"Supple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supple and superb, but always the same, of the women in their long black robes who come without ceasing to fill their long-necked jars and carry them away balanced on their veiled heads. Then the flocks which shepherds, draped in mourning, bring to the river to drink, goats and sheep and asses all mixed ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. (So it is with) all things. Trees and plants, in their early growth, are soft and brittle; at their death, ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... in the city, within closed doors, I saw a young slave-girl dancing. She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple; she danced like a reed in the wind; but her eyes were weary as death, and her white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled, and the men laughed at her. She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that she would fain be rid of such a heavy-footed slave. I paid ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... shoulder-muscles rise and brace themselves at the thought, all the strength and violence of his young manhood, with its firm sinews and supple joints, told him that it was his willing and active servant and would do his pleasure. He wanted to smash the jaw bone that had formed these lies, and he wanted the world to know he had done so. Yet that was not enough, he wanted to throttle ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... fie," cried the supple Mr Simkins, "how can you be so hard? for my share, I must needs own I think the poor lady's to be pitied; for it must have been but a melancholy sight to her, to see her spouse cut off so in the flower of his youth, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... end to them. Week after week, month after month, they came stringing-in from seven-syllabled localities on all points of the compass; some with sunburnt wives, and graduated sets of supple-jointed keen-sighted children—the latter, I grieve to admit, distinctly affirming that disquieting theory which assumes evolution of immigrating races toward the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... he tried to detect the real character of a creature supple and hard as a steel spring; but he had seen her pass through so many phases, that he could not make up his mind about her. The tones of her voice, too, were ringing in his ears; her gestures, the little movements of her head, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... ill clad was her strong young figure; her face showed the strain of years of effort; her eyes had the fire of experience in suffering; and she stood, a supple girl of heightened beauty while the hunter, sure of his welcome, walked up to her, and, as both her hands held the awkward bushel basket, ventured to tickle her under ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... him over, but there was nothing critical in his glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear, candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... God found the Jew when he came to look upon him to save him—"As for thy nativity," says God, "in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... voice of mirth.—The shrill-tongued shrew, Meek as the turtle-dove, forgets her chiding. Here are the wise, the generous, and the brave; The just, the good, the worthless, the profane; The downright clown, and perfectly well-bred; The fool, the churl, the scoundrel, and the mean; The supple statesman, and the patriot stern; The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time, With all the lumber of six thousand years. 540 Poor man!—how happy once in thy first state! When yet but warm from thy great Maker's hand, He stamp'd thee with his image, and, well pleased, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... from whom came low, inspiriting words; then, facing the batter, Keene, he eyed him in cool speculation, and swung into supple action. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... barbarically arrayed in the holiday garb of a Seminole chief. The firelight danced upon the beaten band of silver about her brilliant turban and the beads upon her sash, upon red-beaded deerskin leggings delicately thonged from the supple waist to the small and moccasined foot, upon a tunic elaborately banded in red and a belt of buckskin from which hung a hunting knife, a revolver and an ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... critically over the strong young body, with its long, supple, sinewy lines. "Yes," she nodded. "I ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... And rove about thee, guardians of thy mind; These fetched thee home thy bride, and all the way Advised thy servant what to do and say; These taught him at the well, and thither brought The chaste and lovely object of thy thought. But here was ne'er a compliment, not one Spruce, supple cringe, or studied look put on. All was plain, modest truth: nor did she come In rolls and curls, mincing and stately dumb; But in a virgin's native blush and fears, Fresh as those roses which the day-spring wears. O sweet, divine simplicity! O grace Beyond a curled lock or painted face! A pitcher ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... seen,—having trampled upon those of their servants who had manifested any symptom of independence, or who considered the orders of the Directors as a rule of their conduct,—having brought every Englishman under his yoke, and made them supple and fit instruments for all his designs,—then gave it to be understood that such alone were fit persons to be employed in important affairs of state. Consider, my Lords, the effect of this upon the whole service. Not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with wonderful freshness—scarlet roses, golden roses—and in such masses and so scattered about the nude figure as to give it a character of purity and modesty. The flesh tints are warm, the figure is supple in effect, and the whole is a happy picturing of the sleep and dream of a lovely young woman who has thrown herself down in the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... the grace of youth, when it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers, then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run; how in its pride of strength it had ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... shirt, and trousers. Marshal Stone, chancing to look that way, was astonished to see his companion naked, poised at the water's edge. He had time to note with admiration the splendid figure, still supple and strongly muscled despite the four-score years. Then Uncle Dick leaped, and dived. It was long seconds before he reappeared, only to dive again. He paid no attention to the marshal's remonstrances. Only when he was convinced of the uselessness ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... four apprentices or pupils in that time learning to become figuli, but the one whom Raffaelle liked the most (and Pacifica too) was one Luca Torelli, of a village above in the mountains,—a youth with a noble, dark, pensive beauty of his own, and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender figure that would have looked well in the light coat of mail and silken doublet of a man-at-arms. In sooth, the spirit of Messer Luca was more made for war and its risks and glories than for the wheel and the brush of the bottega; but he ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... a supple riding-switch in his hands, at which his fingers strained and twisted continually, as though somewhere in the inner man there burned a fierce impatience. But his dark face was as immovable as though it had been carved in bronze. A tropical sun had made him even ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... riding-habit—not shrivelled, for she sat too straight, but as though the cotton jacket had been made for a larger woman. If she seemed tired, and if a stranger might have guessed that her head ached until the chestnut curls were too heavy for it, she was still supple. And, as she whipped the pony into an unwilling trot and old mission-named Joanna broke into a jog behind, revolt—no longer impatience, or discontent, or sorrow, but reckless rebellion—rode ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... made her look anything but a theatrical star. Grace, however, had for once departed from her favorite blue and wore a white chiffon gown whose exquisitely simple lines made the most of her slender, supple figure. The charm of early sixteen radiated from her youthful person, and she looked no older than when she had led the freshman basketball team on to victory in Oakdale ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... this time his duties had been ably performed by Colour-Sergeant C. Guilfoyle, now Sergeant-Major, 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Lieutenants Marsh and Weldon also joined here, as Lieutenant Supple had done a few days before. The two former had followed the regiment up the line to Mafeking, and thence across the Western Transvaal in a cape-cart, following very nearly in our tracks. They had an adventuresome journey, and were delighted to reach us at last. Captain Clarke, R.M.L.I., ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... shrouded from the penetration of London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases, and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and having ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poised erect in the great calm of the public performer. Then slowly he began to revolve the log under his feet. The lofty gaze, the folded arms, the straight supple waist budged not by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap! the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. The log came instantaneously ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... he was a student and his tastes were delicate, still he did not frown upon our rude sports, provided they were not low or brutal. "They make the body erect and supple and give strength and elasticity to the muscles. The body should be cultivated as well as the mind. What we want is a sound ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... large business desk with prosaic standard equipment which stood on the carpet on the other side of the pool. They moved rapidly past the pool, Quillan still hauling at her arm. Trigger kept staring at the pillars they passed. Long-limbed, supple and languid, they floated in their crystal cages, in tinted, shifting lights, eyes closed, hair ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... that of an animal in terror and agony. It was so tremendous that it broke Jean's hold. Greaves let out a strangled yell that cleared, swelling wildly, with a hideous mortal note. He wrestled free. The big knife came out. Supple and swift, he got to his, knees. He had his gun out when Jean reached him again. Like a bear Jean enveloped him. Greaves shot, but he could not raise the gun, nor twist it far enough. Then Jean, letting go with his right arm, swung ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... you might have seen the three of us—myself, sunburnt, young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker. Behind us were grouped the two swarthy half-breeds and the little knot of Indians, while in front and above us ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... imagination, memory, and understanding: their proneness to distraction, and the itching curiosity of the mind, must be curbed, and their repugnance to attend to spiritual things corrected by habits of recollection, holy meditation, and prayer. Above all, the will must be rendered supple and pliant by frequent self-denial, which must reach and keep in subjection all its most trifling sallies and inclinations. If any of these, how insignificant soever they may seem, are not restrained and vanquished, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... William played again. His fingers, now grown more supple, brought out clearer, firmer tones. As he played, silence fell on these people. The magic of music sobered every face; the women looked older and more careworn, the men slouched sullenly in their chairs or ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... grand alliance; he "borrowed England on his way to Versailles," and governed it in the interest of the Dutch Coalition. Queen Anne and the first Georges reigned but did not govern; and in the early eighteenth century power fell to men of supple intelligence and complacent conviction—to Marlborough and little Sidney Godolphin, to Harley and St. John and Sunderland, and at last to Robert Walpole, the very personification of the shrewd curiosity, the easy-going morals, the material ambitions ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... indeed, in his arms, but his very roughness was a proof of the intensity of his love. For an instant she lay palpitating against him, and as long as he lives he will remember the first exquisite touch of her firm but supple figure and the marvellous communion of her lips. A current from the great store that was in her, pent up and all unknown, ran through him, and then she had struggled out of his arms and fled, leaving him standing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he moved a step forward and laid ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... keep me from thee, O beloved; But I shall shake his gates in my despair, Until they open wide to let me pass; I'll take my life up like a mighty rock, And so beat breaches in the walls of Time; I'll cast existence from me like a wrestler's robes, And with my supple, naked soul throw Fate; I'll snap the shackles whose Promethean links Bind down my soul unto this narrow earth.— Dost hear my voice dim floating to thee now, Along the waves that ripple at my feet? Thus do I come to thee, Eurydice, Through waving ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so. There was a desperate attempt visible to combine an American shawl with the habits of a mantilla, and it was always slipping from one shoulder, that was so supple and vivacious as to betray the deficiencies of an education in stays. There was a cluster of black curls around her low forehead, fitting her so closely as to seem to be a part of the seal-skin ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... boy and rendering himself responsible for their destinies, Paragot must now saddle himself with a young woman. Had she been a beautiful gipsy, holding fascinating allurements in lustrous eyes and pomegranate lips, and witchery in a supple figure, the act would have been a commonplace of human weakness. But in the case of poor Blanquette, squat and coarse, her heavy features only redeemed from ugliness by youth, honesty and clean teeth, the eternal ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... movements, clear and near, Are in thy living grace. Supple and tender, as a deer Art thou, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the public never bothered about them. Their art was out of touch with the people, music which was only fed from music. Now, Christophe was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that there was no music that had a greater need of outside support than French music. That supple climbing plant needed a prop: it could not do without literature, but did not find in it enough of the breath of life. French music was breathless, bloodless, will-less. It was like a woman languishing for her ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... why the Italian is attractive, supple, and beautiful, because he worships the Godhead in the flesh. We envy him, we feel pale and insignificant beside him. Yet at the same time we feel superior to him, as if he were ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... longer reach, was gifted by the gods with a supple strength no whit less than the bearish power of the timber boss. With ten blows struck, with both men rocking dizzily, it was patently Steve Packard's fight. But a dull, dogged persistence was in Joe Woods's eyes as again he shook his ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... after Bascomb had flung off one glove and struck at Frank with his bare fist, the smaller and more supple lad had sailed in and shown that he could put pounds into his blows, for he had driven Bascomb back and knocked ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... sir, that we now know who committed the murder in Hietzing. Johann Knoll is innocent of anything more than the theft confessed by himself. He took the purse and watch from the senseless form of the just murdered man. The body was warm and still supple and the tramp supposed the victim to be merely intoxicated. His story was in every respect ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... she shines amid the starry sky, * Robing in tresses blackest ink outvie. The morning-breezes give her boughs fair drink, * And like a branch she sways with supple ply: She smiles in passing us. O thou that art * Fairest in yellow robed, or cramoisie, Thou playest with my wit in love, as though * Sparrow in hand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; and, although not shaped for heroic flights, it was a direct and vivid medium for all that had to do with social life. Hence, whenever Scotch poets left their laborious imitations of bad English verses, and fell back on their own dialect, their style ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rich brown hair, at the white-and-rose of her skin, at the delicate blue veins in her forehead, at her fine white hands, clasped loosely together in her lap, at the flowing lines of her figure, with its supple grace and strength; and behind her, surrounding her, accessory to her, he was conscious of the golden August world, in the golden August weather—of the green park, and the pure sunshine, and the sweet, still air, of the blue lake, and the blue sky, and the mountains ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... attenuated by the maternal influence. One found in him the first phase of that evolution of temperaments which ultimately brings about the amelioration or deterioration of a race. Although he was still a peasant, his skin was less coarse, his face less heavy, his intellect more capacious and more supple. In him the defects of his father and his mother had advantageously reacted upon each other. If Adelaide's nature, rendered exquisitely sensitive by her rebellious nerves, had combated and lessened Rougon's full-bodied ponderosity, the latter had successfully prevented ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... opponent may be surmised; what the American thought of the Spaniard need not be left to conjecture. In the pages of his diary Adams painted the portrait of his adversary as he saw him—"cold, calculating, wily, always commanding his temper, proud because he is a Spaniard but supple and cunning, accommodating the tone of his pretensions precisely to the degree of endurance of his opponents, bold and overbearing to the utmost extent to which it is tolerated, careless of what he asserts or how grossly it is proved ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... themselves now and then in hers,—a face hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great master is encrusted by time. Her hands seemed whiter; her shoulders took on an exquisite fulness; her graceful, animated movements gave to her supple ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... be opened!" Sir John said gently, he had done no otherwise than he had been desired; which however the lord chamberlain, in part, denied, (cautious and civil!) "and I was not so unmannerly as to contest against," (supple, but uneasy!) This affair ended miserably for the poor Dutchmen. Those new republicans were then regarded with the most jealous contempt by all the ambassadors, and were just venturing on their first dancing-steps, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Richard was murdered at his prayers, yet withal he got his deserts, for he hatched a worse wrong than ever Galors did. The child was chained by the middle, and came to me chained riding a white palfrey. In green and white she came, and round her middle was a chain, long and supple, and a monk on horse-back held the end thereof. She came to me to the hearth at the length of her chain, and held me in her dear arms, and kissed me, cheeks and forehead. Down I sat on my stool and she on the knees of me, and she hid her face on my leanness ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... lifting of her long, supple figure. Grant watching, wondered why he had never before realized that the sensuous charm of her beauty was irresistible. "Where were my eyes?" he asked himself. "She's beyond any of the women I've wasted so ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was, she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of atmosphere that turned ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... figures emerged from the darkness into the circle of light, and with swift, supple steps gained the camp-fire before any of the travelers had time to move. They were Indians, and the brandishing of their tomahawks proclaimed ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... while the unlucky huntsmen were under our roof, to give them festive welcome. Fred drew out his fiddle; the Doctor gathered his strength and shook as lively a shoe on the sanded floor of the best room as one will hear the clang of in many a day. Clumsy joints grew supple; heavy boots made the splinters fly; a fellow-townsman, like ourselves on a vacation tour, jigged with the inimitable grace of a trained dancer. How few of our muscles are aware of the joy of full development! From the wall of the best room the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... less for it; it added something of charm and mystery to the classical lines of her face. Sanin was especially struck that day by the exquisite beauty of her hands; when she smoothed and put back her dark, glossy tresses he could not take his eyes off her long supple fingers, held slightly apart from one another like the hand ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I'm stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool's tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him to portray a Gretchen. All his pictures were Phryne,—Phryne in triumph, in ruin, in a palace, in a poor-house, on a bed of roses, on a hospital mattress; Phryne laughing with a belt of jewels about her supple waist; Phryne lying with the stones of the dead-house under her naked limbs,—but always Phryne. Phryne, who living had death in her smile; Phryne, who lifeless had blank despair on her face; Phryne, a thing that lived ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... and he did not move from his position in the ship. But the ship had crossed the great gulf, and was speeding through the galaxy now. He was near the end. At a reckless speed, he sat motionless before the controls, save for slight movements of supple fingers that directed the ship at a mad pace about some gigantic sun and its family of planets. Suns flashed, grew to discs, and were left behind ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... piercing and mild, under the lids of a young man; his mustache, fine but slightly grizzled, waved over lips of a pure and delicate model, as if they had never been curled by mortal passions; a form straight and supple; an irreproachable but thin hand—this was what remained of the illustrious gentleman whom so many illustrious mouths had praised under the name of Athos. He was engaged in correcting the pages of a manuscript book, entirely filled ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... tall, with a great braid of shining chestnut hair, showing ruddy burnished tints where the sunlight struck it, hanging over her shoulder. The plain dark dress she wore emphasized the grace and strength of her supple form. Her face was oval and pale, with straight black brows and a finely cut crimson mouth—a face whose beauty bore the indefinable stamp of race and breeding mingled with a wild sweetness, as of a flower ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... burst out; the air grew filled with them: larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water,—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other; forms like naught ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... life. And yet she had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Isabel as an ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... perfectly serious about the production of an opera, Tracy furnishing verse to Emilia's music. He wrote with extraordinary rapidity, but clung to graphic phrases, that were not always supple enough for nuptials with modulated notes. Then Emilia had to hit his sense of humour by giving the words as they came in the run of the song. "You make me crow, or I croak," ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to eat and need never go hungry. On no account may the women sit at the loom till their legs grow cramped, otherwise their husbands will likewise be stiff in their joints and unable to rise up quickly or to run away from the foe. So in order to keep their husbands' joints supple the women often vary their labours at the loom by walking up and down the verandah. Further, they may not cover up their faces, or the men would not to be able to find their way through the tall grass or jungle. Again, the women may not sew with a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cliff of the Dryads be silent, and the springs welling from the rock, and the many-mingled bleating of the ewes; for Pan himself makes music on his melodious pipe, running his supple lip over the jointed reeds; and around him stand up to dance with glad feet the water-nymphs and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... the pins through her hat before the oval mirror which had been one of her acquisitions. As she drew on the gloves she turned her supple body to make sure of the satisfactory hang of her skirt. Her good spirits had returned, and she hummed softly as Phil surveyed her. She seemed less indifferent to-day to Phil's admiration. Phil's spirits rose slowly; it was difficult to mourn in ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the expense of the Great Monarch. After his stay in England we have his Brutus (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his Zaire (1732), a Parisian Othello, both based on Shakespeare. From this time onward he plunges into a supple and dexterous, if sometimes rather disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments are ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... slumber; that on her face and the light print dress fell the golden rays of the morning sun filtering through the young leaves; her hair was tied in a loose knot, and the flowing morning dress showed the outline of her shoulders and supple waist, and in its very carelessness had a certain freshness, which enhanced a thousandfold her charm. It did not escape my notice how much smaller than usual she looked among the tall elm trees of the avenue,—almost a child; in ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and then is the moment when the angler must follow the fish at the top of his speed. To stand still, or to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an enormous length of line; the line is submerged—technically speaking, drowned—in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a necessary quality in the angler; ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... standing there in the long nightgown that made her so straight and tall, with arms raised, holding up the thick mass of her hair, her body bent a little backwards from the waist, showing it for the slender and supple thing it was, seeing herself so incredibly feminine and so alive, she defied any one to tell the difference. If any difference there were it was not in her body, neither was it in her face. That was the face which had looked at ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of the hand are many. Touch has its ecstasies. The hands of people of strong individuality and sensitiveness are wonderfully mobile. In a glance of their finger-tips they express many shades of thought. Now and again I touch a fine, graceful, supple-wristed hand which spells with the same beauty and distinction that you must see in the handwriting of some highly cultivated people. I wish you could see how prettily little children spell in my hand. They are ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... thought Diana; "what must I seem to him?" And truly her print gown was of homely quality and country wear; she did not take into the account a fine figure, which health and exercise had made free and supple in all its movements, and which the quiet poise of her character made graceful, whether in motion or rest. For grace is no gift of a dancing-master or result of the schools. It is the growth of the mind, more than of the body; the natural and almost necessary symbolization in outward ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... sprightly dame of more than seventy years, very thin, but straight and supple, and with hair still jet black. Her eyes were gray-green or green-gray, as the light happened to strike them; her cheeks were hollow, and a long sharp chin slanted up to meet a long sharp nose. Ordinarily, as the Knight had hinted, she was no doubt an unholy terror, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sure-footed as any mountaineer. His clothes were old, so neither rock nor sea could do them much harm; his feet were bare. He was short but very broad, and his muscles were strong and supple. When he came to the foot of the rock he stood a moment, hunting for the deepest pool at its base, then, loosing his hold, he dove ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... faculties were poisoned in the bud; for before she came to Paris she had already been prepared, by a corrupt, supple abbe, for the part she was to play; and, young as she was, became so firmly attached to the aggrandizement of her house, that, though plunged deep in pleasure, she never omitted sending immense ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... assemblies, and outward callings of men; planting our faith one while in the old Convocation house, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who desires to walk in the Spirit, and not in the letter of human trust, for all the number of voices that can be there made; no, though Harry VII himself there, with all ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... give any weight to the doctrine that virtue is something rigid and unyielding as iron. In point of fact it is in regard to friendship, as in so many other things, so supple and sensitive that it expands, so to speak, at a friend's good fortune, contracts at his misfortunes. We conclude then that mental pain which we must often encounter on a friend's account is not of sufficient ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... corner, replied by an imploring look, which had just the opposite effect of argument. It instantly disarmed the old boy; he grinned superior, and spared his supple antagonist three sarcasms that were all on the tip of his tongue. He was rewarded for his clemency by a little piece of advice, delivered by his niece with a sort of hesitating and penitent air he did not understand one bit, eyes down upon the cloth all ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Zephyrine swung passionately into the arena. With a bound she stood erect, one foot upon each of her supple, plunging Arabs; and at once I knew that my fate was sealed, my chapter closed, and the Bride of the Desert was the one bride for me. Black was her raiment, great silver stars shone through it, caught in the dusky twilight of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... such a height the air was so pure and rarefied that Christophe could hardly breathe. There he met artists who claimed the absolute and limitless liberty of dreams,—men of unbridled subjectivity, like Flaubert, despising "the poor beasts who believe in the reality of things":—thinkers, who, with supple and many-sided minds, emulating the endless flow of moving things, went on "ceaselessly trickling and flowing," staying nowhere, nowhere coming in contact with stubborn earth or rock, and "depicted not the essence of life, but the passage," as Montaigne ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... coming down a distant canyon trail. He looked like a giant in the twilight. With long swinging strides he threw himself impetuously down the mountainside. Great power was in every movement. He was magnificent! He seemed as large as a horse, and had that grand supple strength given ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... with pride, and pleased herself with making it stern, but not to the effect she looked for, for the sternness itself pleased. While yet a child her little right hand would control the bit of the charger, and she wielded the sword and spear, and hardened her limbs with wrestling, and made them supple for the race; and then as she grew up, she tracked the footsteps of the bear and lion, and followed the trumpet to the wars; and in those and in the depths of the forest she seemed a wild creature to mankind, and a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... brunette skin, through which the crimson blood flamed in cheek and lip. Eyes, now black, now gray, changing, flashing, witching eyes: gray in quiet moments, darkening with mirth or sadness, anger or pain; hair black and silky, rippling to the rounded, supple waist in glossy waves. Not so tall as Madeline, and rounded ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... actions than whole tomes of ethical culture science. You know perhaps how the Arabs conquered the best half of the world with an epigram, a word. And Khalid loves a fine-sounding, easy-flowing word; a word of supple joints, so to speak; a word that you can twist and roll out, flexible as a bamboo switch, resilient as a fine steel rapier. But once Shakib, after reading one of Khalid's first attempts, gets up in the night when his friend is asleep, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... easy, beetle; don't start off so proudly, or trust at first too greatly to your powers; wait till you have sweated, till the beating of your wings shall make your limb joints supple. Above all things, don't let off some foul smell, I adjure you; else I would rather have you stop in ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... a jewel! always supple o' foot. Phil, call to them to bring out the horse bastes, while I swallow my ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... not even rising erect to her feet, but on all fours, and silently as a snake. For although the hillside is so thickly overgrown with thorny scrub that a pointer would with difficulty quarter it, the supple old savage worms her way through, without making any more noise than would a badger just got out of the barrel, and away from the dogs that have ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... an angle or thin curve. Like Diana, she was long limbed, so that she seemed taller than she really was. The sweep of neck and shoulder was exquisite, and her simple dress was admirably adapted to display the lines of her supple form. As she walked down the studio, setting her feet firmly and carrying her head with fine poise, Grant Herman felt the ghost of an old passion ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... other consequences. It led to an increased freedom of movement of the thigh on the hip joint, to muscular arrangements for balancing the body on the leg, to making the backbone a supple yet stable curved pillar, to a strongly developed collar-bone which is only found well-formed when the fore-limb is used for more than support, and to a power of "opposing" the thumb and the big toe to the other digits of the hand and foot—an obvious advantage for branch-gripping. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... dragged into the Lodge to join in this function, and presently found himself meeting Lady Farquhar, a pleasant plump lady who did not at all conform to the usual stage conception of her part. Her smile was warm for this supple blue-eyed engaging Westerner, but the latter did not need to be told that behind her friendliness the instinct of the chaperone was alert. The one swift glance she had thrown at Miss Dwight told him ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... heaving bosom, shook her little white fist viciously at where the figure must be, and perhaps a comical desire of vengeance stimulated her curiosity. She now glided through the fissure like a cautious panther from her den; and noiseless and supple as a serpent began to wind slowly round the tree. She soon came to a great protuberance in the tree, and twining and peering round it with diamond eye, she saw a very young, very handsome gentleman, stealing on tiptoe to the nearest flower-bed. Then she saw him take ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and the determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The politician and the counsellor are frequently ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... probably matches Tausig's in technic and tone. Paderewski, who has broadened and developed amazingly during ten years, has many of Henselt's traits—and I am sure he never heard the elder pianist. But he belongs to that group: tonal euphony, supple technic, a caressing manner, and a perfect control of self. Remember, I am speaking of the Henselt who played for a few friends, not the frightened, semi-limp pianist who emerged at long intervals before the public. Paderewski is ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... perfectly-shaped head showed through the thin black veil that fell over the white starched coif. The small, high-instepped foot could not be hidden in walking; the make of the thick shoe might not disguise its form. The delicate whiteness and smooth, supple beauty of her hands, larger than the hands of ordinary women, their owner being of more heroic build, as of ampler mind and keener intellect, betrayed her to be a woman not yet old, though there were some deep lines and many fine ones on the attentive face that bent over the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for further usefulness he had come into possession of a whole block in the portion of the city known as "New Town." His prosperity did not, however, lessen his activity; he forgot that he was getting old, for his limbs were yet supple and his eyes perfectly clear. He measured off his lumber and drove nails with the strength and accuracy of a young man; yet, as death lurks in every passing breeze, feeling well is no evidence of sound health or assurance of long ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Neal, after the schoolmaster's last visit, absolutely thunder-struck all who knew him. The clothes, which he had rashly taken in to fit his shrivelled limbs, were once more let out. The tailor expanded with a new spirit; his joints ceased to be supple, as in the days of his valor; his eye became less fiery, but more brilliant. From being martial, he got desperately gallant; but, somehow, he could not afford to act the hero and lover both at the same time. This, perhaps, would be too ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting by night, their exquisite sense of smell enables them to steal cautiously upon these defenceless animals, in the thick covers of the low grassy flats and scrubs, or to run them ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a bird. In brief, it was—it only could be ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... found in ordinary speech or even oral narration. What Anderson employs here is a stylized version of the American language, sometimes rising to quite formal rhetorical patterns and sometimes sinking to a self-conscious mannerism. But at its best, Anderson's prose style in Winesburg, Ohio is a supple instrument, yielding that "low fine music" which he admired so much in the ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... were forced to take a roundabout trail over the prairie; the cattle, moreover, could be driven only at a slow pace; but even twenty-odd miles a day was more than a Maine backwoodsman enjoyed as initiation in horsemanship. Dow was mounted on an excellent trained horse, and being young and supple was able to do his share in spite of his discomfort. But the mare that had been allotted to Sewall happened also to be a tenderfoot, and they did not play a conspicuous role in the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... woman Braithwaite was of a sinister strength; but I had little dreamt how strong she really was. First it was her arms that wound themselves about my neck, long, sinuous, and supple as the tentacles of some vile monster; then, as I struggled, her thumbs were on my windpipe like pads of steel. Tighter she pressed, and tighter yet. My eyeballs started; my tongue lolled; I heard my brand drop, and through a mist I saw it picked up instantly. It crashed upon my skull ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Australian journalism is written it will contain two outstanding Irish names: Daniel Henry Deniehy, who died in 1865, was called by Bulwer Lytton "the Australian Macaulay" on account of his brilliant writings as critic and reviewer in the press of Victoria. Gerald Henry Supple, another Dublin man, is also remembered for his contributions to the Age and the Argus of Melbourne. In India one of the first—if not the first—English newspapers was founded by a Limerick man, named Charles Johnstone, who had previously ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... of coming out to the Hemlock Farm for a day's holiday, and went directly to her own room as though she were at home. When she stepped presently out on the porch, where the gentlemen had gone to smoke, a soft black silk showing every line of her supple figure, glimpses of the rounded arms revealed with every movement of the loose sleeves, one or two thick green leaves in her light hair—ugly, quiet, friendly—they all felt more at home than they had done before. There was a pitcher of punch by the captain's elbow: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was just a school girl and very beautiful; with dark brown eyes; skin the color of a walnut; and a form, bred of the grace of her much walking race. She had walked the innumerable trails of her native land from babyhood and the rhythmic swing of her supple body would have made any race, save that of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... Trampling and rolling in dust his excellent friend the precursor. Peace be with all! but afar be ambition to follow the Roman, Led by the German, uncomb'd, and jigging in dactyl and spondee, Lumbering shapeless jackboots which nothing can polish or supple. Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured, In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here I would rather Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... each supple-shanked lad, 'Most as much as—Statistics. To trudge it For them makes my bosom as glad As—Big Surplus, and Popular Budget; And so I should like to secure them a run, Combining snug ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... and dignity, the attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order, the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman it was more supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these, infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... crowned the hummocks; and here and there great laurels lifted their pyramids of glossy, dark-green foliage. Our passage was frequently obstructed by fallen logs, mossed over with the growth of years; and tangles of vine, tough-stemmed and supple, flung themselves from tree to tree across our path, resisting our advance. All through the forest's higher corridors howled the riotous wind; but along the tunneled ways we traveled it was ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... many close-fitting phrases and keen observations in his pages, and lines that are exactly, and at the same time poetically, descriptive. He is the only writer I know of who has noticed the fact that the roots of trees do not look supple and muscular like their boughs, but have a stiffened, congealed look, as ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself, as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonla, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... stunned; but I have often maintained, that it is better he should retain his own manner. Pliability of address I conceive to be inconsistent with that majestick power of mind which he possesses, and which produces such noble effects. A lofty oak will not bend like a supple willow. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... mingled intimacy and novelty which go to make conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le Breton was leading it as usual. A brilliant French book had recently appeared dealing with certain points of the Egyptian question in a manner so interesting, supple, and apparently impartial that the attention of Europe had been won. Its author had been formerly a prominent official of the French Foreign Office, and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen. Julie put some questions about him ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Russian Gipsies in the language of fiction in his "Interpreter" as follows:—"The morning sun smiles upon a motley troop journeying towards the Danube. Two or three lithe, supple urchins, bounding and dancing along with half-naked bodies, and bright black eyes shining through knotted elf-locks, form the advanced guard. Half-a-dozen donkeys seem to carry the whole property of the tribe. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... every paddle-dip, every twist and turn of the supple canoes, revealed some new caprice of the river's moods. In places the current would be shallow and the canoes would lag. Then the paddlers must catch the veer of the flow or they would presently be out waist-deep shoving cargo and craft off sand bars. Again, as at Grand Rapids, ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... a single comprehensive glance that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and the head it carried bowed so ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to rest, but first he rubbed his limbs with the fat of seals, for he was still sore with the beating of the waters, and they must needs be supple on the morrow if he would keep his eye. Then he slept sound, and rose strong and well, and going to the stream behind the stead, bathed, and anointed his limbs afresh. But Ospakar did not sleep well, because of the ale that he had drunk. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... having risen to go, then, like the wily and supple diplomat you are, you come to the real ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... round and coolly asked him to explain himself, he took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth, and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple hazel-switch. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... me of a Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creeping sensualities of his phrase—his one phrase—how descriptive it is of the form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm's muscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning on silver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours of embroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. Or, maybe, the scene passes on a terrace ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... kneeleth down. "Wilt thou have my son, cony?" saith father. "Yea, dear heart," saith she. "'Tis my counterpart, mark you," saith father. "Better than nothing at all," saith she. Benevolent father, supple-kneed son, convenient lady. Here is agreement. And thus it ends.' Again he laughed outright at the steel-blue face of the sky, then jumped in a flash from his seat to the throat of Bertran. Bertran tumbled backwards with a strangled cry, and Richard ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... called out, in marching- order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and sinewy, but slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vies with the topeng in popularity, but the latter ranks as classic and lyrical drama. A graceful girl in pink, with floating scarf, and gleaming kris in her spangled sash, exhibits wonderful skill in the supple play of wrist and fingers, through the process known as devitalization, a form of drill which gives to the arm a plastic power of detached movement, fascinating but uncanny. The dusky garden is filled with a native crowd, moved alternately to tears and laughter by exploits ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... difficult to realize she was his own daughter, this dashing stranger sitting here, playing idly with a knife and caressing him with her voice and her eyes. The blue evening gown she was wearing to-night (doubtless not yet paid for) made her figure even more supple and lithe, set off her splendid bosom, her slender neck, her creamy skin. Her hair, worn low over her temples, was brown with just a tinge of red. Her eyes were black, with gleaming lights; her lips were warm and rich, alive. He did not approve of her lips. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... accounts, A loose one in the hard grip of his hand, A curse in his God-bless-you: then my eyes Pursued him down the street, and far away, Among the honest shoulders of the crowd, Read rascal in the motions of his back, And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee.' ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... she was called up, along with some children considerably younger than herself, to read and spell. The master stood before them, armed with a long, thick strap of horse-hide, prepared by steeping in brine, black and supple with constant use, and cut into fingers at one end, which had been hardened in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... a cat though it was, the cowpony found the steep pass with its loose rubble hard going. Melissy took the climb much easier. In the way she sped through the mesquit, evading the clutch of the cholla by supple dips to right and left, there was a kind of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... an ill cause; but the dauntless utterances of men who would rather perish than fail to keep faith with God and with their forefathers is a victory for mankind, and is everlasting. How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives, and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... transformed. He appeared to have suddenly thawed. He was no longer the awkward, sickly youth, whose every movement was paralyzed by timidity, and whose words froze on his tongue; his slender frame had become supple, his blue eyes enlarged and illuminated; his delicate features expressed refinement, tenderness, and passion. The young girl was moved and won by so much emotion, the first that Julien had ever manifested toward her. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... answer arguments, not only with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes is menaced ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marred his delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had any better luck; yet ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... and play across them on the shelves. These forces are the self-propelling and self-healing forces of the creative mood. The creative mood protects the books, and it protects all who come near the books. It protects from the inside. It toughens and makes supple. Parents who cannot trust a boy to face the weather in a library should ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee |
