"Deafened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scream into my chest, Bent back my arm upon my breast, And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity. I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to him trembling, and stood ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... brilliant, the inexhaustible Dumas. Scott's generation had no scruples abort "realism," listened to no sermons on the glory of the commonplace; like Dr. Johnson, they admired a book which "was amusing as a fairy-tale." But we are overwhelmed with a wealth of comparisons, and deafened by a multitude of homilies on fiction, and distracted, like the people in the Erybyggja Saga, by the strange rising and setting, and the wild orbits of new "weirdmoons" of romance. Before we can make up our minds on Scott, we have ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... teach you of the temporality how to die in cold blood, our hands not clenched for resistance, but folded for prayer—our minds not filled with jealous hatred, but with Christian meekness and forgiveness—our ears not deafened, nor our senses confused, by the sound of clamorous instruments of war; but, on the contrary, our voices composed to Halleluiah, Kyrie-Eleison, and Salve Regina, and our blood temperate and cold, as those who think upon reconciling themselves ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... sigh. For two hours that afternoon he had sat, half-deafened, while six-inch shells skimmed the parapet in both directions, a few feet above his head. The Gunner major had been as good as his word. Punctually at one-fifty-five "Minnie's" two o'clock turn had been anticipated by a round of high-explosive ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... deafened us. The whole vast mass of ice—millions of tons—was heaving and sliding, cake over cake. It had lain piled fifteen or twenty feet above the water; but the tide surging under it and through it caused it to mix ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... opened somewhere ahead; a white haze of light filtered through, and I floated slowly into a room, that seemed strangely familiar. All at once, there came a bewildering, screaming noise, that deafened me. I saw a blurred vista of visions, flaming before my sight. My senses were dazed, through the space of an eternal moment. Then, my power of seeing, came back to me. The dizzy, hazy feeling passed, and I ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... then to go onward for about a good mile, that we be not so deafened by the noise of the Gas Fountain; and it did be now beyond the seventeenth hour; so that we eat and drunk, and made our rest in a secure ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... dazzled and deafened as well, the girl dashed the rain from her eyes and strove to recollect her wits and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Skale," faltered the other breathlessly, "quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened him a little with ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Whirled all about, dense, multitudinous cold, Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek Which whiffled out men's tears, deafened, took hold, Flattening the flying drift ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... these, when the air was filled with the shouts and yells of attackers and besieged, when the crack of the muskets and the intermittent reports of the cannon almost deafened her, Lady Cholmley was assiduously attending to the wounded and the many cases of scurvy, which was rampant among the garrison. One of her maids who shared these labours crept out of the castle one night with a view to reaching the town and escaping further drudgery ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... before a stall spread with cotton cloth and bought enough for several skirts, the result of her complaisance being a siege of itinerant vendors that nearly deafened her. The big women were literally covered with their young ("pic'nees"), who clung to their skirts, waist, hips, bosoms; and these mites, with the parrot proclivities of their years and race added their ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... all!" cried the captain, and Josiah felt his last hour had come. He held his breath and stuck to his hat, being under the impression that the whole affair would shoot up into the air like a rocket. He expected to be deafened by the noise of whizzing through the air, and to be half suffocated with the rush of wind. Looking over to get a last look at the nature of the soil on which he would presently fall, Josiah beheld ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... ordinary weather that you can approach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur. When the Fall is in flood—to say nothing of being drenched to the skin—you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened by the dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that your condition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature," to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor in former times was there any likelihood ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... splashes and dashes and foams, lashed by scores of active hands and feet, until the boys are fairly deafened by the roar. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the hall was crammed full of men of the most diverse nations, all pushing about and immersed to the eyes in business, so that the ears were deafened by the confused din. But when the exchange hours were over, and the merchants had gone to dinner, and only a few odd individuals hurried through the hall on business (for it served as a means of communication between two streets), that I dare say was the time ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... heard him say "That's got him." Instantly a choir of voices began to chant "That's got him," in roaring, tumultuous bursts of music. Then the music became, as it were, present, but inaudible; there were waves of sound all round me, but my ears were deafened to them. I had been put out of action by some very powerful drug, I remember no more of that evening's entertainment. I ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... ears deafened with the roar of the hard grains against the metallic lining of the chute. He put his hand once into the rushing tide, and the contact rasped the flesh of his fingers and like an undertow drew his hand after it in ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... night our lodging was a house that stood Alone within the valley, at a point Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled The rapid stream whose margin we had trod; A dreary mansion, large beyond all need, [Cc] 645 With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned By noise of waters, making innocent sleep Lie melancholy ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of Jackson planted in a long row on the hard ground, and then open with a terrific crash on the defenders of the ridge. The sound was so tremendous that he was deafened for a few moments. By the time his hearing was restored fully the batteries fired again and the Northern batteries on the hill replied. Then the mass of infantry charged and Harry and Dalton on foot, waving their swords and wild with ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the patter of thieves and burglars "familiar in our mouths as household words." It deafened us in the streets, where it was as popular with the organ-grinders and German bands as Sullivan's brightest melodies ever were in a later day. It clanged at midday from the steeple of St Giles, the Edinburgh cathedral; {ix} it was whistled by every dirty "gutter-snipe," ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... spreading shot. Resolved to sell their lives dearly, they retreated, keeping their backs to the wind, with the poisonous dragons in front. But the breeze was very slight, and they were being rapidly blinded and asphyxiated by the loathsome fumes, and deafened by the hideous roaring and snapping of the dragons' jaws. Realizing that they could not much longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... long, clear, greenish slant of water. Deafened and dazed by the infernal pandemonium of noise, he bowed his head on hers, and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... heavy body tumbling right on top of my own, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on my neck, and on my chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain. And a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with plates and dishes had fallen down, almost deafened me. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cried Cardot, fairly deafened by a chorus of wretched jokes. "I came here on serious business. I am bringing six millions for one of you." (Dead silence.) "Monsieur," he went on, turning to Raphael, who at the moment was unceremoniously wiping his ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... dram cup, which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took up the vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and in a most respectful manner drank to her ladyship's health, expressing the words as loud as I could in English, which made the company laugh so heartily that I was almost deafened with the noise. This liquor tasted like a small cider, and was not unpleasant. Then the master made me a sign to come to his trencher-side; but as I walked on the table, being in great surprise all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and excuse, I happened to stumble ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... passed over the stupendous edifice; carriages filled the narrow lanes, and vessels in the water had been detained in order that their crews might gaze up at the gorgeous pageant passing far above their masts heads. Here again was a grand stand, and here again enthusiastic plaudits almost deafened us. Shortly, we passed the borough of Newton, crossing a fine bridge over the Warrington road, and reached Parkside, seventeen miles from Liverpool, in about four minutes under the hour. At this place the engines were ranged under different watering ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Should not the memory of our noble predecessors' valor and constancy rouse up our drooping spirits? Are our noble predecessors' souls got so far into the English cabbage stock and cauliflowers that we should show the least inclination that way? Are our eyes so blinded? Are our ears so deafened? Are our hearts so hardened? Are our tongues so faltered? Are our hands so fettered that in this our day, I say, my lord, that in this our day, we should not mind the things that concern the very ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... shirt tail fell out; and what made my situation still more disgraceful was the mischievous conduct of my partner, the gal that I was dancing with, who instead of trying to conceal my shame caught my shirt tail behind and held it up. The roar of laughter that came from both men and gals almost deafened me, and I would at this moment have sunk through the floor, so I endeavoured to creep out as slily as I could; but even this I was not permitted to do until I had undergone a hauling around the room by my unfortunate shirt tail: and this part of the programme was performed by the ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... started desperately back, skirting the edge of the logs which now the very seconds alone seemed to hold back. They were drenched and blinded with spray, deafened with the crash of timbers settling to the leap. The men on shore could no longer see them for the smother. The great crush of logs had actually begun its first majestic sliding motion when at last they ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... before the temple, guarded by Lybian soldiers. And she, she, the elect, the saviour, will come forth, ringed by the high priests of Ammon in purple and in gold, and aloft on a chariot where perfumes burn, deafened by sound of trumpet and cries of joy, she will behold the people stretch unnumbered arms ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... iron hand-rail and looked down upon the tumultuous scene, his ears deafened by the roar, his eyes dazed by the conflicting lights and the million swift reflections from moving faces and arms and hats and handkerchiefs. The man is not born who can receive unmoved a frenzied public ovation. A lump rose in his throat. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... whole continuous stream of billowy froth, which, dashing from the one, was eddying and boiling in the other. They were so near this grand phenomenon that they were covered with its spray, and well-nigh deafened by the incessant roar. But crossing in the very front of the fall, and at scarce three yards distance from the cataract, an old oak-tree, flung across the chasm in a manner that seemed accidental, formed a bridge of fearfully narrow dimensions and uncertain footing. The upper ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by pain and terror, vanquished in advance by overwhelming reality. The sole advantage they derived from their disputes, consisted in producing a tempest of words and cries, and the riot occasioned in this manner momentarily deafened them. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... and shooting and dashing about like grey and black water, so that it was as if the wind itself had taken shape, and he saw the grey and black wind tossing and raving most madly all about him. Now it blinded him by smiting him upon the eyes; now it deafened him by bellowing in his ears; for even when the thunder came he knew now that it was the billows of the great ocean of the air dashing against each other in their haste to fill the hollow scooped out by the lightning; now it took his breath ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... a better direct conductor to the earth than his own body, he will not be fatally injured by the electric current, though, if it pass very near, he may be blinded by the glare or deafened by the noise—effects which are usually temporary. Equal safety for buildings ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "The noise nearly deafened me, and my nerves were so shattered that for a time I was helpless. I felt myself go up and up into the air, until soon I was far above the clouds. Then I recovered my wits, and when I began to come down again I tried to fly. I knew the Valley of Mo must be somewhere to the west; so ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... the way she was handled, and a ferocity in the blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrown to the rage of a mob: hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flung down, leaped upon. Captain MacWhirr and Jukes kept hold of each other, deafened by the noise, gagged by the wind; and the great physical tumult beating about their bodies, brought, like an unbridled display of passion, a profound trouble to their souls. One of those wild and appalling ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... stillness of the dripping little shrubbery frightened me. It was so still that I was afraid to move; so still, that I could count each drop of moisture falling from the oozing wall; so still, that when I held my breath to listen, I was deafened by my own heart-beats. I made a step forward in the direction where the arbour ought to be, and the rustling and jingling of my clothes terrified me into immobility. The house was only two hundred yards off; and if any one had been about, the noise I had already made ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... when they saw them sailing off, to bring them back by shouting promises after them that they should be kings if they returned; "for, by the public statute of the ancients, the succession was appointed to the slayers of the kings." As they retreated, their ears were long deafened by the Sclavs obstinately shouting ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in hearts as cold and hard as stone toward their fellow-beings and sodden with hate and suspicion of them. 'If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?' The priests deafened their flocks with appeals to love God, to give their hearts to him. They should have rather taught them, as Christ did, to love their fellow-men and give their hearts to them. Hearts so given the love of God would presently enkindle, even as, according to the ancients, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... at a fixed hour, and its passengers run to it; a vetturino leaves at all hours, and runs after its passengers. Hardly have you set your foot out of the boat that brings you from the steam-vessel to the shore, than you are assailed, stifled, dragged, deafened by twenty drivers, who look on you as their merchandise, and treat you accordingly, and would end by carrying you off bodily, if they could agree among them who should have the booty. Families have been separated at the port ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... still, the lightning, the plague, the falling chimney-pot, smite the good as well as the evil. Even the dumb animal is not spared. 'If,' says Huxley, 'our ears were sharp enough to hear all the cries of pain that are uttered in the earth by man and beasts we should be deafened by one continuous scream.' 'If there are any marks at all of special design in creation,' writes John Stuart Mill, 'one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... that occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that he was holding out, unconscious how long ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... one, which I believe he intended for Campbell, but his avarice got the better, and he commuted his gift into the offer of a tune, and pitching it in a high key, he went through a Tibetan air that almost deafened us by its screech. He tried bravely to maintain his equanimity, but as we preserved a frigid civility and only spoke when addressed, the tears would start from his eyes in the pauses of conversation. In the evening he came again; he was excessively agitated ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... rushing sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold the clouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you not the earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with shrieks and wailings,— all announcing the last days of man? No! none of these things accompanied our fall! The balmy air of spring, breathed from nature's ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... safe place but are deafened for a time by the loud noise of falling trunks, broken boughs, the crackling of leaves and the snapping asunder of the thick masses of foliage that the creepers have woven amongst the branches. The turmoil is indescribable. Reptiles, birds, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... stuffed with warrior gear, Your gander-step parades, your prancing Prussians, Your menaces that shocked the deafened sphere With rude concussions; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... was growing steadily in volume until at last it deepened into a roar very like that of an approaching express train, as Pat had suggested. Followed a smart blow on the shack. Then it reeled and the night was filled with a howling tumult that deafened the men inside; the blizzard had burst upon the mesa. Through the windows one could see nothing, for the air had become a black maelstrom of whirling snow and darkness where a choked roar persisted as steadily as the bass thunder of Niagara. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... voters and fighters, demanded an active share in the proceedings, and were organized by Squire Bean into a fife and drum corps, so that by day and night martial but most inharmonious music woke the echoes, and deafened mothers felt their patriotism oozing out at the soles of ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... animal house wuz enough to turn the soundest brain, for to save the animals they had to let 'em loose. And as they couldn't be driven out, at last it wuz a great writhin', strugglin' mass of animal forms appallin' to see, while the ears wuz deafened by the maddened cries of leapords and hyenas—the wild jabberin' of monkeys, snarlin' and growlin' of panthers, tigers and bears, roarin' of lions—hybrids—hissin' of serpents—pitiful frightened neighing of ponies, trumpetin' of elephants. A great ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... who joined in her gladness with all his kingly heart. The faces and dresses of the public were red and yellow with gulal and abir,—perfumed powders,[FN33]—which were sprinkled upon one another in token of merriment. Musicians deafened the citizens' ears, dancing girls performed till ready to faint with fatigue, the manufacturers of comfits made their fortunes, and the Nine Gems of Science celebrated the auspicious day with the most long- winded odes. The royal hero, decked ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... I stand, And gaze into the depths profound, In ecstacy at sights so grand, And deafened by the sound Of rushing waters, as they leap Like maddened steeds, ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... entering the labyrinth of deceit, but the words of Annie were before her. Again and again they were read, till every word became engraved within her, and the spirit they breathed thickened the film before her eyes, and deafened her ear to every loudly-whispered reproach. Yet in silence and solitude that still small voice, conscience, arose and left its pang, although on the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... clambered over the rail from the boat that had been sent to meet them and nearly had their arms wrung off in congratulations upon their success, about which the very first questions had been asked as soon as they came within hearing. They were nearly deafened with exclamations that their appearance called out, and by the questions that were showered on them. At last some order was restored, and after pictures had been made of them just as they came aboard, dressed in sealskin tassock, sealskin and deerskin boots and moccasins, with which they had ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... Preston never was so proud before, and never with such good reason; for if the people be poor, according to the proverb, they take good care to hide their poverty. Bombards were fired from the bridge, and the church bells rang loud enough to crack the steeple, and bring it down about the ears of the deafened lieges. The houses were hung with carpets and arras; the streets strewn ankle deep with sand and sawdust; the cross in the market-place was bedecked with garlands of flowers like a May-pole; and the conduit near it ran wine. At noon there was more ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... swift instant the old house was before them, with the man lying smoking in the window; another thundering sound, and it heaved, surged outward, opened asunder in fifty places, collapsed, and fell. Deafened by the noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by the dust, they hid their faces and stood rooted to the spot. The dust storm, driving between them and the placid sky, parted for a moment and showed them the stars. As they looked ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... they are sitting on them. If anyone fired a gun near the rock there would be a sudden flight up into the air of hundreds of birds all at once, like a gigantic cloud, flying, whirling, screaming, mixed up together, rising higher and higher in great circles till you would feel stunned and deafened and almost frightened, as if a piece of the sky had suddenly taken shape and broken up over your head. These wild birds know they are safe on the Bass Rock, and they take no care to protect their nests; no ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... his country. Being now to live by his profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of accomplishments like his. At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost deafened by the report ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... made one, was drowned in a burst of brass music that deafened people at intervals throughout the afternoon, and Lady Goldthred's attention wandered to fresh arrivals, for whom, with fresh smiles and untiring energy, she elaborated many more ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... depths of Rivers's nature there heaved and roared something that, had Northrup not held the reins, would have meant battle to the death. It was not outraged honour, love, or justice that blinded and deafened Larry; it was simply the brutish resentment of the savage who, bound and gagged, watches a strong foe take all that he had believed was his by right of conquest. At that moment he hated Mary-Clare ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... gradually forces upon us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become familiar with something of nature's mannerism. This is the true pleasure of your 'rural voluptuary,'—not to remain awe-stricken before a Mount Chimborazo; not to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty—to experience some new vague and tranquil sensation that has before evaded him. It is not the people who 'have pined and hungered after nature many ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was but yesterday our ears were deafened by the turmoil and clamour of political strife, shaking the great national fabric to its centre, and threatening the stability of the Government itself. In that fearful conflict for the control of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... describe the scene that followed their discovery of the Countess Tarnowsy. Be it said, however, to the credit of Elsie and Betty Billy, the startled refugee was fairly smothered in kisses and tears and almost deafened by the shrill, delighted exclamations that fell from their eager lips. I doubt if there ever was such a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... coming on with speed; yet no one turned his back: and they withdrew, retiring slowly as if in time to music, and gradually fell behind the pales of the camp, being unable to sustain the weight of the battalions pressing close upon them, and being deafened by the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... thoroughly and inherently English, a constitution that he has inherited from his ancestors, and which by every obligation both human and divine he is bound to transmit unchanged to posterity";—here the orator, who continued to speak, however, was deafened by shouts of applause, and that part of the subject might very fairly be ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dimness the figures of Lidgett and the boys moved, as faint and silent as ghosts. Plattner's face still tingled with the stinging heat of the flash. He, was, he says, "all muddled." His first definite thoughts seem to have been of his personal safety. He thought he was perhaps blinded and deafened. He felt his limbs and face in a gingerly manner. Then his perceptions grew clearer, and he was astonished to miss the old familiar desks and other schoolroom furniture about him. Only dim, uncertain, grey shapes stood in the place of these. Then came a thing that ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "is the side which has made our blood boil for generations! These women in silk and laces, these idle, pleasure-loving men, this eating and drinking, this luxury in beautiful surroundings, with ears deafened to all the mad, sobbing cries of the world! This is their life day by day. You have been in the wilderness, you have seen the life of those others, you have the feeling for them in your heart. Can you sit at table with these people and wear their clothes, and ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... skeletons with grinning skulls and weird creatures with papier mache heads of bears, tigers, dragons and even stranger beasts. Wild but not inharmonious music from shaven-headed members of an orchestra of weird instruments—gongs, shawns, cymbals, long silver trumpets—deafened the ears. Crowds of gaily-clad spectators covered the flat roofs of the building and arcades, thronged the verandahs, filled the windows and squatted around the courtyard—these last kept in order by ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... wondered. For a long while past she had been aware that her life was a noise, but it had seemed to be very much about something; a noise, indeed, about so much that she felt she must get out of earshot for a little or she would be completely, and perhaps permanently, deafened. But suppose it was ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a young Irishman, who was some years my senior. When he fired his first shot, he came very near putting me out of action. I think that the muzzle of his gun could not have been more than two or three inches from my right ear. The shock of the report almost deafened me at the time, and my neck and right cheek were peppered with powder grains, which remained there for years until finally absorbed in the system. I turned to Phil in a fury, exclaiming, "What in the hell and damnation do you mean?" Just then down went the ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Confused and deafened as he was by the storm himself, he burst out into a roar of laughter at the sight of his brother literally running before the wind in the most comically absurd manner, till, finding a dry spot, he flung himself down in the soft sand, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... this conversation, three shadows might have been seen stealing through the glades in the direction of Falcon's Nest. Nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the leaves—the deafened beating of the sea upon the rocks—and, to use the words of Lamartine, "those unknown tongues that night and the wind whisper in the air." The trees were mirrored in the rays of the moon, and the ground, at intervals, seemed strewn with monstrous giants; their hearts ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... lost in the rending crash of the French artillery. Their batteries were posted on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range. All along the front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened forever. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thunder of the ocean, seething and leaping against the rocks below, shook the air around him. The salt spray leaped up into his white face, and the winds blew against him, and the passionate cry of saddened nature rang in his deafened ears. At that moment those things were a joy ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hearing other people, who have quite as much right as you to be there, talk about it and tramp round its margin. Then, too, for the convenience of visitors, there has been built on the edge of the pool a thatched arbour of wood, into which you admit yourself with a very large key, only to be deafened on the spot by ten thousand cockney names scrawled on the white walls round you. Those who have gibbeted themselves on the walls have also thrown the newspapers that held their lunch into the water, and bottles with the paper—a most unhappy spectacle. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was instantly lost amid the streaming throng; dancers sprang round him, masks shot by him to and fro, kettle-drums and trumpets deafened his ears, and it was unto him as though human life were nothing but a dream. He walked along the lines; his eye alone was watchful, seeking for those beloved eyes and that fair head with its brown locks, for the sight of which he yearned to-day even more intensely ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... they lay in a pandemonium of noise. After a while they would become used to it as do the workers in a stampmill, but that night it deafened them, kept them awake and alert, fearful, with the tremendous cannonading. The bite of the frost made the timbers of the Karluk creak and its thrust continually worked among the stranded masses with groaning thunders and shrill grindings, while ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... near enough to elbow us, and screaming full-lunged. I saw Barque's mouth, stoppered by the clamor of our huge neighbor, pronounce an oath, and I saw the other faces grimacing in deafened impotence, faces helmeted and chin-strapped, for we ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... forcing me to throw the other into the boat, and to hold on tight with both hands to the gunwale. Every time the boat was thrown upward, Shakro shrieked wildly. As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me. I stared about me in dull and chilly terror, and saw the awful monotony around us. Waves, nothing but waves, with whitish crests, that broke in showers of salt spray; above us, the thick ragged edged clouds were like ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... pours upon your head in streams as if from spouts. It seems as if your ship were going to be drowned before she sank, as if all atmosphere had turned to water. You gasp, you splutter, you are blinded and deafened, you are submerged, obliterated, dissolved, annihilated, streaming all over as if your limbs, too, had turned to water. And every nerve on the alert you watch for the clearing-up mood of the Western King, that shall come with a shift of wind as likely as not ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away from the company of his pardners true. The dust from a thousand rustling skirts filled his eyes. The mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky deafened him. The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... arms. A few minutes ago, life had been some mighty and incalculable force which flung its victims where it chose, and now she found it could be tamed by so slight a thing as a human girl. She had been blinded, deafened, half stupefied, tossed in the whirlpool, and behold, with the remembrance that Zebedee believed in her, she was able to steer her course and guide her craft through shallows and over rapids ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... with a crash that wakened me out of an agreeable slumber into which I had gradually fallen; and such discordance of instruments and voices, such confusion worse confounded, such inharmonious harmony, never before deafened mortal ears. The very spheres seemed out of tune, and rolling and crashing over each other. I could have cried Miserere! with the loudest; and in the midst of all the undrilled band was a music-master, with violin-stick uplifted, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... grass;—and long-legged brown insects sprang showering to right and left as she parted the tufts of the thickening verdure. As she went on, the bitter-weeds disappeared;—jointed grasses and sinewy dark plants of a taller growth rose above her head: she was almost deafened by the storm of insect shrilling, and the mosquitoes became very wicked. All at once something long and black and heavy wriggled almost from under her naked feet,—squirming so horribly that for a minute or two she could not move for fright. ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... also is confused, and my heart is painfully afflicted. The whole firmament seemeth to me to have been covered by this banner, and everything seemeth to be hidden from my view! My ears also have been deafened by the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ideas of entertainment. What entertainment is it to stand all the evening in a set of sixteen-by-twenty parlors, jammed in among all sorts of strange persons, and stranger perfumes, deafened with a hubbub of senseless talk, and finally be led down to feed at a long table where the sherry is hot, and the partridges are cold? Very probably some boy or other across the table lets off a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... not children at all,—every one of whom was hurrying to and fro and in and out, while all the time a voice from somewhere was calling out names and dates in such rapid succession that Betty was fairly deafened with the sound. There was a continual stir in the assembly, and people were appearing and reappearing constantly in the most perplexing manner, so that it made one quite dizzy to look on. But Betty was not permitted to look long, for in the ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... was helpless, and when sentence had been passed upon him, he was thrown into a loathly dungeon, clothed in base and servile weeds, and his arms strongly fettered up to iron bolts, while the roars of the two hungry lions who were to devour him ere long, deafened his ears. Now his rage and fury at this black treachery was such that it gave him strength, and with mighty effort he drew the staples that held his fetters; so being part free he tore his long locks of amber-coloured ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Germaine used to feel buzzings in her ears that deafened her, he said to her one evening in ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... afterward I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out that I felt dreadfully unwell—so unwell that I did not know how ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Miss Cammil, and thank ye again for yir veesit. Bring the auld man wi' ye next time ye're passing, though a'm feared ye've been deived (deafened) wi' the engine." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... and neither," sang the man, "This song I hear. It first began Before the hurrying race Of ticking, and of tearing pages Deafened the breathless ages: It is the happy singing Of wind among the rigging Of our ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and a rushing river glimmered before us. We struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north, stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be blinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the ocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, roughened. gathered itself for the shock, was shattered, and dissolved in milky gloom. We wheeled away to the right, and splashed into yeasty froth. I turned my back to the wind, scooped ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and body that was not triply guarded by clothing. I instinctively stretched forth my hands and closed them, clutching by the action hundreds of enormous musquittoes, whose droning, singing noise how almost deafened me. The air was literally filled by a dense swarm of these insects; and the agony caused by their repeated and venomous stings was indescribable. It was a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... shout of laughter around the table, in which baby tumultuously joined, and rattled her spoon against the tea-urn until she almost deafened them. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... strolled the next morning to the Green, a spacious open ground that stretches along the Clyde. One part of it was occupied with the booths and temporary theatres and wagons of showmen, around and among which a vast throng was assembled, who seemed to delight in being deafened with the cries of the showmen and the music of their instruments. In one place a band was playing, in another a gong was thundering, and from one of the balconies a fellow in regal robes and a pasteboard crown, surrounded by several persons of both sexes in tawdry stage-dresses, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," a big policeman, seeing me with baby ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... singing it before there came a distant murmur in the still, warm air, and the murmur grew louder and louder until it would almost have deafened any one if there had been any one there to deafen. But the people in the palace were so occupied in dressing for the ball that a thunderstorm would not have made any difference to them; and as for Sunny, the sound only reminded her of ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and .007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth, and the whole of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... comfortably seating himself in his physiological laboratory by the side of his victim, scientifically picking, and piercing, and pricking the wound, without respite— constantly, without ceasing—until the blinded and deafened and tortured creature is driven into frenzy by torments which it felt continually, which it could not comprehend, and from which, by no exertion, it was able to defend itself! Think of the scientist asking many other learned ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... and all prudent people stayed ashore; but we went out in great dreadnought boots, and bearskin caps over our ears, and amused ourselves with pulling about for a while among the floes. I suppose the grinding of the ice deafened us, and the hummocks hid us from view of the people on board; at all events, down came one of the river steamers slap on us. I saw the red paddles laden with ice at every revolution, and the next instant was ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... The Adapter refers confidently to any Southern female novel of the period for proof, that sentimental Magnolian school-girls always talk, or write, everything educational, except good English, when conferring with their deafened masculine friends.] ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... Aleksandra?" asked Foma, somewhat deafened by the loud speech of this tall, frank, red-faced fellow clad in ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... to carry me up to Kingston. The moment my object was perceived by the black boat—men, I was surrounded by a mob of them, pulling and hauling each other, and shouting forth the various qualifications of their boats, with such vehemence, that I was nearly deafened. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Carabine! La Longue Carabine!" passed from mouth to mouth, until the whole band appeared to be collected around a trophy which would seem to announce the death of its formidable owner. After a vociferous consultation, which was, at times, deafened by bursts of savage joy, they again separated, filling the air with the name of a foe, whose body, Heywood could collect from their expressions, they hoped to find concealed in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... were gained, their landward side was sheltered. Janet sat down in the long grass to rest before ascending. The snow cut her face and the thunder of the waves deafened her. After a few minutes she started on. Davy's Light was straight behind her, so the halfway house lay directly before. On, on in the dark and noise! She felt her way with hands outstretched in front of her. At the dune top, the real magnitude of the storm was apparent. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... surrounded by them: by Wajiji, Wanyamwezi, Wangwana, Warundi, Waguhha, Wamanyuema, and Arabs, and were almost deafened with the shouts of "Yambo, yambo, bana! Yambo, bana! Yambo, bana!" To all and each of my ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... I kin, Mas' Sam," said Joe, who, to prove his powers straightway gave a shrill kildee whistle, which nearly deafened them all. ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... places they had neither of them seen before. They stayed a week in Paris, where Helen bought more dresses and declared herself supremely happy; they visited the falls of the Rhine, which Maurice said deafened him; and ran through Switzerland, which they both voted detestably uncomfortable and dirty—the hotels, bien entendu, not the mountains. They stopped a night on the St. Gothard, which was too cold for them, and a week or two at the Italian ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... your lives!" he commanded in a tone of thunder. I took Adele's arm, we all rushed for the door. We had barely reached it before the floor began to heave, the windows to fall in, and a report like thunder deafened us! We emerged into the street, wrapped in a thick cloud of curling smoke, with masonry and fragments of furniture falling all around us. But we emerged safely, though of the Cafe Suisse there was scarcely left one ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had taken what charge she could of the deafened and distracted maids and waiters who were working to stem the tide, while the other of the aunts Rennsdale stood with her niece and Miss Lowe at the foot of the stairs, trying to say good-night reassuringly to those of the terrified little girls who were able to tear themselves ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... went on pumpin', I suppose we all went on pumpin', for the vessel stayed afloat, but what happened after we passed into the hurricane again, I can't tell you. I was deafened, stunned, blinded. I think I must have gone mad, too. Our trysail blew out right away, and the tiller that we had rigged up went as well. The bulwarks were laid flat with the deck. The skipper and one of the men were lashed to the stump of ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... that, generally in the evening, when the concert was held in a hall which must have contained two thousand people, even when all seated at little tables, and where the band would have deafened you if the hall had not been so large. Here Jimmie and the waitress prevailed upon us to taste the most inhuman dishes with names a yard long, which the maid declared we would find to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... 'They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may,' convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder roar. Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes out to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... little maid-servant ran upstairs from her modest little kitchen, trembling at the terrible prospect of having to open the door. Miss Pink, deafened by the barking, had just time to say, "What a very ill-behaved dog!" when a sound of small objects overthrown in the hall, and a scurrying of furious claws across the oil-cloth, announced that Tommie ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... shirt, chafing the hands and the brow, feeling the pulse, listening at the heart. Whether or not there was a response there he couldn't tell; his own emotion was too overpowering. His fingers on Claude's wrist shook as with a palsy; his ear at Claude's heart was deafened by the pounding of his own. Meanwhile Claude lay limp and still, dead-white, with eyes closed and mouth a little open. Thor had seen many a man in a state of syncope, but never one who looked so much like death. Was he dead? Could he be dead? Had the great oath been ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... novelist, anxious to put his pen down and go to his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and knew no more"—till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space in front of the brick building; ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out over their balusters ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... effect, we would cast a cloak around the adversary and permit the adversary to see and know what we alone provided. This would leave an adversary blind, deaf, and dumb. With superior and rapid firepower, the blinded, deafened enemy would be destroyed and defeated as we saw fit. This would maximize Shock and Awe and help break ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... heroics acted as a spell, The angels stopped their ears, and plied their pinions, The devils ran howling deafened down to hell, The ghosts fled gibbering, for their ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... square of glimmering blackness. Suddenly a sly-creeping foot touched me unseen and then (even as the owner of this foot tripped over me) came the roaring flash of a pistol hard by, followed immediately by another and, as I lay deafened and half-dazed, the floor quivered to the soft, vicious thud of leaping, swift-trampling feet, and on the air was a confused scuffling, mingled with an awful, beast-like worrying sound. And now (though I was broad-awake and tingling for action) I constrained myself to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... anxiety from his mind. He never left the church while the peal was ringing. First he was in the bell-chamber steadying himself by the beams of the cage, while he marked the wide-mouthed bells now open heavenwards, now turn back with a rush into the darkness below. Then he crept deafened with the clangour down the stairs into the belfry, and sat on the sill of a window watching the ringers rise and fall at their work. He felt the tower sway restlessly under the stress of the swinging ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that life—all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft shadows of the flowers and trees—which perturbed them to such a point as to make them angry ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... She got home, he along with all the guests feasted his eyes on the illuminations and drank wine with them, Music and singing deafened the ear. Embroidered fineries were everywhere visible. For his way of seeking amusement was unlike that customary in this portion ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... would be odious were it not ridiculous. If the state of society in Westmoreland be as corrupt as they describe, what, in the name of wonder, has preserved their purity? Away then with hypocrisy and hollow pretext; let us be no longer deafened with a rant about throwing off intolerable burthens, and repelling injuries, and avenging insults! Say at once that you disapprove of the present Members, and would have others more to your own liking; you have named your Man, or rather necessity has named him for you. Your ship was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... all the while holding her close crushed against him, and she deafened almost by the warm beating of a man's heart beneath ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... extinguished, and all tight and right, I saw the crowd scaling, and thought it best to go in too, carrying the two youngsters along with me. When I began to move off, however, siccan a cheering of the multitude got up as would have deafened a cannon; and though I say it myself, who should not say it, they seemed struck with a sore amazement at my heroic behaviour, following me with loud cheers even to the threshold of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... permission, from an imperfect copy, and while editors and printers enriched themselves with the fruit of his labors, the poet himself was languishing in a dungeon, despised, neglected, sick, and destitute of the common conveniences of life, and above all, deafened by the frantic cries with which the hospital continually resounded. When the first rigors of his imprisonment were relaxed, Tasso pursued his studies, and poured forth his emotions in every form of verse. Some of his most beautiful minor poems were composed during ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... grew dim With the dizzying whirl—which way to swim? The thunderous downshoot deafened him; Half he choked in the lashing spray: Life is sweet, and the grave is grim— ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... money-making or the pursuit of fame. To habitual residents among the Alps this absence of social duties and advantages may be barbarising, even brutalising. But to men wearied with too much civilisation, and deafened by the noise of great cities, it is beyond measure refreshing. Then, again, among the mountains history finds no place. The Alps have no past nor present nor future. The human beings who live upon their sides are at odds with nature, clinging on for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the course of an obsolete fence; but the enemy's grape was sharper than his eyes, and it was poor consolation to know that his gunners could not see what they were doing, so long as they did it. The shock of our own pieces nearly deafened us, but in the brief intervals we could hear the battle roaring and stammering in the dark reaches of the forest to the right and left, where our other divisions were dashing themselves again and again into the smoking jungle. What would we not have given to join them in their brave, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... climb the wall in the driving rain, and cross the puddles of the Jas-Meiffren in perfect darkness. As soon as she had left his arms, she was lost to Silvere amidst the gloom and the noise of the falling water. In vain he listened, he was deafened, blinded. However, the anxiety caused by this brusque separation proved an additional charm, and, until the morrow, each would be uneasy lest anything should have befallen the other in such weather, when one would not even have turned a dog out ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... sound deafened him, and the air of the room seemed to have become hot as that of an oven. There came a series of dull reports—an uncanny wailing ... and the needle-ray vanished. A monstrous shadow, moon-cast, which had lain across the carpet of the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... to admit that he was not in a position to judge. He was deafened by the row of this babel of words. It was impossible to hear the little fluting sounds that were drowned in it all. For even among such books as these there were some, from the pages of which, behind all the nonsense, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... beat into Driscoll's ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his veins like fiery needle points. To see them—the cavalry, the cavalry! Then they were gone—a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping sabres. Hacked bodies were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... alongside the launch; he scrambled over the low rail and ran forward, deafened by the din. A woman in oilskins hung to the companion-rail; he saw her white face as he passed. Haggard, staggering, he entered the wheel-house, where the young man in dripping flannels seized his arm, calling him by name. Haltren ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... earnestly at a cluster or heap of brightness, at the foot of a precipice of black rocks, behold, there were the terrible Gorgons! They lay fast asleep, soothed by the thunder of the sea; for it required a tumult that would have deafened everybody else to lull such fierce creatures into slumber. The moonlight glistened on their steely scales, and on their golden wings, which drooped idly over the sand. Their brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out, and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... miles long. It may be doubted whether such an army had ever been brought together under the Roman eagles. The show began early in the morning, and was not over when the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground, astonished, deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In a private letter he ventured to give utterance to an amiable wish which he probably took good care not to whisper in the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all these poor fellows were in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... full three feet from the utmost bound of its shadow, than a sudden pause in the great business of the day was followed by such a tumultuous shout of "Three cheers for Miss Faith Derrick!—the prettiest girl in Pattaquasset!"—that she was well nigh deafened. And promptly upon that, Joe Deacon stepped up to Reuben ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... happy youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibility that he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to lifelong pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened. Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but even waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from the voice of friendship, and love? How ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Willems and Aissa stopped. Another forked flash of lightning split up the clouds overhead, and threw upon their faces a sudden burst of light—a blaze violent, sinister and fleeting; and in the same instant they were deafened by a near, single crash of thunder, which was followed by a rushing noise, like a frightened ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... intense interest throughout Europe, and nowhere more than in England. He was placed in the very thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with talk about election, reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world was resounding ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... open it. Now, if you'll leave me a moment alone, I'll soon be ready. But you mustn't expect me to eat till Anitra comes. I couldn't do that. Oh, she's a dreadful trial, Mrs. Deo; you have a motherly face, and I can tell you that the girl is just eating up my life. If she weren't my very self, deafened by hard usage, and rendered coarse and wilful by years of a miserable and half-starved life, I couldn't bear it, especially after what I've sacrificed for her. I've parted with my husband—but I can't talk, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... that, straight and crisp, Shone like a wheat-field in the sun, Its swift voice deafened to a lisp, Fell, ere the war was well begun, And waned ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... his honest faith, and she would dismiss every doubt again as vain and wearying. But still the eternal question rang loudly in her soul's ears, and the din of the inquisitive devil that would not be satisfied deafened her so that she could not hear Miss Skeat. Once or twice she moved her head nervously from side to side, as it rested on the back of the chair, and her face was drawn and pale, so that Miss Skeat anxiously asked whether she were in any pain, but Margaret merely ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... George into the deafened ears, 'I'm going a long journey; mayhap shall never see you again; speak a word to me before I go!' Grandfather looks up, brightens for a moment, and cackles feebly out: 'George, fetch me some SNUFF from where you're going. See now' (half whimpering), ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod |
