | Rec'ord record' Com'pound 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' | Im'press impress' ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... stirred to free his shoulder of Ivana's supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his lungs, and nursed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... "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, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whisky, were stretched at full length in the shade at headquarters; the half-caked gunners crouched under the shadow of the embankments of the forts, the guards hung limply over the Stockade in front of their little perches; the thirty thousand boys inside the Stockade, prone or supine upon the glowing sand, gasped for breath—for one draft of sweet, cool, wholesome air that did not bear on its wings the subtle seeds of rank corruption and death. Everywhere was the prostration of discomfort—the inertia ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... there are surprisingly few in Morocco. It is hard to guess the age of some of 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 of the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... himself at the side of Lossing's horse and only a few feet away, Lossing nodded; and at the first tug at the rein the trooper's well-trained animal went down and lay supine and moveless. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... closed some time or other,—by payment, by composition, or by oblivion. Expedit reipublicae ut sit finis litium. Constantly taking along with me, that an extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it, and at length to relax into a supine neglect, I propose, Sir, that even the best, soundest, and the most recent dents should be put into instalments, for the mutual benefit of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... operation may be healthful for the individual body. Next to the Jew, the Dutchman is the most stubbornly tenacious of human creatures. He is a fighting man into the bargain. Iglesias could not flatter himself that the campaign would result in an easy walk-over for so much of the British army as a supine and annoyed Government condescended to place in the field. The whole affair lay heavy on his soul. It lay there all the heavier that a few days subsequent to the declaration of war Mr. Iglesias' thought was unexpectedly swept back into the arena of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree, moved a few steps ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... throughout the years that stretched ahead she saw herself travelling through life step by step with Roger, living the same dull existence year in, year out, till at last, when they were both too old for anything to matter very much—too supine for romance to send the quick blood racing through their veins, too dull of sight to perceive the glamour and glory of the world—merciful death would step in and take one or other of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... won't you answer?" He lay supine, his eyes closed, his mouth half open, with brown soft hair on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still showing in his features contracted with pain. From beneath the bandage on his forehead a mere thread ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... the vibration of her impulse and cringed. He was in a daze before this violence of attack, where he had expected only supine yielding. In his creed, the beating of women marked manliness. The drabs he had caressed crept and fawned under his blows, like whipped curs. He could not realize this challenge by the girl with his own method of might. But he saw clearly enough through ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... sinks the Muse's offspring, doom'd to try, Like a caged eagle panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away From ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the assistance of several hundred Indians, who ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Sometimes inflames it to worse spite again; This knew I, who so long was left in night, That from such prayers had disappear'd my light; Till I, who sought her still, nor found, alas! Even her shade, nor of her feet a sign, Outwearied and supine, As one who midway sleeps, upon the grass Threw me, and there, accusing the brief ray, Of bitter tears I loosed the prison'd flood, To flow and fall, to them as seem'd it good. Ne'er vanish'd snow before the sun away, As then to melt apace it me befell, Till, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of Effecting Retention—By Position.—It is often found that only in one particular position can the fragments be made to meet and remain in apposition—for example, the completely supine position of the forearm in fracture of the radius just above the insertion of the pronator teres. Again, in certain cases it is only by relaxing particular groups of muscles that the displacement can ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... utterance of veritable history, and his own [20] spiritual discernment, this man must have risen above worldly schemes, human theorems or hypotheses, to conclusions which reason too supine or misemployed cannot fasten upon. He spake inspired; he touched a tone of Truth that will continue to reverberate and renew [25] its emphasis throughout the entire centuries, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... to smaller matters—The month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill challenges softened by the distance to music, a score of children played with spades and buckets, innocently ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of complaint was the supine inattention of the administration to a treason stalking through the land in open day. The present one, that they have crushed it before it was ripe for execution, so that no overt acts can be produced. This last may be true; though I believe it is not. Our information having ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the last sigh? Too dulled, it may be, for a last good-bye, Too comfortless for any one to soothe, A helpless charmless spectacle of ruth Through long last hours, so long while yet they fly. So long to those who hopeless in their fear Watch the slow breath and look for what they dread: While I supine, with ears that cease to hear, With eyes that glaze, with heart-pulse running down, (Alas! no saint rejoicing on her bed), May miss the goal at last, may ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... stuff one is made of. There is no essay, nothing strictly didactic. Facts are given: inferences 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
... zealous for gaining over proselytes, and often successful; which is not to be wondered at, when favour and interest are on the side of their opinion. Whereas, on the contrary, a majority with a good cause are negligent and supine. They think it sufficient to declare themselves upon occasion in favour of their party, but, sailing against the tide of favour and preferment, they are easily scattered and driven back. In short, they ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... classic vs. romantic conflict. Stendhal has written that a classicist is a dead romanticist. It still holds good. But here in America, "the colourless shadow land of fiction," is there no tragedy in Gilead for souls not supine? Some years ago Mr. James Lane Allen, who cannot be accused of any hankerings after the flesh-pots of Zola, made an energetic protest against what he denominated the "feminine principle" in our fiction. He did not mean the books written by women—in sooth, they are for the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... volume and density, spread and spread, and in a few minutes the south wing of my wife's army was as supine as ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... was a failure. It did not procure that uniformity in the public worship of God which it declared was so desirable; it prevented no scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreverent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of the Church service noticeable ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... people must act. What protection is left us, when our highest police official is slain in our very midst by the Mafia and his assassins turned loose upon us? This is not the first case of wilful murder and supine justice; our court records are full of similar ones. The time has come to say whether we shall tolerate these outrages further or whether we shall set aside the verdict of an infamous and perjured jury and cleanse ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... success are the apathy and faithlessness of her own selfish children, and the supine indifference of the world. In the roar and crush and hurry of life and business, and the tumult and uproar of politics, the quiet voice of Masonry is unheard and unheeded. The first lesson which one learns, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 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
... may be added as to the treatment of shock when severe. Quiet in the supine position, and the administration of a small amount of stimulant, was usually all that was required. Hypodermic injections of strychnine sulph. grs. 1/30 to 1/10 were useful, and in some severe cases, especially where operations were needed, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... are civil," Male Dicis Maledicis, p. 9. I neither argued the one nor the other; they are both, Sir, of your own forging. But this is not your first allegation of this kind. I sometime admire what oscitancy or supine negligence (to judge it no worse) this can be, to fancy to yourself that I have said what you would, and then to bring forth your own apprehensions for ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... medicine with a wry face as the only alternative to supine submission or open war. His opponents, without offering any solution of their own, denounced it as a contemptible plan that brought neither relief nor honor. Beset by the clamor that arose on all sides, Congress, in the closing days of Jefferson's administration, repealed the Embargo ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the scent of the lion, borne to him by an eddying breeze, and lifting his trunk trumpeted loudly. Tarzan stretched back luxuriously, lying supine at full length along the rough hide. Flies swarmed about his face; but with a leafy branch torn from a tree he ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lost their heads. Philip having done his own part, did not feel it incumbent on him to risk a battle with inferior numbers, when those who were more nearly concerned were contented to be supine. Guisnes, therefore, and its defenders, were left ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... 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 men who were known to have started from Canvas-town two or three ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... comme il faut," Blanche remarked when she issued from his room, as though the idea that he was "TRES comme il faut" had impressed even her. For myself, I had so little knowledge of the minor details of the affair, and took part in it so much as a supine spectator, that I have forgotten most of what passed on this occasion. I only remember that Blanche and the Widow figured at it, not as "de Cominges," but as "du Placet." Why they had hitherto been "de Cominges" I do not know—I only know that this ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... moved by alarming sensible dangers or calamities to enter into themselves, on whom the terrors of the divine judgment make very little impression. The reason can only be a supine neglect of serious reflection, and a habit of considering them only transiently, and as at a distance; for it is impossible for any one who believes these great truths, if he takes a serious review of them, and has them present to his mind, to remain insensible: transient glances effect not ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... at least had the sanction of religion, while the hunter has nothing to excuse his cruelty beyond the lust of killing. I do not understand why the humane societies, such as "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals", are so supine in regard to these practices. The Chinese are frequently accused of being cruel to animals, but I think that those who are living in glass ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... I had underrated the lady of the hyphen, in imagining I had only to come and see and conquer Aunt Jane. The grim and bony one had made hay while the sun shone—while I was idling in California, and those criminally supine cousins were allowing Aunt Jane to run about New York at her own wild will. Miss Higglesby-Browne had her own collar and tag on Aunt Jane now, while she, so complete was her perversion, fairly hugged her slavery ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and his wife hung over him supplying his needs; but he was thinking more of the perils of his fellow citizens, and of the supine conduct of the Mayor, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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
... once moved and detached from her weakness, gently holding her supine hand. She mustn't worry, he told her at short intervals. "Don't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... But the very breeze is laden with heat, and the fountain's noise does but whet the thirst of the grass, the flowers, the trees. The earth sulks under the burden of the unmerciful sun. Love itself, one had said, would be languid here, pale and supine, and, faintly sighing for things past or for future things, would sink into siesta. But behold! these are no ordinary lovers. The gushing fountains are likelier to run dry there in the grotto than they to falter in their redundant energy. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... be no hilarious splashing nor swimming, but the silent immersion was most refreshing. It was while supine on my back with only my nose and toes above water that I received my first alarm for that morning. My position being recumbent I was staring up at the sky and in the direction of up-stream, and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the poor old wabbly Chinese Government, urging it to "act." To act; that is, to tell the French Government to hand back to China this "acquired" land. What the outcome will be, I don't know. Apparently the supine, terror-stricken Chinese Government cannot act, doesn't dare. Three days have now passed, and the French are still sitting tight, holding to their fruits of victory, facing an enraged but helpless country. And they will probably ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... pence, in merits chair, They dose and dream supine 0; But how the devil they came there, That neither you ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... paganism rolled over the world; thinkers and steersmen of great political and religious organizations became genuinely alarmed. So had come the downfall of the classical world: a simple apparition in a far away Jewish province, and the Caesars fell supine—their empires cracked like mirrors! To imprison Illowski meant danger; to kill him would deify him, for in the blood of martyrs blossom the seeds of mighty religions. Far better if he go to Paris—Paris, the cradle and the tomb of illusions. There this restless demagogue might find ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 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, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sit down in supine idleness, and mourn over her sad fate. True, at times she gave way to her feelings, when the hopelessness of her situation came upon her, as she strove to penetrate the future, in all its crushing ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... of course, copied her fashionable standards from older lands. While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities. The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their "imported amusements" as having a specific claim ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... summer's passion, and without spring's impulses of hope and action. A quiet day; the air was still; the light was mellow, not brilliant; the sky was clear, but no longer of an intense blue; the little racks of cloud were lying supine on its calm depths, apparently having nowhere to go and nothing to do. The driving, sweeping, changing forms of vapour, which in spring had come with rain and in summer had come with thunder, had all disappeared; and these little delicate lines of cloud lay purposeless and ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... irregularities of nouns as to number (i. e. which want the singular, which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (i. e. their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the supine): this is what they profess to teach. Suppose then their professions realised, what is the result? Why that you have laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly which, if it do actually occur, could not possibly cost more trouble to explain ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... conceal it from the children,' he answered, with his scrupulous candour. He was supine when thought more ill of than he deserved, but he always defended ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the word Incubus; which Pliny and others, more learnedly, call Ephialtes.—I, modestly, state it to mean the Night-Mare, for the information of the Ladies. The chief symptom by which this affliction is vulgarly known, is a heavy pressure upon the stomach, when lying in a supine posture in bed. It would terrify some of my fair readers, who never experience'd this characteristick of the Incubus, were I to dwell on its effects; and it would irritate others, who are in the habit ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... It is life, and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love would fain give us wings wherewith to fly; but the wretched body lies prone—supine; it cannot ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the old, the great, the small Give homage—all supine. Fond parents bring their children there As to some holy shrine. And every one the Beast transforms From human ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... his temper then in earnest. All his nature was on edge in that crisis, and this supine surrender of an able-bodied man whose two hands were needed so desperately was peculiarly exasperating. He leaped out of the boat, ran into the galley, and gave the cook an invigorating beating up with the flat of his hands. The cook clutched his cat more ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... 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, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... steadily between the eyes, I mean; sought to impress it with your mental dominance? Disease is a coward, we are told, a coward who leaves us, when it knows we feel no fear of it. If you just once would assert your manliness, not lie there, supine, and—" ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... less years in a single life were beneath serious consideration; it was the lives to come, the lingering doubt of which power led her on, which restrained and filled her mind. A flicker of rage darted through her calm questioning; her mental processes again faded. With her right arm across the supine body and enveloping the face in her left sleeve a single twist and Nettie Vollar would choke in a cloud of thick satin made gay with unfading flowers and the embroidered symbol of long life. She felt her body grow rigid with purpose when the sound of a footfall below held her motionless ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... heart-sounds, as heard through the stethoscope, in valvular disease, will, of course, be more distinctly ascertained at the locality of F, the right ventricle, which is immediately substernal. While the body lies supine, the heart recedes from the forepart of the chest; and the lungs during inspiration expanding around the heart will render its sounds less distinct. In the erect posture, the heart inclines forwards and approaches the anterior wall of the thorax. When the heart is hypertrophied, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... is an example, on a colossal scale, of the pernicious and supine system of officials, as represented by the Board of Trade. Modern liners are so designed that they have no accommodations for more life-boats. Among practical seamen it has long been recognized that the modern passenger ship has nothing like adequate ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... down a pathway, along which the mass of Grecian women might have followed them; had it been possible for the bulk of the women of the dominant race in Greece at the end of the fifth century to rise from their condition of supine inaction and ignorance and to have taken their share in the intellectual labours and stern activities of their race, Greece would never have fallen, as she fell at the end of the fourth century, instantaneously and completely, as a rotten puff-ball falls in at the touch of a healthy ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... freedom? The classrooms are mine no more; the campus is a departed glory; I shall no longer sing the 'Alma Mater' with you when the chimes ring at ten. The whole challenge of the city is missing. Nothing opposes me, there is no task for me to do. I must be supine, acquiescent, smiling, non-essential. I am like a runner who has trained for a race, and, ready for the speeding, finds that no race is on. But I've no business to be surprised. I knew it would be like this, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... life. In a few seconds would come utter blankness again; her last chance would be gone for saving Roger and herself. Should she make a struggle for it and die fighting? Or was it better to continue her supine pretence and quietly allow the needle to reduce her once more to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless scene ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the tree grows against the forces which try to tear it out. And if these forces were not, there would have been no growth of the root. And so with the root of I'shvara, the life within us; were everything around us smooth and easy, we would remain supine, lethargic, indifferent. It is the whip of pain, of suffering, of disappointment, that drives us onward and brings out the forces of our internal life which otherwise would remain undeveloped. Would you have a man grow? Then don't throw him on a couch with pillows on every side, and bring his ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... colonists of Jamaica ran the most imminent hazard of being extirpated by a domestic enemy. The negro slaves of that island, grown insolent in the contemplation of their own formidable numbers, or by observing the supine indolence of their masters, or stimulated by that appetite for liberty so natural to the mind of man, began, in the course of this year, to entertain thoughts of shaking off the yoke by means of a general insurrection. Assemblies were held and plans resolved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the man somehow overtops the author. The works of both are full of autobiographical confidences. Like Dante, Milton was forced to become a party by himself. He stands out in marked and solitary individuality, apart from the great movement of the Civil War, apart from the supine acquiescence of the Restoration, a self-opinionated, unforgiving, and unforgetting man. Very much alive he certainly was in his day. Has Mr. Masson made him alive to us again? I fear not. At the same time, while ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... great part of their burdens, were able to move with celerity. As to the worthy convive of the preceding evening, he was carefully gathered up from the hunter's couch on which he lay, repentant and supine, and, being packed upon one of the horses, was hurried forward with the convoy, groaning ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... leaves, just a catch of the breath that escaped her now and then. Stonor lay listening with bated breath, as if terrified of losing that which tore his heartstrings to hear. He was afflicted with a ghastly sense of impotence. He had no right to intrude on her grief. Yet how could he lie supine when she was in trouble, and make believe not to hear? He could not lie still. He got up, taking no care to be quiet, and built up the fire. She could not know, of course, that he had heard that broken breath. Perhaps she would speak to him. Or, if she could not speak, perhaps she ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... the spotted leopardess, apparently asleep or lifeless. The Little Ones paused a moment to look at her. She leaped up rampant against the cage. The horses reared and plunged; the elephants retreated a step. The next instant she fell supine, writhed in quivering spasms, and lay motionless. We rode ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Hemstead. He turned from one to another, menacing and trumpeting like a wounded elephant, exulting in his rage. But there was no counsel, no light of reason, in that ecstasy of battle; and he shied from the pursuit of victory to hail fresh blows upon the supine Hemstead, so that the stool was shattered and the cabin rang with their violence. The sight of that post-mortem cruelty recalled Carthew to the life of instinct, and his revolver was in hand and he had aimed and fired before he knew. The ear-bursting sound of the report was accompanied by a ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 Death ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... cabin. By his side he may have the heir-apparent, Paul, his nephew and adopted son, six years old, stark naked, and a model of young human beauty. And there will always be the favourite and perhaps two other wives awake; four more lying supine under mats and whelmed in slumber. Or perhaps we came later, fell on a more private hour, and found Tembinok' retired in the house with the favourite, an earthenware spittoon, a leaden inkpot, and a commercial ledger. In the last, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... justice illegally with their own hands! Nor was this merely in theory. San Francisco at that time was undoubtedly the most corrupt and lawless city in the world. Street shootings, duels, robberies, ballot-box stuffing, bribery, all the crimes traceable to a supine police and venal or technical courts were actually so commonplace as to command but two or three lines in the daily papers. Justice was completely smothered under ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... compared his opponents on the Treasury Bench to a 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 ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... and Russia without moving a finger. Germany thought that the English were blind, and that for the sake of gain we should remain neutral and never lift a finger while she swept over Belgium to crush France; thought, too, that we should be supine while she violated treaties and committed the most fiendish deeds ever committed in the history of the world. But it is not my purpose to speak of these things; I have to tell the story of a commonplace lad in a workaday town, and ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... 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 his half-smoked ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... is, it escaped my observation. The appendix of a chicken, however, is invariably observed as an auxiliary to the observation of the liver and the gall of a pig. If it is found to be erect, that is, at right angles to the intestine, it is considered a favorable omen but if found in a horizontal or supine position with reference to the intestine, it is said to be highly inauspicious. In every case which I saw ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... mysterious habit, explained the inscription by a version and commentary, [24] and descanted with eloquence and zeal on the ancient glories of the senate and people, from whom all legal authority was derived. The supine ignorance of the nobles was incapable of discerning the serious tendency of such representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows the plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse the company with his threats and predictions; and the modern Brutus ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which—" ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... it was, wearied at the length of his lying supine on Fert Sciach under hoops and clasps and ropes. [1]"But, there is one thing more to tell," said Fergus: "unless he be held back now, he will ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... when Catholic Ireland seemed to be crushed, and Ireland lay supine beneath the double weight of the penal laws and the commercial restrictions of England—an Ireland pictured for all time by the keen, merciless pen of Dean Swift—still the vestal flame was not quite extinguished. Captured by ascendancy, dominated by fanaticism, ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... supine, and straight as an arrow, on the sloping sod of this hill-top, gazing up into the blue miles of sky, and still retaining her warm hold of Jude's hand. He reclined on ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... lost. Hitherto I might have turned, and, fortune aiding, have found daylight: but beyond the cellar the galleries ramified by the score, and we walked so rapidly and chose between them with such apparent lack of method that I lost count. My one consolation was the memory of a burly figure in scarlet supine beneath a wine-tun. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
