"Prostrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... red uncertain glare, which falling on the faces of the crowd of devotees, showed that they had worked themselves into a frenzy of religious fervour. Some were crying aloud to the Crocodile-god, some were prostrate on their faces with their lips to the stones worn smooth by the tramp of many feet, while many were going through all sorts of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... tricky place on which to walk in the dark, for the surface is strewn with boulders of all sizes and furrowed and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, and quite suddenly you may find yourself prostrate upon a surface of slippery blue ice. It may be easily imagined that it is no seemly place to exercise skittish ponies or mules in a cold wind, but there is no other place when the sea-ice ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... in those last days they spent together—she would turn, and dragging me with her, all stunned and bewildered by something beyond my understanding, she would hurry me to the chapel of the citadel, and there, before the high altar, prostrate herself and spend long hours ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... creature relaxed its talons, and the dog rushed on, squeaking with terror. The bird turned on Frisby and sent him sprawling on his face, a sticky mass of paste and sand. But this did not end the struggle. The bird, croaking horridly, flew at the prostrate bill-poster, and the sand whirled into a pillar above its terrible wings. Scarcely knowing what I was about, I raised my rifle and fired twice. A scream echoed each shot, and the bird rose heavily in a shower of sand; but two bullets were embedded in that ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... on account of disease and debility. These records contain, at best, only such ailments as are of sufficient importance to come under the observation of the surgeon. But there are manifold lighter physical disturbances, which, though they neither prostrate the patient, nor even cause him to go to the hospital, yet none the less certainly unfit him for labor and duty. Of the regiment referred to by Dr. Mann, and already adduced in this article, in which 700 were unable to attend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... always to see Execution done by their Soldiers.) To whom he gave Command, saying, Take both these, and lead them to such a place, and cut off their Heads, who dared to presume to lay their hands on my Person, and did not prostrate themselves rather that I might lay my hand on them for my relief and safety. And accordingly they ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... bottle at the man's head, just grazing it, and sprang toward him, but stumbled and fell. The man, with a certain rude sense of chivalry, waited for him to get up, but the mean loafers who had cheered were about to manifest their change of sentiment toward Gus by kicking him in his prostrate condition. Van Dam, who also had drunk too much to be his cool careful self, now drew a pistol, and with a savage volley of oaths swore he would shoot the first man who touched his friend. Then, helping Gus up, he carried him off to a private ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... leaning slightly forward, her eyes a-glitter on the prostrate DesCaut, her strong hand doubled and flecked with blood, with Loup at her feet,—and quick on the heels of it she saw the look in the factor's eyes as he had commanded her to silence with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... forward to bend over the prostrate figure. The Indian, a slender, handsome young brave, had been shot through the breast. He held his hand tightly over the wound, while bright red blood trickled between his fingers, flowed down his ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... last of his nervous reserve force, and, with a mighty effort, broke free, and flung Judd face downward on the ground. The latter's right arm was extended, and, grasping the sweaty wrist, he drew it up and back, at the same instant crowding his knee into the spine of the prostrate man. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... awe-struck savages, he spoke to them kindly and bade them rise. They did not understand, but lifted their heads and stared appealingly. He raised each in turn. As they once more looked upon his full magnificence, they were about to prostrate themselves again when they caught sight of the Indians. Those dark stolid faces, even that gay attire, they could understand. Glancing askance at the priest, they drew near to their fellow-beings, touched their hands to the strangers' breasts, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... M. Rohault de Fleury—are singularly shy of the true Virgin of majesty, whether at Chartres or at Byzantium or wherever she is seen. The fathers Martin and Cahier at Bourges alone left her true value. Had the Church controlled her, the Virgin would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of the Cross. Dragged by a Byzantine Court, backed by popular insistence and impelled by overpowering self-interest, the Church accepted the Virgin throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... intentness of a lynx. He was striving to measure the other's resistance. He noted the horror of Mr. Harley at the term forger; he observed Mr. Harley's growing sense of helplessness as he, Storri, set forth how Mr. Harley lay in the toils. Now, when Mr. Harley was prostrate beneath the harrow of every alarm, Storri, sure of success, went off on an easier tack—that is, easier ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the prostrate man's legs, pulled him across the dusty road to the bushes, and laid him on his back under a ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... considered as the source of any power whatever. To rebel against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper position to be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate were the good. Those who stood erect were infidels and traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the few favorites of the ghosts might ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... through me. They're always asking me to tea to meet people in the hope that I'll ask them back to meet you. I'm worn out with keeping them off you. Some day all Harmouth will come bursting into your drawing-room over my prostrate form, flattened ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... which was temporarily the "ladies' cloak-room, prostrate on the bed, Mrs. Bonner found her later. Missy protested she was now feeling better, though she thought she'd just lie quiet awhile. She insisted that Mrs. Bonner make no fuss and go back down to her guests. Mrs. Bonner, after bringing a damp towel and some smelling-salts, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... outside, and they may fall together. In this lies the destructive significance of the Peace of Paris. If the European Civil War is to end with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary now prostrate, they invite their own destruction also, being so deeply and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic bonds. At any rate an Englishman who took part in the Conference of Paris and was during those months a member of the Supreme Economic Council of the Allied Powers, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... water in resisting evil and thwarting its vile inclinations. The pride and hope that had sustained him in what he regarded as the great effort of his life were gone, and he felt neither strength nor courage to attempt anything further. He saw himself helpless and prostrate before his fate, and yet that fate was so terrible that he shrank from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... alighted from the post-chaise and, ordering the driver to proceed by the longest road to Saint-Severe, took a short cut through the woods. As soon as I saw the trees in the park raising their venerable heads above the copses like a solemn phalanx of druids in the middle of a prostrate multitude, my heart began to beat so violently that I was ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... affections, and of his continual thought during his long absence, suddenly checked by disappointment, anxiety, and grief, at finding her lying emaciated, changed, corrupted with disease—her mind overthrown—her eyes unconscious of his presence—her existence hanging by a single hair—her frame prostrate before the King of Terrors who hovers over her with uplifted dart, and longs for the fiat which should permit him to pierce his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... grass, prostrate vines, and low-growing shrubs; primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... have much worse sins than that on my conscience, so I come prostrate at your foot to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said the count, unravelling the prostrate and doubly knotted figure at our feet; "lend a hand, Patsey." Much to my astonishment, he obeyed the summons with alacrity, and proceeded to unharness the mare with the greatest despatch. My attention was, however, soon turned from him to my own more immediate ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the gate for John. Seeing the knights asleep, they extinguished all the lights, so that the place remained in darkness. And John now uncovers the grave and opens the coffin, taking care to do it no harm. Cliges steps into the grave and lifts out his Sweetheart, all weak and prostrate, whom he fondles, kisses, and embraces. He does not know whether to rejoice or regret that she does not stir or move. And John, as quickly as he could, closed up the sepulchre again, so that it was not apparent that any one had tampered ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... a remark of Dr. Kane's;—how when, on one of his voyages, in their ice-girt winter quarters, the whole ship's company, save himself, were prostrate below decks, and he with incredible strength and fortitude was literally doing everything, not even omitting to register regular observations of the instruments;—in the midst of that unsurpassable heroism among the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... glanced at the prostrate counterfeiter, and his last exclamation was in answer to a voice from the room where I had left Lossing ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the part where the faithful used to kneel. The sonority of the granites round about exaggerates the noise of the oars on the enclosed water, and there is something confusing in the thought that we are rowing and floating between the walls where formerly, and for centuries, men were used to prostrate themselves with ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... appearance. She was as pale as death, except a small scarlet patch on either cheek, which contrasted powerfully with the death-like hue of the rest of her countenance. Her hands convulsively clasped the back of the pillion; her lips were slightly apart, and her eyes fixed upon the prostrate form of the Earl of Rochester. On finding they were pursued, and by whom, her first impulse had been to fling herself from the pillion, and to seek safety by flight; but controlling herself, she awaited the result ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... will not, with your own hands, go on forging daggers for maniacs to use upon themselves and their friends, provided you can get some one to take your business at a fair price. You will no longer drag the car of Juggernaut over the bodies of prostrate devotees, if you can sell out ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... lamentation of a Latin poet over a Greek soldier lying prostrate on the battle-field, far from home;—"and dying he remembers his sweet Greece." So they made game of me with the help of the Classics, giving poignancy to their jokes by polishing the tips with classical ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... a little to the right of the elder cemetery. It was very beautiful and tasteful in every way; the names upon the stones were chiefly English and Scotch, with here and there an American's. But affection drew us only to the prostrate tablet inscribed with the words, "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium," and then we were ready to go to the grave of him for whom we all feel so deep a tenderness. The grave of John Keats is one of few in the old burying-ground, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... your own sakes, than for mine. Hetty, hast thou forgotten who appeased thine anguish when thy auricular nerves were tortured by the colds and damps of the naked earth! and thou, Phoebe, ungrateful and forgetful Phoebe! but for this very arm, which you would prostrate with an endless paralysis, thy incisores would still be giving thee pain and sorrow! Lay, then, aside thy weapons, and hearken to the advice of one who has always been thy friend. And now, young woman," still keeping a jealous eye on the muskets which ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... inexorable! He thrust from him Prelates, boyars, and Patriarch; in vain Prostrate they fall; the splendour of ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... hail the power of Jesus' name, Let nations prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, And ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... much exposed to high winds. The question is a very practical one, and should be decided largely by experience and the grower's locality. There are fields and regions in which gales, and especially thunder-gusts, would prostrate into the dirt the stoutest bushes that could be formed by summer pruning, breaking down canes heavy with green and ripe fruit. In saving a penny stake, a bit of string, and the moment required for tying, one might be made to feel, after a July ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... duty he had to do, the Captain was about to order the men to make an extempore stretcher of their rifles and the Sergeant's strong netted sash, so that the retreat could be continued, when Gee dashed some water in the prostrate ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... key was turned in the staircase door. And the doctor, looking expectantly toward the fatal room, saw the Purple Flask on the window-sill, and the prostrate man trying to raise himself ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... startled by the sudden shot, shouted for assistance, and then threw himself upon his knees beside the prostrate woman. ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a space too crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were broken crowns and prostrate figures in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... French man-of-war off Louisbourg, after making a desperate resistence. His ship was in a sinking condition and the blood was mid-leg deep on her deck. Your grandfather was an upstanding man and did not prostrate easily, but the Frencher was too big, so he was captured and later found his way as a prisoner to Quebec. He was exchanged by a mistake in his identity for Huron indians captivated in York, and he subsequently settled ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... underneath my struggling antagonist, and, the power of sight in a hazy, zigzagging fashion coming back to me, I perceived the figure of Miss Anne Elliott recumbent beside me, her arms about Mr. Percy's prostrate body. The extraordinary girl had fastened upon him, too, though I had not known it, and she had gone to ground with us; but it is to be said for Mr. Earl Percy that no blow of his touched her, and she was not hurt. Even in the final extremities of temper, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... and wrongs incident to such removals, with no hope from a Government which neither kept its promises nor listened to their appeals, setting out to try to get back to Omaha. Think of these men, stealing away in the night, leaving their little children, their wives and parents, prostrate, dying, destitute! They were told that they could not leave—that they must stay there; that they would be followed and shot if they attempted to go away. They had no money; they had no food. They were sick and faint. They were on foot, and but poorly clad. Yet they struggled ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... touched it before he went down like a log, the sound of a powerful blow causing Tom to look up. He saw Mr. Sharp standing over the prostrate tramp, who had been cleanly ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... impossible now to recover his pistol, but he would make it difficult for Nicholas to get the knife. The struggle in that way was equalized. He turned in the gripping arms about him and the men were chest to chest. Neither spoke; each fought solely to get the other prostrate, while Nicholas developed a secondary pressure toward the blade buried in the wall. This Woolfolk successfully blocked. In the supreme effort to bring the struggle to a decisive end neither dealt the other minor injuries. There were no blows—nothing but the straining pull of ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he bent over the prostrate man with a cynical laugh: one might have thought he was Satan watching the departure of a soul too utterly lost to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... first hundred of its rings measured only four inches, showing that for a century it had grown in the shade of taller trees and at the age of one hundred years was yet only a sapling in size. On the mossy trunk of an old prostrate spruce about a hundred feet in length thousands of seedlings were growing. I counted seven hundred on a length of eight feet, so favorable is this climate for the development of tree seeds and so fully do these trees obey the command to ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... they emerged into a large glade, and the hound stopped with a low howl over a prostrate body. It was that of Krasippe. He was lying on his face, with a deep gash on the shoulder, and a bruise on the top of the skull, but still breathed, although insensible. Perry, who doubted not that ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... ye—there, behind ye, fool!" snarled Penfeather, pointing sinewy finger. The big man turned, Penfeather sprang with uplifted pistol and smote him, stunned and bleeding, to the floor, then bestriding the prostrate carcass, fronted the rest ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... had little time for reflection; scarcely had he hastily wiped off with the little cloak that lay beside him the blood which covered the face of the prostrate man than he started back in horror, for the person who had sought his life was the very one whom he had honoured with his highest confidence, and had chosen as the teacher and companion of the wife who was dearer than his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the choir, and in a gloomier part of the edifice, knelt a row of rueful penitents, smiting their breasts, and lifting their eyes to heaven. Further on, in front of the dark recess, where the sacred relics are deposited, a few desperate, melancholy sinners lay prostrate. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... with columns variously sculptured, and supporting long and elegant galleries, while the parapets are adorned with statuary. On a nearer approach they represent every form of elegant ruins—columns, some with pedestals and capitals entire, others mutilated and prostrate, and some rising pyramidally over each other till they terminate in a sharp point. These are varied by niches, alcoves, and the customary appearances of desolated magnificence. The illusion is increased by the number of martins, which have built their globular nests in the niches, and hover ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... clamorously invited by the Bonders to step in there, enlighten his eyes, and partake of the sacred rites. Instead of which he rushed into the temple with his armed men; smashed down, with his own battle-axe, the god Thor prostrate on the floor at one stroke, to set an example; and in a few minutes had the whole Hakon Pantheon wrecked; packing up, meanwhile, all the gold and preciosities accumulated there (not forgetting Thor's illustrious gold collar, of which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... said a moment later, as they observed the whole band go face downward on the sand again—all save the chief. The white people seated themselves on the ledge and watched the impassioned jabberer. Presently the prostrate figures arose and in mute submission spread forth their arms and bent their heads, standing like bronze statues in the glaring sunlight, all to the increased astonishment of those who had expected to ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... was up at least seven times last night, to satisfy himself that the windows and doors were barred, and to peep into the oven. That man who appears in court for scoundrels, rushes in here in the night and prays, lying prostrate, banging his head on the ground by the half-hour—and for whom do you think he prays? Who are the sinners figuring in his drunken petitions? I have heard him with my own ears praying for the repose of the soul of the Countess du Barry! Colia ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ground, but he was not asleep. He looked up, at the sound of Menard's footsteps, and then, recognizing him, lowered his eyes again. The Captain hesitated, standing over the prostrate figure. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... said Slackbridge then, shaking his head with violent scorn, 'I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh existed, and this ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... together with all their garniture of messages, reports, and resolutions, are tumbling undistinguished into one common grave. But yesterday this policy had a thousand friends and supporters; to-day it is fallen and prostrate, and few 'so poor as to do it reverence.' Sir, a government which cannot administer the affairs of a nation without so frequent and such violent alterations in the ordinary occupations and pursuits of private life, has, in my opinion, little ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... please yo{r} Lo I haue thoughte yt my parte to reveall such further and more deceiptes as I haue discovered of his lyke practizes and abuses when he tooke vppon him the charge and discharge of Thoffice as now his sonne seekethe to doe, which I Humblie prostrate heare inclosed. Cravinge of yo{r} good Lo for proofe of bothe my Articles I may haue Aucthoritie to examine suche wittnesses as I can produce by othe before some Baron of Thexchequer as to Remaine vppon recorde leaste Deceasinge ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind of the blessings that they have received from God, and of their duties both to Him and to their neighbours. As soon as the priest appears in those ornaments, they all fall prostrate on the ground, with so much reverence and so deep a silence that such as look on cannot but be struck with it, as if it were the effect of the appearance of a Deity. After they have been for some time in this posture, they all stand up, upon a ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... France," and had ordered, as is my custom, a boiled egg. When it was brought to me I proceeded to open it by giving it a smart tap. The egg immediately exploded with a loud report, and the contents were scattered in all directions. Those at table with me at once threw themselves prostrate on the ground, and one, whose olfactory nerves were excessively developed, exhibited every symptom of being gassed. On questioning the innkeeper we learnt that the egg had been laid some weeks before by a hen in the neighbourhood of the Front. I had previously noticed that it was elongated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... spot. On receiving the message Lance of course at once flung down his tools and hastened to the assistance of the injured man. When he reached the scene of the catastrophe he found all hands, Ralli included, crowded round the prostrate gun, and everybody giving orders at the same time, everybody excited, and everything in a state of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... the central shrine of Boupari. Those who heard it clapped their hands to their ears and ran hastily forward. It was a noise like distant rumbling thunder, or the whir of some great English mill or factory; and at its sound every woman on the island threw herself on the ground prostrate, with her face in the dust, and waited there reverently till the audible voice of the god had once more subsided. For no woman knew how that sound was produced. Only the grown men, initiated into the mysteries of the shrine when they came of age ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... mountains of the earth were cast into the ocean, they would not furnish footing to cross it. His incredulity is terminated by a general alarm, and the appearance of Prahasta, his general, to announce that Lanka is invested. Angada comes as envoy from Rama, to command Ravana to restore Sita and prostrate himself and his family at the feet of Lakshmana. Ravana, enraged, orders some contumely or punishment to be inflicted upon him. He orders him to be shaved. Angada puffs his hair out with rage. The monkey tells Ravana, if he were not an ambassador, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... the sky; others were hunched and huddled in a last convulsion. And in the course of his fruitless search for friend and brother, an old instinct reasserted itself in Mahony: kneeling down he began swiftly and dexterously to examine the prostrate bodies. Two or three still heaved, the blood gurgling from throat and breast like water from the neck of a bottle. Here, one had a mouth plugged with shot, and a beard as stiff as though it were made of rope. Another that he turned over was a German he had once heard ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... shook from head to foot. Then, as his eyes rested on the outstretched body of the Sergeant, hate conquered every other feeling; he staggered to his feet, picked up the gun lying in the snow, walked across, and brutally kicked the prostrate form. There was ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Jack got enough of it to knock him down, and to give him a pair of black eyes. Spike did not stop to pick the assistant steward up, for another gun was fired at that very instant, and Mrs. Budd and Biddy renewed their screams. Instead of pausing to kick the prostrate Tier, as had just before been his intention, the captain ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... that the stretch of time covered by the piece is seventy years or more. The scenery undergoes decay, too—the decay of age assisted and perfected by a conflagration. The fine new temples and palaces of the second act are by-and-by a wreck of crumbled walls and prostrate columns, mouldy, grass-grown, and desolate; but their former selves are still recognisable in their ruins. The ageing men and the ageing scenery together convey a profound illusion of that long lapse of time: they make you live it yourself! You leave the theatre ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... witnessed sack-races, basket-balancing, &c. In this way, they were told, the sultan passed all his time. Most striking is the respect and submission shown by all to this sovereign. No one ever stands upright before him, but all prostrate themselves before addressing him. All his subjects do but "wait at his feet," and even his own little child of four years clasps his tiny hands when he speaks ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... falcon stooped, bound to the crow, and the pair came to the ground together. Just as the horseman rode in to take up the hawk the other crow descended straight upon the falcon, knocked her off its prostrate mate, and the two flew off together to cover before the falcon had realised whence the onset came. This crow not only showed great courage in facing both the falcon and the sportsman, but timed its interference with the greatest ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... obstruction, neither knowing nor caring what it might be, he stubbed his toe and went down like a log, the stick flying out of his hand, and hitting the ground harmlessly just beyond. In an instant Nate had grasped it, and stood over the prostrate inebriate in his turn. It is well said, "Beware the fury of a patient man." Slow Nate Tierney was white to his lips, now, beneath the bronze of years, and the knotted veins of his temples throbbed perceptibly. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... himself so well known in this neighborhood, he was aware that he did, here and there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure was to prostrate himself flat upon the ground, against ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... to anchor a little farther away, in an empty space where two prostrate men are talking to each other in low voices; they are so near to me that I hear them without listening. They are two soldiers of the Foreign Legion; their helmets ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... him, more especially in that day when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, if he shall plead in extenuation of his guilt that he did not invite others to worship the idol until he had fallen prostrate ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Plinny—brave soul!—at my heels, and arrived to find Mr. Rogers, hatless and exceedingly dishevelled, kneeling with both hands around the neck of his prostrate antagonist, and holding his face down ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... feet back and piling them up in some sort of a parapet for the front line. The second line was only half a dozen square holes whose fine garrisons lay dead within them, except a few who raved in delirium for water which was not to be had. They and their arms lay prostrate across each other, many half-buried by flying earth from shells ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... by law to burn an anchor or other light. They are quite willing to believe that the offender had had at least one "starboard light" at some period of that night, but that light had lost its power of illumination at the time our correspondents tripped over the prostrate figure, and they wish to suggest that in future, people sleeping out should use some means to safeguard unwary passers-by. (We give the complaint the publicity it deserves and trust steps will be taken to ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... replied Hans; "thou hast had thy share of life." He strode over the prostrate body, and darted on. And a flash of blue lightning rose out of the east, shaped like a sword; it shook thrice over the whole heaven, and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable shade. The sun was setting; it plunged towards the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... into the arbour, where she found the little trembler prostrate on the ground, crying and sobbing as if her heart was breaking. The fairy seized her hand, and would not let her go till she had prevailed with her to return to the Placid Grove, to throw herself once more at her mother's feet, assuring her, that nothing but this humble ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... that now in fashion reign, Most aptly this device explain: If this to clouds and stars will venture, That creeps as far to reach the centre; Or, more to show the thing I mean, Have you not o'er a saw-pit seen A skill'd mechanic, that has stood High on a length of prostrate wood, Who hired a subterraneous friend To take his iron by the end; But which excell'd was never found, The man above or under ground. The moral is so plain to hit, That, had I been the god of wit, Then, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... other comfort can I know? Behold, Wild dogs and wolves with hungry snarl contend Over thy prostrate mighty ones; and rend Their quivering limbs, ere life hath lost its hold. I sicken at the dawn of morn—the noon Brings horror with its brightness; for the day Shows but the desolate plain, Where, feasting on the slain, (Thy princes,) flap ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... hurt?" asked a stranger anxiously of an older negro who had jumped from the conveyance and was standing over the prostrate driver. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... lighten. I was glad to see the roofs of Saury before us; though, on a nearer approach, we found all the houses except the inn ruined and tenantless; and even, that scorched and scarred, with the great gate that had once closed its courtyard prostrate in the ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... vegetation consisting of grasses, prostrate vines, and low growing shrubs; primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, and ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... as he jumped some of the wood rolled from beneath his feet, and he was turned in such a manner that he fell prostrate before the ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... the good fellow had turned his back upon the final tableau of watchful officer and prostrate prisoner and gone out wheezing into the night. But I was at the door to hear the last of him down the path and round the corner of the house. And when I rushed back into the room, there was Raffles sitting cross-legged on the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... second life; and in the absence of this faith the present life is to the writer an insoluble problem. This saying really expressed the popular belief that death ended everything. A man falls like a tree, and, like a prostrate tree, as he ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... while unable to stir, it was snatched from their powerless grasp by others stronger or more sober than themselves. Several pitched battles were also taking place, both amongst boys and men, which generally terminated by each of the combatants falling prostrate martyrs to Bacchus. The infection was universal, and even the three "mounseers," the surviving crew of the Bonne Esperance, could not resist an occasional sly pull at the liquor. These men, though they had only just escaped sudden death, seemed not to be cast down; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... was using his boot-heel on the prostrate man at that moment, when the Hibernian gave him a couple of blows in lightning-like succession. They landed upon the face of the coward with a sensation about the same as if a well-shod mule had planted his two hind ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... with ban We prostrate the man, Who with smooth-woven wile, And a fair-faced smile Hath planted a snare for his friend. Though fleet, we shall find him; Though strong, we shall bind him, Who planted a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... ahead until it had disappeared round a curve in the coast-line, when we mended our pace somewhat. Presently we reached a small headland, and, turning the shoulder of cliff, came full upon the party which had preceded us. The men had halted in a narrow bay, and now stood looking down at a prostrate figure beside which the surgeon ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... bread and water, he pressed forward to Canterbury. At its gates he dismounted and put away from him the royal majesty, and with bare feet, in the garb of a pilgrim and penitent, his footsteps marked with blood, he passed on to the church. There he sought the martyr's sepulchre, and lying prostrate with outstretched hands, he remained long in prayer, with abundance of tears and bitter groanings. After a sermon by Foliot the king filled up the measure of humiliation. He made public oath that he was ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... Talbot approvingly, as his gaze rested on the prostrate figure on the deck. "Now, mates, what's the next move? Come, Ned," to the boatswain, "you're to be our new skipper, you know; give us your orders, cap'n, and we'll ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... and they, breaking up the benches, armed themselves with sticks, and rushed upon Tiberius and his friends. The tribune fled to the Temple of Jupiter, but the door had been barred by the priests, and in his flight he fell over a prostrate body. As he was rising he received the first blow from one of his colleagues, and was quickly dispatched. Upward of 300 of his partisans were slain on the same day. Their bodies were thrown into the Tiber. This was the first ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... he said. He pointed to the prostrate figure on the floor. "He and the other one," he explained, breathlessly, "are New York crooks! They have been looting in the wake of the Reds, disguised as soldiers. I knew they weren't even amateur soldiers by the mistakes in their make-up, and I made that bluff of riding away so as ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... for one side to force the other side to its knees in supplication, even if it were possible for one side to write the terms of the treaty in blood and compel the other side to sign it, face downward and prostrate on the ground, it could not afford to do so; and unless the belligerents have read history to no purpose, they will not desire to do so. Time and again some nation, boastful of its strength, has thought itself invincible, but the ruins of these mistaken and misguided ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... adjusting his weapon for the heaviest charge, Tom fired at the advancing beast. The result was the same as in the case of the whale, the buffalo seemed to melt away. And it was stopped only just in time, too, for it was close to the prostrate Mr. Anderson, who had sprained his ankle slightly, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... to ensure the success of the worthy St. Michael, and prostrate the great St. Patrick in the dust. But this was not all. Mr. Jinks further desired to procure an adequate revenge upon his friend O'Brallaghan. To overwhelm with defeat and dismay the party to which his ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Madame Goesler had smiled, and had seemed to assent. To enjoy the world,—and to know that the best enjoyment must come from witnessing the satisfaction of others, had apparently been her philosophy. But now she was prostrate because this man was in trouble, and because she had been told that his trouble was more than another woman ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... at the very moment in which she had accepted him! To have been made use of as a step, on which a disadvantageous marriage might be avoided without detriment to her own interest! It was this feeling which made him utterly prostrate,—which told him that death itself would be the one desirable way out of his difficulties if death were ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... raking with a white hand at his beard, a prey evidently to cross-tides of fever. When his visitors were announced he looked sharply round; but Molly was hooded, her face deep in the shade. Of Passavente he had not the slightest concern. That hero was prostrate, bowing and chattering, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... began to find a use for their legs, and up they got. Then came on the deaf, the blind, and the dumb, and they too were restored to their lost faculties and senses with the same remedy; which did so strangely amaze us (and not without reason, I think) that down we fell on our faces, remaining prostrate, like men ravished in ecstasy, and were not able to utter one word through the excess of our admiration, till she came, and having touched Pantagruel with a fine fragrant nosegay of white roses which she held in her hand, thus made us ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Psyche, prostrate upon the earth, and following far as sight might reach the flight of the bridegroom, wept and lamented; and when the breadth of space had parted him wholly from her, cast herself down from the bank of a river [77] which ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... enter without stooping, appeared to the left; and the eye could rest on nothing more, except a living mass of human beings crawling slowly about. The first thing the pilgrim does when he gets a sight of the lake, is to prostrate himself, kiss the earth, and then on his knees offer up three Paters and Aves, and a Creed for the favor of being permitted to see this blessed place. When this is over, he descends to the lake, and after paying tenpence to the ferry-man, is rowed ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... his wife's blood running down over her forehead and dyeing with red the pallid face of his child, which one would think might have moved even a demon to pity, only seemed to arouse the latent tiger within him, for he struck the prostrate woman again and again, until she settled heavily on to the floor and was limp and still. This act in the tragedy was complete, for Nancy Flatt was dead, and her infant lay clasped in her arms bespattered with the life-blood of its ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... working his way along the room, when suddenly he stumbled over something on the floor. It was a man lying prostrate. Stooping, he ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... passed when Earle drove into the yard and turned him loose. So had the ditch the boy had dug that rainy morning—washed full of sand now, and a stick horse that had leaned idle against the lot fence was blown down prostrate on the ground. Earle didn't want any supper, he told Aunt Cindy as he went into the house. He did not come out on the porch that night, and the dog sought his sleeping place beside the garage. It was meaningless ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... up again; she is a sweet little patient person, and I cannot withstand Fernan's wish to present her to his wife, who remains prostrate at present, and will till we get out of the present stiff breeze ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knocked the man's hat off with one hand, he dealt him with the other a blow on the head with the heavy butt of his pistol, which felled the unfortunate fellow as a butcher fells an ox. Quickly bending over the prostrate body, he now held his unstoppered vial to the man's nostrils for three or four seconds, then rose cautiously to his feet. He could see no other sentinels posted anywhere on the parapet, but passed quickly round it in order to make quite sure. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... defend it. But even while engaged in this mortal struggle, the eye of Morolt scarcely left his master; and when he saw him fall, his own force seemed by sympathy to abandon him, and the British champion had no longer any trouble in laying him prostrate among the slain. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... his lariat, and drove the spurs into his own broncho. The thunder of hoofs as they plunged in different directions, caused a sudden commotion within the isolated cabin. The door was flung open, and in the light that streamed forth, Willock, looking back, saw dark forms rush out, gather about the prostrate forms of the two brothers, move here and there in indecision, then, by a common impulse, burst into a swinging run ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... stepped into the canoe lying on the shore, and began to paddle rapidly up the river, the prostrate Indian rose to his feet, and glided swiftly among the trees, straight for the lodge where Jean was crouching. As the canoe touched the shore a short distance below the encampment, the native was silently standing near a large spruce tree. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody |
