Sustain

səˈsteɪn

verb

to support, uphold, or endure

The word 'sustain' comes from the Latin word 'sustinere', which combines 'sub-' (from below) and 'tenere' (to hold), reflecting the idea of holding up or supporting something from below.

I’m dreaming of roast chicken.” “Dreams will not sustain you.

George R. R. Martin

A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Five

Not a siren any more but a scream, high and ululating, a scream that no human throat could make or sustain, surely the scream of a banshee or of some black Charon, come to take him across the river that separates the land of the living from that of the dead.

King, Stephen

The Stand

As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

“Life improves the capacity of the environment to sustain life,” his father said.

Herbert, Frank

Dune

You were — reckless — with the world some people — some very dear friends of mine and yours — sacrificed a huge amount to create and sustain.ALBUS: Yes, Professor.SCORPIUS: Yes, Professor.PROFESSOR McGONAGALL: Go on.

J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two

He was able with the money of the Church and of the people to sustain his armies, and by that long war to lay the foundation for the military skill which has since distinguished him.

Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince

Why could not I by that strong arm be slain, And lie by noble Hector on the plain, Or great Sarpedon, in those bloody fields Where Simoïs rolls the bodies and the shields Of heroes, whose dismember’d hands yet bear The dart aloft, and clench the pointed spear!” Thus while the pious prince his fate bewails, Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails, And rent the sheets; the raging billows rise, And mount the tossing vessels to the skies: Nor can the shiv’ring oars sustain the blow; The galley gives her side, and turns her prow; While those astern, descending down the steep, Thro’ gaping waves behold the boiling deep.

Virgil

The Aeneid

So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little snack of something to sustain him.

A. A. Milne

Winnie-the-Pooh

But one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah.

Herman Melville

Moby Dick

" Lady Rohanne gave him a shocked look, but could sustain it no more than half a heartbeat before it turned into a grin.

George R.R. Martin

The Tales of Dunk & Egg

If my brow be severe, it is because many misfortunes have clouded it; if my heart be petrified, it is that it might sustain the blows it has received.

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

If he had any doubts about the reception she would give him, they were set at rest the minute she looked up and saw him; for, dropping everything, she ran to him, exclaiming, in a tone of unmistakable love and longing— “O Laurie, Laurie, I knew you’d come to me!” I think everything was said and settled then; for, as they stood together quite silent for a moment, with the dark head bent down protectingly over the light one, Amy felt that no one could comfort and sustain her so well as Laurie, and Laurie decided that Amy was the only woman in the world who could fill Jo’s place, and make him happy.

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women

He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an effort; he swims.

Victor Hugo

Les Misérables

Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, “there being in truth,” as Evelyn says, “no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade.” “The earth,” he adds elsewhere, “especially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement.” Moreover, this being one of those “worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,” had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted “vital spirits” from the air.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

only that we enjoy each other and exhaust each other if it must be so;) From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to, The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking, From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it is,) From sex, from the warp and from the woof, From privacy, from frequent repinings alone, From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near, From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers through my hair and beard, From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom, From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess, From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood, From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in the night, From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms, From the cling of the trembling arm, From the bending curve and the clinch, From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing, From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave, (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,) From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews, From the night a moment I emerging flitting out, Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for, And you stalwart loins.

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass

I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus

But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

We must refill from the old well at Mudowwara that night to sustain ourselves so far as Rumm.

T. E. Lawrence

Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

Frank Herbert

Heretics of Dune

Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!” “I’ll bet you do!

Sinclair Lewis

Babbitt

This race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease; not only from their inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more vigorous neighbours.

Charles Darwin

The Origin of Species

For the first time in weeks he felt he was no longer groping through fogs of belief and unbelief, sparring with a partner whose body was too insubstantial to sustain blows.

Stephen King

'Salem's Lot

Consider whence each thing is come, and of what it consists, and into what it changes, and what kind of a thing it will be when it has changed, and that it will sustain no harm.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

The god who mounts the winged winds Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds, That high through fields of air his flight sustain O'er the wide earth, and o'er the boundless main: He grasps the wand that causes sleep to fly, Or in soft slumber seals the wakeful eye; Then shoots from heaven to high Pieria's steep, And stoops incumbent on the rolling deep.

Homer

The Odyssey

I’m dreaming of roast chicken.” “Dreams will not sustain you.

Martin, George, R. R.

A Dance With Dragons

Were it I thought death menaced would ensue This my attempt, I would sustain alone The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die Deserted, than oblige thee with a fact Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured Remarkably so late of thy so true, So faithful love unequalled; but I feel Far otherwise the event—not death, but life Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys, Taste so divine, that what of sweet before Hath touched my sense flat seems to this and harsh.

John Milton

Paradise Lost

But its population could never sustain a force that size.

Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay

I carry a better larder on my horse’s croup than a general takes with him when he goes on a march.” Sancho ate without requiring to be pressed, and in the dark bolted mouthfuls like the knots on a tether,555 and said he, “You are a proper trusty squire, one of the right sort, sumptuous and grand, as this banquet shows, which, if it has not come here by magic art, at any rate has the look of it; not like me, unlucky beggar, that have nothing more in my alforjas than a scrap of cheese, so hard that one might brain a giant with it, and, to keep it company, a few dozen carobs556 and as many more filberts and walnuts; thanks to the austerity of my master, and the idea he has and the rule he follows, that knights-errant must not live or sustain themselves on anything except dried fruits and the herbs of the field.” “By my faith, brother,” said he of the Grove, “my stomach is not made for thistles, or wild pears, or roots of the woods; let our masters do as they like, with their chivalry notions and laws, and eat what those enjoin; I carry my prog-basket and this bota hanging to the saddlebow, whatever they may say; and it is such an object of worship with me, and I love it so, that there is hardly a moment but I am kissing and embracing it over and over again;” and so saying he thrust it into Sancho’s hands, who raising it aloft pointed to his mouth, gazed at the stars for a quarter of an hour;557 and when he had done drinking let his head fall on one side, and giving a deep sigh, exclaimed, “Ah, whoreson rogue, how catholic it is!” “There, you see,” said he of the Grove, hearing Sancho’s exclamation, “how you have called this wine whoreson by way of praise.” “Well,” said Sancho, “I own it, and I grant it is no dishonour to call anyone whoreson when it is to be understood as praise.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote

He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights.

Heller, Joseph

Catch-22

Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign, which, by protecting the industry either of the whole people, or of the inhabitants of some particular place, enables them to pay so much more than its real value for the ground which they build their houses upon; or to make to its owner so much more than compensation for the loss which he might sustain by this use of it.

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations