"Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sewing-machine does not lead to direct self-excitement it has been held, as by Fothergill,[209] to predispose to frequency of involuntary sexual orgasm during sleep, from the irritation set up by the movement of the feet in the sitting posture during the day. The essential movement in working the sewing-machine is the flexion and extension of the ankle, but the muscles of the thighs are used to maintain the feet firmly on the treadle, the thighs are held together, and there is a considerable degree of flexion or extension of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... force, a tendency to sincerity, economy, and fine adjustment of life and mind to experience—scepticism seemed a temptation and a danger. This situation, which still prevails in a certain measure, strikingly shows into how artificial a posture Christianity has thrown the mind. If scepticism, under such circumstances, by chance penetrated among the clergy, it was not favourable to consistency of life, and it was the more certain to penetrate among them in that their ranks, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... death was proverbially that of a dog, no man regarded it. Even the ordinary free man was simply buried in the ground in a sitting posture and forgotten. But the departure of a chief of rank and fame, of great mana or prestige, was the signal for national mourning. With wreaths of green leaves on their heads, friends sat round the body wailing the long-drawn cry, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... pantomimic and the absurd, which was the cruellest part of the slaying and the mocking of the real prophets. St. Peter was crucified upside down as a huge inhuman joke; but his human seriousness survived the inhuman joke, because, in whatever posture, he had died for his faith. The modern martyr of the Pankhurst type courts the absurdity without making the suffering strong enough to eclipse the absurdity. She is like a St. Peter who should deliberately ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... edification might be admitted as a weighty reason to abridge the duration of his punishment. It was sufficient, that the emperor of the Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful and suppliant posture; and that, in the midst of the church of Milan, he should humbly solicit, with sighs and tears, the pardon of his sins. [98] In this spiritual cure, Ambrose employed the various methods of mildness and severity. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... from without, others the attendant visual images of past thoughts and experiences and their distorted combination. Somewhat closer to actual dreaming is the rise of images accompanying present bodily and mental states. I sometimes see a body in the posture my own body has that moment assumed and one night, when recalling a passage from Wilhelm Meister, I saw a young man seated bareheaded on a doorstep, plainly a picture of Wilhelm at Marianna's threshold. In the last ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... through the camp, awaking the leaders, and contriving all possible methods for the public safety. Menelaus, Nestor, Ulysses, and Diomed, are employed in raising the rest of the captains. They call a council of war, and determine to send scouts into the enemy's camp, to learn their posture, and discover their intentions. Diomed undertakes the hazardous enterprise, and makes choice of Ulysses for his companion. In their passage they surprise Dolon, whom Hector had sent on a like design to the camp of the Grecians. From ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... on with the chain, was a political acrobat, ready for any kind of posture. A friend of mine gave me several times an account of a mission to him. A Tory member—those who know the old Tory world may look for his initials in initials of two consecutive words of "Pay his money with interest"—who was, of course, a political opponent, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... fetus frequently changes its position during the earlier months of pregnancy, generally by the beginning of the tenth lunar month it has assumed a permanent posture. It has then reached such a size that it can best be accommodated in the cavity of the uterus if its various parts are folded together so as to give the fetus an ovoid shape. To secure this form its back is arched forward, and its head bent so that its chin touches ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... leaning posture by the mantelpiece, and the lawyer watched his embarrassed countenance as he began a search through his pockets. He succeeded in extracting ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... that I hope in a short time a plan will be offered to the consideration of all the parties engaged in the present war, as a basis for a general negotiation of peace, in which the honor and the interest of all parties have been consulted as far as the circumstances of time and the present posture of affairs would admit." The Royal speech did not contain one single word which had to do with the internal condition of England, with the daily lives of the English people. No legislation was promised, or even hinted at, which concerned the domestic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... strange humming, or buzzing, 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 afoot. It is the synod of all parts politic, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the Parliament. 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 here, like the legends of Popery, first coined and stamped in the church. All inventions are ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... some time before, left a watch to be repaired. It occurred to me that, since I was now on the spot, I might as well stop and make some inquiry about it. On entering the shop I almost repented of my purpose, as two persons were within the bar, if I may call it so, seated in a lounging posture, by a small stove, smoking cigars and gazing at me with an air of indolent impertinence. I determined to make my stay as short as possible, and hurried over a few questions to the artist, who knew me only as the owner of the watch. My attention was quickly roused by one of the loungers, who, having ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... instant Hubert Varrick—who had been dazed by his fall, and the terrible blow on his head caused by striking it against the mantel—was struggling to a sitting posture. Varrick had scarcely regained his feet ere the portieres were flung quickly aside, and his mother and half ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... spite of all the learned have said, I still my old opinion keep; The posture that we give the dead Points ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... length, when their breath's end was come about, And both could now and then just gasp 'impostor!' Holding their heads thrust menacingly out, As staggering cocks keep up their fighting posture, The stranger smiled and said, 'Beyond a doubt 'Tis fortunate, my friends, that you have lost your 150 United parts of speech, or it had been Impossible for me ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the American mission school and see the native children settin' flat on the floor. Josiah wuz awful worked up to see 'em settin' down in such a oncomfortable posture, and he said to me that if he had some tools and lumber he would make 'em some seats. But that is their way of ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... bases; and had stood gazing blankly at the whitened skull of Wituwamat above the gate of the Fort until the wrens who nested there began to fly restlessly in and out, fancying that the captain planned an invasion of their territory. He still stood in this posture when the rustle of a footfall among the dried herbage reached his quick ear, and turning he confronted Barbara, whose down-dropt eyes hid the gleam of amusement the sight of his melancholy attitude had kindled ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... be, for now Seth, apparently sure that the coast was clear, emerged from his hiding place and ran in a stooping posture until he reached another clump further off and nearer the end of the cove. He remained there an instant and then ran, still crouching, until he disappeared behind a high dune at the rear of the bungalow. And there he stayed; at ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the door of a great dining-room, on whose lofty ceiling, as he entered it, wreaths of smoke rolled, which the air had put in motion, and a heavy smell, as of burned charcoal, struck him as he entered. There were no living creatures—the inhabitants were all dead in the last posture of life. The table was covered with silver and gold vessels, and among them were dead flowers and fruits, dried by the close chamber. It should seem they had drunk deeply before they died here—perhaps they had collected the last liquids, and resolved to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... He kicked out, and the next moment his ankle was gripped and held by a row of keen teeth. He yelled again, and tried to free his leg by kicking with the other. Then he realised he had the broken water-bottle at his hand, and, snatching it, he struggled into a sitting posture, and feeling in the darkness towards his foot, gripped a velvety ear, like the ear of a big cat. He had seized the water-bottle by its neck and brought it down with a shivering crash upon the head of the strange beast. He repeated the blow, and then stabbed and jobbed with the jagged ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bronchitis, later they are quite distinctive. Cough is very markedly paroxysmal in character, and though severe is intermittent, the patient being entirely free for many hours at the time. The effect of posture is very marked. If the patient lie on the affected side, he may be free from cough the whole night, but if he turn to the sound side, or if he rises and bends forward, he brings up large quantities of bronchial secretion. The expectoration is characterized by its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week." And Mrs. Touchett's husband slowly resumed his former posture. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of them knelt before him, holding out the trays upon which was the food. So they remained while he ate, like bronze statues, nor would they consent to change their posture even when he told them in their language to be pleased to go away. On hearing themselves addressed in the Asiki language, they seemed surprised, for their faces changed a little, but go they would not. The result was that Alan grew extremely nervous and ate and drank ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... her with a view to arriving at the exact state of her colour perception, and also to investigate her sense of distance. The arrangements consisted in this instance in giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a band passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back of her chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their movements. Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... and smoking in the midst of them, he would occasionally take off his cap. Whenever he did so, there was a sensation in the surrounding circle. The Indians would half rise from their recumbent posture, and gaze upon his uncovered head, with their usual exclamation of astonishment. The worthy captain was completely bald; a phenomenon very surprising in their eyes. They were at a loss to know whether he had ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... posture a necessary part of prayer. Some choose to pray standing, others prefer to kneel. It is not the posture of body God looks at, but the posture of the heart. Reverence there must be, but such reverence as comes from the inner sanctuary of the soul, and which only finds outward expression ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... Meanwhile, king Vriddhakshatra, the father of thy son-in-law, endued with great energy, was, O sire, engaged in his evening prayers. Decked with black locks and adorned with ear-rings, that head of Jayadratha was thrown upon Vriddhakshatra's lap, as the latter was saying his prayers in a sitting posture. Thus thrown on his lap, that head decked with car-rings, O chastiser of foes, was not seen by king Vriddhakshatra. As the latter, however, stood up after finishing his prayers it suddenly fell down on the earth. And as the head of Jayadratha ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in this posture, Stretch'd on the ground? your honest, true, old servant, Your poor Ernesto, cannot see you thus. Rise, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... a routine-ridden military system, meets with an adversary who, like the rude element, knows no other law than that of his intrinsic force. Every deficiency in energy and exertion is then a weight in the scales in favour of the enemy; it is not so easy then to change from the fencing posture into that of an athlete, and a slight blow is often sufficient ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... eyes before, when the Indian believed that injury had come to those he loved; and when the white boy saw it now, bent upon himself, he knew that he, too, had become more than a friend to this savage pathfinder of the wilderness. Minnetaki's caressing hand and the fearful anxiety in the crouching posture of the old hunter thrilled him, and two words fell from his lips before they knew that he ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... but, for appearances' sake, accepted a cramped lodging in the cottage. Piers kept very much to himself until the funeral was over; he was then invited by Daniel to join a conference in what had been his father's room. Here the man of law (Jerome's name for him) expounded the posture of things; with all professional, and some personal, tact and delicacy. Will there was certainly none; Daniel, in the course of things, would apply for letters of administration. The estate, it might be said, consisted of certain shares in a prosperous newspaper, an investment which could be ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... from these proofs given by himself. He asserts upon his own knowledge, "I know it," says he—"that the corpse of a dead Christian, at the first breath of the prayer made by the priest, on occasion of its own funeral, removed its hands from its sides, into the usual posture of a supplicant; and when the service was ended, restored them again to their former situation." (Tertul. de anima c. 51.) And he relates as a fact, which he, and all the orthodox of his time credited, that—"the body of another Christian already ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... came a noise of seats being moved and chattering of voices, which dispelled this vapor of a dream, and he perceived, dozing around him, his four friends, relaxed from a listening attitude to the comfortable posture ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... stairs, halfway down, a man was crouching in a posture of frozen consternation: a small electric pocket-lamp burning brilliantly in one hand, the other, lifted, grasping a weapon of some curious sort, in the eyes of P. Sybarite more than anything else like, a small black cannon: a hatless man in evening clothes, his face ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... He was a young Eskimo with a clean-cut intelligent face. Lucile, by his posture, recognized the one who had championed ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... with the same speed refilled it from the tumbler. She laid it down again exactly where it had been before, looked to see that there were no drops spilled. Then once more she lay down, trying with meticulous care to resume her old posture. Was this right? No, her head must have been a little lower. Oh, what hope was there of deceiving those keen little python's eyes? The man would surely detect the smallest variation in her attitude. No, it was a pathetic ruse, foredoomed to failure. If he ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... piercing its way from the cliff top, broke through the wall of the cave, high up, close to the roof. He turned, and his eyes followed Vashti, who had caught up Eli's lantern, and was picking her way across the rocky floor. Presently she bent to a kneeling posture, as the rays fell on what at first appeared to be a long bundle. He hurried after her, but stopped short ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to advancing in a sitting posture—after a manner known to infants—at the same time intensifying the urbanity of his look and the wheedlement of his tone. The gazelle suffered him to approach until his fingers were within an inch of its nose. There the middy stopped. He had studied animal ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... were stopped by the increasing tightness of the hawser, which was wound on the cylinder as fast as the slew-ropes were wound off it. When all the ropes had been drawn equally tight, and the whole party of men had been ranged along the top in an erect posture, with their faces all turned one way, a signal was given by one of the principal natives. At this moment the men, one and all, still grasping their respective slew-ropes firmly in their hands, and without bending a joint in their whole bodies, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... yourself: A slim figure, if you like, held in the posture of the caterpillar slouch, a long length of stocking so thin as to give the effect of shaded skin above high-heeled slippers with sparkling buckles of bright jet, a short skirt, a scrappy, thin, low-necked, short-sleeved blouse through which white underclothing shows various edgings ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... being of no more use in Paris, Cowley was sent back to England, that 'under pretence of privacy and retirement he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation.' For some time he lay concealed in London, but was at length seized by mistake for another gentleman of the Royal party; and being thus discovered, he was continued in confinement, was several times examined, and ultimately succeeded, although with some difficulty, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Comminges drew himself up, and placing his hand on his hip, the prescribed posture in such circumstances, replied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... stood in the door and he looked over her shoulder, six old men, evidently awaiting her arrival, bent themselves almost to the floor in a reverential posture that expressed greeting and adoration. Again Kendric's fancies were drawn back into ancient Mexico. They wore loose white cotton robes; their beards fell on their aged breasts; in their sashes were long ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... 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
... Bazalgette's cries he started up, and looked confusedly at them all; but, when she did the feinting business, he thought she was going to faint, and caught her in his arms; and, holding her in them a moment as if she had been a child, he deposited her very gently in a sitting posture at the foot of one of the trees, and, taking her hand, slapped it to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... priesthood, ambulance halls and rest houses for their accommodation when on journeys, were built in every district, and rocks were hollowed into temples; one of which, at Pollanarrua, remains to the present day with its images of Buddha; "one in a sitting and another in a lying posture," almost as described in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Tarrant sighed and grimaced, wrapped herself more than ever in her mantle, said she didn't know as she was fit to struggle alone, and that, half the time, if Verena was away, she wouldn't have the nerve to answer the door-bell; she was incapable, of course, of neglecting such an opportunity to posture as one who paid with her heart's blood for leading the van of human progress. But Verena had an inner sense (she judged her mother now, a little, for the first time) that she would be sorry to be taken at her word, and that ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... almost imperceptibly, keeping his eyes on the figure which now stood within the shade of the trees in an attitude which might suggest listening, or perhaps merely a posture of alert repose. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets. Each party kicks backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans forward upon those that are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this ludicrous posture, each loses its balance, and, after having cut the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid singular somersaults. Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward line. It finds itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is cleared away, and the first ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... applied to the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of L100 a year. There was no certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... touch them, and they immediately sprang to their feet. Samuel Parris had his minions well trained. On any special action of her body, shaking of her head, or the turning of her eyes, they imitated her posture and seemed under some ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... body. In two or three minutes four more men, accompanied by George and Polly, whose anxiety would not let her stay behind, hurried up. Luke and his companions had raised Ned and Bill into a sitting posture. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... remove her clothing, but she firmly said, "Instead of weeping, rejoice; I am very happy to leave this world and in so good a cause." Then she knelt, and after praying stretched out her neck to the executioner, imagining that he would strike off her head while in an upright posture and with the sword, as in France; they told her of her mistake, and without ceasing to pray she laid her head on the block. There was a universal feeling of compassion, even the headsman himself ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of a friable substance, like rust of iron, called rust balls. (* There may probably be also in the chalk itself that is burnt for lime a proportion of sand: for few chalks are so pure as to have none.) (** To surbed stone is to set it edgewise, contrary to the posture it had in the quarry, says Dr. Plot, Oxfordsh., p. 77. But surbedding does not succeed in our dry walls; neither do we use it so in ovens, though he says it is best for Teynton stone.) (*** 'Firestone is full of salts, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... bitumen—all wearing pshents of gold, and breastplates and gorgets glittering with precious stones, their eyes immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles contemporary with them—rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands—mewed, ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... in which my reverend preceptor had the privilege of walking for study, and to which he had a key that was always at my command. Near one of the stiles, I perceived a young man sitting in a devout posture, reading a Bible. He rose, lifted his hat, and made an obeisance to me, which I returned and walked on. I had not well crossed the stile till it struck me I knew the face of the youth and that he was some intimate ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... masturbation. When he was 13 he used to discuss erotic matters with a schoolfellow who was in the habit of engaging in vulvar intercourse with a girl of his own age. The intercourse was practised on the way home from school, and in a standing posture. B. embraced the girl in the same way. He is not interested in the psychological aspects of the sexual emotion. Although his sex passion was early kindled, he never had commerce with prostitutes. He thinks that his youthful experiences had no ill effect upon ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the sitting posture," he said, sinking down again. "I suppose I am your prisoner. If you have anything to do, pray do not let me detain you. I cannot get away and you will probably find me here when you come back to dinner. I will occupy myself in cursing ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... to the male attire after this; but being yet in the prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I engaged myself to a French mountebank posture-master to dance Corantoes on the Tight and Slack Rope, accompanying myself meanwhile by reveilles on the Drum, an instrument in which I had become a proficient. The Posture Master, finding out afterwards that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... olive tree . . . and there remained in kneeling posture for the space of half an hour. A marvellous thing it was to see the branch which sustained him swaying lightly, as though a bird had ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to do, while Archer, tremulous and unstrung, stood awkwardly by, watching. He knelt down over the lifeless form of the old man and straightened the prostrate figure so that it lay becomingly and decently upon the hard floor. He bent the one arm and laid it across the breast in the usual posture of dignity and peace. He took the threadbare covering from the old melodeon and placed it over the face. So that the last service for old Pierre Leteur was performed by an American boy; and ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... for this hesitation he explained more fully to Clarice herself some half an hour afterwards. He found her standing by herself upon the terrace. She started nervously as he approached, and it seemed to him that her whole figure stiffened to a posture of defence. She said nothing, however, and for a while they stood side by side looking seawards across the breadth of the island. The ground stretched away broken into little hollows and little hills,—downs ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... more enrich us thereby:—if it pleases Him to take His ancient speeches back again into His mouth, in order that He may syllable them anew,—making them sweeter than honey to our lips, yea, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb;—what is Man that he should reply against GOD? What should be our posture, at witnessing such a spectacle, but one of Adoration? What, our becoming ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... seeing the posture of affairs, shouted to the combatants to desist, but to no purpose, rage and absorption in their wrathful occupation having deafened both to all external sounds. Seized with pity for the younger lad, who was getting so mercilessly the worst of it, the woman, hastily throwing ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the middle of the sofa, the only piece of furniture in the room in harmony with her ample proportions. Her attitude and posture were both judicial, and justice itself ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were struck with no little misgivings when they found both entrance doors open and the house all lonely and silent. They went up to their son-in-law's room, and found him in the posture he had all along maintained, with his eyes immovably fixed on his wife, whom he held by the hands, whilst both were in tears; she, because she saw his flow, and he at seeing how deceitfully she wept. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... children, and to devote to her own study and life of thought; it is she who wrings his heart. It is not the woman, who, on hands and knees, at tenpence a day, scrubs the floors of the public buildings, or private dwellings, that fills him with anguish for womanhood: that somewhat quadrupedal posture is for him truly feminine, and does not interfere with his ideal of the mother and child-bearer; and that, in some other man's house, or perhaps his own, while he and the wife he keeps for his pleasures are visiting concert ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... fatigue of long attention, and I threw myself upon a bench, in a state, both mentally and personally, of the utmost supineness. The lulling sounds of the waterfall, the fragrance, and the dusk, combined to becalm my spirits, and, in a short time, to sink me into sleep. Either the uneasiness of my posture, or some slight indisposition, molested my repose with dreams of no cheerful hue. After various incoherences had taken their turn to occupy my fancy, I at length imagined myself walking, in the evening twilight, to my ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... were allowed to dissent from Ministerial measures, and yet to keep their places; and that I should not think myself in the smallest degree ill-used if the Cabinet accepted my resignation. This is the present posture of affairs. In the meantime the two Houses are at daggers drawn. Whether the Government will last to the end of the Session I neither know nor care. I am sick of Boards, and of the House of Commons; and pine for ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... statue in the Thebaeis, and says that the history given of it was not satisfactory. He tells us, that it stood near the Syringes, in upper Egypt; and he viewed it with great admiration. It was the figure of a man in a sitting posture; which some said was the representation of Memnon the Ethiopian: others maintained, that it was the statue of Phamenophis: and others again, that it related to Sesostris. There were here emblems, and symbols; yet a diversity of opinions. I want therefore to know, how Herodotus could interpret in ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... established this tenet,—that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving SOME doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking them upon trust without further examination: in which posture of blind credulity, they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to some sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... his stooping posture, took the verdict of the ring of faces and in a trice tugged open the two buckles. The central fastening was not locked, and yielded to a touch. The flannel shirt, the weird collar and a few other garments in the nature of a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... meanness and ingratitude. His troubles, however, did not prevent him living to the great age of one hundred and three. The author of the little book about schoolmasters had seen his statue in his native town. It was a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two writing desks beside it. The favorite authors of Orbilius, who was of the old-fashioned school, were, as has been said, the early dramatists. Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... the forests, in which not a human creature is seen and no food can be obtained. The highest point is 1200 feet above the sea-level, and the path leading up to it is in many parts only one foot wide. The traveller is generally carried, bound to a chair in a sitting posture, on the back of a native, as a porter ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... occasioned by the breaking up of the company, the tutor and his pupil—the latter of whom had naturally dropped into the less ostentatious posture of a quadruped—were forgotten, or at least overlooked, by the crowd of courtiers, who rushed to congratulate Mar Yusef, or laid their heads together, to whisper their surprise or their suspicions. Titus, therefore, having briefly given directions ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... great length the experience with "Hatha Yoga" of a very gifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for several months its methods of fasting from food and sleep, its exercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic posture-gymnastics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and deeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself, and to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the "circular" type, from which ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... heard a rustle of a silken gown, and knew it ought not to have been worn in a sick-room; for her senses seemed to have passed into the keeping of the invalid, and to feel only as he felt. The noise was probably occasioned by some change of posture in the watcher inside, for it was once more dead-still. The soft wind outside sank with a low, long, distant moan among the windings of the hills, and lost itself there, and came no more again. But Ruth's heart beat loud. She rose with as little noise as if she were a vision, and crept ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... brutally abolished all private rights, regarding the actual living people as a beast of burden, and yet worse, as a robot, subjecting their human machine to the cruelest restraints in order to mechanically maintain it in the unnatural, rigid posture, which, according to principles, they inflict upon it. Thenceforth, all ties are sundered between them and the nation; to prey upon, bleed and starve this nation, to re-conquer it after it bad escaped them, to repeatedly enchain and gag it—all this they could well do; but ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—The posture of my mind the last fortnight relative to the duty of the present hour—which, indeed, I was proud to be assigned to, as I ought to have been, but which has been a black care to me ever since I undertook it—has a not inapt illustration in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... to the bench]. At the word Go, place your prisoner on the bench in a sitting posture; and take your seats right and ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... Berry. "Darling, you rave. You're going to spend the next four hours afloat upon your beautiful toes, with a large spade-shaped hand supporting the small of your back. I'm not. I'm going to maintain a sitting posture, with one of the 'nests for rest' provided by a malignant Casino directly intervening between the base of my trunk and the floor. Now, I know that intervention. It's of the harsh, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Cathedrall about 9 or 10 of the clock, in the midst of their superstitious worship, with their singing men and boys; they (owing them no reverence) marched up to the place where the altar stood, and staying awhile, thinking they would have eased their worship, and demanded a reason of their posture, but seeing they did not, the souldiers could not forbeare any longer to wait upon their pleasure, but went about the worke they came for. First they removed the Table to its place appointed, and then tooke the seate which ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... lightning, but the parry of the smaller man was still quicker. His left hand clutched Silent by the wrist, and that mighty sweep of arm was stopped in mid-air! They were in the middle of the room. They stood perfectly erect and close together, embraced. Their position had a ludicrous resemblance to the posture of dancers, but their bodies were trembling with effort. With every ounce of power in his huge frame Silent strove to complete his grip at the throat. He felt the right arm of Dan tightening around him closer, closer, closer! It was not a bulky arm, but it seemed to be made of linked steel ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... is weeping at his feet. Ye Gods! what a prostitution of talent! This is the master-piece of GIRARDON; but, in point of execution, many connoisseurs prefer the mausoleum of the crafty MAZARIN, whom COYZEVOX has pourtrayed in a supplicating posture. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of thorough relaxation in a dentist's chair proves the folly of tightening one's muscles. When in school or out the remedy for nervousness is relaxation. The discipline that prohibits a pupil from stretching or changing his posture or seat is as much to be condemned as that which flourishes the rod. It has been said of our schools that children are not worked to death but bored to death. Wherever a room must be stripped of all beauty and interest to induce concentration, wherever the greater part of the teacher's time must ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... take a stroll, and when the sun shows itself I reenter and go to bed again, where I remain a longer or shorter time, according as the day promises to turn out. If it is bad, and I feel irritation and uneasiness, I have recourse to the method I have just mentioned. I change my posture, pass from my bed to the sofa, from the sofa to the bed, seek and find a degree of freshness. I do not describe to you my morning costume; it has nothing to do with the sufferings I endure, and besides, I do not wish to deprive you of the pleasure of your surprise when you see it. These ingenious ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... such who should be examples to the flock. One or two things are omitted about your comings-together, which I shall here add. I beseech you, forbear sitting in prayer, except parties be any way disabled; 'tis not a posture which suits with the majesty of such an ordinance. Would you serve your prince so? In prayer, let all self-affected expressions be avoided, and all vain repetitions. God hath not gifted, I judge, every brother to be a mouth to the church. Let such as have most of the demonstration of the Spirit ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Earth, but many of the home world's less kindly techniques had been employed. Lack of complete loyalty to the state was likely to result in a siege of treatment that left the subject suitably "re-personalized." Kolin had heard of instances wherein mere unenthusiastic posture had betrayed intentions to harbor ...
— The Talkative Tree • Horace Brown Fyfe
... inclination to laugh. He had wasted too much time already, and was anxious to get back to the ranch. He quite realized that Joe knew what he was about, if his legs were hors-de-combat, for, after delivering himself of this, his unvarnished opinion, he wisely sought the safer vantage-ground of a sitting posture. ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... night Jerry got awake with a start. He felt restless and uneasy. The ropes on his arms pained him. He raised himself to a sitting posture ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... I will set you free." He then gave orders what further he would have him do; and away went Ariel, first to where he had left Ferdinand, and found him still sitting on the grass in the same melancholy posture. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... he, of course, visits our theatres, and a tolerably broad caricature he gives of them. "To sit in a huge room hotter than a glass-house, in a posture emulating the most sanctified Faquir, with a throbbing head-ache, a breaking back, and twisted legs, with a heavy tube held over one eye, and the other covered with the unemployed hand, is, in Vraibleusia, called a public amusement." In one morning's lionizing, too, he acquires "a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... she started to peer under the bed to ascertain if there was any dust there, when, hearing a noise, supposing that the minister had come, she turned and closed the closet door, and reseated herself, wiping her mouth with her apron as she did so. This change of posture brought her into full view of the stairs leading to the loft above, which humble place, under the roof, the clergyman used for a study when he wished to be very much retired. On the stairs, descending with solemn ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that one well-directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for one) might penetrate through the eye to the brain of his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and arose From her reclining posture at my side, Threw back the clust'ring ringlets from her face With a quick gesture, full of easy grace, And, turning, spoke to Vivian. "Will you guide The boat up near that little clump of green Off to the right? There's where the lilies grow. We quite forgot our errand here, Maurine, And our ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... whole hour in fluctuations with which there was certainly mingled some struggle. Three o'clock struck. He opened his eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed, and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost without knowing it, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... saw that her whole body was trembling in gentle and yet seemingly intense vibrations, and she maintained this singular agitation while she assumed an attitude of much grace, extending her arms and spreading out her scarf in gracefully-waving curves. In these slow and languid changes of posture, which accommodated themselves to the music like undulations in running water to undulations in the sand of its bed, and in the strange trembling of her body, which seemed to be an inner miniature dance of the nerves, consisted her entire performance. She intensified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... the knees, separating them from his thighs, as he suddenly sank down, shortened, as he believed, to the extent of about a foot in measurement, the trunk of the body falling backwards on the ground, and the senses being completely paralysed by the shock. In this posture he lay motionless during the remainder of the night, not daring to move a muscle for fear of fatal consequences. He experienced no severe suffering; but this immunity from pain he attributed to the stunning effect produced upon ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... are, as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my knees. For our en- deavours are not only to combat with doubts, but always to dispute with the devil. The villany of that spirit takes a hint of infidelity from our studios; and, by demonstrating a naturality in one ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... dryness that smacked of his uncle Everard Romfrey, Beauchamp said of the fantastical posture of the young man, 'One can do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... CASSIUS. Antony, The posture of your blows are yet unknown; But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, And leave ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... 