"Suppleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received into the household as an equal; and surely no man ever had a more kingly countenance. His body, however, seemed to lag behind, and was no match for his sublime spirit. But when fired by his position as Conductor, or when at the piano, the slender body was nerved to a point where it seemed all suppleness and sinewy strength. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... solution contained in the tube. He said nothing, but he saw what he had expected to see. And Jees Uck, her eyes riveted on his face, saw something too,—something that made her spring like a tigress upon Amos, and with splendid suppleness and strength bend his body back across her knee. Her knife was out of its sheaf and uplifted, glinting in the lamplight. Amos was snarling; but Bonner intervened ere the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... faded out of her face, leaving her quite pale, with eyes that began to blaze. The suppleness of her seemed ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... masterly style, folding and unfolding in turn, like two garlands, her peri's arms; then the rhythm becoming more and more animated, she struck the floor with her rapid and repeated steps, with the wild suppleness and the wanton smile of a young bacchante. Suddenly she brought the performance to a close with a long slide that carried her, all panting, before Monsieur de Lucan, seated opposite to her. There, she bent one knee, lay with rapid gesture both her hands upon ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... elevated or overturned; but such is the fatal condition of absolute power on this earth. The civil servants of the government, of an inferior class, all those who look to make their fortune by their suppleness or intrigues, in no degree resemble the inhabitants of the country, and I can readily believe all the ill that has been and may be said of them; but to appreciate properly the character of a warlike nation, we must look to its soldiers, and ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... nature of a territory that stretched along the bay-indented sea, but the physical culture and maxims of education, consistently enforced by the State, thus affected both the being and the development of the population. These measures were calculated to combine beauty, strength and suppleness of body with wit and elasticity of mind, both of which were transmitted to the descendants. True enough, even then, in comparison with man, woman was neglected in point of mental, but not of corporal culture.[86] In Sparta, that went furthest ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... to speak of nothing else, there are thirteen s-s to five in the original. Even Crashaw, whose translation of Strada's "Music's Duel" is a masterpiece for litheness of phrase and sinuous suppleness of rhythm, quails before the "Dies Irae," and contents himself with a largely watered paraphrase. No one has ever yet succeeded more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... delicate youth of twenty-four years, having only a superficial knowledge of public affairs, scarcely known to the Ministers, and endowed with a narrow pedantic nature which was to be the bane of his people. He lacked alike the sagacity, the foresight, and the suppleness of Leopold. Further, though his inexperience should have inspired him with a dread of war for his storm-tossed States, yet that same misfortune subjected him to the advice of the veteran Chancellor, Kaunitz. That crabbed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... seized its plaything and swung him slowly around Creede let out a big loop and began to swing it about his head, his teeth showing in a tense grin as he fixed his eyes upon the mark. At each turn his wrist flexed and his back swayed with a willowy suppleness but except for that he was like a herculean ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... odious facility and that the lesson of his life, the sternest and wholesomest, would be to keep out of the trap it had laid for him. He had fallen into this trap on the threshold and had only scrambled out with his honour. He had a talent for appearance, and that was the fatal thing; he had a damnable suppleness and a gift of immediate response, a readiness to oblige, that made him seem to take up causes which he really left lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to have all the air of having ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... dress of an Englishman stepped aside from the press of visitors and came towards her. Before she could, in that dim light, distinguish his face, she recognised him by the lightness of his step and the suppleness of his figure. She raised herself into a position a little more upright, and held out her hand. She made room for him on the couch beside her, and when he had taken his seat, she turned at once ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... whose will and character has been tempered by this holy fire takes on something of the suppleness, hardness, and firmness of steel, of which a delicate blade will cut the grosser iron of which that blade itself was a part before it was subjected to the refining process that ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Bohemian rubber, and Scanlon agreed to accept his ministrations. After a bath and a shower, the Bohemian kneaded and punched some suppleness into him; an hour's sleep followed this, and he was pleased to find himself ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... the saint's and poet's love of things for their own sakes, the vision of the charitable heart, which is the secret of union with Reality and the condition of all real knowledge. This brings with it the precious quality of suppleness, the power of responding with ease and simplicity to the great rhythms of life; and this will only come when the ungainly "lump" of sin is broken, and the verb "to have," which expresses its reaction to existence, is ejected from the centre of your consciousness. Then your attitude ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... and hurrying to meet another young girl who now advanced along the winding path, "why do you remain behind, Rosa?" And so saying, she threw herself upon her knees before the new-comer, and clasped her arms around her with a rapidity and suppleness that almost resembled the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... evidence was soon overwhelming in favour of a vastly longer existence of man in the Nile Valley than could be made to agree with even the longest duration then allowed by theologians. For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson, it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chronology was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civilization at a period before the "Flood of Noah," and that no such flood had ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse remained behind: it was soon clear ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and she—the living woman—asks me in her purring voice what sound I heard, hiding a smile as she stoops low over her work, and I answer lightly, and, moving towards her, put my arm about her, feeling her softness and her suppleness, and wondering, supposing I held her close to me with one arm while pressing her from me with the other, how long before I should hear the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... superintending the putting up of the tent, he thinks out and arranges the packing of the sledge; it is extraordinary how neatly and handily everything is stowed, and how much study has been given to preserving the suppleness and good running qualities of the machine. On the Barrier, before the ponies were killed, he was ever roaming round, correcting ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... truly great leader of men shares with the domestic pig; though in the case of the pig it is generally spoken of as obstinacy. But the leader—General, Prime Minister or Captain of Industry—is distinguished from the pig by a certain intellectual suppleness which makes his obstinacy a more effective though less showy thing. The pig, being determined to go his own way, has no better idea than to tug desperately against the rope which is tied round his ankle. He tugs unwaveringly up to the very last ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... paper; clouds of lining-muslin, snakes of piping; skeins, shreds; and the floor literally sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the fair, those taper fingers so typical of the minds of their owners: or they have softness, suppleness, nimbleness, adroitness, and "a plentiful lack" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... discover no favourable field of action nor will he acquire real energy until he has drunk of the waters of Lethe in a rest-giving Hereafter and a new body supplies his will with an instrument having the obedient suppleness ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... not one jot less than I am, They are tann'd in the face by shining suns and blowing winds, Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength, They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves, They are ultimate in their own right—they are calm, clear, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... fitful light from the fire glanced in a thousand capricious reflections on the Diva's auburn hair and rich satin dress. It was black of the most lustrous quality, and fitted her person with a perfection that showed the shape of the bust, and the lithe suppleness of the slender waist to the utmost advantage. The dress was made low on the superb shoulders—the dazzling whiteness of which, as seen contrasted with the black satin, was now covered with a slight silk scarlet shawl,— a most artistic completion of the harmonious colouring of the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... as unmoved as she gave out. She had always admired and liked Captain Haney, though he never moved her in the same way that the young barber did (for Ed Winchell had youth as well as comeliness, and there is a divine suppleness in youth), yet he had been a welcome guest. "A hundred thousand dollars a year! And yet he's been coming to our little hotel for ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... or tuft of grass, running swiftly along the high bank of a watercourse, and sneaking under the shadowing border of a belt of jungle, is to understand his cunning and craftiness. His attitude, when he is crouching for the final bound, is the embodiment of suppleness and strength. All his actions are graceful, and half display and half conceal beneath their symmetry and elegance the tremendous power and deadly ferocity that lurks beneath. For a short distance he is possessed of great speed, and with a few short agile ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... ladies—girls I had supposed them to be—were, in fact, women and mothers, and had reached an age that with us would be associated with decrepitude, wrinkles and imbecility. They were all practical chemists, and their work was the preparation of food from the elements. No wonder that they possessed the suppleness and bloom of eternal youth, when the earthy matter and impurities that are ever present in our food, were ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the tastes if they stiffen at the one period limber at the other; their forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent suppleness. One is aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one would once have turned destitute from the door, or with a dole of Organized Charity meal-tickets at the best. But in that maturer time one hesitates, and possibly ends by asking the stranger ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the form of the body and transform the recruit into a soldier. The constant drills all have their effect upon the bearing and gait of the men. The extensive system of calisthenics gives to the body suppleness. All this work is done under direction, so that obedience and discipline are taught at the same time with physical culture. Apart from these exercises are voluntary athletics, which are greatly encouraged. It is believed that athletic ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... health suffers, and weakness, anaemia, and dyspepsia are common. Even though most of the joints become useless, there is often sufficient suppleness in the fingers to allow of their use, as in writing or knitting. In old men the disease is seen attacking one joint alone, as the hip, shoulder, knee, and spine. Children are occasionally sufferers, and in young women it may follow frequent confinements ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... clearer cut as she grew older—features wrought with delicacy and yet imbued with strength, suggestive of carved ivory. Delicacy imbued with strength was betokened, too, by the tall slenderness of her figure, whose silence and suppleness of movement came—in Conquest's imagination at least—from her ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... certainly. But read Latin—till you can speak Latin, think Latin. It is more difficult to think Greek. Our stiff-necked, stubborn Lowland nature, produce of half-a-score of conquering nations, has not the right suppleness. But if there is any poetry in you, it will find you out when ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... together up the slope to the big house. A fishing costume is not a thing of grace, but the one this girl wore could not eclipse the elastic suppleness of the slender figure or the joy in life that animated the vivid face with the black curls straying from beneath the jaunty cap. The long hip waders she wore so briskly gave her the look of a modern Rosalind. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... hoarsely growling they packed forward again, and Dolores found herself fighting desperately against men maddened into steel-armed wolves, thirsty for her blood in payment for that split. She more than held her own by sheer skill and suppleness for a space; but assailed from all sides save the back she speedily felt her limbs growing heavy and awkward, and a cutlas sang above her bent head when her foot had failed, leaving her without guard ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... own work. Anyone could detect, with half an eye, nineteen out of twenty of them; dress them how you would, disguise them as you like. They step the regulation length, bring their foot down in the regulation way, are as stiff as if they had swallowed a ramrod. They have neither suppleness nor adaptability. They are so accustomed to obey that they have almost lost the power of originating, and would be taken and shot before they were in the enemy's lines ten minutes. Now, Fergus has the advantage of knowing both languages, and ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... certain creative activity, rendered familiar with the life of Nature, the claims of the household, the toil of the peasants, mechanics, etc., and at the same time increase its dexterity in using its fingers and the suppleness of its body. It learns to play, to obey, and to submit to the rules of the school, and is protected from the contradictory orders of unreasonable mothers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I wish to condense slightly and insert here. He speaks of the quickness of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgment of the direction of approaching missiles as being quite extraordinary, and of the answering suppleness and accuracy of limb and muscle in avoiding the missile as being extraordinary also. He has seen an aboriginal stand as a target for cricket-balls thrown with great force ten or fifteen yards, by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of that?" said he, giving it two or three switches in the air to try its suppleness and toughness; "don't that look like a whip? Now we'll see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... in hand, each in his own day, and have done for it what the master of a gymnasium does for the bodily frame. They have formed its limbs, and developed its strength; they have endowed it with vigour, exercised it in suppleness and dexterity, and taught it grace. They have made it rich, harmonious, various, and precise. They have furnished it with a variety of styles, which from their individuality may almost be called dialects, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... let them rove From the mark where shafts of love Their flight wing. Try, my girl, O try what bliss Young men render when they kiss! Youth is alway sturdy, straight; Old age totters in its gait. These delights of love we bring Have the suppleness of spring, Softness, sweetness, wantoning; Clasp, my Phyllis, in their ring Sweeter sweets than ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... salutations from such as you." Young Egmont, who had been captured, fighting bravely at the head of coward troops, by Julian Romero, who nine years before had stood on his father's scaffold, regarded this brutal scene with haughty indignation. This behaviour had more effect upon Roda than the suppleness of Capres. "I am sorry for your misfortune, Count," said the councillor, without however rising from his chair; "such is the lot of those who take arms against their King." This was the unfortunate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lay flat among the fern in his moments of rest, following the march of the clouds as they sailed divinely over the rich breadth and colour of the commons, a whole brood of images nestled at his heart, or seemed to hover in the sunny air before him,—visions of a slender form fashioned with Greek suppleness and majesty, of a soft and radiant presence, of looks all womanliness, and gestures all grace, of a smile like no other he had ever seen for charm, of a quick impulsive gait! He followed that figure through scene after scene; he saw primroses in its hand, and the pale spring ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... book of letters in raised type for the blind boy. Before setting him down to this, however, she wished to try the suppleness and accuracy of his touch with some ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of horses' hoofs, and the commissioners, bravely attired, with cavalier boots, and swords dangling at their sides, were seen riding forward, followed by a little knot of officers. The crowd parted before them as they came, not sullenly, perhaps, but certainly with no alacrity or suppleness of deference. There was no love lost on either side; but Cartwright, who wore the most arrogant front of the three, really feared the Puritans more than either of his colleagues; and when, seven years afterward, he was called before ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... not convinced. The amazing improvement in Mildred's health, the splendid slim strength and suppleness of her body, the new and stable glories of her voice—all these she knew about, but they did not convince her. She believed in work, in hard work, but to her work meant the music itself. She felt that the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... should be to have the friendship of this lady, whose wit and amiable manners are so greatly talked of." "Yes," said de Maupeou, laughing, "she is a type of court ladies, a mixture of dignity and suppleness, majesty and condescension, which is worth its weight in gold. She was destined from all eternity to be the companion of the king's female friends." We both laughed; and the chancellor went on to say: "There are others whom I will point out to you by and by; as for this ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... sea," now that its master has set his weary feet on land.[22] The fisherman, ceasing his labours, hangs up his fish-spear to Poseidon, saying, "Thou knowest I am tired." The old hunter, whose hand has lost its suppleness, dedicates his nets to the Nymphs, as all that he has to give. The market-gardener, when he has saved a competence, lays his worn tools before Priapus the Garden- Keeper. Heracles and Artemis receive the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... [50] Note Professor Woodberry's praise of the heroic couplet | | for its simple music, its suppleness, its power of forcing | | brevity: "the best metrical form which intelligence, as | | distinct from poetical feeling, can employ." (Makers of | | Literature, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... the edge of the road covering him with a revolver, having apparently just stepped from behind the trunk of the cottonwood beside her. The color had fled her cheeks even to the edge of the dull red-copper waves of hair, but he could detect in her slim young suppleness no doubt or uncertainty. On the contrary, despite her girlish freshness, she looked very much like business. She was like some young wild creature of the forest cornered and brought to bay, but the very terror in her soul rendered her more dangerous. Of the heart beating ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... notion of a well-built woman. She was as straight—I mean she had as little of what people call figure—as a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high, and she had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never once wore uncovered. But this bamboo figure of hers had a suppleness and a stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that I can't compare to anything else; there was in it something of the peacock and something also of the stag; but, above all, it was her own. I wish I ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... magnificently dressed in some vesture that had the lustre of a polished plate of gold, with the suppleness of velvet. As we approached he fixed his immense, deep-set eyes sternly ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... political writer. His is one of the greatest names in the history of political literature. There have been many more important statesmen, for he was never tried in a position of supreme responsibility. There have been many more effective orators, for lack of imaginative suppleness prevented him from penetrating to the inner mind of his hearers; defects in delivery weakened the intrinsic persuasiveness of his reasoning; and he had not that commanding authority of character and personality which has so often been the secret of triumphant eloquence. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and scrawl, while the neat and orderly-minded will view themselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's clerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even nations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and variableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and suppleness of the Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede. When we are in grief, we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... too strong for her, that habit of honesty of thought and action. If this struggle with it had come years before she could have mastered it, flinging against it the irresistible suppleness and lightness of her ignorant youth. But now, freighted heavily with experience of reality, she could not turn and bend quickly ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Gabrielle's arms and stood with her back to the door. Gabrielle too rose and faced her. Her tears had put an end to the dreamy mood in which Mrs. Payne had found her at first. Now she was determined, dangerous, ready to fight with all the quickness of her wits and the suppleness of her youth against the elder woman's dogged devotion. They faced one another, ready to fight to the end, for the possession of the thing they each loved best, and both of them realized the bitter nature of ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... to the woman, and looked at her as he would study a blurred trail in the forest. She bore his scrutiny well, and he grunted approval. Now that he had risen he was impressive. He was tall, and had that curious, loose-jointed suppleness that, I have heard women say, comes only from gentle blood. As he stood beside Father Nouvel it came to me that the two men were somewhat kin. One face was patrician and the other savage, but they were both old men who bore their years with wisdom ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... which all Queen Anne's old friends now saw with indignation occupied by one of the most detested of Richelieu's creatures, Pierre Seguier. This last, however, was a man of capacity—laborious, well-informed and full of resources. To these qualifications he added a remarkable suppleness, which made him very useful and accommodating to a Prime Minister. He moreover had the support of friends who stood high in the Queen's favour, and was further strengthened by the opposition of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that he could stand stiff-legged and lay his ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... of leaving off the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual's mind can affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body new suppleness." ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... ohs! and ahs! of delight. His body was perfect, alive with easy suppleness and health and strength. The skin was white as a woman's, and as smooth. All grace, and resilience, and power resided therein. He had proved it in scores of battles. His photographs were in all the physical ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... of these slow and laborious inquiries is this: the scholar, while engaged in speculative studies, is actively using his body, gaining suppleness of limb, and training his hands to labour so that he will be able to make them useful when he is a man. Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in our experiments and to supplement the exactness of our ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... There were huge forms of wrath, grasping thunderbolts, and rising to the roof: the Deva-kings, like impersonations of hurricane power; the Ni-O, guardians of long-vanished temple gates. Also there were forms voluptuously feminine: the light grace of the limbs folded within their lotos-cups, the suppleness of the fingers numbering the numbers of the Good Law, were ideals possibly inspired in some forgotten tune by the charm of an Indian dancing-girl. Shelved against the naked brickwork above, I could perceive multitudes of lesser shapes: ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... short, pointed beard, and hair also short that was swiftly turning to grey. The only thing that suggested the musician was the heaviness and swelling of his brows, and the delicacy of his hands and wrists, which were white, like a woman's, of an extraordinary suppleness and full of power; hands that were watched instinctively and obeyed. The eyes of the entire chorus were fixed on them now, gazing as if hypnotized, and hanging on every movement ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... himself, not liking to receive any suggestions from his chiefs, intending to follow his own ideas. The battle once begun, he invariably attacked the strongest enemy and pursued those comrades who occupied the highest rank. With the marvelous suppleness of a cat, he climbed trees, flung himself to the ground, crept along barriers, slipped between the legs of his adversaries, and bounded triumphantly off with a number of brassards. It was a great joy to him to bring the trophies of his struggles ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Beauharnais from Barras. She had thin brown hair, a complexion neither fresh nor faded, expressive eyes, a small retrousse nose, a pretty mouth, and a voice that charmed all listeners. She was rather undersized, but her figure was so perfectly proportioned as to give the impression of height and suppleness. Its charms were scarcely concealed by the clothing she wore, made as it was in the suggestive fashion of the day, with no support to the form but a belt, and as scanty about her shoulders as it was about her shapely feet. It appears to have ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... strove to attune his words to the even cadence and harmony with which he wished to amaze us, for, as A.J. Balfour said, "he was a man of the finest and most delicate imagination, a style which, for grace and suppleness, for its power of being at once turned to any purpose which the author desired, has seldom been matched." It is difficult for those who knew him before he had, by pure hard work, won his way to fame, to realise how one physically so fragile, of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... proclaiming himself Emperor of the French. Setting aside the means, it must be acknowledged that it is impossible not to admire the genius of Bonaparte, his tenacity in advancing towards his object, and that adroit employment of suppleness and audacity which made him sometimes dare fortune, sometimes avoid difficulties which he found insurmountable, to arrive, not merely at the throne of Louis XVI., but at ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... kept his word, and having made a king of Bavaria to give them to, gave them to the king of Bavaria, Messieurs the senators, with a suppleness and a docility which would have done credit to Debry (who after proposing, as a republican, to organise 1,200 'tyrannicides' and murder all the kings and emperors of the earth, begged Napoleon to make him ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to-morrow night, General." He bowed with almost extravagant submission, and turning walked sharply away, energy and suppleness in every line of his slight figure, leaving Sir Terence to the unpleasant, almost desperate, thoughts that reflection must usher in as ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... elastic and fleshy spine, the sinews of her thighs as well developed as those of a race-horse, her deep chest, her enormous jutting shoulders, the nerve and muscle in her short, thick paws—all announced that this terrible animal united vigor with suppleness, and strength ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the scent, and went away merrily through the wood at a slashing rate. The rider is here kept wide awake by the vicinity of the trees, many of which are spreading and low-branched, requiring a quick eye and some suppleness to keep one's hat from getting hurt when going "the pace," and, by St. Hubert! these hounds in woodland appear anything ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal. This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move, but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening eyes and ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... get rich, which aggravates their position); while what they call performers are looked upon by them as mere tricksters or jugglers, who profit by the dexterity of their fingers, as dancers and acrobats by the suppleness of their limbs. The painter whose works decorate their saloons figures in the budget of their expenses on a line with the upholsterer, whose hangings they speak of in the same breath with Church's "Heart of the Andes," and Rosa Bonheur's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the fast disappearing type of gentleman, and I knew that for him this was possible through an extraordinary suppleness of mind, fineness of tact and feeling, and a philosophic broadness ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the domain of the toilet, has been widely sought by both sexes in Europe. Devoting long vigils to the study of the skin and cuticle of the two sexes, each of whom, one as much as the other, attach the utmost importance to the softness, suppleness, brilliancy, and velvet texture of the complexion, the Sieur Birotteau, perfumer, favorably known in this metropolis and abroad, has discovered a Paste and a Lotion justly hailed as marvellous by the fashion and elegance of Paris. In point of fact, this Paste and this ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful pictures spoke of "Gian," every one knew who was meant; but to those who worked at art he was "The Master." He was two inches under six feet in height, strong and muscular. In spite of his seventy summers his carriage was erect, and there was a jaunty suppleness about his gait that made him seem much younger. In fact, no one would have believed he had lived over his threescore and ten, were it not for the iron-gray hair that fluffed out all around under the close-fitting black cap, and the bronzed ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... cheeks with a corner of his dilapidated Norfolk jacket—if you have ever tried to do this you'll know that it is more or less of a test of suppleness—he went slowly to the door, and in another minute was lifted high into the air and shaken violently by a slight, rather plain young man, who bore with the utmost meekness a passionate embrace highly detrimental ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... throat, and it always lay closest to his heart. The blade of the knife was of the finest Spanish steel, in the days when Spanish smiths knew how to draw out steel to a streak of light; the handle of the knife was from Milan. On the whole, it was a delicate and beautiful weapon—and it had the durable suppleness of—say—hatred itself. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... that is, seventeen. He was very tall for his age, with dark hair and a pale dry face, and of distinguished bearing. Unlike his father, he was slim and gracefully built, with no breadth or power to his shoulders, but with an athletic suppleness and a refinement almost womanlike. He was tenacious, overbearing, self-willed, somewhat ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... instead of two days a week, as had been his custom. Never was he more calm, graceful and fascinating in his performances. The evening before the eventful day, he repeated in pantomime his victory over the lion near Damascus, with so much elegance, precision and suppleness as to elicit round after round of enthusiastic cheers. Of course everybody who had seen him play killing a lion was wild with curiosity to see him actually fight with a ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... physical plane great strides are being made. The suppleness of one, the power of balance of another, the feats of the acrobat, the will of the juggler which commands the action, and the seeming suspension of natural law; all these expressions are ever increasing and ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... back, be often in action and sustain the greatest fatigue of all the body. The hands are a contexture of nerves and little bones set one within another in such a manner that they have all the strength and suppleness necessary to feel the neighbouring bodies, to seize on them, hold them fast, throw them, draw them to one, push them off, disentangle them, and ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... industries," the great marts of commerce and the banks. It has friends at every Court, in every Cabinet, in every European Parliament, and its agents are alert and active in every branch of the administration of foreign lands. And while suppleness marked their dealings with others, they were inflexible only in their fidelity to the Teuton cause. Thus in Russia they were conservative and autocratic in their intercourse with the ruling spheres, and revolutionary in their relations with the Socialists ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... light-blue silk stockings, delicately striped, and shining black polished shoes, upon which glittered large buckles set with precious stones. If to this we add that his gait was the elegant gait of a dancing master, that he had a certain cat-like suppleness of body, and that his little legs had a strange knack of knocking the heels together on fitting occasions,—for instance, when leaping across a gutter,—it could not fail but that the little decorator got himself singled ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... envoys of Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable in the French demands. The negotiators for the Vatican were Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur Spina—able ecclesiastics, who were fitted to maintain clerical claims with that mixture of suppleness and firmness which had so often baffled the force and craft of mighty potentates. The first difficulty arose on the question of the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church: Bonaparte demanded that, whether orthodox or constitutionals, they must resign ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... is limpid, accurate, easy and strongly marked, with a sound framework and having the suppleness of a living organism. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a scrambling as there was! Ann Hicks showed her suppleness by being one of the first to land and beating some of the boys; but she did not run ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... the last of October that Billy began to notice her husband's growing restlessness. Twice, when she had been playing to him, she turned to find him testing the suppleness of his injured arm. Several times, failing to receive an answer to her questions, she had looked up to discover him gazing abstractedly at ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... could not contain, that he should be left to die in the dust of the palace. His weakness was such, that he could not prevent himself six weeks after from complaining to the King at Fontainebleau, where he was playing the valet with his accustomed suppleness and deceit. The King put him off with fine speeches, and by appointing him to take part in a commission then sitting for the purpose of bringing about a reduction in the price of corn in Paris and the suburbs, where it had become very dear. Harlay made ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... like a wet sheet. The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spoke the truth, and that his opinion was shared by the majority of his companions. But our good comrades of the Territorial Force have no conception of the vigour, the suppleness, and of the fulness of youth required to charge up to the enemy's line under concentrated fire and to cut the complex network of barbed wire that bars the road. Our chiefs were well advised in placing these ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... woman, no taller than Miss Dudleigh. Nor was she of marked carriage or build. Her form, indeed, seemed only made to express suppleness and passion, and was as speaking in its slight proportions as if it had breathed forth the nobler attributes of majesty and strength. Her dress was dark, and clung to every curve with a loving persistence bewildering in its effect upon an eye like mine. Upon the bust, ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the chest; and, in fact, he was rather a thin man than otherwise, nor did he appear a powerful one—but his bones were well set. His sinews were all strength—they were not encumbered with flesh. He was as much a model of activity and suppleness, as Meikle Robin was of bodily power. Now, Andrew was a native of Eyemouth; he was about three and thirty years of age, and he united in his person the callings of a fisherman and cadger; or, in other words, Andrew, being without mother, sister, wife, or servant, sold himself the fish which ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Something had to be done. He employed every device to gain time. He had interviews with men of various parties. He grew more and more care-worn and aged. His troubles showed themselves in his carriage and his face. "By turns he was insinuating, eloquent, lively, pathetic. He showed a suppleness and a tenacity of purpose that amazed those brought into contact with him. If he could but gain time, he hoped that the Republicans would disagree about his successor, and decide to rally round him; but at last he was forced to send in his resignation. He ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... that she would die, painlessly, in some accident, she who was out of doors in the streets, crossing busy thoroughfares, from morning to night. And as she always returned safe and sound, he marvelled at the strength, at the suppleness of the human body, which was able continually to hold in check, to outwit all the perils that environed it (which to Swann seemed innumerable, since his own secret desire had strewn them in her path), and so allowed its occupant, the soul, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... unattractive. His eyes had the color and the hard brightness of steel; his keen glances, subject to his will, often questioned, but never allowed themselves to be interrogated. Well made, slender, a slight and graceful figure, he had in his gait and movements a feline suppleness and stealthiness. He was slow, but easy of speech, and never animated; the tone of his voice was cold and veiled, and whatever the subject of conversation might be, he neither raised nor lowered it; no modulations; everyone of his sentences ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... conclude that he was still destined to perform a distinguished part. But he is content with the liberty of a private station, as a spectator only, and, perhaps, in that he shows his wisdom; for undoubtedly such men are not cordially received among hereditary statesmen, unless they evince a certain suppleness of principle, such as we have seen in the conduct of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... must do his own training. No one else can do it for him. The assumption of superiority over his opponent will riot develop his suppleness of body and strength of muscle. To be sure, faith and courage are essential to—victory, but they must be backed by careful and persistent training. Vainglorious boasting alone will ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... agreeable to his stern and inflexible temper. His integrity was republican—his loftiness of spirit was patrician. He had all the purity, the disinterestedness, and the fervour of a patriot—he had none of the suppleness or the passion of a demagogue; on the contrary, he seems to have felt much of that high-spirited disdain of managing a people which is common to great minds conscious that they are serving a people. His manners were austere, and he rather advised than persuaded men to his purposes. He ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... philosophic induction, but at first hand, because he is a Jew by birth and breeding. He, unlike Heine, has never tried to conceal the fact that he is a Jew. In Israel Zangwill all the tenderness and sympathy, all the tenacity, the suppleness and adaptability, and it may be added, the baffling inconsistencies ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... was heavy as stone, while the cedar, being light and elastic, lent buoyancy and suppleness, all ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... understood, none the less, that her life was in question. With one bound she rushed to the other end of the room to escape the fatal knot which De Marsay tried to pass round her neck. There was a struggle. On either side there was an equality of strength, agility, and suppleness. To end the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her lover a cushion which made him fall, and profited by the respite which this advantage gave to her, to push the button of the spring which caused the bell to ring. Promptly the mulatto ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... these people was that, when standing—unlike nearly every other tribe of savages I have seen—they spread their toes outward instead of keeping both feet parallel. To a lesser extent the feet were held in that position also when walking. The suppleness of their bodies gave them a great advantage in penetrating with ease anywhere in the forest without having to cut ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and tastes had been so far civilized as to admit of his tolerating the companionship of man and subsisting on a mixed diet; but at the second glance, noting his color, and the shape of his head, with a certain loftiness of mien and suppleness of backbone—neither of which is ever to be found in the wolf—you would have pronounced him a little lion, shorn of his brindled mane. On further acquaintance, however—I cannot say intimate acquaintance, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... shrieked mere amazement and indignation, when the English tired of fighting for him and it. When the English said to their great Marlborough: "Enough, you sorry Marlborough! You have beaten Louis XIV. to the suppleness of wash-leather, at our bidding; that is true, and that may have had its difficulties: but, after all, we prefer to have the thing precisely as it would have been without any fighting. You, therefore, what is the good of you? You are a—person whom we fling out ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the head of the poor saint, who was suffocating in that thick atmosphere. Look how the drapery now floats, and you see that the breeze lifts it; just now it looked like heavy linen held out by pins. Observe that the satiny lustre I am putting on the bosom gives it the plump suppleness of the flesh of a young girl. See how this tone of mingled reddish-brown and ochre warms up the cold grayness of that large shadow where the blood seemed to stagnate rather than flow. Young man, young man! what I am showing you now ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... perfect: although he was quite conscious of his good looks, he never had the air of being so; every movement was natural and spontaneous, like the movements of a wild creature, and as agile. He seemed to rejoice in his own strength, to delight in his own suppleness; and he walked on now with healthy elastic step, his violin held to his shoulder, his clear cut cheek leant down to it lovingly; his luxuriant light hair all tumbled and tossed, while he kept time to an imaginary tune with the bow in his right ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of my superior skilfulness, did seek to depreciate it by insinuating that my grouse was one which, having been seriously wounded by other hands some days previously, had come up to the hills to shuffle off its mortal coil in seclusion, arguing thus from its total absence of heat and suppleness. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Sierras. Suffice it to say that her fall from grace had been rapid, though her dissolute career had in no way diminished her beauty. Indeed, her features were well-nigh perfect, her skin transparently clear, if dark, and her form was suppleness itself as she danced. And that she was the undisputed belle of the evening was made apparent by the number of men who watched her with eyes that marvelled at her grace when dancing, and surrounded her ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... unexampled multiplicity of ways of cultivating the soil is not only typical of the wonderfully rich organization of our social conditions, but it also furnishes the most natural basis for the peculiar suppleness, many-sidedness, and receptivity ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... more sensitive and softer lines, his dark-blue eyes and jet-black eyebrows completed a general impression of vigour and forcefulness. His figure was a little thin but lithe, and his movements showed all the suppleness of a man who has continued the pursuit of athletics into early middle-life. His hair, only slightly streaked with grey, was thick and plentiful. His clothes were carefully chosen and well tailored. He had the air of a man used to mixing with ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... century Buddhist monasteries were accused of organizing armed conspiracies and many later sects suffered from the panic which they inspired in official bosoms. But both difficulties were overcome by the suppleness of the clergy. If they outraged family sentiment they managed to make themselves indispensable at funeral ceremonies.[576] If they had a dangerous resemblance to an imperium in imperio, they minimized it by their obvious desire to exercise influence through the Emperor. Though it is true that the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... place, the fluids are all in a better and more healthy state. In proof of this, I might mention in the first place that superior agility, ease of motion, speed, and power of endurance which so distinguish vegetable-eaters, wherever a fair comparison is instituted. They possess a suppleness like that of youth, even long after what is called the juvenile period of life is passed over. They are often seen running and jumping, unless restrained by the arbitrary customs of society, in very advanced age. Their wounds heal with astonishing rapidity in as many days as weeks, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... in amusing me by aid of my slate. That sort of pastime suited my hours of silence, which became less and less broken by the talkative vein. His forefinger rubbed away defects in the aspect of faces or animals with a lion-like suppleness of sweep that seemed to me to wipe out the world. We also had a delicious game of a labyrinth of lines, which it was necessary to traverse with the pencil without touching the hedges, as I called the winding marks. We wandered ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the courtyard and Flann began to climb the Fairy Rowan Tree with all suppleness, strength and cunning. The cats that were below felt him going up the tree and the cats that were above humped themselves up. Flann passed the first branch on which a cat was crouched. He went above where the rowan berries ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... she smiled. She had a string of opaque white, wax-like beads around the neck of her dress, and the contrast of the pearly whiteness of the bauble with the creamy whiteness and softness of her throat was marked with much finish. Her figure was hardly of medium height, and, despite the suppleness of youth, as "plump as a partridge," according to the familiar saying. The clear iris of her eyes gave an impression of quick shifting, and by them one could see her ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of them, have sided with the weaker. On his return from Jerusalem, William found the situation extremely strained, and he endeavoured to relieve it by concessions of various kinds. None of them, however, were regarded as adequate. Thereupon, with the suppleness which costs him so little when it is a question of sacrificing his most devoted and valuable servant, the Emperor, King of Prussia, sacrificed Herr von Lucanus, the head of his private household, an almost legendary personage who had had a hand in every ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... title, and an elaborate comparison of the Peloponnesian War and the War between the States would undoubtedly have led to no little sophistication of the facts. Historical parallel bars are usually set up for exhibiting feats of mental agility. The mental agility is often moral suppleness, and nobody expects a critical examination of the parallelism itself. He was not an historian of the first rank, but a phrase-making rhetorician, who is responsible for the current saying, History is philosophy teaching by examples. This definition is about as valuable as some of those other ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... appearance of this newly-found companion—her lithe and agile form, the proud set of her neck and head, the beautiful close masses of her curly, golden-brown hair, and the fine contour of her sun-tanned cheek. Then the vigorous exercise in which she was engaged revealed all the suppleness and harmonious proportions of her figure; for here was no pretty wrist-work of trout-fishing, but the wielding of a double-handed salmon-rod; and she had taught herself the gillies' method of casting—that is to say, she made the backward ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... style of her letters did not make her the greatest prose writer of her time, it certainly entitled her to rank as one of the most original. The prose of the seventeenth century lacked "easy suppleness in lively movement, and imagination in the expression"—two qualities which Mme. de Sevigne possessed in a high degree. The slow and grave development, the just and harmonious equilibrium, the amplitude, are in her supplanted ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... communicates the verbal instructions with which he has been entrusted by his employer, and which are often of more importance than the letters themselves. Indeed, all the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect, and a natural gravity of deportment, which differs as far from the suppleness of a Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown." ... "Even children," he continues, "in Mahomedan countries have an unusual degree of gravity in their deportment. The boy, who ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... required the utmost caution not to wound; so that a conversation with him of any length was a positive strain upon the mind. When I had, as it were, felt of his defects, I conformed to them with the same suppleness that his wife showed in soothing him. Later in life I should certainly have made him angry, but now, humble as a child, supposing that I knew nothing and believing that men in their prime knew all, I was genuinely amazed at the results obtained at Clochegourde ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... these parts a woman who followed a band of mountebanks and jugglers, who stretched out her legs in such an extraordinary manner, and raised up her feet to her head, before and behind, with as much suppleness as if she had neither nerves nor joints. There was nothing supernatural in all that; she had exercised herself from extreme youth in these movements, and had contracted the habit ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... open the door and receive a square box tied with purple ribbon. She dexterously untied the loose bow knot, and withdrew from its tissue wrappings, a fragrant bouquet of violets. An envelope enclosing a card fell to the floor. With suppleness hardly to be expected from one of her years, she stooped to pick it up, and in a twinkling had the donor's name ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... instructor explains the importance of good footwork and impresses on the men the fact that quickness of foot and suppleness of body are as important for attack and defense as is the ability to parry and deliver a strong point ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... spirit; but I found such contests as disagreeable to me as they were new. One evening, under the pretext that I had purposely jostled him in running, he struck me, and we fought. Although he was probably stronger than I, as he was heavier and older, my suppleness enabled me to get the better of him in a wrestle; and I got him under me, when the master, attracted by the shouts of the boys, made his appearance. He separated and reproved us, and sent us off in disgrace to our respective rooms. From that time Balty Mahu treated me with ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... conversational powers, their smiles and bows—all this is lost on him, or charged to account. He has no liking for their insinuating and discreet ways;[3326] he regards them as merely good domestics for parade; all he esteems in them is their ceremonial significance, that innate suppleness which permits them to be at once servile and dignified, the hereditary tact which teaches them how to present a letter, not from hand to hand, but on the rim of a hat, or on a silver plate, and these faculties he estimates at their true worth.—On the other hand, nobody succeeds, as lately under ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... minutes the swords clashed, and then the captain lunged, but the major, recovering his old suppleness of wrist, parried in a masterly style, and if he had returned the attack Burle would have been pierced through. The captain now fell back; he was livid, for he felt that he was at the mercy of the man who had just spared him. At last he understood ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... her cheeks rosy; she was neither slender nor plump, but a well-muscled, graceful woman, decidedly young-looking, and altogether statuesque in build and carriage, but very much alive in her springy suppleness. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... had his revolver with him, but while he had occasionally fired a six-shooter, he was by no means a crack shot, and he realized that if he fired at and only wounded the creature he would unquestionably be attacked. And there was a lithe suppleness in the manner that the movement of the muscles rippled over the skin that was alarmingly suggestive of ferocity. Wilbur did not like the looks of it at all. On the other hand, he had not the slightest intention of going back to the camp without water. He had come for water, and he would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... "And the suppleness of thy arms, and the softness of thy limbs are like the young plaintain tree, and thy fingers are the buds of the champaka flower." He spoke rapidly, crushing her hands cruelly. "The bone of thy knee showing whitely through thy garment is shaped ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... made her repast, with the most profound attention. THe suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame; my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean and float with her through those grooves ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The man's broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot as well as ever though, and not a day had passed since that morning at the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and fierceness of his ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... the manner of a sailor, and his hands were the hands of a sailor, except that they were smooth. Pleasant had an eye for sailors, and she noticed the unused colour and texture of the hands, sunburnt though they were, as sharply as she noticed their unmistakable looseness and suppleness, as he sat himself down with his left arm carelessly thrown across his left leg a little above the knee, and the right arm as carelessly thrown over the elbow of the wooden chair, with the hand curved, half open and half shut, as if it had ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... affections to stupefy the subtlest philosopher, maintaineth (as in Our Island) a wall of defence and watery garrison to guard the state. It entertains the Sun with vapors, the Stars with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility. But why should I longer detain you? The Sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, and the World to the World, by this art ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... her in a chair. Elsie stared about, too frightened and tired even to whimper. The whip fell to the floor and Tess picked it up. For a long time, she held it in her hand, meditatively trying its strength and suppleness while she glared at the child. Then she slipped quietly into the hall, still carrying the ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... as we have shown by the foregoing sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office. Endowed with the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the office of a provincial notary had ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... replied, and him embraced: "With thee, Heabani, I my throne have graced; With thee I go, mine own companion dear, And on the road each other we may cheer," "The way is long, my King, and if I live, With thee I go, but oh, thou must not grieve, For perils great attend the way, and old Am I: the suppleness of youth to hold My strength I need, but it alas! is gone. My heart is ready, but I fear, my son, These crippled limbs which Anu's bull hath left Of my strong vigor, have thy seer bereft. Too weak am I, for ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... upon a black silk dress, very elegantly made. It shows off Aniela's figure to perfection, its suppleness and rounded curves. I can neither think nor write about it calmly. Angeli, addressing Aniela, repeatedly called her "Mademoiselle." Feminine nature, even an angelic one, has still its little weaknesses. I noticed that my dear love was ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
