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Suppliant

noun
1.
One praying humbly for something.  Synonyms: petitioner, requester, supplicant.






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"Suppliant" Quotes from Famous Books



... when I thought the audience was ended, a chamberlain advanced to the foot of the throne, and kneeling, said that a suppliant prayed speech with the Inca. Upanqui waved his sceptre, that long staff which I have described, in token that he should be admitted. Then presently up the chamber came Kari arrayed in the tunic and cloak of an Inca prince, wearing in his ear a disc carved with the ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... that the fault was mine, But I cannot, will not speak; How should I, suppliant, meek, His gracious pardon seek— Tho' the fault were ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner

... may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the more or ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... he pleases. He perhaps has reduced you to this plight. However, since your wanderings have brought you so near to our city, it lies in our duty to supply your wants. Clothes and what else a human hand should give to one so suppliant, and so tamed with calamity, you shall not want. We will show you our city and tell you the name of our people. This is the land of the Phaeacians, of which my father, Alcinous, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... clouds oppressed, Should vexing thoughts distract thy breast? Turn thou to Him in every pain, Whom never suppliant sought in vain; Thy strength in joy's ecstatic day, Thy hope, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... possess that power?" continued the Dwarf, with a bitter sneer; "Is mine the form of a redresser of wrongs? Is this the castle in which one powerful enough to be sued to by a fair suppliant is likely to hold his residence? I but mocked thee, girl, when I said I ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... not for Adam—not for the anguish that would come upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was obliged to cling ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... invocation of the ghosts, goes hand in hand with magic, represented by the hocus-pocus with the stone. Again, certain celebrated ghosts are invoked to promote the growth of taro and yams. Thus to ensure a good crop of taro, the suppliant will hold a bud of taro in his hand and pray, "O Mrs. Zewanong, may my taro leaves unfold till they are as broad as the petticoat which covers thy loins!" When they are planting yams, they pray to two ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... her; the scenes in which she is brought to shame are scarcely real, living, moving, all the rest of it. But on the other hand is there anything better than Lovelace in the whole range of fiction? Take Lovelace in all or any of his moods—suppliant, intriguing, repentant, triumphant, above all triumphant—and find his parallel if you can. Where, you ask, did the little printer of Salisbury Court—who suggests to Mr. Stephen 'a plump white mouse in a wig'—where ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... came humbly crawling up to receive the morsel. He then put in a number of leafy boughs, under which it crawled and went to sleep. The next day it was evidently tamer, and more accustomed to the sight of human beings, and after this, the moment he appeared, it came towards him in a suppliant manner to receive its food. In less than a week, it was perfectly tame, and before a month was over, followed him about like a dog, while it became on perfectly friendly terms with the rest of the animals. At first it evidently stood in awe of Bruin, conscious that the bear had the ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... well to pray for peace! With suppliant palms outstretched to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow. Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating flocks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... wisely do we call her Mother—she Who from her liberal breath breathes sustenance To nations; a majestic charity! No marble symbol cold, in suppliant glance Deceitful smiling; strenuous her advance, Yet calm; while holy ardors, fancy-free, Direct her measured steps: in every chance Sedate—as Una 'neath the forest tree Encompassed by the lions. Why, alas! Must her perverse and thoughtless children turn From ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... Supreme and Highest Arts The Secrets of Immortality The Critic and his Material Dante the Living Guide The Limitations of Genius Wanted A New Background Without Frontiers The Poetry of Archaeology The Art of Archaeology Herod Suppliant The Tetrarch's Remorse The Tetrarch's Treasure Salome anticipates Dr. Strauss The Young King A Coronation The King of Spain A Bull Fight The Throne Room A Protected Country The Blackmailing of the Emperor Covent Garden A Letter from Miss Jane Percy ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... clouded maze of fate, Where wavering man, betray'd by venturous pride, To tread the dreary paths without a guide, As treacherous phantoms in the mist delude, Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good; 10 How rarely Reason guides the stubborn choice, Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice; How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress'd, When Vengeance listens to the fool's request; Fate wings with every wish the afflictive dart, Each gift of Nature, and each grace of Art, With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness elocution flows, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... it again: any one who might hereafter be found there was to be the slave of his captor. It must be known that the Lacedaemonians had an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that they should let go the suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth with their children and their wives, and being received by Athens from the hatred that she now felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at Naupactus, which she had lately taken ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... were really Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods. Into this much-disputed question I must not go farther, except to note that while Heinze is absolutely confident that Virgil never wrote these lines, the editor of the new Oxford text of Virgil is equally certain that he did. My opinion is of no value on such a point; ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... attachment. But when he now saw that the noblest and best of the city began to forsake their homes and property, and fly from all quarters to Sylla's camp, as to their haven, he likewise was desirous to go; not, however, as a fugitive, alone and with nothing to offer, but as a friend rather than a suppliant, in a way that would gain him honor, bringing help along with him, and at the head of a body of troops. Accordingly he solicited the Picentines for their assistance, who as cordially embraced his motion, and rejected the messengers sent from Carbo; insomuch that a certain ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... good gifts from Thy treasury flow; All good is assembled where Thou dost abide; To Thee, save my poverty, nought can I show, And of Thee all my poverty's wants are supplied; What choice have I save to Thy portal to go? If 'tis shut, to what other my steps can I guide? 'Fore whom as a suppliant low shall I bow, If Thy bounty to me, Thy poor slave, is denied? But, oh! though rebellious full often I grow, Thy bounty and kindness are not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... thinking as she ran, "Miss Lou too sick ter do anyting. I des got ter 'peal ter Miss Whately, er ole miss hab me whipped haf ter daith." When in response to a timid knock Mrs. Whately peered out of her niece's room she found a trembling suppliant with streaming eyes. Noiselessly shutting the door ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public action during fifteen years. Yet what was the gift with which he came before them as a suppliant, crawling to the footstool of their throne? A treatise De Principatibus; in other words, the celebrated Principe; which, misread it as Machiavelli's apologists may choose to do, or explain it as the rational historian is bound to do, yet carries venom ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... in the theatre of space, and that every consciousness is educating to read it and adore the perfect justification of the ways of God. The eternal immensity of the universe is the true Aula Regis in which God holds perpetual session, overlooking no suppliant, omitting no case. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... before his time the state of knowledge with regard to flying in Europe was demonstrated by an order granted by the King of Portugal to Friar Lourenzo de Guzman, who claimed to have invented a flying machine capable of actual flight. The order stated that 'In order to encourage the suppliant to apply himself with zeal toward the improvement of the new machine, which is capable of producing the effects mentioned by him, I grant unto him the first vacant place in my College of Barcelos or Santarem, and the first professorship of mathematics in my University ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... than in Lancashire. Dr. Dee, however, disclaimed all dealings with "the black art" in his petition to the great "Solomon of the North," James I., which was couched in these words: "It has been affirmed that your majesty's suppliant was the conjurer belonging to the most honourable privy council of your majesty's predecessor, of famous memory, Queen Elizabeth; and that he is, or hath been, a caller or invocater of devils, or damned spirits; these slanders, which ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I saw 'em baith: th' ain doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom. And there's Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi' Betsy." There, indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back, paws up, throat exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown puppy, stood over her, his habitually evil expression intensified into a fiendish grin, as with wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze he waited for a movement as a pretext to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... He stretched out suppliant hands to her; there were tears now in his eyes. "Of your charity, Rosamund...." he was beginning, when at ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... Footnote 5: The suppliant has made a wax figure of Apepi, and, by sympathetic magic, imagines that by burning it he is destroying the power of the original. Such wax figures of the gods made for magical ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... myself, Shall I expel this poison in the blood; For whoso slew that king might have a mind To strike me too with his assassin hand. Therefore in righting him I serve myself. Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs, Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither The Theban commons. With the god's good help Success is sure; 'tis ruin if we fail. [Exeunt ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... broke in upon her suppliant. "Of course! Hal Surtaine! But father has been to see him and he won't promise a thing. I don't see what he's got ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... this woman, to hide in the woods for my own. I could feed and clothe her, deck her with necklaces of garnets from the rocks, and wreaths of the delicate sand-wort flower. She said she would rather make Paul a woodchopper than a suppliant, taking the constitutional oath. I could make him a hunter and a fisherman. Game, bass, trout, pickerel, grew for us in abundance. I saw this vision with a single eye; it looked so possible! All the crude imaginings of youth colored the spring woods with vivid beauty. My face betrayed me, and she ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... totally destroyed. It has followed the balance of power in Europe. It is not alone what shall be left nominally to the assassins that is theirs. Theirs is the whole empire of Spain in America. That stroke finishes all. I should be glad to see our suppliant negotiator in the act of putting his feather to the ear of the directory, to make it unclinch the fist; and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out of the iron gripe of robbery and ambition! It does not require much sagacity to discern that no ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... adored her dissolute brother and was always, on account of her marriages, first with Charles, duke of Alencon, [Sidenote: 1509] and then with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, [Sidenote: 1527] put in the position of a suppliant for his support. She carried on an assiduous correspondence with Briconnet as her spiritual director, being attracted first by him and then by Luther, chiefly, as it seems, through the wish to sample the novelty of their doctrines. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... mystical life as set forth by the interior of the cathedral, is carried out by the exterior, in the suppliant effect of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... your suppliant. Not even for a day will I remain under this roof, even if—which is doubtful—I should be suffered to do so. I put myself under the protection of your Holiness, until such time as I can set forth on my sad journey to Rome. At Surrentum I must ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the only captive who was never suppliant before him, and ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... river to the magic Achensee, up the Zillerthal, across the Schmerner Joch, even to the railway station at Steinach. And in the evenings after the late dinners in the upper hall where the sleepy hounds leaned against our chairs looking at us with suppliant eyes, in the evenings when the fire was dying away in the hooded fireplace in the library, stories. Stories, and legends, and fairy tales, while the stiff old portraits changed countenance constantly under the flickering firelight, and the sound of the drifting Inn came ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... secure the speedy triumph of the Reformation throughout all France,[1210] they even persuaded Chantonnay to abate somewhat of his insolence, and to ascribe his master's delay in satisfying Antoine's requests to Philip's belief that his suppliant was confident of being able to frighten the Spaniards into restitution.[1211] They represented to Antoine himself that his only chance of success lay in devotion to the Catholic faith. Joining arms with "those flagitious men" the Huguenots, he would arouse the hostility of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... him. Doubled up, small as a child, she gazed intently into the distance, at the man who was not there. She bowed to this image like a suppliant, and felt a divine reflection from it falling upon her—from the man who was not there, who was being deceived, from the offended man, the wounded man, from the master, from him who was everywhere except where they were, who occupied the ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... most tragic and the most characteristic proof of Cleopatra's complete conquest of Antony. Among his other crimes of obedience he sent by her orders and put to death the Princess Arsinoe, who, knowing well her danger, had taken refuge as a suppliant in the temple of Artemis ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... rights, His glory and majesty, His jealousy over the Church, His indignation against evil, His vindication of right! What those nights of prayer must have been to that boyish heart! The Holy Spirit came down upon the tender suppliant; the glory of the Lord shone round about him; the heavens bent and burst with blessings above his head; he made many an incursion into the upper world. What a wonderful life we may expect to arise out of a beginning like this! Look out for the boy ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... from cuffs to cutting and the effusion of blood,'—our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the rioters, with bell, book and candle (accensis candelis), at one stroke.[22] Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked, 'nothing on but their breeches, omnino nudi praeter femoralia, and prostrate themselves at ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... startled rush in pursuit of what had been, doubtless, only a whisper of their imaginations. He had said he would come for her—before daybreak—and she must be ready. Later, she could approach death with suppliant hands, but now she must be ready. Her life was not her own yet. It was her country's. Later, the shade of Lucius would beckon. Surely he would forgive her for having avenged him. But how had she reached her room? Had it been Calavius or the slaves who had ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... would have thrust her rudely from his path. But she arose from off her bended knee, Turning her fair face from him, so her hair Hid its too touching beauty from his sight; Clasping her suppliant hands upon her bosom She spoke out wildly, as one weary waiting For ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... acquired world-wide significance from the decision given in favour of the project of Christopher Columbus which followed as a consequence of the Christian victory. Though he nowhere states the fact, Martyr must at this time[2] have known the Genoese suppliant for royal patronage. Talavera, confessor to the Queen, was the friend and protector ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... showed that he was very young, took something from the bottom of the canoe, as we drew near, and kneeling down in the bow in a suppliant manner, held out his hand towards us. The commander, anxious not to alarm him, ordered the gig to pull round and back in quietly astern, while, standing up, he leaned forward to examine what the boy had got in his hand. Just at that moment another head rose above the gunwale of the canoe from ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... founded, which, without any avenger, of its own accord, without laws, practised both faith and rectitude. Punishment, and the fear {of it}, did not exist, and threatening decrees were not read upon the brazen {tables},[28] fixed up {to view}, nor {yet} did the suppliant multitude dread the countenance of its judge; but {all} were in safety without any avenger. The pine-tree, cut from its {native} mountains, had not yet descended to the flowing waves, that it might visit a foreign region; and mortals ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Mexicans, recognizing Cortes, who was cheering on his soldiers, resolved to sacrifice themselves in the hope of killing the man who had been the author of their country's calamities. They approached him in a suppliant attitude, as though they would ask for quarter, then seizing him round the waist they dragged him towards the battlements, over which they threw themselves, hoping to drag him over with them. But thanks to his exceptional strength and agility Cortes managed to escape ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... how to make use of the services of the nature-spirits when he requires them, but the ordinary magician can obtain their assistance only by processes either of invocation or evocation—that is, either by attracting their attention as a suppliant and making some kind of bargain with them, or by endeavouring to set in motion influences which would compel their obedience. Both methods are extremely undesirable, and the latter is also excessively dangerous, as the operator would arouse a determined hostility which might prove ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... whole of it, but only part. That is to say, she was the moon, and all the constellations were following her about, their hearts in flames for love of her, but she would not halt, she would not listen, for 'twas thought she loved another. 'Twas thought she loved a poor unworthy suppliant who was upon the earth, facing danger, death, and possible mutilation in the bloody field, waging relentless war against a heartless foe to save her from an all too early grave, and her city from destruction. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... height of his power, insultingly refused to grant. Admetus was deeply incensed, and eager for vengeance; but now Themistokles feared the fresh fury of his countrymen more than this old grudge of the king's, put himself at his mercy, and became a suppliant to Admetus in a novel and strange fashion; for he lay down at the hearth of Admetus, holding that prince's infant son, which is considered among the Molossians to be the most solemn manner of becoming a suppliant, and one which ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... better features and expression than the other, but their heads are formed on the same model; whence we may infer that if the suppliant is a servant or a slave of the same race with his master, the artificial moulding of the cranium was common to all classes. If, on the other hand, we assume that he is an enemy imploring mercy, we come to the conclusion that the singular custom ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton

... burns with a holy zeal, To behold his country free, And would sooner see her baptized in blood, Than to bend the suppliant knee; Must agree to follow her White-Cross flag, Where the storms of battle roll, A soldier—A SOLDIER!—with arms in his hands, And the love of the South in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... the education of his boys and to the composition of a great work; "The Picturesque History of China," the profits of which, combined with the savings resultant from an austere manner of living, allowed him to pay in twelve years' time to the legatees of the suppliant Jeanrenauds eleven hundred thousand francs, representing the value—time of Louis XIV.—of the property confiscated from their ancestors. This book was written, so to speak, in collaboration with Abbe Crozier, and its financial results aided greatly in comforting the declining years of a ruined ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... king should be Justice! Sire, I know I ask nothing Your Majesty may not grant! Sire, I have urged, entreated! But Your Majesty must excuse me when I say that I am no longer a suppliant.... Your Majesty understands me?... It is Juve who requests the signature of ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... 21 To suppliant Holland he vouchsafed a peace, Our once bold rival of the British main, Now tamely glad her unjust claim to cease, And buy our friendship with her ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... formed, when an important event took place, which afforded a favourable opportunity and pretext for laying the foundation of the Portuguese empire in Africa. Bemoy, a prince of the Jaloofs, arrived at Arguin, as a suppliant for foreign aid, in recovering his dominions from a more powerful competitor or usurper. He was received with open arms, and conveyed to Lisbon, where he experienced a brilliant reception, his visit being celebrated by all the festal ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... I wasn't at the end of my rope I'd come to you like this? Do you think I'm enjoying it?" He broke off and bit his lip, feeling that he had better subdue the rising anger in his voice. After all, he was the suppliant. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... of gold. Unforc'd by laws Strict rectitude and faith, spontaneous then Mankind inspir'd. No judge vindictive frown'd; Unknown alike were punishment and fear: No strict decrees on brazen plates were seen; Nor suppliant crowd, with trembling limbs low bent, Before their judges bow'd. Unknown was law, Yet safe were all. Unhewn from native hills, The pine-tree knew the seas not, nor had view'd Regions unknown, for man not yet had search'd Shores ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... dragged almost beneath a horse's hoofs, cast into a wagon with wrists bound together, carried in the rear of an army with the rest of the victor's spoils, and immured within Russian walls. She felt again on her lips the degradation of the first kiss of this man whose suppliant, pitiful ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... He not go with the suppliant? Why, in the act of granting, does He refuse? For the suppliant's sake. The whole force and beauty of the story come out yet more vividly if we take the contrast between it and the other narrative, which presents some points of similarity ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... at length to be approved by yourself, be willing to appear beautiful to God, desire to be in purity with your own pure self and with God. Then, when any such appearance visits you, Plato says, Have recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to the temples of the averting Deities. It is even sufficient if you resort to the society of noble and just men, and compare yourself with them, whether you find one who ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... "Hear me, ruler, whoever thou art, I approach thee much-besought. The deathless Gods revere the prayer of him who comes to them and asks for mercy, as I now come to thy stream. Pity, ruler, me thy suppliant." Certainly a lofty recognition of the true nature of deity; no wonder that the River stayed his current, smoothed the waves and made a calm before him. Such a view of the Gods reveals to us the inner depths of the Hero's character; it calls to mind that speech of Phoenix in the Iliad (Book Ninth) ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... the commanders that, with a little patience, the fort would surrender without firing a shot, as Toolajee was already in their hands and ready to treat. Alarmed at the great armament coming against him, and cowed by recent reverses, Toolajee had come as a suppliant into the Mahratta camp to try if, by finesse and chicanery, he might escape utter destruction, while, in Gheriah, he had left his brother-in-law with orders to defend it to the last. The Peishwa's officers, on their side, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... a picture of innocence, and drew from life the likeness of a child at prayer. The little suppliant was kneeling by his mother. The palms of his hands were reverently pressed together, and his mild blue eyes were upturned with the expression of devotion and peace. The portrait was much prized by the painter, who hung it up on his wall, and called ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... The anxious suppliant was gathering her forces to reply when the hall clock struck solemnly, bringing back disagreeably to the specialist's mind his impending social duty, and this was sufficient to turn the balance of his decision definitely against Seraphine. He ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... in this city for the gentle ways of love, for precious walks in shady alleys, the full moon sparkling on the water, while the suppliant pleads in vain. Rich, young, and beautiful, I have only to love, and love would become my sole occupation, my life; yet in the three months during which I have come and gone, eager and curious, nothing has appealed ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... asked the suppliant what offence she had been guilty of to bring down on herself a warrant ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... thrice blest the Roman Who sees Rome's brightest day, Who sees that long victorious pomp Wind down the Sacred Way, And through the bellowing Forum, And round the Suppliant's Grove, Up to the everlasting ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though I had resolved to seek out Maitre Jacques, still 'twas a hateful thing to enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I had paid for my breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for my dinner. I had bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have to tell how I had been flung under the coach-wheels. My pace slackened to a stop. I could not bring myself ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... to that of admiring him. One appears to display more critical acumen than the other, by showing that though we do not choose to take the trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius than the author. These suppliant prefacers are ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... and faced him. "Will you hear me, Father?" He used the ceremonial title without hesitation, and the Old One said in distress, "The son of Hastur need never speak as a suppliant to ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... the yellow leaf. Still were her round and plump arms bound with the shining bracelets, and her long and slender fingers adorned with the glittering rings. The sheaf of nodding grain was still an emblem of her power, and the shell and sceptre another. But she wore no more the suppliant air which at first distinguished her. Pride and haughtiness, and command and oppression, were now written on her face, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... imagination heated with enthusiasm, the expression seemed to alter from the hard outline, fashioned by the Greek painter; the eyes appeared to become animated, and to return with looks of compassion the suppliant entreaties of the votaress, and the mouth visibly arranged itself into a smile of inexpressible sweetness. It even seemed to her that the head made ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... burning words—words which, in the silence of the wood, frightened me because they carried with them an impression of something preternatural, something indefinably weird and compelling. He was no longer the humble suppliant of that morning in the park, spoke no more of his diffident hopes, his half-mystical aspirations, his incurable sense of sorrow. This time he did not beg and entreat. It was the voice of passion, full of audacity and virile power, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... his way to his private chamber, a young man stepped forward and offered a pretended petition, William being at all times of easy access for such an object. While he read the paper, the treacherous suppliant discharged a pistol at his head: the ball struck him under the left ear, and passed out at the right cheek. As he tottered and fell, the assassin drew a poniard to add suicide to the crime, but he was instantly put to ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... ponders some problem. Now, beholding his air of latent power and indomitable mastery, the richness of his habit, the luxury that surrounded him, it seemed in very truth that he was the great gentleman and I the merest poor suppliant for his bounty; whereupon I must needs contrast his case with mine and perceiving myself no better than I had been three weary years since, to wit: the same poor, destitute wretch, I fell into a black ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... this hour I was suppliant for these two brothers, And I said: Your land has need: Half-awakened and blindly we grope in the great world.... What strength may we take from our Past, What ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... time was fitting. Whatever he may have himself felt, the friends of Thomas believed that the troubles which had fallen upon the realm were a punishment for the sins of the king. A personal reconciliation with the martyr, to be obtained only as a suppliant at his tomb, was plainly what ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... amazement saw him lead the way through the poor at the gate; and advancing to the porch with a courteous bending of his head, he said in the soft Provencal—far more familiar than English to Adam's ears—"Hast room for another suppliant, mi Dona?" ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... legend appears in Olympus, but this belongs to the Odyssey, and to a Phoenician, not a Hellenic, circle of ideas. His Olympian assembly is, indeed, largely representative of human appetites, tastes, and passions; but in the government of the world it works as a body on behalf of justice, and the suppliant and the stranger are peculiarly objects of the care of Zeus. Accordingly, we find that the cause which is to triumph in the Trojan war is the just cause; that in the Odyssey the hero is led through suffering ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... to be under obligations to your friends, and it kills off those strong qualities which you naturally possess but which warp when you are catching up. The man who is catching up cringes instead of standing erect, he is suppliant instead of dominant. He is disturbed by little things, and in the meantime the catching up process is tearing down ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... to the cross, On which a dying Saviour hung, Bemoaned my sins with weeping eyes, Besought his grace with suppliant tongue. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... regard his instructions?" said the Lady Isabelle. "I am, I thank Heaven for it, no subject of his, and, as a suppliant, he has abused the confidence he induced me to repose in him. I would not dishonour this young gentleman by weighing his word for an instant against the injunctions of yonder ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... who was the suppliant, who felt a strange misgiving about this spirited girl with resolute eyes and poise of the head like a bird who would fly the next moment. And yet it was not the entreaty of starved and waiting love, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... while she trembled at the resolution which she read in his countenance of demanding as a soldier, and not as a suppliant, the restoration of Le Gardeur to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... make himself as civilized as possible in appearance, lest his war-worn guise should shock mamma and frighten baby into convulsions, he obeyed in silence, nay, even with propitiatory smiles and gestures. Ay, lay down your arms and bend the suppliant knee, sheathe your useless sword, and hush to soothing whisper the voice that thundered in command a week agone; hide away with noiseless hand the heavy boot and clinking spur; off with belt and buckle and scratching shoulder-strap, and don your ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... a little from the open fire where he sat with her, bolt upright, eager, forceful, exactly like a suppliant for a job he desperately needs, "you won't use it to set the men against ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... arrival of the pope. He hastened across the Alps in midwinter and appeared as an humble suppliant before the castle of Canossa, whither the pope had come on his way to Augsburg. For three days the German king appeared before the closed door, barefoot and in the coarse garments of a pilgrim and a penitent, and even then Gregory was induced only by the expostulations of his influential ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... world. It is only as I think sometimes of the story of our parents' wrongs that my hot blood seems to rise against them. They have been kind to us. I trow we need not fear to take such kindness as may be offered to us as strangers; but to come as suppliant kinsmen, humble and unknown, I neither can nor will. Let us keep our secret; let us carve out our own fortunes. A day shall come when we may stand forth before all the world as of the old line of De Brocas, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... suppliant knee to that goggle-eyed jim-jam Josh, I am grieved to know it. If such was the case, the friends of Confucius should keep the matter from me. I cannot believe that the great philosopher wallowed in the dust at the feet of such a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... expression and his pain compels him to rise and resume his allotted part with a mouth of acknowledging laughter. Humour, as a beautiful woman's defensive weapon, is probably the best that can be called in aid for the bringing of suppliant men to their senses. And so manageable are they when the idea of comedy and the chord of chivalry are made to vibrate, that they (supposing them of the impressionable race which is overpowered by Aphrodite's favourites) will be withdrawn from their great aims, and transformed into happy ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... the picture was merely in outline, but she finished the form and features of the suppliant in all save the expression, and this she meant to paint from his face whenever she was in the right mood and could bring matters to ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the temple. The archdeacon Pelagius [13] stood before him, with the Gospels in his hand. "O Lord, be merciful to your servant." "Pelagius," said Totila, with an insulting smile, "your pride now condescends to become a suppliant." "I am a suppliant," replied the prudent archdeacon; "God has now made us your subjects, and as your subjects, we are entitled to your clemency." At his humble prayer, the lives of the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and matrons was preserved inviolate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... hails Him to His face, Spurning the safe, ingratiant courtesy Of suing Him by thee; Ora pro me! Creature of God rather the sole than first; Knot of the cord Which binds together all and all unto their Lord; Suppliant Omnipotence; best to the worst; Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ And Egypt's brick-kilns, where the lost crowd plods, Blaspheming its false Gods; Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... I am at this hour a poor man, as I may in the next be an exile or a slave: I have ties to life as strong as ever were bound round the heart of man. I stand here a suppliant for the life of one whose loss would embitter mine! Yet, not for wealth unlimited, for the safety of my family, for the life of the noble victim that is now standing at the place of torture, dare I abandon, dare I think ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... dullness tell me, that there is 240 Guilt too enormous to be duly punished, Save by increase of guilt? The Powers of Evil Are jealous claimants. Guilt too hath its ordeal, And Hell its own probation!—Merciful Heaven, Rather than this, pour down upon thy suppliant 245 Disease, and agony, and comfortless want! O send us forth to wander on, unsheltered! Make our food bitter with despisd tears! Let viperous scorn hiss at us as we pass! Yea, let us sink down at our enemy's gate, 250 And beg forgiveness and a morsel ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... accosted by a poor woman, who, with a piteous tale, too likely to be true, entreated that she would visit her perishing family. Without hesitation she desired Margaret to return home and obtain such scanty provisions as remained, while she accompanied the suppliant. Margaret, having collected a small amount of food, hurried back to rejoin her mistress at the address given by the woman who had spoken to her, but no living beings were in the house; three corpses alone lay on the ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston

... is better than a half-way loyalty; there should be no if, followed by self-interest.... The seal of confederate nobles, opposed to some measures of Peter IV. of Aragon, 'represents the king sitting on his throne, with the confederates kneeling in a suppliant attitude, around, to denote their loyalty and unwillingness to offend. But in the back-ground, tents and lines of spears are discovered, as a hint of their ability and resolution to defend themselves.' ... This kind of allegiance no true ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... fiercely infamous a curse that North, pale with righteous rage, seemed prompted to strike the burly ruffian to the earth. For a moment, the two men faced each other, and then Frere, muttering threats of vengeance against each and all—convicts, gaolers, wife, and priest—flung the suppliant woman violently from him, and rushed from the room. She fell heavily against the wall, and as the chaplain raised her, he heard the hoof-strokes of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... Author of power, the Master of obedience persuades us to the precepts of virtue by His example." Hence Augustine says (Tract. civ in Joan.): "Our Lord in the form of a servant could have prayed in silence, if need be, but He wished to show Himself a suppliant of the Father, in such sort as to bear in mind that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... wrinkled cheeks. Her close cropped head was thrown back and her back was toward the windows over which no curtains had been drawn. In her gay frock, which firelight and lamplight touched to a brilliant flame color, she must have appeared to one beyond the panes like a suppliant child begging pardon ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... brains despise. You knew its worth, and made it early prize: And in its happy leisure sit and see The promises of more felicity: Two glorious nymphs,[53] of your own godlike line, Whose morning rays like noontide strike and shine: 30 Whom you to suppliant monarchs shall dispose, To bind your friends, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... rejoins the lawyer. He muses a moment. What devil is awakened in her now? This is no old-time pleading suppliant. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... that a respectable Presbyter, well recommended from America, hath arrived in London, seeking what it seems in the present state of affairs he cannot expect to receive in our Church. Surely, dear sir, the Scotch prelates, who are not shackled by any Erastian connexion, will not send this suppliant empty away. .... I scruple not to give it as my decided opinion that the king, some of his cabinet counsellors, all our bishops (except, peradventure, the Bishop of St. Asaph [Footnote: Dr. Jonathan Shipley.]), all the learned and respectable clergy of our Church, will at least secretly rejoice ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... very charming love antics. His circlings about the hen-bird; his numberless advances and retreats, and little soarings above her when his voice swells with importunate passion; his fluttering lapses back to earth, where he lies prone with outspread, tremulous wings, a suppliant at her feet, his languishing voice meanwhile dying down to lispings—all these apt and graceful motions seem to express the very sickness of the heart. But the melody during this emotional period ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... a suppliant before his godson, very different now from the stern man who had greeted him on his arrival. His face was pale, his hands shook, and there were beads of perspiration ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini



Words linked to "Suppliant" :   supplicate, imploring, besieger, postulant, beseeching, canvasser, solicitor, applicant, pleading, petitioner, supplicatory, applier



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