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 ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boy, lying there on the coral pavement, with his head resting on the thin, delicate arm, with pale, sweet face turned half upward toward the Virgin, gave a feeble cry and opened his eyes. He rose to a sitting posture, with his little hands resting on his lap and little ragged shirt. Then, with his dim hazel eyes fixed upon the painting, while the tears coursed slowly down his pallid cheeks, he put forth his hands in a childish movement ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... what think you of that?" He was not, however, quite prepared to give an answer to a question so abruptly propounded, nor indeed did he exactly understand to what particular the lady referred. "For my part," she resumed, recovering her previous posture—"for my part, it's a very caldrife way of life to dine every day on coffee; broth and beef would put mair smeddum in the men; they're just a whin auld fogies that Mr. Andrew describes, an' no wurth a single woman's pains." "Wheesht, wheesht, mistress," cried Mr. Craig; "ye mauna let ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... 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 cause ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... the tone of that response that Mariana involuntarily raised herself from her listening posture, and the dishes clinked. "What's that? Didn't you hear suthin'? Why, Jake Preble's a kind of a hind wheel. He goes rollin' along after t'others, never askin' why nor wherefore, and he thinks it's his own free will. He never so much as dreams ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... hunting; the hunter the same when 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 walk, amble, ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... could under that limitation. A man in a grey top hat, grey-bearded, with thin brown, folded cheeks, and a certain elegance of posture, sat there with a woman in a lawn-coloured frock, whose dark eyes were fixed on himself. Soames looked quickly at his feet. How funnily feet moved, one after the other like that! Winifred's voice said ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... interposition of the very floe along whose edge they are feeding. Steadily La Salle drives the prow gently against the ice, then drops his oar, and grasps his heavy gun. He hazards a glance: the birds, scarce thirty yards away, are unsuspectingly feeding in a close body; he rises to a sitting posture, raises his gun, and whistles shrilly and long. Instantly the birds raise their heads, gathering around their leader. Bang! The thunder-roll of the report, reverberating amid the ice, is the death-sentence of the flock. Not one escaped; the distance ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom; I can feel With all 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 ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... necessary, Jet insisted that the prisoner should be made fast to one of the trees in a sitting posture, and not until this had been done was the balance of ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... appreciation of Michael Angelo's spiritual power. It is perhaps owing to the very intensity of his imagination that he has been so little understood—for, as I before said, imagination can never be met by vanity, nor without earnestness. His Florentine followers saw in him an anatomist and posture-master—and art was finally destroyed by the influence over admiring idiocy of the greatest mind that ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... stuck them in the ground, and set to work. After digging about two feet, we came to a mass which proved to be the body of a human being, swaddled up in bandages of cloth, and in good preservation. It was in a sitting posture, with the knees drawn up to the chin. Placing it on one side, we dug on. Clearing away another stratum of earth, we reached a collection of household utensils, which at first I thought were of copper and clay; but as Ned was ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... carried on.—There being no special restrictive rule, the Purvapakshin holds that the Devotee may carry it on either sitting or lying down or standing or walking.—This view the Sutra sets aside. Meditation is to be carried on by the Devotee in a sitting posture, since in that posture only the needful concentration of mind can be reached. Standing and walking demand effort, and lying down is conducive to sleep. The proper posture is sitting on some support, so that no effort may be required for ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... frankness of manner Loveday—who was not a ladies' man—blushed, and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a sentence which had no end, and showed quite a boy's embarrassment. Recovering himself, he politely offered his arm, which Anne took with a very pretty grace. He conducted her through his comrades, who glued themselves perpendicularly to the wall to let ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... started back, and, stooping his head on his breast, with his hands over his eyes, as if to save them from being dazzled by an expected burst of light, awaited the answer to his summons. The Anglo-Dane, desirous to obey his leader, imitating him as near as he could, stood side by side in the posture of Oriental humiliation. The little portal opened inwards, when no burst of light was seen, but four of the Varangians were made visible in the entrance, holding each his battle-axe, as if about to strike down the intruders who had disturbed ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... I cried. "Am I not dead, then?" And I sought to struggle up into a sitting posture, but that gentle hand upon my forehead restrained and robbed me of all will that was ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here for a time." She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, "You would like me to read ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his posture—a stark stillness which arrested his eye. He stepped quickly to his side ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... you been waiting?" she cried, as she came on to the extreme point of the breakwater. He was just going to tell her not to jump, but it was too late; without lessening her speed, she had already sprung from the pier down into the boat. Her feet slipped from her, and she fell in a sitting posture on the bottom of the boat, while part of her dress hung ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Sir Francis Varney, who was seated in the same posture as he had been left by Henry ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus Revenge more wounds our children than ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... first. With white face he climbed to the roof of the cabin and idly seizing the great limb that lay there tried to move it. Xavier, who lay on his face on the bank, rose to a sitting posture and crossed himself. Beyond me crowded the four members of the crew, unhurt. Then we heard Xavier's voice, in French, thanking the Blessed Virgin for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fire; and there the old man sat, on one side, in a high-backed not very easy- looking chair. With a great effort he managed to rise as I approached him, notwithstanding my entreaties that he would not move. He looked much older when on his feet, for he was bent nearly double, in which posture the marvel was how he could walk at all. For he did totter a few steps to meet me, without even the aid of a stick, and, holding out a thin, shaking hand, welcomed me with an air of breeding rarely to be met with in his station in society. But the chief part ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... days, and I have paid you eight different guineas; but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, Sir, not to leave this room till you satisfy me by doing so." Struck by his manner, Mr. Abernethy threw himself back in his chair, and assuming the posture of a most indefatigable listener, exclaimed, in a tone of half surprise, half humour,—"Oh! very well, Sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole—your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure; go on." Upon which Curran, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... things of this world, as pride, pleasures, profits, lusts, vanities? What! dost thou think to run fast enough, with the world, thy sins, and lusts, in thy heart? I tell thee, soul, they that have laid all aside, every weight, every sin, and are got into the nimblest posture, they find work enough to run; so to run as ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... looked him full in the face. He was sitting, but she had not sat down. She was standing before him, faultless in demeanour, in posture, and in dress. If it had been his aim to confound her, he certainly had so far ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... valleys is rich from the detritus of the basalt that forms or caps the hills; but it is now in a bad state of cultivation, partly from several successive seasons of great calamity, under which the people have been suffering, and partly from over-assessment; and this posture of affairs is continued by that loss of energy, industry, and character, among the farmers and cultivators, which must everywhere result from these two evils. In India, where the people have learnt so well to govern ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... doubted its potency. Yaqui pointed down the lava slope, pointed with finger and arm and neck and head—his whole body was instinct with direction. His whole being seemed to have been animated and then frozen. His posture could not have been misunderstood, yet his expression had not altered. Gale had never seen the Indian's face change its hard, red-bronze calm. It was the color and the flintiness and the character of the lava ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of the afternoon he appeared to be in great pain and distress, from the difficulty of breathing, and frequently changed his posture in the bed. On these occasions I lay upon the bed and endeavored to raise him, and turn him with as much ease as possible. He appeared penetrated with gratitude for my attentions, and often said, 'I am ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... from the side of his bed. It was his custom to pray in this posture both morning and night; in the morning to thank his Lord for having brought him safely through the night and to offer Him all his prayers and works and sufferings of the day. At night to implore pardon for his shortcomings of the day and to commend himself into the hands of his Creator. This morning, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... spread that the French had made an incursion within the lines, and carried off a few head of cattle, the tales were too vague to excite the least alarm. I was then lodging with a Madame Tissand, on the Place du Sablon, and I occasionally chatted with my hostess on the critical posture of affairs. Every Frenchwoman loves politics, and Madame Tissand, who was deeply interested in the subject, continually assured me of her complete devotion to the English.—"Ces maudits Francois!" cried she one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... an easy posture as though he intended a long stay, and in a voice broken with emotion murmured something about home, and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... semitones of sensuousness. Fantasy, passion, even paroxysmal madness there are; yet what elemental power in his Adam as the gigantic first homo painfully heaves himself up from the earth to that posture which differentiates him from the beasts. Here, indeed, the two natures are at strife. And Mother Eve, her expression suggesting the sorrows and shames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins seem crushed by the ages that are hidden within them. You may walk freely about the burghers ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... tidings that a vessel was 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, Laudonniere 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 along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and taken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... movement. Half-dreaming still, he thought that Schriften, the pilot, had in his sleep been attempting to gain his relic, had passed the chain over his head, and was removing quietly from underneath his neck the portion of the chain which, in his reclining posture, he lay upon. Startled at the idea, he threw up his hand to seize the arm of the wretch, and found that he had really seized hold of Schriften, who was kneeling by him, and in possession of the chain and relic. The struggle was short, the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... have rid themselves of their routine, which was to tumble and scurry among its cogs and levers. They are done with life, with buying and selling and with the perpetual errand. And they have become a swarm of little ornaments. Men and women denuded of the city. Their outlines posture quaintly in the mist. Their little faces say, "The clock is gone. There is nothing any more to make us alive. So we ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht |
