Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Stifle" Quotes from Famous Books



... guided me—to burst asunder the bonds both of conventionality and of religion that might have restrained me, to make suspicion of some vague unseen danger stifle within my breast every tender thought of awakening love. But in my surge of excitement love and faith were alike forgotten. I ran from the walls, and without consulting anyone returned but a few minutes later with a coil of rope in my hands. To fasten this to one of the parapets, to tie a few ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... to snore the fist to stifle the shop to wake up the walls were whitewashed this is just what I ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... her—not yet. Not while the Lorrigan name—" What came before, what came after those incomplete phrases he would not permit his mind to formulate in words. But he could not shake off the effect of the dream, could not stifle altogether the impulse ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... had but small appreciation of this—of either their temporary safety, or the perils that menaced them. Suddenly the thick air seemed to stifle them. They could neither breathe nor see. The lamps had been lost when they were flung—like dice in a box—into ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... could have adequately filled up the outline. Miss Ferrier appears habitually in the light of a hard satirist, but there is always a fund of romance at the bottom of every true woman's heart who has tried to stifle and suppress that element more carefully and pertinaciously, and yet who has drawn, in spite of herself, more genuine tears than the authoress ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... screamed had not a hand been swiftly laid across her lips to stifle the sound. She tried to rise, but the shelf of rock beneath which she crouched prevented her. However, she struggled until an arm was passed firmly around her waist and a stern ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... and she had the most dreadful wave of homesickness roll over her. Then the tears came, hot, scalding tears that rolled down her cheeks in ever increasing number. She made no noise, lest she waken the other girls but the effort to stifle her sobs made her cry harder, and she buried her face in the rough worsted of the sofa pillow and wiped her eyes with ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... the reach of the means of salvation.' Thus reined in, Science was not likely to make much progress. Later on, the political and theological strife between the Church and civil governments, so powerfully depicted by Draper, must have done much to stifle investigation. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Judea. Others went on a pilgrimage from their natural to their spiritual home, to the "throne of the glory exalted from the beginning," Jer. xvii. 12. In vain was every thing which the kings of Israel did in order to stifle their indestructible longing. Every new event by which "the glory of Israel" manifested itself as such, kindled their ardour anew. But here also the great blessing and privilege, which the believers missed with sorrow, the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... so occupied in the endeavor to stifle their laughter that the lieutenant again took up the ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Robin, for whom the gentleman had first inquired, and they were both engaged in such deep and earnest conversation, that neither noticed the addition to the party, until the old woman had thrown her arms around her son's neck, so as almost to stifle him with her caresses, seeming to lose all sense of the stranger's presence in the fulness of joy at the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... when they saw Beauty dressed like a princess, and more beautiful than the dawn. Her caresses were ignored, and the jealousy which they could not stifle only grew worse when she told them how happy she was. Out into the garden went the envious pair, there to vent their spleen to ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... she found that he had had his breakfast earlier than usual and had gone to the mill. She also learned that he had eaten very little, and that he had sent a man into Vilray for something or other. Try as she would to stifle her anxiety, it obtruded itself, and she could eat no breakfast. She kept her eyes on the door and the window, watching for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... unfortunates whose daily round is but the measured clank of hateful chains; who eat, drink, sleep, live together, in a bondage worse than that of Chillon,—round whom the bright sun shines, the sweet flowers bloom, the soft breezes play,—and yet who stifle in the gloom of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... happiness we should enjoy in doing the kind action. He comes in some deep conviction, calling us to a new life. We feel that we ought to leave our frivolity, and live for God and eternity—live for what is real and permanent. But we stifle these convictions, and go back to our old lives, and so judge that we are not worthy to become the friends and fellow-workers of Jesus, and companions of the pure and good. The great feast is ready, and the invitation is sent to us, and we, with ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... praised him, and patted him on the back; told him that he was a brave fellow,—that he was beginning right, and that there was good stuff in him. And Rodney laughed, tickled by such praises, and drank what they offered, and tried to stifle his conscience and harden himself in sin. Yet often, when he was alone, did he shrink from himself, and writhe under the lashings of conscience; and the remembrance of home, and thoughts of his ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... with such tough matter, it must necessarilie binde and cleaue together, and so likewise the blacke clay, from whence most naturally proceedeth your best limestone, being mixt with white sand, doth also binde together and stifle the seede, if it be not preuented ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... was but a five minutes' run at the pace to which Marigold, time-worn master of crises of life and death, put the car. Betty held herself rigid, staring straight in front of her, and striving in vain to stifle horrible little sounds that would break through her ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... was but a short and sudden triumph of will over body: for his poor crooked legs began to trail and lag sadly. So turning sharp about, we struck for the hedge's shadow, and there pull'd him down in a dry ditch, and lay with a hand on his mouth to stifle his ejaculations, while we ourselves ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... whiter and whiter, Contracts tighter and tighter, Until I stifle with the will Long forged, now used (Though utterly strained)— O pounding heart, Baffled, confused, Heart panged, head singing, dizzily pained— To ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... lowest, the most senseless superstitions, I venerate them, I exalt—I glory in them! The ugliest, the most deformed, the most unreal of our gods, I adore them, and I bow down before their impossibility. [She kneels] Oh, I stifle in their petty narrow world, sad as a forest without birds! Air! Air! Singing! The sound of wings! ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf. Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils of the Moslem Hell had been turned loose to snatch and rave at them. Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a kind of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr. Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. Rosamund had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, no longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... economists may say about wealth being the reward of capacity, their own reward is exaggerated. The conscience of human solidarity begins to tell; and, although society life is so arranged as to stifle that feeling by thousands of artful means, it often gets the upper hand; and then they try to find an outcome for that deeply human need by giving their fortune, or their forces, to something which, in their opinion, will ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... and large tears rolled down her face, uniting with the tears of all the other mourners and purging her soul of all sorrows and memory of what had passed. But after a while those tears began to stream so freely and stifle her so that Janina quietly arose and left ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... Two! Three! In the chaos of space Rolls the earth to the hideous glee Of death! And so cramped is this place, I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three! Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles me! He has covered my mouth with ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... emancipation from every form of serfdom, you must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its joyous return; you must penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty." Then, and not till then, can you stifle the ennobling aspiration of the American Negro for the unabridged enjoyment of every right guaranteed under ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... replied Maurice, "to return to my life of indolence and supposed gayety. A snake might more easily crawl back into his cast-off skin. I have breathed this free, exhilarating, vitalizing atmosphere, and the convention-laden air of Paris would stifle me. I have written to my father and announced that I propose remaining in Charleston. That is not all: he forbade my studying law in Paris, because his sapient Breton neighbors would have been scandalized by a viscount's taking so sensible a step; but possibly I may ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... yet another page unfold, To glean fresh moral from the deeds of old? Ye busy spirits that pervade the air, And still with dark intents to earth repair; That goad the passions of the human breast, And bear the missives of Fate's stern behest— Say, stifle ye those thoughts that Heaven reveals— The tears of sympathy—the glow that steals O'er the young heart, or prompts soft pity's sigh— The prayer to snatch from harsh captivity The virtuous doom'd—teach but to praise—admire— Forbid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... some fifty miles, partly to save his money, partly because he felt the need of exercise, not to stifle thought, but to clear it, he left the coach, and betook himself to his feet. Alternately walking and riding, he found his strength increase as he went on; and his sorrow continued to be that of a cloudy summer day, nor was ever, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... relation had never been other than patient and nurse! It would have been better for both had we never been husband and wife!" And John Manning turned his face to the wall with a weary sigh; then he coughed harshly and raised his hand to his breast as though to stifle the burning within him. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... captain, was one. She made what haste she could to fill her oil pot, and returned to her kitchen, lighted her lamp, and taking a great kettle went back to the oil jar and filled it. Then she set the kettle on a large wood fire, and as soon as it boiled went and poured enough into every jar to stifle and destroy the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... affairs, is so much waste and extravagance. Not only does it bring in no practical return, but it works out in a precisely opposite direction. Schools and colleges that only serve to produce anomalous and unnatural social conditions, that stifle genius and talent, and that cause widespread misery among the unsuitably educated, must be reckoned ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... and fast conceptions of good and evil, of right and wrong—I what I am, a creature craving pleasure, joy, luxury, if possible, happiness wherever and whenever I can assure myself I have really found it. I wouldn't make a preacher's wife at all, I know. I'd stifle in that ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... grief of poor Louise, though, brave girl as she was, she strove to stifle her feelings, lest she should give pain to those she loved. A little later she sought Van Zwanenburg, and begged that he would restore Saturnin to favour, and consent to his marriage with Therese. She was successful in her mission of love, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... her face; her blood, racing through her veins, seemed to stifle her. They walked with her into the hall, but the air there was chilly, and the doctor was somewhat alarmed for his ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... be useful, and applied himself to his duty with perfect heartiness and good-temper; but luncheon and the depressing London atmosphere made him sleepy, and he had sometimes hard work to stifle his yawns, and to keep his eyes open, while Lady Mabel was deep in the entanglement of lines which soared to the seventh heaven of metaphysics. Unhappily Rorie knew hardly anything about metaphysics. He had never read Victor Cousin, or any of the great ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... must stifle A fruitless love. Recall your former virtue: The king who was thought dead will soon appear Before your eyes, Theseus has just arrived, Theseus is here. The people flock to see him With eager haste. I went by your command To find the prince, when with a thousand ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... that all Paris and all France had gone mad—that the whole nation was drunk with blood as with intoxicating wine, and wanted to stifle the voice of conscience in the horrible revelry ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... when coming unto his own; and having arrived at Whitehall, they knelt down in the matted gallery, when his majesty "was pleased to walk along," says MERCURIUS PUBLICUS, "and give everyone of them the honour to kiss his hand, which favour was so highly received by them, that they could no longer stifle their joy, but as his majesty was walking out (a thing thought unusual at court) they brake out into a ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... by-corners, which any well-clad person could avoid; it was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring to obtain authority from ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... her tears and tried to form a plan of action: "He evidently didn't put my advertisement in the paper, for I've looked in vain for it. I must go away where I shall never see Colonel Pinckney again. I'll stifle, throttle, this miserable love, and endeavor once more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... a professional sonnetteer although he is best known as a dramatist, made late in the second half of the sixteenth century an independent endeavour of like kind to stifle by means of parody the vogue of the vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a collection of three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a woman,' and he appropriately entitled them 'Contr' Amours' in distinction from 'Amours,' the term ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... rifle, And smite with spear and knife, Let no base cunning stifle Each lesson of your life: How won your gallant sires The country which ye keep? By soul, which still inspires The soil on which ye weep! Leap up! their spirit fires, And ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... assurance," she told him, "that what I have done is wholly right. Had I turned my back upon her I should have scorned myself.... That I should stop to ask if my act would injure the reputation of any movement never crossed my mind, nor will I allow such a fear to stifle my sympathies or tempt me to expose her to the cruel inhuman treatment of her own household. Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... which suddenly springs up with a thousand fragrant buds. Now it was impossible to stem it or to conceal it. She had wanted to suppress every germ, with her father's coldness and the day's dispassionately proud haughtiness she had been willing to stifle every impulse toward love, every longing for self avowal. Now she found her pride was dead and buried and her being within and ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... possesses them. Too horror-stricken to utter a sound, Gerald sprang at her, and seizing her with fearless hands, forced the poor struggling girl by main strength down on to the floor. No one near to help! No water at hand! Not so much as a rug or a shawl to throw over her and stifle the flames! Yes! there was the table-cover, heavy and thick, as if created for this very life-service. Gerald tore it off,—books, boxes, china cups, and glass vases crashing to the ground together,—and flinging it over Phebe, threw ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... thank heaven, I breathe freely once more. I have lost my dear husband, but I have escaped from that prison-house; and with his memory to keep me merciless, I am eager to wage war against those influences which are conspiring to fetter the free-born soul and stifle spontaneity. Luella Bailey must be elected, and these people be taught that foreign ideas may flourish in New York, but cannot ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... month the movements of the calf may often be observed in the right flank, nearly in front of the stifle, when the cow is drinking cold water. The sensation of cold on the side of the first stomach, which lies to the left and directly below the womb (Pl. I), stimulates the calf to active movements, which are detected on the sudden jerking outward of the abdominal wall as if from blows ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... Johnston heard him stifle an exclamation of impatience. As for the American, he was at once thrilled and fascinated by the awful sight below; he could now see beneath the overhanging mouth of the pit, and look far down into a boundless lake of molten matter that seemed as restless ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... especially two Things wherein our Union must carry us along together. We are to unite in our Endeavours to deliver our distressed Neighbours, from the horrible Annoyances and Molestations with which a dreadful Witchcraft is now persecuting of them. To have an hand in any thing, that may stifle or obstruct a Regular Detection of that Witchcraft, is what we may well with an holy fear avoid. Their Majesties good Subjects must not every day be torn to pieces by horrid Witches, and those bloody Felons, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... colonel—the pity is that it wasn't found out fourteen years ago. It is so much easier to pinch a baby's nose until it falls asleep than to stifle a young girl's shrieks and cries—then the baby would not have been missed—but the young girl will be ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... stifle ourselves at last if we had our own way. Never mind, Leonard, we make them go through quite as much ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Let us stifle all vain speculations; we need not to be told what righteousness is; we were born with the whole Law in our hearts. Let us do: let us act: let us down on our knees. And if, after all, we should be ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... creating the illusion of thirty; and everything she said and did was calculated to confirm this process of self-deception. She loathed old age. The very breath of an old person in the room in which she sat was enough to oppress and stifle her. It always struck her that the bitter smell of corpses was not far distant from the couch whereon they reclined. She wanted youth. Rightly or wrongly she thought she was entitled to the best, and who will deny that youth is the best? She was devotedly attached to young men. She would ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... for your sympathy—and for your confidence; and to show my appreciation of your kindness, I wish I could eat that dainty luncheon; but I think it would strangle me—I have such a ceaseless aching here, in my throat. I feel as if I should stifle." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... that for?" demanded the fallen one, scrambling to his knees. I heard a sound from the dingy's stern as if the young lady was trying to stifle her merriment. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... bandages, sir; only this." He held out a shirt belonging to the engineer; his eyes pleaded his question. Neville nodded, and Dan tore the shirt in strips. When he finished the task, strange to his clumsy hands, Larry had regained consciousness and lay trying pitifully to stifle his moans. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... gasps; she speaks in a loud, mannish voice, punctuated by explosions of hoarse laughter. But there still twinkles in her blood-shot blue eyes a youthful lust for life which hard usage has failed to stifle, a sense of humor mocking, but good-tempered. She wears a man's cap, double-breasted man's jacket, and a grimy, calico skirt. Her bare feet are encased in a man's brogans several sizes too large for her, which gives her a ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill

... "You will stifle me between you all," Harry said, after he had responded to the embraces. "Where are ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... life; become a substitute for the Creator, in his search, for happiness. As a consequence, the unregenerate man knows but "in part" respecting the primitive and constitutional necessities of his being. He is feeding them with a false and unhealthy food, and in this way manages to stifle for a season their true and deep cravings. But this cannot last forever. When a man dies and goes into eternity, he takes nothing with him but his character and his moral affinities. "We brought nothing into this world, and ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... "Oh! oh! oh!" he half sobbed, and, throwing himself again upon the ground, he buried his face in his hands, and lay gently rolling from side to side, trying to stifle the hysterical fit which had attacked him; for it was mingled with relief from what he had looked upon as certain death, anger with himself for making such a blunder, and ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... up at my first words, to congratulate her. As I dropped out the last three, with admirable presence of mind—"When in doubt, apply cake," said he hoarsely, cramming a large piece into his mouth to stifle ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... one thing, and sincerely to give it quite another, may be well imagined, and may well be left to be imagined. They both went through a terrible period of temptation, wherein they listened longingly to the seductive pleading of their hearts; but both emerged triumphant, resolved to stifle their mad fancy, to prefer good faith to mere inclination, and to avoid, at all costs, wounding one to whom they had sworn to be true. Thus far their steadfastness carried them, but not beyond. They could part from ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... encouragement—that he could make no reply, but, with a profound bow, retired hastily from her presence, went to his lodgings, and sat down with his elbows on the table, and his face buried in his large hands, the fingers of which appeared to be crushing in his forehead, as if to stifle the thoughts that burned there. After sitting thus for half an hour he suddenly rose, with his face somewhat paler, and his lips a little more firmly ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... as despair. Brigit sat quivering under the echo of Sara's last words: "You take what I call the hard view." Was it, then, such an easy matter to bury love in perpetual silence, to let nature yield to fate, to stifle every human craving? The mention of Robert's name and the news that he looked ill and careworn had stirred all the unshed tears in her heart; she could not think, she could not move, she could but realise that she had no right to be with him. And sorrow seemed her province. There, surely, she and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... presence of mind than a daughter could at the time have been supposed capable of exerting, discovered the instrument of his murder- -a sort of scarf, which had been drawn so tight round his throat, as to stifle his cries for assistance, in the first instance, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... the same steadfast, earnest look, which began to grow embarrassing, for it emphasized the consciousness which she could not stifle, that she alone ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... body,—nerve and artery, eye and ear, and all the admirable servitors of the soul, steadily bringing to that invisible matrix where it houses their costly nutriments, their sacred offices; while every part and act of experience, every gush of jubilance, every stifle of woe, all sweet pangs of love and pity, all high breathings of faith and resolve, contribute to the form and bloom it finally wears. Yet the more profound and necessary product of one's spirit it is, the more likely at last to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... one seemed to be moving about. Hubbard laid his hand on that of the girl, still resting on the table, and grasped it in burlesque alarm; she could scarcely stifle her mirth. He released her hand, and, reaching his chair with a theatrical stride, sat there cowering till the noises ceased. Then he began to speak soberly, in a low voice. He spoke of himself; but in application of a lecture ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... his face away and stared out over the river. The walls of the fort seemed to stifle him; but in truth his own breast ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Another face was bared to friend and foe. Scarce to his foes will generous judgment lean— Foes mean as merciless, and false as mean, Their poisoned pens, which even softening Death, Which hate should hush and stifle slander's breath, May not deprive of venom, prodding still The unresponsive corse they helped to kill, Is an ignoble sight. Turn, turn away! Mean hates pursue the MARMION of our day, A nobler foe, like DOUGLAS, well may rue ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... snap 'neath the stress of the noontide—those 35 sunbeams like swords! And I first played the tune all our sheep know as, one after one, So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40 Into eve and the blue far above ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Giovanni committed the murder; therefore Pellico gives to the deformed brother the power that history does not wholly accord. The dramatist would avoid the indelicacy he finds in the reading incident, recounting it only in a situation during which Francesca holds aloof in a wild effort to stifle her love. Throughout the play, there is this ruthless twisting, in a desire to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... sudden blow at the officer's face, levelled with so true an aim, that it stretched him at his length upon the ground. No terrors of impending vengeance, had they been a thousand times stronger than they were, could at this moment have availed to stifle the cry of triumphant pleasure—long, loud, and unfaltering— which indignant sympathy with the oppressed extorted from the crowd. The pain and humiliation of the blow, exalted into a maddening intensity by this popular shout of exultation, quickened the officer's rage into an apparent frenzy. With ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... called upon to worship such a god; to get upon our knees and tell him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love. We are asked to stifle every noble sentiment of the soul, and to trample under foot all the sweet charities of the heart. Because we refuse to stultify ourselves—refuse to become liars—we are denounced, hated, traduced and ostracized here, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... persons the complaint that the effort to follow your meaning is too great, and impairs both the pleasure and profit of listening to you. I myself am conscious that wonder and admiration of your talent is apt to absorb and stifle the properly spiritual influence, and when I read your sermons, I often pause so long on single sentences as to be fully aware that I could have got little good from hearing them. I know that no two men's nature is the same, and habit is a second nature. Do not imagine that I wish you ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... the Author," unnamed. I have never seen this first edition, which was "very curious and disgusting." Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talks of "the art and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, by certain booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, and corrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of personal satire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts of envy, rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... mathematics to play with horoscopes which they more than half believed might bite. There was just enough doubt as to whether any given wonder was a miracle to make it interesting; and at any moment the pall of superstition might stifle the flickering light of inquiry, as we feel was the case when ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... her face with her apron, and said the kitchen was enough to stifle her, proceeded to pursue her scrubbing and ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall

... words had brought his rage to a climax, he bounded from his seat, and, with haggard eyes, strode about the room for some seconds in all directions, as if he sought for some weapon, and uttered from time to time a hoarse cry, which he endeavored to stifle by thrusting his clinched fist against his mouth, whilst his jaws moved convulsively. It was the impotent rage of a wild beast, thirsting for blood. Yet, in all this, the young Indian preserved a great and savage beauty; it was evident that these ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... from others, than in the deficiency of strong affections. The chances are many against their existence; and if a woman be born to move in the haunts of the worldly, it were almost cruel to snatch her from that immersion in their follies which may serve to stifle the pangs of disappointed affection. For after all that can be said of the misery of its empty pursuits and corrupted tastes, the disappointments that end its petty passions, and the mortifications ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... said the chevalier; "I understand all you would say. You thank me in his name, and ask me to leave you: I obey-yes, madame, I am going; at the risk of my life I will prevent this meeting, I will stifle this fatal revelation. But grant me one last prayer-permit me to look forward to seeing you once more before I leave this city, to which I wish I had never come. But I shall quit it in a day or two, to-morrow perhaps—as soon as I ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... duties of his office. These duties did not consist with him in heaping up old papers to no advantage. He took personal cognizance of the projects which were submitted to him; he was the indefatigable promoter of all those which narrow-minded persons sought to stifle in their birth; we may include in this last class, the superb road from Grenoble to Turin by Mount Genevre, which the events of 1814 have so unfortunately interrupted, and especially the drainage of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... on the outside of a theatre is unquestionably necessary, and proper for the preservation of order; but that the public should not be at liberty to approve or condemn such a passage, or such an actor, is at once to stifle the expression of that general opinion which alone can produce good performers. The interior police of the theatre being at present almost entirely in the hands of the public themselves, it is, on that account, more justly ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... stooping over a prostrate figure, with his dagger raised, paused for a moment to look round on hearing the howl of his comrade, and as he did so Edgar's sword fell on his wrist with such force that hand and dagger both fell to the ground. The remaining ruffian, who was roughly endeavouring to stifle the shrieks of a young girl, seeing himself alone with two adversaries, also darted off and plunged into a narrow alley a ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... Could stifle down the gnawing pain, And say, "We still divide our life, She has the rest, and I the strife, And mine the loss, and hers the gain: My ill with bliss ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter

... that she had caused the box to be opened in such good company; for being before such witnesses, she rightly judged it was impossible to stifle this adventure; and, at the same time, there being no possibility of retaining any longer such a maid of honour, Miss Price had her valuables restored to her, with orders to go and finish her lamentations, or to console herself for the loss of her lover, in ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... swift, clean things that cleave the air To the swift, clean things that cleave the sea To the swift, clean things that brave and dare Forest and peak and prairie free, A cage to craze and stifle and stun And a fat man feeding a penny bun And a she-one giggling, "Ain't it grand!" As she drags a ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... will believe thee? My unsoil'd name, th' austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the State, Will so your accusation overweigh That you will stifle in your own report The ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... so easily supplied on all occasions of emergency. This prospect cannot fail to prove an additional motive with the government for the abolition of duties, which, if persevered in, will for ever stifle all commercial enterprize, and debar not only the colonists themselves, but the parent country also from the various important advantages, which I should presume it is now evident that an uncontrolled ability to prosecute these fisheries would infallibly ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... with her throat, which threatened to close altogether and stifle her voice. She opened the letter, turned to the last page, and found ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... child again," she cried, "as in the days Of that past when thou wast still my 'Father,' friend! Here is not my home, I stifle 'mid the crowd; For I love not flattery nor palace halls; But green woodlands, air, and ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman

... is sad. She is constituted to expect and need a happiness that cannot exist on earth. She must stifle such aspirations within her secret heart, and fit herself, as well as she can, for a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Weston stood wrapped in thought. Forgotten was the man lying in the bunk, for his mind was upon the two slowly wending their way to the lake. The room seemed to stifle him, so he went to the door and stood there, silent and alone. He was fighting the hardest battle of his life, much harder, in fact, than the one he had fought in his study the night he had first interviewed Reynolds. He knew that he was at the parting of the ways. That Glen had given her heart ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... as Carlyle imagines, because it "rejects the Faith proffered by the visiting angel"—a Protestant Spain is impossible—but because Spain seeks to stifle in the Netherlands, in Europe at large, that freedom which modern Europe had come to regard as dearer than life—freedom to worship God after the manner nearest to its heart. But disaster taught ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... man gasped; "that's—it's no good—I can't count. I've no head now. Thank you, missy! God bless you. I'll get something hot—something to stifle the pain." He struggled on to his knees, and Lilian Rosenberg helped him ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... people to be not only neutral in deed but "impartial in thought." Mr. Wilson has been severely criticised for this appeal. The more violent pro-Germans and the more violent pro-French and pro-British regarded it as a personal insult and an attempt on the part of the President to stifle what they were pleased to regard as ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... succeeding century were not without their brighter sides and were not those totally Dark Ages they have been represented by the enemies of the Church, nevertheless, seeds of evil passions, which in spite of her endeavors the Church had been unable completely to stifle, lingered in the hearts of those strong-limbed, strong-passioned Teutonic races which had succeeded to the tasks and responsibilities of pagan Rome. Those races did not have Rome's organizing power. By force, it is true, in a great ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... suspicious death of a prince, whose indulgence and liberality they alone had experienced; but the emergency of the occasion, the authority of their praefect, the reputation of Pertinax, and the clamors of the people, obliged them to stifle their secret discontents, to accept the donative promised by the new emperor, to swear allegiance to him, and with joyful acclamations and laurels in their hands to conduct him to the senate house, that the military consent might be ratified ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... At 7 A.M. Livy taken violently ill. Telephoned and Dr. Lambert was here in 1/2 hour. She could not breathe-was likely to stifle. Also she had severe palpitation. She believed she was dying. I also ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... this the apostle has in mind when saying: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." A Christian must not entertain wrath; he should instantly quench and stifle it. It is the part of the new man to control anger, that the devil may not move him from his new-found faith and make him lose what he has received. If he yields to these instigations of his flesh, he thereby returns to the error and condemnation in the old man and loses control of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... Loki had to stifle a laugh. Fancy the AEsir giving their fairest flower to such an ugly fellow as this! But he only said politely, "Ah, yes; you demand our Freia in exchange for the little hammer? It is a costly price, great Thrym. But I will be your friend in Asgard. If I have my way, you shall soon see ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... account. Ah, he has a false insinuating tongue. Well, sir, I will stifle my just resentment at my nephew's request. I will endeavour what I can to forget, but on proviso that you resign the contract with my ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... the State is our strength, used and abused by men like ourselves, no better than ourselves, often worse. We are not duped by them, and in times of peace we judge them fairly enough, but let a war come on, they are given carte blanche, they can appeal to the lowest instincts, stifle all control, suppress liberty and truth, destroy all humanity; they are masters, we must stand shoulder to shoulder to defend the honour and the mistakes of these Masacarilles arrayed in borrowed plumes. We are all answerable, do you say? Terrible net-work of words! ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... burning oil, blazing wood, and Greek fire. They fortify the wall with mattresses of lighted straw until it seems one sheet of flame. The tower approaches this barricade of fire, but the smoke and flame stifle the Crusaders. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... most opportunely, To tell you in a word my frank opinion. Not to sift out this scandal to the bottom, Suppose the worst for us—suppose Damis Acted the traitor, and accused you falsely; Should not a Christian pardon this offence, And stifle in his heart all wish for vengeance? Should you permit that, for your petty quarrel, A son be driven from his father's house? I tell you yet again, and tell you frankly, Everyone, high or low, is scandalised; ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... Motion, then the Obstruction of that Motion or a counter Motion must obstruct and check the Passion: And therefore an Historian and a Writer of Historical Plays, passing from Events of one nature to Events of another nature without a due Preparation, must of necessity stifle and confound one Passion by another. The second Reason why the Fiction of a Fable pleases us more than an Historical Relation can do, is, because in an Historical Relation we seldom are acquainted with the true Causes of Events, whereas ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... her throat, which threatened to close altogether and stifle her voice. She opened the letter, turned to the last page, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... M. de Vermondans became angry and humiliated at suffering his impatience to become manifest, and forbade Ireneus or La Vendee to be mentioned. He could not, however, stifle thought in his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... life into harmony with their conscience, they try by every means to stifle its voice. But it is in darkness that the light begins to shine, and so the light is ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... figure contrasting with his brother's aspect of Bohemian carelessness and jollity, whilst Bridget, adorned in striking colours, would have passed for anything you like but a legitimate and devoted spouse. Once again did Piers stifle his conscience in face of the exhilarating bottle; indeed, he drank deliberately to drown his troubles, and before the second course had already to some ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... my love! Let only life be given, And choking griefs that stifle now, will flee As darkness from the mountain-cave is driven By ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... most dreadful wave of homesickness roll over her. Then the tears came, hot, scalding tears that rolled down her cheeks in ever increasing number. She made no noise, lest she waken the other girls but the effort to stifle her sobs made her cry harder, and she buried her face in the rough worsted of the sofa pillow and wiped her eyes with the ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... subsequent kindness, accompanied by an exhibition of sincere sorrow, you will cease to look upon him as your enemy; but where the hatred is such that, while feeling you cannot, on a sober examination of your heart, account for it, there is little hope that you will ever be able to stifle the enmity that you entertain against him. This, however, in politics and religion, is what is frequently designated as principle—a word on which men, possessing higher and greater advantages than the poor ignorant peasantry of Ireland, pride themselves. In sects and parties, we may mark its effects ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... with doubt, whether the communion of a crime, such as they two were jointly stained with, ought not to stifle all the instinctive motions of their hearts, impelling them one towards the other. Miriam, on the other hand, remorsefully questioned with herself whether the misery, already accruing from her influence, should not warn ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be that Berenger was only two miles—only half an hour's walk form Eustacie? The bound his heart gave as he touched the shore seemed to stifle him. He could not believe it. Yet he knew how fully he had believed it, the next moment, when he listened to what the fishermen were saying to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... difficult to overestimate, and I believe that its introduction into the school curriculum, under the strictest supervision, will be of extraordinary benefit. The movement, in its present chaotic condition, and in the hands of commercial management, is more likely to stifle than to awaken or stimulate the imagination, but the educational world is fully alive to the danger, and I am convinced that in the future of the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... faint upon the floor. One sister sat down on an ottoman, and covered her face, to try and realise it. That was Sophy. Helen threw herself on the sofa, and burying her head in the pillows, tried to stifle the screams and moans ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... hours, to old and young, Deep lessons to the heart. Yet, should not life be all a sigh! Good Snell, do thou a burthen try Shall change our sadness into joy: Such as thou trollest in blythe mood, On days of sunshine in the wood. Tell out thy heart withouten fear— For none shall stifle free thoughts here! But, bear the mead-cup, Edith sweet! We crave our stranger guest will greet All hearts, again, with minstrelsy, When Snell hath ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... to the curb that they could no longer dispense with it. A guard on the outside of a theatre is unquestionably necessary, and proper for the preservation of order; but that the public should not be at liberty to approve or condemn such a passage, or such an actor, is at once to stifle the expression of that general opinion which alone can produce good performers. The interior police of the theatre being at present almost entirely in the hands of the public themselves, it is, on that account, more justly observed and ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... a physical rage that held him now, a rage divided against itself—that longed to strike down, to crush, to stifle the thing it coveted. He had almost a fear ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... I am, and have always been! Why did I not stifle this wretched, overpowering attraction in the beginning?" Ay! but ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... grinned, chuckled, made a diabolical sound in attempting to whistle, and finally, unable to stifle his emotions, ran away to empty the feelings of his ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... there were no curtains to the bed, Herbert could see his mother's face as she knelt on a stool at the bedside. His father was turned away from him, and lay with his hand inside his wife's, and Emmeline was sitting on the foot of the bed, with her face between her hands, striving to stifle her sobs. "Here is Herbert now, dearest," said Lady Fitzgerald, with a low, soft voice, almost a whisper, yet clear enough to cause no effort in the hearing. "I knew that he would not be long." And Herbert, obeying the signal of his mother's eye, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... no time in presenting himself. He endeavoured to stifle all emotion—to conquer the impatience that possessed him; but he ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... bent. You cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... neatly as if it were a stocking—a finesse in providing the due amount of suffering for wrong-doers only brought to its height in Nero's living bonfires. But then, by making his suffering ridiculous, you enlist against the sufferer, some real, and all would-be manliness, and do much to stifle any false sentiment of compassion. The philosophic emperor, having no great taste for sport, and asserting here a personal scruple, had greatly changed all [240] that; had provided that nets should be spread ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... since the Barbara Freitchie days, and it's closer than I want to come. Besides, it's not just your laughter that I love. It's all of you: heart, mind, body: the whole lovely trinity of yourself. I mean to wage unabated war against all these forces that are trying to stifle your laughter into the pious smirk of the pharisee. There's more of what God wants the world to feel in one peal of your laughter than in all the psalms that this whole people ever whined through their noses. You're one of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... the charts and nodded. "Very well," he said, "so must it be," and Chris felt that his heartbeat would stifle him, it pounded so fast and thickly in his throat. All at once, looking up at the thoughtful face of his master, Chris longed to be able to stay safe at home. The imminent journey, so far and perhaps so ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... and Marjorie were best friends. What had she meant when she said, "Well, Marjorie, you and Constance deserve fair sophomore weather after last year's storms." The flame of jealousy, which Mary had sought to stifle after her first meeting with Constance, ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Gracchus, 'is in its nature melancholy, and how, my child, can you think to forget or stifle grief by waking the strings of your harp, whose tones, of all other instruments, are the most melancholy? And yet sometimes sadness seeks sadness, and finds in it its best relief. But now, Fausta? rather let sleep be your ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... to the Rehearsal." "Our most noble author, to manifest his just indignation and hatred of this fulsome new way of writing, used his utmost interest and endeavours to stifle it at its first appearance on the stage, by engaging all his friends to explode and run down these plays; especially the 'United Kingdoms,' which had like to have brought ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and after the grand horrors ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... was too proud to do or say anything to let the frowsy maid guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... his hand, and pointed to a place, but his eyes were misty, his voice faltered, broke down, and he was obliged to press his face down on the pillows to stifle his sobs. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... iuvantibus dis, et quae Patres censuerunt, vos iubete. Huius vobis sententiae non consul modo auctor est, sed etiam di immortales; qui mihi sacrificanti ... laeta omnia prosperaque portendere." Thus adjured, the people yielded; and as a reward, and to stifle any religio that might be troubling them, they are treated to a supplicatio of three days, including an "obsecratio circa omnia pulvinaria" for the happy result of the war; and once more, after the levy was over,—a heavy tax on the patience of the people,—the consul made vows ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... and a fellow jumped in instantly, and seizing hold of Zabel by the hose, dragged him along with him; but they were soon both carried into deep water—Zabel, however, was the uppermost, and held the other down tight to stifle him. Another seeing this, plunged in to rescue his companion, and from the bank dived down underneath Zabel, intending to seize him round the body; but it so happened that the fishermen of Stramehl had laid their nets close ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... on his friend, "that this child will vanquish every obstacle by the force of her will, will stifle all jealousies by the grace of her purity, and she already belongs to the public, while the fame of your name has simply served for a stepping-stone. You, in your wisdom, have been able to impart true wisdom to your child. But before the public has ever ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... kisses and tears. For thy love, I stand here like a child, and look up to this inanimate figure as I did when I was an acolyte. My intellect, O my mother, I would drown in my tears, and thy faith I would stifle with my kisses. Only thus is ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... beautiful because it shall come slowly. The great thing is to know that we are all—the wops and dagoes and the hombres and the guinnies—all gods! to know that in all of us burns that divine spark which environment can fan or stifle—that divine spark which makes us one with the infinite!" He threw his face upward as one who saw a vision and cried: "And America—our America that they think is so sordid, so crass, so debauched with ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... sunlight to stand in and the living air to drink, she might find the life before her in truth as little of a burden as it seemed this morning But the days would again be wrapped in nether fumes, the foul air would stifle her, her blood would go stagnant, her eyes would weep with the desolate rain. Why should Gilbert remain in England? Were there no countries where the sun shone that would give a man and a woman toil whereby to support themselves? Luke Ackroyd had spoken of going ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... room just in time to stifle a laugh, as she saw Mrs. Nichols stoop down to examine the hearth-rug, wondering "how much ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... "I understand all you would say. You thank me in his name, and ask me to leave you: I obey-yes, madame, I am going; at the risk of my life I will prevent this meeting, I will stifle this fatal revelation. But grant me one last prayer-permit me to look forward to seeing you once more before I leave this city, to which I wish I had never come. But I shall quit it in a day or two, to-morrow ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... was solid, and she knew that her future would be safe in his hands. The past was past, and every day took her farther from it. Yet very deep down in her soul there still lurked the memory of that past. In the daytime she could put it from her, stifle it, crowd it out with a multitude of tasks; but at night in her dreams that memory would not always be denied. In her dreams the old vision returned—tender, mocking, elusive—a sunburnt face with eyes of vivid blue that looked into hers, smiling and confident with that confidence that is ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... be here soon," she murmured amiably; "I am rather tired of waiting." She affected to stifle a yawn. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... the heat so much in my life. The doctor says it's because of my condition—and last night, after Oliver went to sleep, I got up and sat by the window until daybreak. At first I was dreadfully frightened, and thought I was going to stifle—but poor Oliver had come home so tired that I made up my mind I wasn't going to wake him if I could possibly help it. This morning I didn't tell him a word about it, and he hasn't the least idea that I didn't sleep soundly all night. I suppose that's why I feel so dragged and worn out ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... and nobody knew it, it was all very well; but if they were found out—ah! then was the time to be sorry! Dotty's conscience had been much better educated than theirs: it gave her plenty of warning, which she would not heed, and tried to stifle by talking. ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... upon the handle. He was white to the lips, his whole frame was shaking with the effort of intense repression. He kept silence, till only a flutter of her cloak was to be seen in the doorway. And then the cry which he had tried so hard to stifle broke from ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to prevent the rolling of the ship turning this kind of cage into a rat-trap. The little grating, of which D'Artagnan had spoken to the king, like the visor of a helmet, was placed opposite to the man's face. It was so constructed that, at the least cry, a sudden pressure would stifle that cry, and, if necessary, him who had uttered ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... experienced in estimating the value of the expression which they have given to it. Elements of beauty were certainly, and perhaps are still, within it; but in proportion as we clear away the rubbish which encumbers it, the mass of glossaries necessary to interpret it fall in and bury it so as to stifle it afresh. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,—those useless accessories under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never been,—a child! I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too. Besides, that is part of ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... committing myself to this mysterious chamber, and I hoped to pass the night in slumber as sound as my thoughts were innocent. But I was fearfully disappointed. I cannot judge how long I had slept, when my bosom was oppressed by an unusual weight, which seemed at once to stifle my voice, stop the beating of my heart, and prevent me from drawing my breath; and when I looked up to discover the cause of this horrible suffocation, the form of the murdered British matron stood over my couch taller than ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... the people as many opportunities as possible to acquaint themselves with political affairs, and do not stifle the aspirations of the people or weaken their strength or damp their interest or crush their self-respect. Then within a few years we shall be rewarded with results. If, instead of doing all these things, we vainly blame the form of State, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on the bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit exactly. Scattered here and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... play of fate that the next passer was Marengo Todd, whipping his way to the fire behind a horse that had a bit of wire pinched over his nose to stifle his "whistling." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... reproduction of the reactions of the object of his interest. In an exactly opposite way the artificial conditions of the spectator at a play, which reinforce the vivid reproduction of ideas, and check action, stifle those emotions directed toward the players, the objective emotions of which we have spoken. The spectator is completely cut off from all possibilities of influence on events. Between his world and that across the footlights an inexpressible gulf is fixed. He cannot take an "attitude," ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... unassisted by the sense or the recollection of oppression or treachery to hurry the people into excesses. Excesses are never the offspring of speculative reason, are never the offspring of misrepresentation only, but of power endeavouring to stifle reason, and to traverse ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... hearing, a bill to revoke the commissions was passed unanimously by the governor and council, and by a majority of eleven in the Lower House, the vote standing 67 yeas to 56 nays. This attempt to stifle public opinion won a general acknowledgment that the minority were oppressed. The feeling of sympathy thus roused was increased by the death of Major Judd, who had been taken ill after his arrival in New Haven. His partisans ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... persuasions at last. "It has been very kind of you to see me, but I don't want to sit and talk and use your time any longer. I want to do something. I want to hammer myself against all this that pens women in. I feel that I shall stifle unless I can do something—and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... applause, proposed driving it through without debate; but New York hesitated to order the previous question. Then it asked permission to withdraw for consultation, and when it finally voted in the negative, deeming it unwise to stifle debate, it revealed the fact that its action was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... arrows, quarrels, javelins, fell upon the head of the column as it tried to face about and retreat, confusing it more and more. One arrow, shot by no common aim, went clean through William's shield, and pinned it to the mailed flesh. He could not stifle ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... for seamen in a situation, from which her navy in the East might at no very remote period be so easily supplied on all occasions of emergency. This prospect cannot fail to prove an additional motive with the government for the abolition of duties, which, if persevered in, will for ever stifle all commercial enterprize, and debar not only the colonists themselves, but the parent country also from the various important advantages, which I should presume it is now evident that an uncontrolled ability to prosecute ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... Miss Arthur, pretending to stifle a yawn, "why can't we all be out in this keen air and sunshine? If there were but snow ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... was disgusted. He was less versed in human nature than art, and did not recognize in the forced and obtrusive gayety the effort to stifle the voice of an aroused conscience. Even to her blunted sense of right it seemed a hateful and disgraceful truth that a stranger had helped her father towards manhood, an that she had destroyed the transient and salutary influence. Her complacency had been disturbed from the time ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... growing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least idea of." . ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... Do we not know that there is not this difference between our sexual needs and those of men? Let us tear down the old pretence. Do not instincts arise in us, too, that demand expression, free from all coercion of convention? And if we stifle them are we really the better—the more moral sex? I doubt this, as I have come to doubt so many of the lies that have been accepted as the ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... change in him, and judging of his integrity by her own, 'I was impatient,' said she, 'to hear the event of your conversation with the abbess; tell me therefore in a few words, for the bell rings to chapel, whether you have succeeded so far as to stifle all jealousies of me?' 'Yes, madam,' replied he, recovering himself as well as he could from his confusion, 'we may be easy for the future, as to that particular.'—'I long for the particulars of your discourse' resumed she, 'but cannot now stay to be informed; meet me in the garden after the sisterhood ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... of a cool million so near his clutches, and suddenly lose it, was more than the villain could endure calmly. He was frenzied. His rage at the girl slipping so cleverly, so audaciously, through his fingers knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to stifle the fierce exclamations that sprang to his lips of what he should do when he once ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... have me. As in this action he had no way transgressed the rules of decency, he could ill brook the finding her so much alarmed at it; and would have testified his resentment, had not the excess of his love, which is ever accompanied with an adequate share of respect, obliged him to stifle it. Well, Louisa, said he, looking earnestly upon her, ungenerously do you requite what I have done for you; but I, perhaps, may bring myself to other sentiments.—None, interrupted she, emboldened by the too great freedom she thought he had taken with her, can be so dreadful to me as ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... of doing all one can to please, without succeeding, but still offending by the very means designed to oblige. Being kept with such persons, in a most severe confinement, from morning till night, without ever daring to quit them is most difficult. I have found that great crosses overwhelm, and stifle all anger. Such a continual contrariety irritates and stirs up sourness in the heart. It has such strange effect, that it requires the utmost efforts of self-restraint, not to break out ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... ravish'd, it is their own choice: Why are they so wilful to struggle with men? If they would but lie quiet, and stifle their voice, No devil nor dean could ravish them then. Nor would there be need of a strong hempen cape Tied round the dean's ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... that loose but effective system of tactics, in which much was left to the individual, adopted by the French army just previous to the wars of the Revolution.) of Washington, of Nelson, and of Wellington, and aware that their strength would thus be doubled, McClellan and Pope did their best to stifle it; and in the higher ranks they succeeded. In the one case the generals were taught to wait for orders, in the other to anticipate them. In the one case, whether troops were supported or not depended on the word of the commanding general; in the other, every officer was taught ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... fanatical prophet who appeared during the moral blight which characterized the age of the Borgias, and Lucretia must frequently have recalled this man in whom her father, by the executioner's hand, sought to stifle the protestations of the faithful and upright against the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... men, the surrounding of all corn-tracts—and even then I doubt if your protection would be efficacious. You could send the stuff into the fields by a hundred methods. The only thing to do is to catch van Heerden and stifle the scheme ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... the coat I had on was a small piece of dirty rag that I had used some time before to clean a gun with. 'Put this in your mouth,' I whispered again, giving him the rag; 'and if I hear another sound you are a dead man.' I knew that that would stifle the clatter of his teeth. I must have looked as if I meant what I said, for he instantly obeyed me, and continued his journey ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... the sky, the sky, the open sky, For the home of a song-bird's heart! And why, and why, and for ever why, Do they stifle here in the mart: Cages of agony, rows on rows, Torture that only a wild thing knows: Is it nothing to you to see That head thrust out through the hopeless wire, And the tiny life, and the mad desire To be free, to be free, to be free? Oh, the sky, the sky, the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... women, the monks were preferred, and the treatment they received was not without its touches of grim humor. Their cowls were snatched off, and bandied about, their hats crushed over their ears, their veils stuffed in their mouths to stifle their outcries, their rosaries converted into scourges; and the laughter when a string of them passed to the doors was long and loud. They had pulled their monasteries down upon themselves. If the Emperor, then lying in the bloody alley of St. Romain, dead through their bigotry, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... 381. enforces the confiscation of the landed estates of the Begums of Oude, viii. 403. orders the seizure of their treasures, viii. 409. severities practised upon their ministers in the execution of those orders, viii. 414. endeavors to stifle an inquiry into his proceedings, viii. 448. corruptly abandons the Nabob of Furruckabad and his country to the oppressions of the Nabob of Oude, viii. 472. causes the destruction of the Rajah of Sahlone, viii. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... overpowering emotion? Her thoughts were undefined, but so painful, that she was glad—how glad when morning came. She compared her present with her former self, and the contrast was misery; but even as her ill-fated aunt had done, she summoned pride to stifle every feeding ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... Providence in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may molder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found that beats ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... no longer a nuisance existing merely in by-corners, which any well-clad person could avoid; it was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring to obtain authority from Mr. Prendergast, the non-resident rector, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... discussion of the "Evidences," we do indeed hold to be a beginning at the wrong end. At the same time, all of Professor Powell's opening remarks, in which he insinuates that the Church would bar, or would stifle discussion concerning the evidences of Religion, are obviously untrue. No scrutiny of Christian Miracles, however rigid, is stopped by the admonition that such narratives "ought to be held sacred, and exempt from the unhallowed criticism of human ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... with good stuff in them than this caution called wisdom, which so often creeps over us as we advance in years. Then it is so frequently the case that the precepts that most naturally flow from our lips are the negatives that stifle hope. "I can no longer afford convictions," said a man to me once, "I have come to limit myself to opinions; they can be held at less risk, and changed at less cost." And the disposition to regard both faith and hope in great things as subject to the same insecure and miserable tenure, is apt ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak, when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal, stronger than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him away, as on the former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... will in apathy, and stifle, they who can, The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly man; Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up, with interest or with ease, Consent to hear, with quiet pulse, of loathsome deeds like these. I first drew in New England's ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... mother—a great deal too grand for a quiet family dinner; and so are you,' she added, as she looked critically at her mother in the elaborately trimmed, plum-coloured silk dress, so rich that it seemed to prop up the delicate little woman and almost stifle her with its ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... were ashamed to tell me? Oh, never seek to conceal from your friend so important a secret. If your passion be unworthy, it is for the steady hand of friendship to pluck it forth; if honorable, none but an enemy would seek to stifle it. On nothing does the character and happiness so much depend as on the first affection of the heart. Were you caught by some fleeting and superficial charm—a bright eye, a blooming cheek, a soft voice, or a voluptuous form—I would warn you to beware; I would ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... Council, and General Gallieni Minister for War. It was not a "political crisis," but a union of the parties—a coalition, such as the British Government had already adopted. The change implied a distribution of responsibility among the leading men of all parties, a useful measure to stifle criticism and insure unanimity of purpose. M. Viviani reentered the new Cabinet as Minister of Justice. For the first time in the history of the French Republic a coalition ministry of all ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... into a laugh she was unable to stifle, and ran out of the room. Lavretsky also rose ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... could not fail to notice that Tommy was no longer at his ease in Everard's presence. The old careless camaraderie between them was gone, and she missed it at first vaguely, later with an uneasiness that she could not stifle. There was something in Tommy's attitude towards his friend that hurt her. She knew by instinct that the boy was not happy. She wondered at first if there could be some quarrel between them, but decided in face of Everard's unvarying ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... labors, and May took heart from Thanksgiving. The next day I peeped under the paper and the bugs were a solid phalanx. I reported at head-quarters, and they asked me if I killed the bugs before I put the paper down. I said no, I supposed it would stifle them,—in fact, I didn't think anything about it, but if I thought anything, that was what I thought. I wasn't pleased to find I had been cultivating the bugs and furnishing them with free lodgings. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... some straw and then digging, spoils the combs, as Wat does it; now I have got some puff-balls and sulphur to put into the hole, and set fire to them with a lucifer match, so as to stifle the wasps, and then dig them out ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the old place—the Peyrou—the soldiers beating their drums to stifle his voice while he prayed. His corpse was laid beside that of Alexandre Roussel, under the rampart of the fortress of Montpellier. Durand was the last of the preachers in France who had attended the synod ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... exercise of this holy and delightful duty. His most successful effort has been to keep the soul in that fatal lethargy, or death unto holiness, and consequently unto prayer, into which it is plunged by Adam's transgression. Bunyan has some striking illustrations of Satan's devices to stifle prayer, in his history of the Holy War. When the troops of Emmanuel besiege Mansoul, their great effort was to gain "eargate" as a chief entrance to Mansoul, and at that important gate there were placed, by order of Diabolous, "the Lord Will-be-will, who made one old Mr. Prejudice, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... remembered only that a horrible creature appeared by the bedside, after which all was blank. On the floor they found a hideous death mask, doubtless the cause of the screams which Mrs Catanach had sought to stifle with ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Greece. Even the worst criminals seek to give some specious colour to their villainy; and the condemned felon, who will face death without a tremor, shudders at the cry of execration which greets his appearance at the scaffold. So hard it is, even for the most depraved, to stifle the last embers of the moral sense. We cannot suppose, then, that an educated Athenian of the fifth century would publicly have claimed for his state the right of rapine and murder. For this is the line of argument pursued by the representative ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... make common cause with them. In time of peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of reinforcements. Thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* We possess very ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the words deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the sound of their utterance would stifle the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... way, sweet Clodius. I have too much regard for you to suffer you to make love at such disadvantage. You smell too much of Falernian at present. Would you stifle your mistress? By Hercules, you are fit to kiss nobody now, except old Piso, when he is tumbling home in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... those selected by the half of the people—by men alone—evoke force to stifle liberty, and forge restrictive laws to establish order by compression, woman, guided by fraternity, foreseeing incessant struggles, and in the hope of putting an end to them, makes an appeal to the laborer to found liberty and equality on fraternal ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... from the counter, from the railway coach, from the sick bed, an ever-steady stream of prayer is kept up. They may befoul our names, but they can not stop our praying. They may "cast us out as evil," and may deny us pulpit privileges, and take away our salaries, but prayer and praise they can not stifle nor hinder. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... was he at the sight that he leaned up against the wall with his hand to his throat to stifle his inclination to call out. His first thought was that the prostrate figure was that of some wounded or dying man, but as he watched it he saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall with the rapidity and noiselessness of a ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... on the other side. It was not till he had hastened past Paul that the power of movement returned to his limbs. To remain there longer was useless. He had heard enough—more than enough. But he was unable to think clearly in that tunnel. The air seemed to stifle him; he ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... word or action, we happen to raise the laughter of those about us, we cannot stifle it better than, by a brisk presence of mind, to join in the mirth of the company, and, if possible, anticipate the jests they are ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... and rebound; Life answering life across the vast profound, In full antiphony, by a common grace?— I think this sudden joyaunce, which illumes A child's mouth sleeping, unaware may run From some soul breaking new the bond of tombs: I think this passionate sigh, which, half begun, I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes Of God's calm angel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... I retreated to a table, trying to stifle our chuckles. JONL remained at the counter, talking about ice cream with the guy b.t.c., comparing Uncle Gaylord's to other ice cream shops and generally ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... knew that the richness of the vein he had now opened in the land would be certain to secure his cooperation in working it. He had the magnanimity, therefore,—for there is something magnanimous in being able to stifle the suggestions of a petty rivalry in obedience to sound policy,—to send at once to his ancient comrade, and invite him, with many assurances of friendship, to Caxamalca. Almagro, who was of a frank and careless nature, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... Walter's job. As a democratic young American who had always mingled in the best society Lovell's Harbor had to offer he had been free to give a hail to anybody he desired to greet. But at Surfside everything was different. He must stifle his natural impulses and curb his tongue, a role very hard for one who had had no previous experience with class distinctions. Difficult as it had been he had made up his mind to being excluded from the gayety that went on about ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... only relative, and have a right to know. Come out into the grounds, the air of the house would stifle me." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... in silence. Her heart was full. She went into the garden that she might relieve herself by weeping unseen. With one hand supporting her burning head, and the other pressed tightly against her heart, to stifle her sobs, she wandered on mechanically till she found herself by the side of the river. She felt quickly for her purse, intending to throw the rouble into the water, but as quickly thrust it back again, for she could not bear to part ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... to stifle the feelings of joy in his own bosom, offers his most cordial congratulations on the occasion to all the officers of every denomination, to all the troops of the United States in general, and in particular to those gallant and persevering ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... may. There is a joy in giving generously, just as there is in receiving generously. Yet, there are many moments in each man's life when no gift can numb the dull ache of the inevitable, when nothing, except getting away—somewhere, somehow, and immediately—can stifle the unspoken pain which comes to all of us and which in not every instance can we so easily cast off. Some men travel; some men go out into the world to lose their own trouble in administering to the trouble of other people; some find forgetfulness ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which others for mantuas would think fine enough: So the wit that is lavishly ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... of his body ached where the doubled gravity had pressed his flesh to the unyielding wood of the floor. His eyes were gummy and his mouth was filled with an indescribable taste that came off in chunks. Sitting up was an effort and he had to stifle a groan ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... these words, which came forth as if heaved from the inmost heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he endeavoured to stifle, he fell back into his chair, and fixed his eyes, which glared fearfully through the increasing darkness upon Linden, who stood high, erect, and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... consider the progress which the opinion of the injustice of this trade was making in the nation at large, as manifested by the petitions; which had almost obstructed the proceedings of the House by their perpetual introduction. It was impossible for them to stifle this great question. As for himself, he would renew his profession of last year, that he would never cease, but with life, to promote so glorious ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... is beautiful. We fight for freedom—not for the vanity of the world, not to have a fine conceit of ourselves, not to be as bad—or if we prefer to put it so, as big as our neighbours. The inspiration is drawn from a deeper element of our being. We stifle for self-development individually and as a nation. If we don't go forward we must go down. It is a matter of life and death; it is out soul's salvation. If the whole nation stand for it, we are happy; we shall be grandly victorious. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... work attract you less than formerly? Does it develop in you the purpose to be something more or stifle in you the regret to be something less? Is it a snare to idleness or a goad ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... you think so?" asked Blanch, endeavoring to stifle the emotion Chiquita's passionate ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... Of course she must marry. Since it had been plain to him that she would never listen to his own suit, this great-hearted and clear-brained man had done his best to stifle in himself all small or grasping impulses. But this fellow—with his inferior temper and morale—alack! why are the clever women ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... me die of despair? If I were capable of making a bad use of your secrets, I could have done so long ago, for I know them. In Heaven's name, do not dissimulate any longer, and tell me how it is possible to stifle the pangs of labour. Do you want more gold? Here it is." And he threw ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... name, which I had never before asked, for fear of giving uneasiness; for, as I added, I did not doubt she had observed in my behaviour, ever since I first saw her, a peculiar tenderness for her, and a sedulous concern not to offend, which had obliged me hitherto to stifle several questions I had to ask her whenever they would be agreeable to her. She then bid me begin; for as she was now my wife, whilst I was speaking it became her to be all attention, and to give me the utmost satisfaction she could in all I should require, as she herself should have so great an ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... reassure her. "I'll be keerful of him, marm. I promise ye, marm, the boy shan't be hurt. I'm a-goin' to stifle them bees, marm, and pull out all their stingers." And the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... fifth month the movements of the calf may often be observed in the right flank, nearly in front of the stifle, when the cow is drinking cold water. The sensation of cold on the side of the first stomach, which lies to the left and directly below the womb (Pl. I), stimulates the calf to active movements, which are detected ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... pressed upon me as a strong probability that I might never leave those deserts. "Well," thought I to myself, "a prairie makes quick and sharp work. Better to die here, in the saddle to the last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber, and a thousand times better than to drag out life, as many have done, in the helpless inaction of lingering disease." So, drawing the buffalo robe on which I sat over my ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... (while making believe to execute a march), and even to uttering aloud such encouraging nicknames and phrases as "bulldog" and "little fat capon." Then suddenly recollecting that he was not alone, he hastened to moderate his behaviour and endeavoured to stifle the endless flow of his good spirits; with the result that when Platon, mistaking certain sounds for utterances addressed to himself, inquired what his companion had said, the latter retained the presence of mind ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... his friend, "that this child will vanquish every obstacle by the force of her will, will stifle all jealousies by the grace of her purity, and she already belongs to the public, while the fame of your name has simply served for a stepping-stone. You, in your wisdom, have been able to impart true wisdom to your child. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the sound of their utterance would stifle the whisper ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... and as the street cars pass our homes, colored people should give the best pictures possible of themselves, if they can not of the houses in which they live. We are a poor people but we can be quiet, clean, becomingly and fittingly dressed. We must stifle the desire to be conspicuous unless it is to be conspicuous ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... witness the comparatively rare occurrence of an individual, surrounded with almost every description of temptation to stifle conviction, and, by his silence at least, to perpetuate a corruption in the Christian church, which for ages has been protected by legislative authority, popular favour, and implicit faith, not only nobly ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... rhetorical natures, outside the walls of Congress, the business of firing the people and stirring popular opinion and sympathy. He was set to do that portion of the work of abolition which was to be done in Congress, to encounter the mighty efforts which were made to stifle the great humanitarian cry in the halls of the national legislature. This was quite as much as one man was equal to; in fact, it is certain that no one then in public life except Mr. Adams could have done it effectually. So obvious is this that one cannot help wondering ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... brother's aspect of Bohemian carelessness and jollity, whilst Bridget, adorned in striking colours, would have passed for anything you like but a legitimate and devoted spouse. Once again did Piers stifle his conscience in face of the exhilarating bottle; indeed, he drank deliberately to drown his troubles, and before the second course had already ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... glitter went out of his eyes and in place there came a questioning, almost an appealing, look. His tense mouth relaxed. It was as if he was on the point of surrendering to some emotion which he was struggling to stifle. And Nathaniel, meeting those eyes, felt that somewhere within him had been struck a strange chord of sympathy, something that made this little old man more than a half-mad stranger to him, and involuntarily the grip ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... left her, as she rushed up-stairs to throw herself on her bed, and hide her face in the pillows to stifle the hysteric sobs that would force their way at last, after the rigid self-control of the whole day. How long she lay thus she could not tell. She heard no noise, though the housemaid came in to arrange the room. The affrighted girl stole out again on tip-toe, and went and told Mrs. Dixon ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... or ill. If he brag vulgarly before his strangers, away with him! by all means. He does not know how to play the game. He is a failure. But, if he convey subtly (and, therefore, successfully) the fine impression he wishes to convey, then you should stifle your wrath, and try to pick up a few hints. When I saw my fellow-passengers eyeing my hat-box, I did not, of course, say aloud to them, 'Yes, mine is a delightful life! Any amount of money, any amount of leisure! And, what's more, I know how to make the best use of them both!' ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... Let us try and forget our troubles. What is to be, will be. I am nothing, if not a fatalist." Grace forced herself to smile with her usual brightness, and the two girls entered the house arm in arm, each endeavoring, for the sake of the other to stifle her unhappiness. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... comfort the human heart can crave. Those who have heard him, as many have, relate such touching episodes of the war, cannot recall without emotion the quivering lip, the face gnarled and writhed to stifle the rising sob, and the patient, loving eyes swimming in tears, which mirrored the tender pity of his gentle and loving nature. He seemed a stranger to the harsher and stormier passions of man. Easily grieved, he seemed incapable of hate.... It is first among ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... me he would have said that I was an abnormal being, and he would have wanted to treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring treatment. All this mental malady was the simple result of the fact that we were living immorally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suffered, and, to stifle our sufferings, we tried abnormal means, which the doctors call the 'symptoms' of ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... its favour. The illusion was a fatal one. Alexander was still the accomplice of Napoleon. For the sake of the Danubian Principalities, Alexander was willing to hold central Europe in check while Napoleon crushed the Spaniards, and to stifle every bolder impulse in the simple King of Prussia. Napoleon himself dreaded the general explosion of Europe before Spain was conquered, and drew closer to his Russian ally. Difficulties that had been placed in the way of the Russian annexation of Roumania vanished. The Czar and the Emperor ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... instant Mistress Anne heard the footsteps once more, and saw full well a figure in dark cloak and hat which stepped quickly into the shade of a great tree. But more she saw—and clapped her hand upon her mouth to stifle the cry that would have otherwise risen in spite of her—that notwithstanding his fair locks were thrust out of sight beneath his hat, and he looked strange and almost uncomely, it was the face of Sir John Oxon, the moon, bursting through the ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... minutes sped, until a dim shape emerged from the opposite blackness. It came unheard, growing from nothing into something with ghostly subtlety. Iris, a prey to many emotions, managed to stifle the exclamation of alarm that rose unbidden. But Hozier read her distress ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... see how it is," impetuously interrupted Judith. "I am the one he sees fit to scorch with his withering tongue! Hetty, indeed! Poor Hetty!" she continued, her voice sinking into low, husky tones, that seemed nearly to stifle her in the utterance; "she is beyond and above his slanderous malice! Poor Hetty! If God has created her feeble-minded, the weakness lies altogether on the side of errors of which she seems to know nothing. The earth never held a purer being ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... seems—totters upon the edge of doom. Therefore the stoutest hand must seize the helm. Rome must be cleansed,—cleansed to the very roots; The sluggish we must waken from their slumber,— And crush to earth the power of these wretches Who sow their poison in the mind and stifle The slightest promise of a better life. Look you,—'tis civic freedom I would further,— The civic spirit that in former times Was regnant here. Friends, I shall conjure back The golden age, when Romans gladly gave Their lives ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... chair, and leaned shoulder and head against him. He put his left hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently; she caught it and held it in both of hers. And at the Quartette's tremendous climax she, scarcely trying to stifle a sob, pulled his hand down and hugged it fiercely, the heel of his hand pressing hard against her ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... least Sybaritic in his tastes, but he could not stifle a sigh of satisfaction at sinking so naturally into the unobtrusive little comforts which the ornamental life offers to its votaries. They rose up around him and pillowed him, and were grateful to the tired fibers of his being. His remoter past had enjoyed these things as ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... shaft was filled with smoke, but not that of an ordinary wood fire. Even this would have been sufficient to stifle them where they were; but the fumes now entering their nostrils were of a kind ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... zealously strive to fan it there. And I know why. The fiery ambition which consumes you will not suffer you to be the wife of a man who is second to any other. You refuse to call me by the name I owe to you. But if hatred and arrogance do not stifle in your breast the one feeling that still unites us—love for our people, the day will come when you will voluntarily approach and, unasked, by the free impulse of your heart, call ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... is, that it is of no use to attempt to stop heresy or schism by persecution, unless, perhaps, it be conducted upon the plan of direct warfare and massacre. You cannot preserve men in the faith by such means, though you may stifle for a while any open appearance of dissent. The experiment has now been tried, and it has failed; and that is by a great deal the best argument for the magistrate against a ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... was in his room, reading a newspaper by the light of a large candle; the place was a regular storehouse, cluttered with old secretaries, dilapidated chests, mantlepieces, clocks and sundry other items. It was close enough to stifle a person; it was impossible to breathe or to take a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... getting back to Willett," said Mount quietly. "As for me, my errand is done, and the strange, fishy smells of New York town stifle me. I'm stale and timid, and I like not the shape of the gallows yonder. My health requires the half-light of the woods, Mr. Renault, and the friendly shadows which lie at hand like rat-holes in a granary. I've drunk all the ale at the Bull's-Head—weak ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... about her cough and shrank from comment upon it. She did her best to stifle it and she herself spoke of it lightly; but to-day, when she came into the warm air of the office after the nightmare of a wait on the corner and the long, cold ride afterward, it set her coughing violently, so violently that it attracted the attention of her ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... brought him face to face with the old pictures, the old life. With them came haunting memories of a Philip Whittemore who had once lived, and who had died; and with these ghosts of the past there surged upon him the loneliness which seemed to crush and stifle him. Like one in a dream he was swept back. Over the black spruce at his feet, far into the gray, misty distances beyond, over forests and mountains and the vast, grim silences his vision reached out until he saw life as it had begun for him, and as he had lived it for a time. It had opened fair. ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... have put my mite into the treasury. The expectation of displeasing all classes has not been unaccompanied with pain. But it has been strongly impressed upon my mind that it was a duty to fulfil this task; and worldly considerations should never stifle the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... thousand men slain and six thousand prisoners. One thousand six hundred of the most distinguished of these prisoners, princes, nobles and chieftains, who had been the most conspicuous in the rebellion, were put to death. Nevertheless these severities did not stifle the insurrection; the Tartars, in banditti bands, even crossing the Volga, pillaging, massacring and burning with savage cruelty. For five years the war raged in Kezan, with every accompaniment of ferocity and misery. The country ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... see, were not thine own heart dark. Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, 5 Fear that—the spark self-kindled from within, Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare, Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air. Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds, And soon the ventilated spirit finds 10 Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd, Or worse than foe, an alienated friend, A rib of dry rot in thy ship's stout side, Think it God's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... as the Happy Family knew, that Luck had good and sufficient reasons for over-staying the time-limit he had given himself for the trip. But knowing that Luck was not to be blamed for his long absence did not lessen their impatience, nor did it stifle the call of the wide spaces nor the subtle influence of the winds that blew ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... you dream of?" inquired Hsi Jen, smiling, as she tried to stifle her blushes, "and whence ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... thanks, be grateful for. agradecido, -a thankful, grateful. agreste adj. wild, rude, rough. agrupar(se) cluster. agua f. water. aguardar await, expect. agudo, -a sharp, keen. ah! interj. ah! ahnco m. energy, determination. ahogar stifle, smother, drown. ahora adv. now, at present. airado, -a angry. aire m. air, atmosphere, wind, breeze, manner. airoso, -a airy, lively, easy, genteel, elegant, graceful. aislamiento m. isolation. ajar spoil, crumple, fade. ajeno, -a of another, ignorant, unaware; ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... fortune smiled; Nor light the task, so long with apt disguise To veil the cherished secret of my heart, And cheat my ever-jealous lord: more hard To stifle mighty nature's pleading voice, That, like a prisoned fire, forever strove To ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the heart. A burst of indignation and sorrow filled my eyes. I could scarcely stifle my emotions sufficiently to ask, "Of whom, sir, do you speak? Was the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... in a strange house, or show by ill-mannerly conduct the curiosity which a child, in unaccustomed surroundings, naturally feels. They can be taught so great a respect for the possessions of others that they would become able to stifle their curiosity, or express it only at a ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... power which gave him practically the entire guidance of the policy of the State. The chief wish of both Walpole and Fleuri was peace, above all in western Europe. France and England therefore continued to act together for that purpose, and though they could not entirely stifle every murmur, they were for several years successful in preventing outbreaks. But while the aims of the two ministers were thus agreed, the motives which inspired them were different. Walpole desired peace because of the still unsettled condition of the English ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... short of murder to stifle the threatening exposure. Sterner methods were necessary. All at once his eye spied a coil of rope in the corner and he sprang to it ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... convention. The Douglas men, greeting this resolution with tremendous applause, proposed driving it through without debate; but New York hesitated to order the previous question. Then it asked permission to withdraw for consultation, and when it finally voted in the negative, deeming it unwise to stifle debate, it revealed the fact that its action ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... look of heart-felt sympathy into the archduke's mournful face; he saw the tears filling John's large blue eyes; he saw that he firmly compressed his lips as if to stifle a cry of pain or rage, and that he clinched his hands in the agony of his despair. Animated by tender compassion, the general approached the archduke, who had sunk into a chair, and laid his hand gently on his shoulder. "Courage, courage!" he whispered; "nothing is ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... debated, and if not upon this, upon some other resolution. . . . I give notice that, under the rules of the Senate, we are able to be heard, and that we will be heard, in despite of the honorable Senator from Ohio, who appears to be so anxious to stifle debate." ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... the clergy are right in what they preach though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us. My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But let's finish with it while we are about it—my solution is that the State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage, subsidize, reward ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... non-Magyar peoples of the Dual Empire are in a state of suppressed revolt, held down by armies largely composed of their disaffected brethren. Perhaps the Balkan winter may delay the Allied advance, perhaps Germany may find enough troops to stifle Austrian disaffection, but the condition of the Hapsburg realm is at best a desperate one, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... farmhouses that dotted the little, winding road but none of them were people for whom she cared. And so as the days had come and gone, there had crept into the heart of the girl a loneliness that would not be forced down, a longing that she could not stifle, a dissatisfaction that grew ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... on fire in the deep shadow of the crimson-hearted passion-flowers that quivered on the intervening vines. The letter she held in her hand slipped from her fingers into the bushes all unheeded. She had but one thought—she must get away. The very air seemed to stifle her; her heart seemed numb—an icy band seemed pressing round it, and her poor forehead was burning hot. It did not matter much where she went, nobody loved her, nobody cared for her. As softly as she came, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... interview, and the two parties be found not within the prohibited degrees, yet if the proposed wife be disagreeable to the father, grandfather, &c. of the husband, the match is never concluded. On the other hand, ambition, avarice, and the other passions, so common with us, never stifle in the breasts of the fathers those dictates of nature, which make us desire to see ourselves perpetuated in our offspring, nor influence them to thwart their children, improperly, and much less to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... a suspense that was well nigh unendurable and when the filthy wings of a bat brushed her cheek again she had to bite the blood out of her lips to stifle an outcry. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... much more violent and personal than the first—at least, previous to the Speaker's leaving the chair. I left the House after that, and know not what was done. The evident disposition of the House is to stifle all further proceedings regarding the Queen, but it is equally the intention of the Opposition to pursue it; but the latter must ultimately give way, for the House will not hear them. The saints—Butterworth, Wilberforce, &c. &c.—are favourable ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... faint sob followed, while the little fellow rose with his teeth closely set and lips compressed, as he tried to stifle the cries that were struggling to escape, and then stood leaning against his nearest ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... she heard the news; she heard the heartfelt congratulations of Nyoda and the Winnebagos who would share in her glory. On the other hand she heard just five ugly words echoing in her ears. "You didn't win it honestly!" She tried to stifle the voice of science. "I knew it perfectly all the time," she said to herself, "and it only slipped my mind for an instant." "But you forgot," said the voice, "and if he hadn't told ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... till the Trees are become large, and their Branches spreading, cast such a Shade as to hinder the Weeds from coming up; and afterwards, the Leaves falling from the Trees, and covering the Earth, will contribute to stifle them intirely. When this troublesome Business of Weeding is ended, it will be sufficient to overlook them once a Month, and pluck up here and there those few Weeds that remain, and to carry them far into the Woods for fear ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... fain think them false for my own sake—mere old women's tales. But terrible thoughts will come into my mind; and though I seldom think of heaven, I often hear a voice from the shut up depths of my heart—a voice that I cannot stifle. Do not smile," said the man gloomily, "I am in no mood to be laughed at. Bad as I am, confound me if you are not ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... his bread. It would abolish property and family. It would march about with the heads of the proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts, silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the other—the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it would ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... satisfaction. Others begin to feel that, whatever economists may say about wealth being the reward of capacity, their own reward is exaggerated. The conscience of human solidarity begins to tell; and, although society life is so arranged as to stifle that feeling by thousands of artful means, it often gets the upper hand; and then they try to find an outcome for that deeply human need by giving their fortune, or their forces, to something which, in their opinion, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... in a powdered wig. It is somewhat curious to find how many great women have contracted just such marriages. Grim disillusionment following, true love holding nothing in store for them, they turn to books, politics or art, and endeavor to stifle their woman's nature with the husks ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... had not had the distraction of work. Activity was, as it had often been before, the tonic which restored her to comparative health. She had no money, and Fanny, despite Imlay's promises, was entirely dependent upon her. Her exertions to maintain herself and her child obliged her to stifle at least the expression of misery. One of her last outbursts of grief found utterance in a letter to Mr. Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who in France had been the witness of her happiness. Shortly after her final farewell to Imlay, she ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim From its silence and darkness is ever the same; The hope of that world whose existence is bliss May not stifle the tears of the mourners ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... again, to somebody, before she can borrow money to equip her armies. And will the country from whom she borrows money, who agrees to train and equip her armies, also have full military control over the affairs of China? Will that nation be given liberty to suppress her press, to stifle all opposition to whatever moves military necessity may dictate? It ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... repertoire, but to this was her command of language limited. She dressed perfectly, but she was a vulgar little soul; drank everything, from Bass' ale to rum-punch, and from cherry-brandy to absinthe; thought it the height of wit to stifle you with cayenne slid into your vanilla ice, and the climax of repartee to cram your hat full of peach stones and lobster shells; was thoroughly avaricious, thoroughly insatiate, thoroughly heartless, pillaged ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... absence of mind. The day after he joined the ship he sang out to a midshipman, 'Let my cab be brought round to the door.' The youngster stared. 'Do you hear? What did I say?' 'You desired to have your cab brought round to the door, sir,' answered the midshipman, trying to stifle his laughter. 'Ah! did I?' exclaimed the commander. 'Well, possibly. It's no easy matter to change one's mode of expression on a sudden. I mean, man my gig; I am going on shore.' The first day he attempted to carry on duty, he threw all the crew into convulsions by ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... long-projected motor should be perfected. But what was wealth when in that dismal pavilion, whose shutters were ever closed, those frightful shrieks continued, proclaiming some terrible drama, which all the stir and bustle of the prosperous works were unable to stifle? ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Windbag, thou unto our party grand Art but a convert new, and needs must learn That platforms are the Bible which we read, And to them we do blindly pin our faith. If one has doubts, he, like a Christian true, Must stifle them and reason throw aside, 'Tis thus we from the Sunny South do act, When facts run counter ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... corner—such a little bed!—and such a tearful little face looked up at us, as we stopped beside it! The twelve years old drummer boy was not singing now, but sobbing, with a manly effort all the while to stifle the distressful ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... breast, kissing it passionately again and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and, staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... not crying for them, Susan," said Owen, trying to stifle his tears, "I am crying for myself; I cannot help it. I know you love me, and you always have ever since I could remember—if you punished me it was kindly done—and now you are going away, and I do not know when I shall see you again. Mr Rowe is very kind and good, and so are ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations; I thought that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... opponents the Buddhist displays the calmest indifference, convinced that in its undiminished strength, his faith is firm and inexpugnable; his vigilance is only excited by the alarm of internal dissent, and all his passions are aroused to stifle ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... early morning, Came the swarth and naked "Sioux;"[CF] On the village, without warning, Fell the sudden, savage blow. Horrid yell and crack of rifle Mingle as the flames arise;— With the tomahawk they stifle Mothers' wails and children's cries. Men and women to the ferry Fly from many a blazing cot;— Brave and ready—grim and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... coat, and he straightway thinks he, too, will have a coat of that same make and pattern. Never does it occur to him to gauge the stature or character of the man who was first wearing the coat. There is yet a good deal of the monkey and the ape left in us. We seem to do our best to stifle our individuality, and reduce our souls to one sad dead level of accursed and wicked imitation. Some day we shall have our eyes opened, and then see that a man may break the whole of the Ten Commandments at once, and ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... world Hung in the balance of that fervent kiss. But still she held him in her clinging arms.... Then Parsifal, as if the kiss had stung His being into horror of new pain, Sprang up with anguish in his pallid face,— His hands held tight against his throbbing heart, As if to stifle some great agony,— And at the last he cried with voice of pain: "Amfortas! O Amfortas! O Amfortas! I know it now! The Spear-wound in thy side! It burns my heart! It sears my very soul! O grief and horror in my being's depth! O misery! O anguish beyond ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel

... source of every kind of evil; they render abortive the most useful enterprises, in like manner as the tares stifle the good grain; they have introduced, even into the hearts of families, dissension, confusion, and hatred. But the pontiff comprehends the grand design of his czar; God alone could ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... he cried suddenly, in a frenzy—"accept one's lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in oneself, giving up all claim to activity, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... who had bandied her name about for the past few weeks felt a dim sense of shame. Only a few out of all those present were unmoved: the judge, schooled to conceal all trace of emotion, nay, schooled to stifle it as it rose; the jury, too overcome by the duty thrust upon them to be just then alive to what was happening; the counsel on both sides, who, for different reasons, forbore as long as they could ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... sky, the open sky, For the home of a song-bird's heart! And why, and why, and for ever why, Do they stifle here in the mart: Cages of agony, rows on rows, Torture that only a wild thing knows: Is it nothing to you to see That head thrust out through the hopeless wire, And the tiny life, and the mad desire To be free, to be free, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... rapidly. The fatal hatred which she had sought to stifle gained a new vitality. Another woman—another woman actually here in London! So there was someone upon whom he did not look in that half-amused and half-compassionate manner. How she hated him! How she hated the woman to whom he had but a moment ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... Spaniards and Portuguese afforded another opening, English traders smuggled. The Spaniards, with monstrous fatuity, refused to make use of the superb waterways provided by the Parana and Paraguay, and endeavoured to stifle all trade. England's main struggle was with France. It was prolonged by her entanglement in European disputes and by political causes, by the want of co-operation among the English colonies and their jealousy of control by the home government. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... America. Emigration multiplies a nation. She should be represented in the growth of the New World by men who have a voice in its government. By this fair means she could repossess it instead of leaving it to foreigners, of all nations, who may drown and stifle sympathy for the mother land. It is now a fact that Irish emigrants and their children are in possession of ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... the second time in my life, I knew what pain was; that pain has steadily increased until this moment, when I speak with you for the last time. What matters now my father's position? You know all. I could, by the help of my love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I cannot stifle the voice of doubt. Is it not probable that my origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it, diminish it? That fear nothing has been able to quench in me. There, Jules, is the cause of my death. I cannot live fearing a word, a look,—a word you may never say, a look you may never ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... I am laid; Thy lips on mine like cupping glasses clasp; Let our tongues meet, and strive as they would sting: Crush out my wind with one straight-girting grasp, Stabs on my heart keep time while thou dost sing. Thy eyes like searing irons burn out mine; In thy fair tresses stifle me outright: Like Circe, change me to a loathsome swine, So I may live forever in thy sight. Into heaven's joys can none profoundly see, Except that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give in at last, and I tucked my book under my arm and walked back to the hospital, where at least I was with ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... of popular rhetoric, and a facility for catching at the current phrases, can set up as a teacher, however palpable to the initiated may be his ignorance. Scientific thought has perhaps as much to fear from the false prophets who take its name as from the open enemies who try to stifle its voice. I would rather emphasise another point, perhaps less generally remarked. The study has its idols as well as its market-place. Certain weaknesses are developed in the academical atmosphere as well as in the arenas of public ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... that which is already stirring in my breast, in my mind, in the marrow of my bones! I am already rich, as a star is rich in golden rays. And I will bear all, I will suffer all, because there is within me a joy which no one, which nothing can ever stifle! In this joy there is a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... and brightly-coloured glass, were a great contrast to the bare walls and scant necessaries of Schloss Adlerstein; but Ebbo was resolved not to expose himself by admiration, and did his best to stifle Friedel's exclamations of surprise and delight. Were not these citizens to suppose that everything was tenfold more costly at the baronial castle? And truly the boy deserved credit for the consideration for his mother, which made him merely reserved, while he felt like a ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had made the fatal mistake of anticipating the success in which he so firmly believed. Those notes—he dashed his hand before his face; suddenly the air of the room seemed to stifle him, courage and cunning had left him; there was only North to whom he could turn for a few hundreds with which to quiet Gilmore. Let him but escape the consequences of his folly this time and he promised himself he would retrench; he would live within his income, he would apply ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... Come inside," said she. "It's a gang. And I was feeling so peaceful and exalted. It will make a terrible atmosphere in the house. My Guru will be profoundly affected. An atmosphere where thieves have been will stifle him. He has often told me how he cannot stop in a house where there have been wicked emotions at play. I must keep it from him. I ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... Well, brother, I put it to thy own conscience. Does thee not, daily, in dealing with thy slaves, stifle thy emotions of piety, generosity, and love, and is it not easier to do this now than it was twenty years ago, when, with a heart full of tenderness and truth, thee left us for ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... rightfully take a deep interest may be here briefly considered. I refer to the existence of trusts and other huge aggregations of capital the object of which is to secure the monopoly of some particular branch of trade, industry, or commerce and to stifle wholesome competition. When these are defended, it is usually on the ground that though they increase profits they also reduce prices, and thus may benefit the public. It must be remembered, however, that a reduction of prices to the people is not one ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... that they could no longer dispense with it. A guard on the outside of a theatre is unquestionably necessary, and proper for the preservation of order; but that the public should not be at liberty to approve or condemn such a passage, or such an actor, is at once to stifle the expression of that general opinion which alone can produce good performers. The interior police of the theatre being at present almost entirely in the hands of the public themselves, it is, on that account, more justly observed ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... rapidly. But there is a useful look about the men, and the horses show condition after their long practice march just finished. Horses much used to go under saddle have well-developed quarters and strong stifle action. Fact is, nothing looks like a horse with a harness on. That is a job for mules, and these should have a labor organization ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... the advantage of Mansoul, and gave to their soldiers orders to be ready at the sound of the trumpet for war. The Lord Willbewill also, he took the charge of watching against the rebels within, and to do what he could to take them while without, or to stifle them within their caves, dens, and holes in the town-wall of Mansoul. And, to speak the truth of him, ever since he took penance for his fault, he has showed as much honesty and bravery of spirit as any he in Mansoul; for he took ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit exactly. Scattered here and there in ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... do you suppose she will?" cried Polly, unable to stifle an undefinable dread. She was running now on frightened feet, Jasper having hard work to keep up with her, and the two dashed through the little gate in the hedge where Phronsie was accustomed to let herself ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... it is their own choice: Why are they so wilful to struggle with men? If they would but lie quiet, and stifle their voice, No devil nor dean could ravish them then. Nor would there be need of a strong hempen cape Tied round the dean's neck for committing ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... thirst. The moment you have family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will destroy that desire; we'll make use of drunkenness, slander, spying; we'll make use of incredible corruption; we'll stifle every genius in its infancy. We'll reduce all to a common denominator! Complete equality! 'We've learned a trade, and we are honest men; we need nothing more,' that was an answer given by English working-men recently. Only the necessary is necessary, that's the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the importunate intellect kept insisting that feeling was deceptive, that health and youth and the freshness of the morning spoke in her, and not reason or experience. Feeling was left untouched nevertheless. It was impossible to stifle the voices that prophesied golden things. Life was all before her; she was full of vigour and longing and good will; the world stretched forth as a fair territory, with magical pathways leading up to dizzy mountain tops. With visions such ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... gold controul, Tho' the Heart urge a wiser choice, By force of habit lord it o'er the Soul, And stifle e'en Conviction's powerful voice. See, with sighs the Miser yield The promis'd joys of wood, and field; Against experienc'd disappointment, try With Gold to purchase that, which Gold ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... always as to-day, if there were always sunlight to stand in and the living air to drink, she might find the life before her in truth as little of a burden as it seemed this morning But the days would again be wrapped in nether fumes, the foul air would stifle her, her blood would go stagnant, her eyes would weep with the desolate rain. Why should Gilbert remain in England? Were there no countries where the sun shone that would give a man and a woman toil whereby to support themselves? ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... marquise was beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak, when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal, stronger than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him away, as on the former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... no difference of opinion upon subjects, however important—no long course of opposition, however contracted upon public principles—not even long inveterate habits of public opposition—are able so far to stifle the natural feelings of our hearts, so far to obscure our reason, as to prevent us from feeling as we ought—boundless gratitude for boundless merit. Neither can it pluck from our minds that admiration ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish, even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed, that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though not so fashionable ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... that I would do anything in my power to help him. But he runs away at the sight of me. In fact, they all run away from me. I must have the evil eye." He was shaking the cornucopia free of the last kernel of corn when he saw something which caused him to stifle an exclamation. "Dan," he said, "keep on feeding the doves. If I'm not back inside of ten minutes, return to the hotel and wait for me. No questions; ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... exclaimed; "at last we are in our own home! No uncongenial spirits about us—no one to molest or annoy—no unsympathetic souls to stifle our ardent passion for Nature and the work ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... The first but a rebus, the last but a dean. A dean's but a parson: and what is a rebus? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like hers no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff, Which others for mantuas would think fine enough: So the wit that is lavishly thrown away ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... forward, grinned, chuckled, made a diabolical sound in attempting to whistle, and finally, unable to stifle his emotions, ran away to empty the feelings of his heart ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... mistress, but the mere de famille. The alliance rises or sinks to one of interest and affection instead of being amorous or uxorious, whilst the underlying idea, "the more the merrier," especially in lands where free service is unknown, seems to stifle envy and jealousy. Everywhere, moreover, amongst polygamists, the husband is strictly forbidden by popular opinion to show preference for a favourite wife; if he do so, he is a ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... the oak to snore the fist to stifle the shop to wake up the walls were whitewashed this is just what I want ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... of it: she remembered only that a horrible creature appeared by the bedside, after which all was blank. On the floor they found a hideous death mask, doubtless the cause of the screams which Mrs Catanach had sought to stifle with the pillows ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... would half rise to go to the door and overpower that guard! If only he could get up to where the officers were enjoying themselves! Oh, to bring them down here and bind them in this loathsome atmosphere, feed them with this food, stifle them in the dark with closed port holes! His brain was fertile with thoughts of revenge. Then suddenly across his memory would flash the words: "If with all your heart ye seek Him," and he would reach out in longing: Oh, if he could find God, surely ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... finally alone upon the deck they rocked in each other's arms, striving to stifle their laughter. Meanwhile from the interior of the cabin came the feeble ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... elf, looking terribly frightened and shrinking further into his corner. "Me losa monk'. He come here but gona way. W'en Petri fin', he keel me." The thin face worked pathetically as the little fellow bravely tried to stifle the sobs which shook his feeble body; and Peace, with childish instinct, understood what the waif's queer, broken ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... silence for a few moments. Then Miss Patience, who had bravely tried to stifle her sobs, said with chattering teeth, "Perez, I'm ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... political condition of the several provinces of British North America when events occurred to stifle discontent and develop a broader patriotism on all sides. The War of 1812 was to prove the fidelity of the Canadian people to the British Crown and stimulate a new spirit of self-reliance among French ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... statements which have their sole origin in the haste of travellers or in the croaking of disappointed egotists. The government of the majority does not end in tyranny: cultivated Americans are not cowards: the best heads are not excluded from public life: free schools do not tend to stifle free thought, but infinitely to multiply it: individuality of character is not checked, but healthily trained, by political equality. Six months in this country would do more to disabuse Mr. Mill, in these matters, than years of mere reading; and it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... to her with my eyes: "I know you want to stifle your feelings;" and she understood me as if I had said it in so many words. And indeed, I am quite certain that she is as much absorbed in our mutual relation as I am. The thought of love independent of matrimony is already planted in her soul; it is there, and does not leave her for a moment. She ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... scarcely different in any material respect from the trembling with which the Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful creditor. It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views. When the Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that universality and elasticity which are ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... leaving her bare head exposed, her companions reached the spot, trying in vain to stifle their laughter. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... he had hastened past Paul that the power of movement returned to his limbs. To remain there longer was useless. He had heard enough—more than enough. But he was unable to think clearly in that tunnel. The air seemed to stifle him; he must ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... with kisses and embraces.—Where I witnessed this scene, there were eight or nine Children, and the eldest Daughter and the Mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the Father, and he clasped all his Children so tight to his breast—it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him.—I was very much affected.—The Shadow of the Bough and its appendages on the wall, and arching over on the Ceiling, made a pretty Picture—and then the raptures of the "very" little Ones, when at last the twigs and their needles began to take ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... for the want of love. There are more people die for the want of a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don't stifle it—let ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... their home comfortable. What ample scope they had! Many a fancy they had checked before it became a wish in the old quarters, they were so cramped there, though never in danger of suffocation, Heaven knows. Grandly the great arch lifted over the old moss-grown roof. But now they need stifle no fancy of all that should come to them; there was room in the house, and behind it,—yes, a strip of ground in the rear, and against the brick wall an apricot-tree and a grape-vine! Very Garden of Eden: was it big enough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... and nodded. "Very well," he said, "so must it be," and Chris felt that his heartbeat would stifle him, it pounded so fast and thickly in his throat. All at once, looking up at the thoughtful face of his master, Chris longed to be able to stay safe at home. The imminent journey, so far and perhaps so perilous, seemed suddenly too much for him. Mr. Wicker had taken the river charts and rolled ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... Bonanza king. Beyond the hills rose the slopes of the mountains, with their mighty redwoods, their dark untrodden aisles, their vast primeval silences. Magdalena was thankful that Nature had not ceased to be beautiful, and pressed her hands against her heart to stifle its demand; Nature commands union, and has no sympathy ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... religion, are ideations of the primitive mind and the mind of the child; reason is the product of mature thought. Schopenhauer remarked that, "The power of religious dogma when inculcated early is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... begins to rise in my heart, I know that a story is hovering in the offing. It does not always come safely to port. The daily routine of ordinary life kills off many a vagrant emotion. Or if daily humdrum occupation does not stifle it, perhaps this saturated solution of feeling does not happen to crystallize about any concrete fact, episode, word or phrase. In my own case, it is far more likely to seize on some slight trifle, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... was entirely in Harry's confidence; that is to say, Harry had gradually trained him to bear without flinching the situation as Harry represented it. He believed Harry had a hopeless romantic affection for Mrs. Romer Wyburn which he was trying to stifle, and that Miss Walmer being hopelessly in love with him, he was doing his best to marry her, partly, as he ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... free spirit, the political and speculative genius in man, chafes under those blind involutions and material bonds. Natural, beneficent, sacred, as in a sense they may be, they somehow oppress the intellect and, like a brooding mother, half stifle what they feed. Something drives the youth afield, into solitude, into alien friendships; only in the face of nature and an indifferent world can he become himself. Such a flight from home and all its pieties grows more urgent ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... took energetic military measures; but, while combining his plans of campaign with the insinuating charm of Italian diplomacy, he also set the Machiavelian springs of the police in movement, Fouche then being at its head. And none of these means were superfluous to stifle the fire of war then blaring in ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... hesitate to make common cause with them. In time of peace, the governor did his best to protect them against molestation on the part of the natives, and in return for this they rallied round him whenever the latter threatened to get out of hand, and helped him to stifle the revolt or hold it in check until the arrival of reinforcements. Thanks to their help, the empire was consolidated and maintained without too many violent outbreaks in regions far removed from the capital and beyond the immediate reach of the sovereign.* ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... knees. But pshaw! when such thoughts entered my heart and forced a tear or two from my eyes, I rebelled against myself. I said: 'My lad, when you earn but three thousand francs a year, and have an old and cherished father to support, it is your duty to stifle such desires, and remain a bachelor.' And yet I met a young girl. It is thirty years now since that time; well! just look at me, I am sure I am blushing as red as a tomato. Her name was Hortense. Who can tell what has become of her? She was beautiful and poor. Well, I was quite an ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... reproaching us on its dereliction. We recognise it as the sweetest and most troublesome of visitants; sweetest when the peace unspeakable sinks into our souls, most troublesome when we have been guilty of a great betrayal. So delicate is that voice that nothing is easier than to stifle it; so clear is it that no one by ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... of the Section, the newly appointed juryman received the congratulations of the President Olivier, who made him swear on the old high altar of the Barnabites, now altar of the fatherland, to stifle in his heart, in the sacred name of humanity, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... progress which the opinion of the injustice of this trade was making in the nation at large, as manifested by the petitions; which had almost obstructed the proceedings of the House by their perpetual introduction. It was impossible for them to stifle this great question. As for himself, he would renew his profession of last year, that he would never cease, but with life, to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... then let me die of despair? If I were capable of making a bad use of your secrets, I could have done so long ago, for I know them. In Heaven's name, do not dissimulate any longer, and tell me how it is possible to stifle the pangs of labour. Do you want more gold? Here it is." And he threw more Louis ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... on as long as they please, but I shall take no Notice of any Imaginary Adventures that do not happen while the Sun is on this Side of the Horizon. For which Reason I stifle Fritilla's Dream at Church last Sunday, who while the rest of the Audience were enjoying the Benefit of an excellent Discourse, was losing her Money and Jewels to a Gentleman at Play, till after a strange Run of ill Luck she was reduced to pawn three ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... destined to be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wrists—whatever good that is supposed to do—I knew that the ghost had been walking again, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the instinct of self-preservation. The wounded wolf, while his wounds are fresh, avoids the pack lest the pack destroy him. And so with Storri; he would hide until he could command that old-time manner of unclouded ease. He would stifle every surmise, deny every rumor if rumor blew about, of the blow he had received. A few days, and Storri would be himself again. As for immediate money, Storri would extort that from Mr. Harley, who, in his dull-head ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... race. The fierce Zegris suspected and learned my capture. They summoned the troops they delivered me, it is true. At that time had I reasoned with them, it would have been as drops upon a flame. They were bent on besieging thy palace, perhaps upon demanding thy abdication. I could not stifle their fury, but I could direct it. In the moment of passion, I led them from rebellion against our common king to victory against our common foe. That duty done, I come unscathed from the sword of the Christian ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to reassure her. "I'll be keerful of him, marm. I promise ye, marm, the boy shan't be hurt. I'm a-goin' to stifle them bees, marm, and pull out all their stingers." And the old ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... shuffling noises in the next room in the half-hour just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling, when he turned and apologized for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... was on the brink of a discovery. A lover had entered the garden, and the lighted candle was a signal to him. Norbert shuddered; the blood seemed to course through his veins like streams of molten fire, and the misty atmosphere that surrounded him appeared to stifle him. He ran across the street, forced the lock, and rushed wildly into ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... to deprive them of the advantage of bearing his name. He finished by telling me that he had found himself obliged to recognize his children to prevent slander attributing them to others, which would have injured the reputation of the three honest girls who bore them; and besides he could not stifle the voice of nature, which spoke so well on behalf of these little ones. His last words were, "There is no danger of the superior falling into the same fault, as he confines his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... not the heart to exult, especially as the war was now ended. I speak for myself—there was no event that tended so much to reconciliation and forgiveness as this immense slaughter of the English. We felt that this victory was too bloody not to stifle loud exultation. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... policy forced him to stifle his resentment, and he paid, mentally adding another item to the long list of his personal animosities to be wiped ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... hand-over-hand climb. She was made for success. What she attempted, she accomplished. That which she strove for, she won. She was too sure, too vital, too electric, for failure. No, Fanny Brandeis' struggle went on inside. And in trying to stifle it she came near making the blackest failure that a woman can make. In grubbing for the pot of gold she ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... own ends, we should probably make a botch of remodelling the universe. How much more then from the point of view of ends we cannot see! Wise men therefore regret as little as they can. But still some regrets are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle,—regrets for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery, for example, whether performed by others or by ourselves. Hardly any one can remain entirely optimistic after reading the confession of the murderer at Brockton the other day: how, to get rid of the wife whose continued ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... I can scarcely stifle my laughter. Of all our earthly goods, our neighbor has chosen for salvation a dented bandbox containing a moth-eaten bonnet from my mother's happier days! And I laugh not only from amusement but also from lightness of heart. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... stern-visaged officer had become just a human being longing for peace and home, revolting against laying waste the peace and homes of his fellowmen. But to what avail? All things would conspire to make him conform and stifle the revolt within. How could he escape from the toils in which he was held? Next morrow or next week he would again be in the ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... sociable man, he shunned the society of the neighbouring farmers, and they, on their side, resenting his outrageous conduct to his stepdaughter, studiously kept out of his way. Doggedly he set himself to do both the labours of the house and farm, and sought to stifle in hard work the memory of his wife's desertion of him, together with whatever twinges of remorse may have come to him when he thought of the revenge which he had taken upon her daughter. But as time went on he found it impossible ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... plunder false certificates of philosophy and imaginary titles of nobility. The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... even against a King. When thou hast made merry a thousand times thou shalt grow tired of making merry. At last thou shalt become weary of the chase, and still old age shall not come near to thee to stifle desires that have been too oft fulfilled; then, O King, thou shalt be a hunter yearning for the chase but with nought to pursue that hath not been oft overcome. Old age shall come not to bury thine ambitions in a time when there is nought for thee to aspire to any more. Experience ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... house. She filled her oil pot, went back to the kitchen, and, having lit her lamp, went again to the oil jar and filled a large kettle full of oil. When it boiled she went and poured enough oil into every jar to stifle and kill the robber inside. When this brave deed was done she went back to the kitchen, put out the fire and the lamp, and waited to ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... apparent ingratitude and stubbornness, in leaving the home of his uncle. Under the influence of his mother's teaching and prayers, his religious impressions were deepened, but the jests of his companions at school made him stifle his convictions, and continue his career of ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean

... condition, by reason of the natural rigidity of the parts, is not to be observed in the foot, although at times it must most certainly occur. Examples of such a condition are to be found in bog-spavin, in hygroma of the stifle, and sometimes in the fetlock. From a study of these, we know that they may be induced by frequent attacks of acute synovitis, from repeated slight injuries or bruises, or from strains to the ligaments of the joint; or that they may be chronic from ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... further conversation between Emily and Henry was not unperceived by the latter. He was satisfied that her uncle's close attendance at her side—so foreign to his former manner—was not without its purpose. Love, which he had in vain attempted to stifle, pressed more vigorously at his heart. In her recognition of him he had read that the sentiment in her heart was not abated by his absence. Her melancholy aspect had awakened a new interest in him. Disappointed in obtaining the interview he desired, he sought the hurricane deck to think of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... for me request the king to stifle every fickle feeling of affection, and say that I, to escape from birth and age and death, have entered the ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from those ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... are, and must be, in their own nature, it might be thought cruel to hasten them to the grave, could that be effected by any thing I have in my power to say, if they did not prevent the success, and stifle in the birth, works which have a just title to life, fame and immortality. Human genius is pretty much the same in all ages and nations, but its exertion, and its displaying itself to advantage, depend on times, accidents, and circumstances. There are, no doubt, writers ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... storm of sobbing, and he took her on his knee again. He knew that Halkett's children would come and stifle pain and, as he tried to think he would not hate them, her voice ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... that pain has steadily increased until this moment, when I speak with you for the last time. What matters now my father's position? You know all. I could, by the help of my love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I cannot stifle the voice of doubt. Is it not probable that my origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it, diminish it? That fear nothing has been able to quench in me. There, Jules, is the cause ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... made to have these festivities joyous. Especially should the wife subdue her emotion if the review of the years since her bona fide wedding day have seen the loss of beloved children. She must stifle her sad recollections for the sake of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... came to the performance, though there was perhaps no one in the audience more critical, none was more moved than Fleeming. The rest of us did not aspire so high. There were always five performances and weeks of busy rehearsal; and whether we came to sit and stifle as the prompter, to be the dumb (or rather the inarticulate) recipients of Carter's dog whip in the Taming of the Shrew, or, having earned our spurs, to lose one more illusion in a leading part, we were always sure at least of a long and an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... spare his friends an oath.— I know by that he's dead; and, by my soul, If this right hand would buy two hours' life, That I in all despite might rail at him, This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood Stifle the villain whose unstanched thirst York and young Rutland ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... the throne. Charles was engaged in the same designs; and it will not be pretended that Catherine was left without information of what was going forward, or that her own conduct was uninfluenced by policy. These intrigues it was positively necessary to stifle, and it was impossible to leave a pretext of which so powerful a use might be made in the hands of a party whose object was not only to secure to the princess her right to succeed her father, but to compel him by arms either to acknowledge it, or submit ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... are to feel perfectly at home; go anywhere you fancy—only—," Aunt Janice lowered her voice—"only pass quickly by the tower room at the extreme west wing—perhaps sometime—," the old lady paused, a sigh escaping her lips, that she forgot to stifle, but quickly remembering, brought back a bright smile, as she first led them in family prayers and then waved them off, bidding her young visitors ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay

... the florid profile till the last note, and for some seconds after. "He certainly does love music," she thought; and when the bell rang for the Elevation, she bowed her head and became aware of the Real Presence. When it rang a second time she felt life stifle in her. When it rang a third time she again became conscious of time and place. But the sensation of awe which the accomplishment of the mystery had inspired was dissipated in the tumult of a very hideous Agnus ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... away on the shelf above the row of pegs. Quite unthinkingly she had accepted this place as home; after the tiny cabin it did not seem very small; she was too mentally anxious to feel actual disadvantages. It was days before the cramping influence of four walls made her stifle and gasp ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... and I am not sure that the life is yet quite out of the kindly ridicule that was cast for a whole generation upon the people who left their comfortable houses in town to starve upon farm-board or stifle in the narrow rooms of mountain and seaside hotels. Yet such people were in the right, and their mockers were in the wrong, and their patient persistence in going out of town for the summer in the face of severe discouragements has multiplied indefinitely the kinds of summer resorts, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... chiefly by the purchase of the newspapers by the mandarins, with the result that at the beginning of 1910 there was said to be hardly an independent native daily newspaper left in China. The use of government funds to subsidize or to purchase newspapers and thus to stifle or mislead public opinion provoked strong protests from members of the Nanking provincial council at its first sitting in the autumn of 1909. The appropriation by the Shanghai Taot'ai of moneys belonging to the Huangpu conservancy fund for subsidizing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... did not invent the vault. And therefore, since there was a limit to the size of the stones which they were able to place flat like beams, they had recourse to this profusion of columns to support their stupendous ceilings. And thus it is that there seems to be a want of air, that one seems to stifle in the middle of their temples, dominated and obstructed as they are by the rigid presence of so many stones. And yet to-day you can see quite clearly in these temples, for, since the suspended rocks which ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... with an intimation that I should meet some very agreeable ladies. At my arrival, I found that the company consisted chiefly of females, who indeed did me the honour to rise, but quite disconcerted me in paying my respects, by their whispering each other, and appearing to stifle a laugh. When I was seated, the ladies grouped themselves up in a corner, and entered into a private cabal, seemingly to discourse upon points of great secrecy and importance, but ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... sharing Charles's affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a disconcerting ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court salons and corridors, as if ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... glance along the beds. It came from one in the corner—such a little bed!—and such a tearful little face looked up at us, as we stopped beside it! The twelve years old drummer boy was not singing now, but sobbing, with a manly effort all the while to stifle the distressful sounds ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... generation, was looked up to with reverence by a large and influential portion of the community, and whose memory is still warmly cherished by not a few. But truth is truth, and the simple fact of the matter is that Dr. Strachan did more to stifle freedom and retard progress in Upper Canada than any other man whose name figures in our history. His baneful influence made itself felt, directly or indirectly, in every one of the public offices. Wherever liberty of thought and expression, whether as ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... it took her back to that dreadful day. She could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that something more grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at least she had done what she could. If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before she ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... by the converted Augustin twenty-five years later, does not altogether stifle his words of admiration for the old capital of his country. One can see this patriotic admiration stirring between the lines. Carthage made a very strong impression on him. He gave it his heart and remained faithful to the end. His ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... on either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... the murder; therefore Pellico gives to the deformed brother the power that history does not wholly accord. The dramatist would avoid the indelicacy he finds in the reading incident, recounting it only in a situation during which Francesca holds aloof in a wild effort to stifle her love. Throughout the play, there is this ruthless twisting, in a desire to conceal wrong ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... believed in me—and told me so. I love my king, I love him well, but, oh— Once I wore poppies, red upon my brow, (A crown seems very heavy to me, now,) And once I wore, for all the world to see A gown of rags. (Now, velvets stifle me!) And once my hands (how soft they are!) were strong To toil for me. The days seem very long While I must sit in state above the land— I love my king... But does he understand? I was a beggar maid, I used to lie ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... a movement betrayed an instant's shrinking from her fate, as the cold heap of clay covered Beatrice to the very neck. Her face was still above ground, and the infuriated bigot, whose word was to save her or stifle her voice for ever, once more approached. He knelt beside her thrust his crucifix close to her still straining eyes, and in accents that faltered from rage, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... breath of disapproval; and yet with a little malleable heart in it compounded of the most primeval of affections." She turned over the pages; everywhere she came upon the same thing. Now the phrases were spun out fine, they were subtle, they seemed to cling round her and stifle her; now they were short and keen, and they cut like knives. "Women may be divided into three classes—the virtuous, the flirtuous, and the non-virtuous. The middle class is by far the largest. It shades off finely into the two extremes. Laura belonged to it." "The moon ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... would have screamed had not a hand been swiftly laid across her lips to stifle the sound. She tried to rise, but the shelf of rock beneath which she crouched prevented her. However, she struggled until an arm was passed firmly around her waist and a ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... cue from Marakinoff. If he had eliminated the episode of car and Moon Pool, he had good reason, I had no doubt; and I would be as cautious. And deep within me something cautioned me to say nothing of my quest; to stifle all thought of Throckmartin—something that warned, peremptorily, finally, as though it were a message ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... wanted to. There was no use beating about the bush. It was perfectly true. She was growing fonder of him, and more dependent on him, every day. And every other man she had ever known had been grateful for her least favor, while he—Her hurt pride seemed to stifle her. She was very close to tears. She was jerked back to composure by the happy ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... glad you're there. I'm very glad!" The voice was full and vibrant; it had a rare quality of resonance that even the telephone could not stifle. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... mind, but what are its effects on the heart? Are they equally propitious? Does it inspire benevolence, and awake tenderness; or does it, by a frequent repetition of wretched objects, blunt sensibility, and stifle the still small ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... but the satisfaction of witnessing the delivery of three precious tons of coal in the teeth of the authorities was more than we could forego. The butler was admitted to our confidence, and instructed to stifle any attempt to allay curiosity, by interpretation of the carman, that might originate in the servants' hall, and immediately after luncheon, which finished at three minutes to two, an O.P. was established by the side of one of the dining-room windows, in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... the inner room. A swift sensation of coming evil swept over her, and without taking thought of consequences, she slipped under the kitchen table, drawing the pail after her. The long fringe from the red cloth hung down about her in small, even tassels. The dining room door opened and she tried to stifle her swiftly coming breaths. Virginia could see a pair of legs, man's legs, and they weren't country legs either. Following them were the light ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... long pause, only broken by the woman's sobs, which she appeared endeavouring to stifle. At last the man rose, and in a tone so soft that it seemed literally like music, addressed her in the most endearing terms. She soon yielded to their persuasion, and replied to them with interest. "Spite of the stings of my remorse," she said, "as long as I lose not you, I will lose life, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr. Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. Rosamund had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, no longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to border on the reverse. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... grumbled Hank Butts, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn. "This may be what Mr. Seaton calls a vacation on full pay, ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... Morton had lost a beautiful infant about four months ago. It had not been more than six weeks old, but the mother's heart was still bleeding. Many months afterwards she told me that she often dreamed of her little Muriel—she had only been baptised the day before her death—and woke trying to stifle her sobs that she might not disturb her husband. I sat cogitating this imaginary picture of mine, and shuddering over the sanguinary details, until Mrs. Morton returned, and, to my embarrassment, her ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various

... women sat at the table with the men over in the Gap—why not here? Then her father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the kitten at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with never a word. Something began to stifle her, but she choked it down. There were the dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the pans and kettles to be cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were tired to the shoulders and her burned hand quivered with pain when all was done. The old woman had left ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... to a home where, in an atmosphere of devotion, the beauty that had been in her from the beginning had perfected in its maturity. Even the homely surroundings of the environment into which she drifted could not stifle her native fineness of soul. Bred up a fisherman's daughter she had lived and moved among plain, kindly people, whom she had learned to cherish and revere as if they were of her blood, and to whom she had endeared herself ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... another world," he muttered under his breath. "All I have to do at present is to stifle thought. It ought not to be difficult to go forward," he muttered, with a bitter smile, "the downhill slope is ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... while she draws me to her breast and threatens to stifle me with her kisses. Then I no longer speak and neither do I think; everything is drowned out in an ocean of ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... of the will and of the conscience which is called moral progress. It is in this sense that Bismarck said, "Imagination and sentiment are to science and intelligence what the tares are to the wheat. The tares threaten to stifle the wheat; that is why they are cut down and burned." True civilization is a virile education, aiming at force and implying force. A civilization which under pretext of humanity and of courtesy enervates and softens man is fit only for women and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... hardhearted turnkey, who had spent his life in scenes calculated to stifle both conscience and feeling, could not witness this scene without a touch of human sympathy. It was shown in a trifling action, but which had more delicacy in it than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe's character ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... horoscopes which they more than half believed might bite. There was just enough doubt as to whether any given wonder was a miracle to make it interesting; and at any moment the pall of superstition might stifle the flickering light of inquiry, as we feel was the case when ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... room, reading a newspaper by the light of a large candle; the place was a regular storehouse, cluttered with old secretaries, dilapidated chests, mantlepieces, clocks and sundry other items. It was close enough to stifle a person; it was impossible to breathe or to take a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... I could stifle the upbraidings of this cruel monitor.) You keep me in constant torment. This everlasting cant about rank poison, and liquid fire, and blood, and murder, is too much for even a Christian to put up with. Why, if any body but Conscience were to make such insinuations ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... accepting age for youth, shabbiness for finery, tinsel for splendour. Garrick frankly owned that he had once appeared upon the stage so inebriated as to be scarcely able to articulate, but "his friends endeavoured to stifle or cover this trespass with loud applause," and the majority of the audience did not perceive that anything extraordinary was the matter. What happened to Garrick on that occasion has happened to others of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... the point of view of practical politics, comrade. Here is an historical figure whom all men reverence and love, whom some regard as divine; and who was one of us—who lived our life, and taught our doctrine. And now shall we leave him in the hands of his enemies—shall we allow them to stifle and stultify his example? We have his words, which no one can deny; and shall we not quote them to the people, and prove to them what he was, and what he taught, and what he did? No, no, a thousand times no!—we shall use his authority to turn out the knaves and sluggards ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal, stronger than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him away, as on the former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, better instructed, took ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... leeward of our hut and the rocks below which it was built, and they could be used to make our hut more weather-proof. Then with great difficulty we got the blubber stove to start, and it spouted a blob of boiling oil into Bill's eye. For the rest of the night he lay, quite unable to stifle his groans, obviously in very great pain: he told us afterwards that he thought his eye was gone. We managed to cook a meal somehow, and Birdie got the stove going afterwards, but it was quite useless to try and warm the place. I got out and cut the green canvas outside the door, so ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... Minor. No modern joy or ecstasy of ours can lower its height or dim its lustre, but there it lies in the east of literature, as it were the earliest and latest production of the mind. The ruins of Egypt oppress and stifle us with their dust, foulness preserved in cassia and pitch, and swathed in linen; the death of that which never lived. But the rays of Greek poetry struggle down to us, and mingle with the sunbeams of the recent day. The statue of Memnon is cast down, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... greatly mortified when they saw Beauty dressed like a princess, and more beautiful than the dawn. Her caresses were ignored, and the jealousy which they could not stifle only grew worse when she told them how happy she was. Out into the garden went the envious pair, there to vent ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... future. Your Highness, the grand thing I recommend is to fear God! Everybody says, you have the sentiments of an honest man; excellent, that, for a beginning; but without the fear of God, your Highness, the passions stifle the finest sentiments. Must lead a life clear of reproach; and more particularly on the chapter of women! Need not imagine you can do the least thing without the King's knowing it: if your Highness take the bad road, he will wish to correct it; the end will be, he will bring you back to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... imperceptible degrees, in the last few years a new and critical attitude towards the ways of modern finance: moat of them had an uncomfortable feeling that Hodder was somehow right,—a feeling which they sought to stifle when they reflected upon the consequences of facing it. For this would mean a disagreeable shaking up of their own lives. Few of them were in a position whence they might cast stones at Eldon Parr . ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... under the grass became insurgent. I had never before thought of Regent's Park as a cemetery, but now, through the trees, stretching as far as eye could see, I beheld a flat plain of writhing graves and heeling tombstones. There seemed to be some trouble: the rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward, they bled in their struggles, the red flesh was torn away from the white bones. "Awake!" cried a voice; but I determined I would not rise to such horrors. "Awake!" They would ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... was to take down the alarm clock and stifle its prolonged whirring under the pillows and blankets. But when this had been done, he continued to sit stupidly on the edge of the bed, curling his toes away from the cold of the floor; his half-shut eyes, heavy with sleep, fixed and vacant, closing and opening ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... tinder lying about on the outskirts of his. Pitt rode away heart-whole, she was obliged to confess to herself, so far, at least, as she was concerned; and Betty had nothing to do now but to feel how that fire bit her, and to stifle the smoke of it. Mrs. Dallas was a woman and a mother, and she saw what Betty would not have had her see for ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... movement should come naturally, it should be as much a part of his personality as his tone of voice or the glance of his eye, and it should be the teacher's aim to develop this personality and not to stifle it as is too often the case. Of course great judgment is required in this development, or the personality will become marked mannerism, than which nothing could be worse. True art always displays a certain reticence; excess at either end of the gamut of emotion is avoided. Calmness is not ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... tears to the dead! For humanity's claim From its silence and darkness is ever the same; The hope of that world whose existence is bliss May not stifle the tears of the mourners ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively); instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... of the same lack of scientific insight when he rejects a method because it is not completely successful, and substitutes something else which will always be successful because it will never tell us anything at all and will stifle all investigation. Were Maimonides living in our day, we may suppose he would be more favorably inclined to the mechanical principle ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... too, will have a coat of that same make and pattern. Never does it occur to him to gauge the stature or character of the man who was first wearing the coat. There is yet a good deal of the monkey and the ape left in us. We seem to do our best to stifle our individuality, and reduce our souls to one sad dead level of accursed and wicked imitation. Some day we shall have our eyes opened, and then see that a man may break the whole of the Ten Commandments at once, and yet he shall be saved if he be not vulgar, and it is both senseless and ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... wealth, taste, elegance; the carpets and various articles of furniture were of the most costly materials, but at the thought of living here she shuddered. Fine and fashionable in all its appointments, but chilly, empty, surface gilded, she felt that she would stifle in this mansion. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... subdued chant of the brethren swelled up through the night air. Poor little John of Dunster, with his arms round Leonillo's neck, to keep him from disturbing his master, knelt, sobbing as though his heart would break, but trying to stifle the sounds as the priest's voice came grave and full on the silent air, responded to by the gathered tones of the brethren: the fountain bubbled on, and the wakening birds began to ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning the love of God; and to stifle human affections must be very often to render the love of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... of extortion to whom he owed the wealth inherited from his economical sire. Henry in fact was blessed with the most valuable of all possessions for a ruler of men, a magnetic personality, which made his servants ready to go through fire and water, to stifle conscience, to forgo their ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is clear from the restlessness and discomfort with which it begins, and the trouble it causes in the soul while it lasts; from the obscurity and distress, the aridity and indisposition for prayer and for every good work, which it produces. It seems to stifle the soul and trammel the body, so as to make them ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... to myself: "Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham—you four great universities—you terrors of Europe—that road is older than you: and meanwhile I drink to your continued healths, but let us have a little room ... air, there, give us air, good people. I stifle when I think ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... "Twice when I have gone into the Park with him, attempts have been made to separate us, to get him away from me; and once they did get him away, so swiftly, so adroitly, that he had vanished before I could turn round. But, although a bag had been thrown over his head to stifle his cries, he managed to make a very little one. I plunged screaming into the undergrowth from which that cry had come, and was just in time to save him. He was lying on the ground all bundled up in the bag, and his ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... She turned her face away, for she knew she could not in truth say "No" to that, for the knowledge that she had been trying to stifle was with her now, the knowledge that meant that she could not love the man whose wife ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... at the window, And said to the day, "Be dark!" And the roguish rain tapped hard on the pane, To stifle the song of ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... by what caprice, have attached shame to the indulgence of that reciprocal inclination which nature has bestowed upon both sexes. They knew, however, that they could not entirely stifle its voice, so what did they do to relieve themselves of their embarrassment? They attempted to substitute the mere shell of an affection wholly spiritual for the humiliating necessity of appearing in good faith to satisfy a natural want. Insensibly, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... language of officialdom can lessen its power to stir the heart. Who, for example, could read the story of The Prize, and the involuntary tribute from the captured German commander that rounds it off, without a glow of gratitude and pride? Do you recall how we would attempt to stifle curiosity with the unsatisfactory formula, "We shall know some day"? Here in this authoritative volume is another corner of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... Congress, the business of firing the people and stirring popular opinion and sympathy. He was set to do that portion of the work of abolition which was to be done in Congress, to encounter the mighty efforts which were made to stifle the great humanitarian cry in the halls of the national legislature. This was quite as much as one man was equal to; in fact, it is certain that no one then in public life except Mr. Adams could have done it effectually. So obvious is this that one cannot help wondering what would ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... had not fully understood. And so, in his quiet way, he endeavored to calm Constance, explaining that Blaise had a very good heart, and that in the circumstances in question he had behaved in the best way possible, doing all that he could to stifle scandal, and even displaying great disinterestedness. And as Constance had risen, satisfied with knowing the truth, and anxious that the three men might not find her there on their arrival, the accountant likewise quitted his chair, and accompanied her along the gallery which she ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... the early morning, Came the swarth and naked "Sioux;"[CF] On the village, without warning, Fell the sudden, savage blow. Horrid yell and crack of rifle Mingle as the flames arise;— With the tomahawk they stifle Mothers' wails and children's cries. Men and women to the ferry Fly from many a blazing cot;— Brave and ready—grim and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... doctor, sir, who seeks only to destroy or stifle the symptoms without an effort to examine into the origin of the malady, or, when knowing it, fears to attack it. The Civil Guard has only this purpose: the repression of crime by means of terror and force, a purpose that it does not fulfil or accomplishes only incidentally. You must take into ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... very hard to stand still and never let out a single yelp. Once he almost whined. But he managed to stifle the sound. ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey

... have been Almagro's original purpose, Pizarro knew that the richness of the vein he had now opened in the land would be certain to secure his cooperation in working it. He had the magnanimity, therefore,—for there is something magnanimous in being able to stifle the suggestions of a petty rivalry in obedience to sound policy,—to send at once to his ancient comrade, and invite him, with many assurances of friendship, to Caxamalca. Almagro, who was of a frank and careless nature, received the communication in the spirit in which it was made, and, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... at her fate. There were hours, even yet, when she lay alone in her bed hearing her father's regular stertorous breathing till a great wave of longing to live swept upon her, and she was forced to turn her face to her pillow to stifle her ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland

... this modest Pyrgopolinices! He has certainly served under Bombochides Cluninstaridysarchides,' cried the host. 'Sporus, Niger, Tetraides, he declares he shall win the purse from you. Why, by the gods! each of your muscles is strong enough to stifle all his body, or I know nothing of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... that I can fit up like it," I said. "All the things here are mine." And then I was glad to divert his attention by proposing to go and inspect Mount Eaton, as soon as he had had some much-needed food, since Prometesky was out, and we at once plunged into the "flitting" affairs, glad in them to stifle some of the pain that Eustace had given, but on which we neither of ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... companies (or squadrons in the modern phraseology), under the command of as many independent chiefs, so as to leave little chance of any principle of union reigning among them. But the German and Spanish troops in Philip's pay were cantoned on the frontiers, ready to stifle any incipient effort in opposition to his plans. In addition to these imposing means for their execution, he had secured a still more secret and more powerful support: a secret article in the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis obliged the king of France to assist him with the whole ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... the Industry; that must be his first act. And after that? Well, after that he would look about him, and if he could pick up a tidy little vessel cheap; he would invest his savings in the purchase of her, sail in his own employ, and try to stifle all vain regrets by plunging into a more adventurous mode ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may molder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... go to bed Partisans wanted not accommodation but victory Puritanism in Holland was a very different thing from England Seemed bent on self-destruction Stand between hope and fear The evils resulting from a confederate system of government To stifle for ever the right of ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... awful demon who possesses them. Too horror-stricken to utter a sound, Gerald sprang at her, and seizing her with fearless hands, forced the poor struggling girl by main strength down on to the floor. No one near to help! No water at hand! Not so much as a rug or a shawl to throw over her and stifle the flames! Yes! there was the table-cover, heavy and thick, as if created for this very life-service. Gerald tore it off,—books, boxes, china cups, and glass vases crashing to the ground together,—and flinging it over Phebe, threw herself on top of ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... and stifle in the grave, Or dungeon's gloom, my woman's voice, that it Shall not reverberate throughout the world. This he may do; but force me to speak aught Against my will, that can he not; though backed By all thy craft—no, he has missed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... consequently production is encouraged and trade and industry are stimulated. But under an appreciating standard the recompense of labor becomes smaller and smaller, and the share of the products of labor absorbed by the creditor larger, which tends to discourage industry and stifle enterprise. ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... how sad steps, O Moon thou climb'st the sky. How silently, and with how wan a face!" [2] Where art thou? Thou whom I have seen on high Running among the clouds a Wood-nymph's race? Unhappy Nuns, whose common breath's a sigh Which they would stifle, move at such a pace! The Northern Wind, to call thee to the chace, Must blow tonight his bugle horn. Had I The power of Merlin, Goddess! this should be And all the Stars, now shrouded up in heaven, Should sally forth to keep thee company. What strife would then be yours, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... the darkness was broken by an unmistakable sneeze. True, the sneezer, if I may use such a term, tried to stifle the explosion, but he was not altogether successful. It was a sneeze, ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... me!— I think thou hast a sword;—'twas the wrong side. Yet, cruel Haemon, think not I will live; He, that could tear his eyes out, sure can find Some desperate way to stifle this cursed breath: Or if I starve!—but that's a lingering fate; Or if I leave my brains upon the wall!— The airy soul can easily o'er-shoot Those bounds, with which thou striv'st to pale her in. Yes, I will perish in despite of thee; And, by the rage that stirs me, if I meet thee ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... few writers are insisting that the growing desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from those who work. And ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... wiser than they, we had in a measure pined, and in a great measure starved; which is just answerable to the principles of those men who cry down all devices, or ingenious discoveries, as projects, and therefore stifle and choak improvements." According to a late writer, in the year 1830, there were 46,727 acres occupied in the cultivation of hops in Great ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various

... should have suffered pain, as it requires fasting to gain a good appetite. We, who can have all for a wish, little enjoy that all when we have possessed it. Seest thou yonder thick cloud, which is about to burst to rain? It seems to stifle me—the waters look dark and lurid—the shores have ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,—those useless accessories under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never been,—a child! I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too. Besides, that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... a few moments. Then Miss Patience, who had bravely tried to stifle her sobs, said with chattering teeth, "Perez, I'm pretty nigh froze ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... Never a sociable man, he shunned the society of the neighbouring farmers, and they, on their side, resenting his outrageous conduct to his stepdaughter, studiously kept out of his way. Doggedly he set himself to do both the labours of the house and farm, and sought to stifle in hard work the memory of his wife's desertion of him, together with whatever twinges of remorse may have come to him when he thought of the revenge which he had taken upon her daughter. But as time went ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... country for years and will continue to do so. The plague strikes blindly but the present regime chooses its victims from the flower of the nation, taking all upon whom depend the fortune and glory of Russia. It is not a political party that they crush, it is a nation of a hundred millions that they stifle. That is what the Czar has done.'[14] Down with such despotism! Down ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... memory. The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out for the good of the kingdom. Certain princes, too near to the throne, have been conveniently stifled between mattresses, the cause of death being given out as apoplexy. Now to stifle is worse than to mutilate. The King of Tunis tore out the eyes of his father, Muley Assem, and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by the emperor. Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the suppression of a state, etc. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... by telling me that he had found himself obliged to recognize his children to prevent slander attributing them to others, which would have injured the reputation of the three honest girls who bore them; and besides he could not stifle the voice of nature, which spoke so well on behalf of these little ones. His last words were, "There is no danger of the superior falling into the same fault, as he confines his attention to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... before whom Oates had laid his information, was found in a field near London with his sword run through his heart. His death was assumed to be murder, and the murder to be an attempt of the Jesuits to "stifle the plot." A solemn funeral added to the public agitation; and the two Houses named committees to investigate the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... the slow isicle hangs At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse. This portion thou wert born for. Why should we Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie? An age that thus hath fooled ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... devils die,' cried the stout American mate, actuated by the generosity of the race he sprang from, which his degrading employment could not wholly stifle. Assisted by our men, who had jumped out of the boat, the hatches were soon removed, exposing to view a mass of human misery which, being once seen, must remain impressed on the memory for ever—the naked bodies of men, women, and children, writhing in a heap, contorted, gasping ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... pshaw! when such thoughts entered my heart and forced a tear or two from my eyes, I rebelled against myself. I said: 'My lad, when you earn but three thousand francs a year, and have an old and cherished father to support, it is your duty to stifle such desires, and remain a bachelor.' And yet I met a young girl. It is thirty years now since that time; well! just look at me, I am sure I am blushing as red as a tomato. Her name was Hortense. Who can tell what has become of her? She was beautiful and poor. Well, I was quite an old ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... as I thought, very composedly. I tried to persuade myself that I was not in the least ruffled or agitated by the scene I had passed through; but I was secretly conscious, notwithstanding, of a vague dread which I endeavored in vain to stifle. The defiance which the dwarf had so insolently flung at me, the contrast he drew between his shriveled frame and my physical advantages, and the Satanic pride with which he rose superior to his wretched deformities, gave me no slight cause for uneasiness, although I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... not at all new. Sporadic attempts to start and carry on various industries had been made during the colonial period. They had all failed, either because the watchful mother-country took pains to stifle them, or because lack of capital and experience, in addition to foreign competition, killed them almost at their birth. The idea of developing American industries was generally diffused for the first time when the colonists strove to bring England to ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... to the call of the open road; In your cities I'd stifle and die. I'm off to the hills in fancy I see— On the breast of old earth ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... cannot be [and striking his right hand on his breast, he went on:] I feel here something that rises and tells me: Never, Rameau, never. There must be a certain dignity attached to human nature that nothing can stifle; it awakes a propos des bottes; you cannot explain it; for there are other days when it would cost me not a pang to be as vile as you like, and for a halfpenny there is nothing too dirty for me ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the Rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the Maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the Bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... From the period of the Reformation in England up to the present time, she has kept her emissaries here—individuals contemptible in intellect, it is true, but cat-like and gliding, who, at her bidding, have endeavoured, as much as in their power has lain, to damp and stifle every genial, honest, loyal and independent thought, and to reduce minds to such a state of dotage as would enable their old Popish mother to do ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... thinkers found some rest: but not for long. The perplexity of the presence of this immediate order of things seemed solved; but another kept obtruding itself: what was going on before that "beginning?" Vain to stifle the inquiry by replying, "nothing."[168-1] For time, which knows no beginning, was there, still building, still destroying; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. What then is left but the conclusion of the Preacher: "That which ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... wonder. The women sat at the table with the men over in the Gap—why not here? Then her father went silently to his pipe and Bub to playing with the kitten at the kitchen-door, while she and her mother ate with never a word. Something began to stifle her, but she choked it down. There were the dishes to be cleared away and washed, and the pans and kettles to be cleaned. Her back ached, her arms were tired to the shoulders and her burned hand quivered with pain when all was done. The old woman had left her to do the last ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... the other, and the quality of address and response is lost. Likewise, true religion disappears when it represents only what God says and eliminates the meaning of man's response. Religious dogma is sometimes used to shackle human creativity, and the form of belief is allowed to stifle the vitality of faith. Similarly, religion disappears when the address to God and the response of God are eliminated. The Pharisee in Jesus' parable had lost the dialogical quality of his prayer because he "stood and prayed thus with himself...."[6] He was not ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... weakness in the Buddhist propaganda. Unquestionably the influence which Buddhism exerted upon Japanese [187] civilization was immense, profound, multiform, incalculable; and the only wonder is that it should not have been able to stifle Shinto forever. To state, as various writers have carelessly stated, that Buddhism became the popular religion, while Shinto remained the official religion, is altogether misleading. As a matter of fact Buddhism ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... be familiar to his hands, and the groans of the dying continually in his ears. But though the horrors of war were awfully familiar to him, the harshness of war never became so; he spilt no blood that he could spare, he took no life that he could save. The cruelty of his enemies was unable to stifle the humanity of his heart; even a soldier and a servant of the republic became his friend as soon as he ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Could it be that Berenger was only two miles—only half an hour's walk form Eustacie? The bound his heart gave as he touched the shore seemed to stifle him. He could not believe it. Yet he knew how fully he had believed it, the next moment, when he listened to what the fishermen ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cruelty. Not once more did I close my happy eyes Amid the thrush's song. Away! Avaunt! O 'twas a cruel thing."—"Now thou dost taunt So softly, Arethusa, that I think If thou wast playing on my shady brink, 980 Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid! Stifle thine heart no more:—nor be afraid Of angry powers: there are deities Will shade us with their wings. Those fitful sighs 'Tis almost death to hear: O let me pour A dewy balm upon them!—fear no more, Sweet Arethusa! Dian's self ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... look upon him as your enemy; but where the hatred is such that, while feeling you cannot, on a sober examination of your heart, account for it, there is little hope that you will ever be able to stifle the enmity that you entertain against him. This, however, in politics and religion, is what is frequently designated as principle—a word on which men, possessing higher and greater advantages than the poor ignorant peasantry ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... commissioned her to carry His good tidings to all peoples; and so long as she remained true to this commission and to her instruction book, the world's cunning sophistries could not deceive her, nor could the cruel power of a world empire stifle her voice. And now when her absent Lord is about to return again, it surely behooves her to set her house in order, and to return with candor and fidelity to that written code of instruction left with her by ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... knit together, with such tough matter, it must necessarilie binde and cleaue together, and so likewise the blacke clay, from whence most naturally proceedeth your best limestone, being mixt with white sand, doth also binde together and stifle the seede, if it be not preuented ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... Morok, who, with his arm encumbered by the sling, made a rush for the staircase, the soldier caught him by his long, streaming hair, pulled him back, clasped him with hands of iron, clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle his outcries, and notwithstanding his desperate resistance, dragged him into the chamber, on the floor of which the burgomaster lay bruised ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... in his sorrow by the thought that his son's memory would be forever glorious, manfully endeavored to stifle his misery and go about his daily tasks. The sympathy of his parishioners was not made apparent by their bearing toward him. He was disappointed in not receiving more direct consolation from his friends and those with whom he was in direct and almost daily ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... memory. If the sky were always as to-day, if there were always sunlight to stand in and the living air to drink, she might find the life before her in truth as little of a burden as it seemed this morning But the days would again be wrapped in nether fumes, the foul air would stifle her, her blood would go stagnant, her eyes would weep with the desolate rain. Why should Gilbert remain in England? Were there no countries where the sun shone that would give a man and a woman toil whereby to support themselves? Luke Ackroyd had spoken of going ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... be an eventful one, for when I entered the house and found Eliza ensconced in the upper hall on a chair, with Mary Anne doing her best to stifle her with household ammonia, and Liddy rubbing her wrists—whatever good that is supposed to do—I knew that the ghost had been walking again, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... flags are furled, the trumpets mute, And soft-voiced messengers replace the guns, Let it be yours to stifle old dispute And found a first-aid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various

... which any well-clad person could avoid; it was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... quite unfit for, and untrue of, people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning the love of God; and to stifle human affections must be very often to render the love of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... after a silence of some minutes, 'I would request a favour of you: You have a right to know on whom you confer an obligation. I will not therefore stifle a confession which covers me with shame; But permit me to comprise it in ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... crying for them, Susan," said Owen, trying to stifle his tears, "I am crying for myself; I cannot help it. I know you love me, and you always have ever since I could remember—if you punished me it was kindly done—and now you are going away, and I do not know ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... its aspects it was abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on the bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit exactly. Scattered here and there in every direction you might find a terrible person, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... garments were brought out. Even inside the palisade one could see a great change in apparel and adornment. The booths were no longer invitingly open, but here and there were inns and places of evening resort where the air was not only enough to stifle one, but so blue with smoke you could hardly see your neighbor's face. No merry parties sang songs upon the river nor went up to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... much in recognition of their goodness, that he became abashed by it. Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted from him by an insuperable moral distance. A warm flush seemed to rise from his heart into his throat and stifle him. He wished to shed tears. His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he would not have any more coffee. "Then," she said, "we will go into the drawing-room;" but she allowed him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... man-power-carriage coolies, who in the exercise of our nightly avocation are called to distant parts of the town, where the knife that is invisible will speedily sever the head from the body, and the cloth that is impenetrable will stifle the last cry of him that hath none to avenge, and our heads go to make the water run within the pipe, and make firm the foundations ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... himself and struggled against the feeling, hated his brother-in-law. He disliked his vulgar feelings, his self-confident narrowness of mind, but, principally, because of his sister, who should so passionately, egotistically and sensually love such a poor nature, and to please whom she should stifle all her noble sentiments. It was always painful to Nekhludoff to think of Natalie as the wife of that hairy, self-confident man, with shining bald head. He could not even suppress his aversion to his children. And whenever he heard that she ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... the confusion, Elaine, closely followed by her friend Susie, made her way fearlessly into the stifle ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... if at the threshold of some golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... later (o'er the trifle), When Araminta with her tactful gush Asked if the garden seemed to help or stifle The Muses' output, I responded, "Tush; When you go out, my dear, please buy a rifle; I want to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... our industrial towns, imposes prevailing methods of industry and technique of factory processes as final and determined. As industrial history and technique are taught in the schools, in effect they bind the children to the current industrial practice and to the current conditions. They stifle imagination and discourage the concept that industry is an evolving process. The effect of technical training in the German continuation schools (and the tendency is the same in our own industrial education courses) is to teach the children that the methods and ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... the meal was ended, and went up to the great empty deck. She felt as if she would stifle below. But, up above, the wash of the sea and the immensity of the night soothed her somewhat. She found a secluded corner, and leaned upon the rail, gazing out over the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... know," answered the individual addressed, shaking his head with a serio-comical expression; "but stifle me with the night-mar, if ever I'm cotched riding a race with death on ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... brief betrothal—and music would peal out upon them till Lady Landale's stormy heart could bear it no longer, and she would rise in her turn, fly to the shelter of her room and roll her head in the pillows to stifle the sound of sobs, crying from the depths of her soul against heaven's injustice; anon railing in a frenzy of impotent anger against the musician, who had such passion in him and gave it to his ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... the art to hide their jealousy under a tone of angelic kindness; they are, like Lady Dudley, over thirty years of age. Such women know how to feel and how to calculate; they press out the juices of to-day and think of the future also; they can stifle a moan, often a natural one, with the will of a huntsman who pays no heed to a wound in the ardor of the chase. Without ever speaking of Madame de Mortsauf, Arabella endeavored to kill her in my soul, where she ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... dreadful wave of homesickness roll over her. Then the tears came, hot, scalding tears that rolled down her cheeks in ever increasing number. She made no noise, lest she waken the other girls but the effort to stifle her sobs made her cry harder, and she buried her face in the rough worsted of the sofa pillow and wiped her eyes with ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... for it took her back to that dreadful day. She could not bear to think that Billy Dale's blood lay on her and Monohan, neither could she stifle an uneasy apprehension that something more grievous yet might happen on Roaring Lake. But at least she had done what she could. If she were the flame, she had removed herself from the powder magazine. Fyfe had pulled his cedar crew off the Tyee before ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... into the conservatory the music ceased and there was a flutter as the dancers sought seats, or stepped out upon the lawn. Archie, acutely uncomfortable, heard the Governor stifle ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... bitter source of every kind of evil; they render abortive the most useful enterprises, in like manner as the tares stifle the good grain; they have introduced, even into the hearts of families, dissension, confusion, and hatred. But the pontiff comprehends the grand design of his czar; God ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the shop where they buy their clothing smiles as she wraps for them their packages. Such attentions would be passed by without a thought at ordinary times, but now notice means much to a heart that is trying hard to stifle its loneliness and sorrow, struggling to learn in an unknown tongue the knowledge of the West; in lieu of mother, sister, or sweetheart of his own land, the boy is insensibly drawn into a net that tightens about him, until he takes the fatal step and brings back ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... to make our hut more weather-proof. Then with great difficulty we got the blubber stove to start, and it spouted a blob of boiling oil into Bill's eye. For the rest of the night he lay, quite unable to stifle his groans, obviously in very great pain: he told us afterwards that he thought his eye was gone. We managed to cook a meal somehow, and Birdie got the stove going afterwards, but it was quite useless ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... had pondered it since! In this intense trance of feeling it breaks upon her finally that he is right. May it not be that he with his clearer thought, his wider knowledge of life, has laid his finger on the weak point in her guardianship of her sisters? 'I have tried to stifle her passion,' she thought, 'to push it out of the way as a hindrance. Ought I not rather to have taught her to make of it a step in the ladder—to have moved her to bring her gifts to the altar? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... now and then disturbed by little gusts of passion and prejudice; but the faculty was there to be strengthened by every opportunity of exercising it. This faculty had been stirred within her when Lady Alice first told her of her father's existence; but she had tried to stifle it as an accursed thing. She held it wicked to be anything but a partizan. And now it had revived within her, and was urging her to form no rash conclusions, to be careful in her thoughts about her new acquaintances, to weigh her opinions before expressing them. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... and the tender, throbbing voice pleading to be taught the fullness of human love, that she might find the largeness of the Infinite. Turning swiftly to the window, he pressed his lips together to stifle his emotion. He could no longer bear the stab at his heart, nor risk the mist rising in his eyes. Tessibel, wholly unconscious of the stir she was making, sang on and on, her gaze on the sheet in her hand. Suddenly she raised her eyes and there near the door was Frederick ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... cosmopolitan extraction (who had not been extracted quite far enough to be sure of British tastes) gave the audience four verses where one would have been better. And all this time the anger of the Pacificist grew. His cheeks burned, and the excited pounding of his heart was like to stifle him. He knew himself one, alone, against hundreds; impressing them, no doubt (despite their pretence of indifference), with the courage of a right cause. To face odds like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... limbs and his twisted soul. He lay quite still a while longer, staring. Charlotte, with her eyes upon him, and the squirrel with his eyes upon him, never stirred. Charlotte heard her heart beat, and wished for some way to stifle it, but that she could not do. It seemed to her that the beating of her heart was like a drum, as if it could be heard through all the grove. She realized that she could not hear the sound of passing wheels on the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the most amiable member of it. For my own part, I can control my temper when it is not running away with me, and be fairly kind to the little ones, so long as they do what I tell them. But, at a crisis like this, I can no more yield to your unreasonable wishes, stifle my just anger, apologize for a little wrong to you who owe apologies for a big one, and pave the way to peace with my own broken will, than the leopard can ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... the editor of a Washington newspaper; another pro-slavery member, from Arkansas, had violently attacked Horace Greeley on the street; a third pro-slavery member, from California, had shot an unoffending waiter at Willard's Hotel. Was this fourth instance the prelude of an intention to curb or stifle free Congressional debate? It is probable that this question was seriously considered at the little caucus of Republican Senators held that night at the house of Mr. Seward. The Republicans had only a slender minority in the Senate, and a plurality in the House; they could do nothing ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... to create by an effort of will a feeling of love in ourselves which otherwise would have had no existence; the feeling must arise naturally or it cannot arise at all. But a number of causes which are removable may interfere to prevent the feeling from arising or to stifle it as it arises, and we are commanded to remove these hindrances. It is natural to man to love his kind, and Christ commands us only to give nature play. He does not expect us to procure for ourselves hearts of some new supernatural texture, but merely the heart of flesh for the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... possession of the poison, and said that the 100,000 francs which he had invested he had inherited from an uncle. Through Goupil he succeeded in communicating with his mother in the hope that she would use her influence to stifle some of the more serious evidence against him. Through other prisoners he tried to get at the chemists from whom he had bought acetate of morphia, and persuade them to say that the preparation of morphia which he had purchased ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... the sparrow. But whatever may be said, let us drop the past. Let us consider the present. I beg of you, leave this boy—let him develop without your attempting to stifle the life in him or impressing upon it the stamp of ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... bed, Herbert could see his mother's face as she knelt on a stool at the bedside. His father was turned away from him, and lay with his hand inside his wife's, and Emmeline was sitting on the foot of the bed, with her face between her hands, striving to stifle her sobs. "Here is Herbert now, dearest," said Lady Fitzgerald, with a low, soft voice, almost a whisper, yet clear enough to cause no effort in the hearing. "I knew that he would not be long." And Herbert, obeying the signal of his mother's eye, passed ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... greasy mop on top of her round head. Her figure is flabby and fat; her breath comes in wheezy gasps; she speaks in a loud, mannish voice, punctuated by explosions of hoarse laughter. But there still twinkles in her blood-shot blue eyes a youthful lust for life which hard usage has failed to stifle, a sense of humor mocking, but good-tempered. She wears a man's cap, double-breasted man's jacket, and a grimy, calico skirt. Her bare feet are encased in a man's brogans several sizes too large for her, which gives her ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill

... Beatrice, trying to stifle her laughter, increased by Marie's witticism: "the child is ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... the chevalier; "I understand all you would say. You thank me in his name, and ask me to leave you: I obey-yes, madame, I am going; at the risk of my life I will prevent this meeting, I will stifle this fatal revelation. But grant me one last prayer-permit me to look forward to seeing you once more before I leave this city, to which I wish I had never come. But I shall quit it in a day or two, to-morrow perhaps—as soon as I know that your happiness is assured. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... shoulders, tremendous quarters, exceptionally short of cannon bone and long from hock to stifle as a greyhound; with a breadth of chest and a depth of barrel beneath the withers that indicated most unusual lung capacity, behind the throat-latch Sol showed, in extraordinary perfection, all the best points ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... have closed his ears, and, hoping to stifle the remorseful pangs that seized upon his very vitals with the sharpness of serpents' teeth, he strove to dwell upon the frequent and severe acts of penance he had performed. But he now found that his penitence had never been sincere and efficacious. This one damning sin ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... not life be all a sigh! Good Snell, do thou a burthen try Shall change our sadness into joy: Such as thou trollest in blythe mood, On days of sunshine in the wood. Tell out thy heart withouten fear— For none shall stifle free thoughts here! But, bear the mead-cup, Edith sweet! We crave our stranger guest will greet All hearts, again, with minstrelsy, When Snell hath ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... organized into trusts to control the conditions of trade among our citizens, to stifle competition, limit production, and determine the prices of products used and consumed by the people, are justly provoking public discussion, and should early claim the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... comparatively rare occurrence of an individual, surrounded with almost every description of temptation to stifle conviction, and, by his silence at least, to perpetuate a corruption in the Christian church, which for ages has been protected by legislative authority, popular favour, and implicit faith, not only nobly triumphing over every inducement to compromise ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... times would be a scourge to the human race, would now be useful to the public welfare. This salutary crisis would elevate the people to the level of their destiny; it would restore to them their pristine energy—it would re-establish our finances, and stifle the germ of intestine dissension. In a similar situation Frederic the Great broke the league formed against him by the court of Vienna, by forestalling it. Your committee propose that the preparations for war be accelerated. A congress would be a disgrace—war is necessary—public ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... democratic prejudices to stifle our understanding in such matters. We are trying to get clearly in perspective a ruler, who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates from the people, but in obedience to God. We could not be ruled by such a one in America; and in England such a ruler would ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... wish,"—went on the Prince—"that I should stay in the palace more, I will obey you. If you desire me to be seen oftener in the capital, I will endeavour to fulfil your command, though the streets stifle me. But, for God's sake, do not make me a puppet on show before my time,—or marry me to a woman I hate, merely for the sake of heirs to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... counsel of life was most remote from such cabals. But certain of the nobility (for what reason it is more proper that ye should judge than that I, as a magistrate, should, without proof, insinuate) have laboured to stifle entirely the inquiries; and then, finding their strength unequal to it, rather than stand a trial have fled for refuge to the stronghold of their adversaries, an appeal and the support of the tribunes; and on being there also repulsed, (so fully were ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... sometimes to be a little obstinate, etc. In short, it all comes to this, that many M.P.'s are afraid of losing their seats by a dissolution, and many others whose boroughs are disfranchised hate the Reform Bill, and many more are anti-Reformers by nature, and all these combine to stifle it.... And to tell Lord John that really he has such a quantity of spare character that it can bear a little damaging! I am ashamed and sick of such things, and should think my country no longer worth caring for, but for those ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... inevitable! As between such competitors, which way would the popularity be likely to flow? Naturally the mere merits of the competition were decisive of the public opinion, although the petty aristocracy of the provincial boroughs availed locally to stifle those tumultuous acclamations which would else have gathered about the name of Caesar. But enough transpired to show which way the current was setting. Cicero does not dissemble that. He acknowledges that all men's hopes turned towards Caesar. And Pompey, who was much more forced ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... levelled with so true an aim, that it stretched him at his length upon the ground. No terrors of impending vengeance, had they been a thousand times stronger than they were, could at this moment have availed to stifle the cry of triumphant pleasure—long, loud, and unfaltering— which indignant sympathy with the oppressed extorted from the crowd. The pain and humiliation of the blow, exalted into a maddening intensity by this popular shout of exultation, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... fireworks in her other hand, she crossed this train with the light and set it on fire. Then the brave woman, throwing away the parachute and the match, strove to close the mouth of the balloon, and to stifle the fire. These efforts being unavailing, Madame Blanchard was distinctly seen to sit down in her ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... that somebody had lied. In fact, all men of her race had been lying from the beginning of time, for what, after all, did civilization amount to if it were not convincing? Did it ever soothe a wounded heart, stifle the pangs of jealousy, or was it ample compensation for the loss of the great ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible—by a little ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... literary genius to reveal our thoughts to us, as it often does, certainly the average person will not discover his own characteristics alone. Even with firm intentions he will merely grope about, and from blindness and want of skill will stifle a good portion of his ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its life—stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice. But where are Professor Beale's bioplasts which, but a moment before, were not only weaving the nerves, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... mean, endurable to each other. We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set up on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel them to be clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, and choose the generous expression, and make them know how much happier the generous ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... the stoutest hand must seize the helm. Rome must be cleansed,—cleansed to the very roots; The sluggish we must waken from their slumber,— And crush to earth the power of these wretches Who sow their poison in the mind and stifle The slightest promise of a better life. Look you,—'tis civic freedom I would further,— The civic spirit that in former times Was regnant here. Friends, I shall conjure back The golden age, when Romans gladly gave Their lives to guard the honor of the nation, And ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... deprived them of a darling folly; they did not perceive that I acted from goodwill, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man—that was not within the range of their ideas; neither am I their enemy in all this, but it would be wrong for me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth. Once more, then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question, 'What is knowledge?'—and do not say that you cannot tell; but quit yourself like a man, and by the help of God you will be able ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... Barry Houston was in New York, swirling along Seventh Avenue toward Bellstrand Hospital. There he sought the executive offices and told his story. "Five minutes later he was looking at the books of the institution, searching, searching,—at last to stifle a cry of excitement and bend closer ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... telephone, which was in the next room. The instant the door had closed behind her Uncle Henry leaned forward, tapped Elizabeth Ann on the shoulder, and nodded toward the sofa. His eyes were twinkling, and as for Aunt Abigail she began to laugh silently, shaking all over, her napkin at her mouth to stifle the sound. Elizabeth Ann turned wonderingly and saw the old dog cautiously and noiselessly letting himself down from the sofa, one ear cocked rigidly in the direction of Cousin Ann's voice in the next room. "The old tyke!" said Uncle Henry. "He always sneaks up to the table to be fed ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... the main the clergy are right in what they preach though they give the wrong reasons. We must try to regulate our passions or they will master us, stifle what is really good in us. My solution of this problem which I am so sick of discussing.... But let's finish with it while we are about it—my solution is that the State and the Community should do their utmost to encourage, subsidize, reward ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... highness was sorry that she had caused the box to be opened in such good company; for being before such witnesses, she rightly judged it was impossible to stifle this adventure; and, at the same time, there being no possibility of retaining any longer such a maid of honour, Miss Price had her valuables restored to her, with orders to go and finish her lamentations, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... maid guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that he ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... in vain they cried for help. He put his arm about the neck of each, and swore to stifle them with kisses if they were not as silent ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... a long pause, only broken by the woman's sobs, which she appeared endeavouring to stifle. At last the man rose, and in a tone so soft that it seemed literally like music, addressed her in the most endearing terms. She soon yielded to their persuasion, and replied to them with interest. "Spite of the stings of my remorse," she said, "as long as I lose ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to drink to Canada, our adopted country,' put in Benson, willing to stifle the incipient quarrel—'the finest country on the face of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... respectably—to lie low till the funeral is over. Of course this is all very annoying, especially as you have such a lovely lot of new frocks and all the rest of it, but I dare say they will come in later on. Not that it matters, seeing that you have a husband who could stifle you in pretty frocks and never miss the money. What a funny girl you are, Bee. You don't seem to appreciate your good ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White









Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar