"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deeper. Opponents of Rome who had risen up against her in other quarters, on other grounds, and with other weapons, now ranged themselves upon his side. Among all alike the ardour of battle grew the more powerful and violent, the more it was attempted to smother them with edicts ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... confusing sounds. Syrens whooped, steam whistles shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving no intimation ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... cultured public will interest all, if displayed clearly and pleasantly, in a form to catch attention at the outset. Savants and professionals have kept the delights of orchidology to themselves as yet. They smother them in scientific treatises, or commit them to dry earth burial in gardening books. Very few outsiders suspect that any amusement could be found therein. Orchids are environed by mystery, pierced now and again by a brief announcement that something with an incredible ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... to betray to deserve to burst the handkerchief to smother you know what remains to be done to be dismissed there and then what ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... over, crying aloud, "Oh, my darlin', if I break your sweet bones, it is better than the fire!" And indeed it seemed as if it must break her bones, so fiercely he rolled her over and over, tearing off his woollen coat to smother the fire; beating it with his tartan cap, stamping it with his knees and feet "Oh, my darlin'! make yourself easy. I'll save ye! I'll save ye if I ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... forward scowling. "Who said he had any?" he asked savagely. "Sol Brig kept himself to himself. He never told secrets to any man aboard!" Then he turned and with a black frown at the two boys, climbed through the hatch into the howling smother outside. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... misery and despair by shouting at this poor kid. God knew what she'd been through with his irresponsible other self—Forth had admitted that that damned "Jason" personality was a blend of all the undesirable traits he'd fought to smother all his life. By an effort of will he kept himself from pulling away from ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... smother, Perjur'd Caelia loves another; In his Arms I saw her lying, Panting, Kissing, Trembling, Dying: There the Fair deceiver swore, As once she did to ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... had gained a sufficient distance I followed. It seemed as if the disgusting water would smother me as I laid myself down into it, and such was my agitation that it appeared almost impossible that I should escape making such a noise as would attract the guard's notice. Catching hold of the roots and limbs at the side of the stream, I pulled myself slowly ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... stopped at the station, and the nurse scarcely liked to ask Suzanne for the child, who was holding it against her heaving bosom, and kissing it as if she intended to smother ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin's position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy; a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key, and ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... ship slowly paid off and gathered away the white squall broke upon them. The sea was a-smother with mist and rain. The wind whipped through the shrouds and rigging, but everything held. Taking a great bone in her teeth the old Almirante Recalde heeled far over to leeward and ripped through the water to the southward ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... size of the bed), let his face be turned to the opposite side. (3.) Let him lie fairly either on his side, or on his back. (4.) Be careful to ascertain that his mouth be not covered with the bed-clothes; and, (5.) Do not smother his face with clothes, as a plentiful supply of pure air is as necessary when he is awake, or even more so, than when he is asleep. (6.) Never let him lie low in the bed. (7.) Let there be no pillow near the one his head ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... replies, 'Alas! 310 Trojans we were, and mighty Ilium was; But the last period and the fatal hour Of Troy is come: our glory and our power Incensed Jove transfers to Grecian hands; The foe within the burning town commands; And (like a smother'd fire) an unseen force Breaks from the bowels of the fatal horse: Insulting Sinon flings about the flame, And thousands more than e'er from Argos came Possess the gates, the passes, and the streets, 320 And these the sword ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... probably be a more economical means of making our land clean, than the liberal use of expensive manures. It depends, doubtless, on the land and on circumstances. It is well to know that manure on grass land, will so increase the growth of the good grasses, as to smother the weeds. Near my house was a piece of land that I wanted to make into a lawn. I sowed it with grass seed, but the weeds smothered it out. I plowed it, and hoed it, and re-seeded it, but still the weeds grew. Mallows came up by the thousand, with other weeds too numerous ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... storm. A wilder day would be hard to imagine; a hurricane was raging, the rain was whirled ahead of it like charges of shot. The mountains behind Kyak were invisible, and to seaward was nothing but a dimly discernible smother of foam and spray, for the crests of the breakers were snatched up and carried by the wind. The town was sodden; the streets were running mud. Stove-pipes were down, tents lay flattened in the mire, and the board houses were shaking as ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... tired little gasp, looking apprehensively up the long stretch of rough ground rising right in front, and the now gloomy hilltop, above which heavy black clouds hung, like the curtain of night about to descend and smother them ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... the use of potions and incantations they are able to arouse the pangs and to soothe them at will; they can make those bear who have a difficulty in bearing, and if they think fit they can smother the embryo ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these being moved by the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... not have left the castle! What might not a man in the mental and moral condition of the earl, unrestrained by law or conscience, risk to secure the property for his son? Might he not poison her, smother her, kill her somehow, anyhow that was safest? Then rushed into his mind what the housekeeper had told him of his cruelty to his wife: a man like that, no longer feeling, however knowing the difference between right and wrong, hardly knowing the difference between dreaming a thing ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... treacherous element in themselves; they succeed only in dwarfing their natures, and imagination is inert while reason controls; but when reason rests in sleep, and you cease to live to the external world, imagination resumes its normal power. You dream;—it is only the revival of that which you smother when you are awake. You consider the sights and sounds of yesterday follies; you reason;—imagination demonstrates its power by overturning your reason ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... o'clock it seemed as if the children would smother for lack of air! It was very peculiar. Even the janitor noticed it. He spoke about it to Kara at the head of the back stairs, and she held her hand so as to let him see the new silver ring on her fourth finger, and he let go of the rope ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... struck!" suddenly called one of the life savers. All gazed out to sea, where, amid a smother of foam, the craft could be seen. Her change in position was evident. Her decks sloped more, and instead of drifting she remained ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... town-yard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for God's sake, take hur out where ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... it; and Nana—that child whom I have raised from the cradle—disappears in the morning and never shows her face until night, when she sleeps right through and never once asks me how I am or if she can do anything for me. It will soon be over, and I really believe this clearstarcher would smother me herself—if she were not afraid of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... we're roaming, Mid flow'rets may lie, But soon will life's gloaming, Come dark'ning our sky. Then seek not to smother Kind feelings in thee, And scorn not thy brother, Though poor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... lads!" cried Fink, going down on his knees and pulling out the contents. "Wollum of The Leisure Hour, Sunday Magazine, odd numbers o' The Quiver, wollum of The Boy's Own Paper, Young England, Home Words, and Good Words (to smother our bad words, you know). There you are, enough to make doctors or professors of every man Jack o' you, if you'll on'y ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Elm, and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,—you will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night." All this was uttered without pause or alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me, walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not conjecture what she ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... just can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, they hand ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... post, and after many whispered remarks and tittering, the younger thrust his handkerchief into his mouth to smother a burst of irrepressible laughter, while the other, assuming a modest and ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, and ask her to substitute it in her memory for the inharmonic lines which he had used in order to smother the degenerate melody of a foreign lay. The other poem was intended for use in case his interview should not be successful. But on the way home Mr. Locker experienced an entire change of mind. He came to believe that it would ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... to himself, he made every effort to smother it, but the thought still stared him in the face—"I am not so strong in my ideals of personal character as I ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... away from the door, clasping Arisa to his breast and kissing her hair. The next moment he was sprawling on the floor, face downwards, and Arisa was pressing one of the soft cushions from the divan upon his head to smother his cries, while Aristarchi bound his hands firmly together behind him with one end of the long sash, and in spite of his desperate struggle got a turn with the rest round both his feet, drew them back as far as ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more doubted ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... seemed doubtful, so doubtful that Nick finally threw Cervera heavily to the floor, the better to press the matting closely around her and so smother the flames. In this he presently succeeded, but not before she was so severely burned as to be rendered ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... watchman. "That was an ugly dream," said he, "but droll enough. It seemed to me as if I were the lieutenant up yonder, but there was no happiness for me. I missed my wife and the little ones, who are always ready to smother me with kisses." He sat down again and nodded, but he could not get the dream out of his thoughts, and he still had the goloshes on his feet. A falling star gleamed across the sky. "There goes one!" cried he. "However, there are quite ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... kill the little princes. They have got a feather-bed or something there, and they are going to smother them while they ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... like it?" said Johnny Stout (Mabel her laugh must smother), As he straightened himself in his roundabout, And said, "I'll sing you another." He sang and whistled with might and main, Till Mabel's ears were a-ringing, And she stopped them up, and exclaimed again "Why, Johnny, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... which have now and then Been from the Record thoughtfully deleted, Repeat that favorite one about the hen, Repeat the ones that cannot be repeated; But in the midst of such enjoyments, smother The impulse to extol ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... leaned upon the other, Which played within the tangles of her hair; And to contend with thoughts she could not smother She seemed by the distraction of her air. 'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother To leave together this imprudent pair,[t] She who for many years had watched her son so— I'm very certain mine would not have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... over them now, like water out of a spout; it seared and blinded them; its touch was like that of a flame. Nevertheless they struggled on into the smother, making what headway they could. The Indian led, pulling at the end of a rope; Grant strained at the sled and hoarsely encouraged the dogs; Cantwell stumbled and lurched in the rear like an unwilling prisoner. When he fell his companion lifted him, then beat him, cursed him, tried ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... its raucous call, a loud yawn resounded through the empty spaces of the chamber. The sleeper, who had selected this spot that he might indulge, all undisturbed, in a revivifying sleep, evidently took no pains to smother the sound of his voice, for, after yawning enough to dislocate his jaws, he uttered a loud: "Ah!" He ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... mother, but that e'en her feet are blind Down the path that she cannot escape from: nay oft is she nothing, he saith, Save a staff for the foredoomed staying, and a sword for the ordered death; And that he will be wiser than this, nor thrust his desire aside, Nor smother the flame of his hatred; but the steed of the Norns will he ride, Till he see great marvels and wonders, and leave great tales to be told: And measureless pride is in him, a stern heart, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... has!' cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. 'Here! Take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. "How doth the little"—and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn "how doth ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... had kept her nose to it, and if the Mary Sinclair had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror which is past. Allardyce, who was ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a noble other, Went he, whispering soft and low: "Good-bye — pray for me, my mother; Sister! kiss me — farewell, brother;" And he strove his grief to smother. Forth, with footsteps firm and fearless, And his parting gaze was tearless Though his heart was lone and cheerless, Thus from all he ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... seeing his loved little lad so changed was too much for even his man's courage, for, with a cry he in vain strove to smother, he sunk on his knees with his face hidden in ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... maternal, Canst not smother her affection; Bitterly I'll mourn thy downfall, I would weep if thou shouldst perish, Shouldst thou leave my race forever; I would weep in court or cabin, Sprinkle all these fields with tear-drops, Weep great rivers to the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... the Arrow's achievement, a little torpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles an hour. The little craft seemed to disappear in the white smother of her wake, and those who watched the speed trial marvelled at the railroad speed she made. The Turbina—for that was the little record-breaker's name—was propelled by a new kind of engine, and her speed was all the more remarkable on that account. C.A. Parsons, the inventor of ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... looked so queer and was so uncomfortable that they let her choose her own costume. Nursing was certainly her strong point, and she tended Kavanagh as carefully as if he had been a baby. Only she always thought it cold, and wanted to smother him with wraps. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... found lying outside the castle wall, wi' her puir throat cut fra ear to ear!" shrieked the dame, covering up her face to smother the cries ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself in ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... arm about the girl's shoulders, and raised one hand to her cheek—it might have been in caress, but it wasn't. It was to smother the cry of alarm he anticipated would follow the discovery that he was not "Stefan." He bent his lips close to ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... much obliged to you, Misses Brown,' said the unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a cove. I'm very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don't smother ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... voyager. It is an extremely beautiful and varied coast. In the foreground, only a rifle-shot away across the blue undulating floor of the Caribbean, rises a long terraced mesa, fronting on the sea, with its rocky base in a white smother of foaming surf, and its level summit half hidden by a drooping fringe of dark-green chaparral and vines. Over the cyclopean wall of this mesa appear the rounded tops of higher and more distant foot-hills, densely clad in robes of perennial verdure, while beyond and above ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... some tall thinking," agreed Tubby, as a wave caught the little Flying Fish "quartering" on her port bow, and sent a white smother of spray ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... fame! Peasant am I, so to misterm my love: Although a millers daughter by her birth, Yet may her beauty and her vertues well suffice To hide the blemish of her birth in hell, Where neither envious eyes nor thought can pierce, But endless darkness ever smother it. Go, William Conqueror, and seek thy love, Whilest I draw back and court mine own the while, Decking her body with such costly robes As may become her beauties worthiness; That so thy labors may be laughed to scorn, And she thou seekest in foreign regions Be darkened and eclipst ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they roll'd one on another, Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thund'rous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing through the air; Said Francis then, "Good gentlemen, we're better ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... you?' he roared, wiping his face with a grimy handkerchief. 'Ain't this dust awful? There ain't no doing anything with it. If you put the winders down you'll smother with the heat, and if you leave 'em up, you'll choke to death. Hobson's choice, eh? Ha, ha! And all that prayin' for rain on Sunday, too. Providence's ways is certainly beyond us—ain't they? Well, I rather guess ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... has not met the Irishman who apes the Englishman, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were? 'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did you never hear Mrs. Captain Macmanus talk about 'I-ah-land,' and her account of her 'fawther's ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... lifted off the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not moved; ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... raged on and the snow piled its drifts. Joshua Ward sat silent by the fire, his head in his hands, or stood in the "dingle," gazing mournfully out into the smother of snowflakes. It would be a mad undertaking to venture abroad. He realized it and needed ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... suppressed desire, Raked up in ashes of my burning breast, Break out at length and to the clouds aspire, Urging the heavens to afford me rest; But let my body naturally descend Into the bowels of our common mother, And to the very centre let it wend, When it no lower can, her griefs to smother! And yet when I so low do buried lie, Then shall my love ascend ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... these various substances possess to combine with oxygen. We open the draft of a stove that it may "draw well": that it may secure oxygen for burning. We throw a blanket over burning material to smother the fire: to keep oxygen away from it. Burning, or oxidation, is combining with oxygen, and the more oxygen you add to a fire, the hotter the fire will burn, and the faster. The effect of oxygen on combustion ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... so pale he had to put his arms about her, and his father turned and walked away, exclaiming: 'Ach Himmel!' in a tone of such mingled pain, relief, and gratitude, that Ted pulled an extra pillow over his head to smother the sound. They were all right in a minute; but such news is always a shock, even if the peril is past, and Mrs Jo hugged her boy close till his father came and took him away, saying with a strong shake of both hands and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... made, Admiral Cervera heerd iv what was goin' on. 'Glory be to the saints,' he says, 'what an injaynious thribe these Yankees is!' says he. 'On'y a few weeks ago they thried to desthroy me be dumpin' a load iv coal on me,' he says; 'an' now,' he says, 'they're goin' to smother me in feed,' he says. 'They'll be rollin' bar'ls iv flour on me fr'm th' heights next,' he says. 'I'd betther get out,' he says. ''Tis far nobler,' he says, 'to purrish on th' ragin' main,' he says, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... well acquainted with his crew and his prisoner, that during the whole voyage he had been in dread of two things: either that the general would prefer death to this sort of imprisonment, and would smother himself by endeavoring to speak, or that his guards would allow themselves to be tempted by the offers of the prisoner, and put him, D'Artagnan, into the box ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... table, writing; Pia, the old nurse, stood behind her chair; the oil was richly scented that she burned; the single light illumined only her, and covered with her shadow the low ceiling,—a shadow that seemed to hang above her like a pall ready to fall from ghostly fingers and smother her in its folds; the others lounged about the room and waited on her pen, in gloom they, their faces gleaming from that dusk demoniacly. It was a concealed room, entered by secret ways, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... lines misconstrue and lose each other. Nay, it seems to be a kind of luxury to them to believe that those who could and would love them are false to them. We make haste to doubt the divinest fidelity; we drive the dagger into each other, and we smother the Desdemona who would have been the light of life to us, not because of any deadly difference or grievous injury, but because we idly ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... banner we will march and the lads in the quarry with us; it is they will have the welcome before him! It won't be long till we'll be attacking the Square House! Arms there are in it; riches that would smother the world; rooms full of guineas—we will put wax on our shoes walking them; the horses themselves shod with no less ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... the sight and presence of God; and I choose deliberately to expose myself to those severe censures which the haughty but empty scorn of infidelity, or principles nearly approaching it, and effectually doing its pernicious work, may very probably dictate upon the occasion, rather than to smother a relation, which may, in the judgment of my conscience, be like to conduce so much to the glory of God, the honour of the gospel, and the good of mankind. One thing more I will only premise, that I hope none who have heard the colonel himself speak something of this wonderful scene, will be ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... one moment it seemed absolutely irresistible; but the next she had turned to Maurice de St. Genis, who was never absent from her side, and who seemed to hover over her with an air of proprietorship and of triumphant mastery which caused poor Bobby to grind his heel into the oak floor, and to smother a bitter curse which had risen insistent ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper is never abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, and many of them have to await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up his wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfully fingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers' shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherless brothers and sisters with the few shillings which Dad has doled out. Who knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... joy so soon should waste! Or so sweet a bliss As a kiss Might not for ever last! So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious, The dew that lies on roses, When the morn herself discloses, Is not so precious. O rather than I would it smother, Were I to taste such another; It should be my wishing That I might die ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... verdureless. The scanty grasses were long ago turned into sun-cured hay by the fierce summer heats. There is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth buff, the air blae and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep across the prairie and smother the settlement. Cheyenne is described as "a God-forsaken, God-forgotten place." That it forgets God is written on its face. It owes its existence to the railroad, and has diminished in population, but is a depot for a large amount ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... trying to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... satellite, that other one, in Washington? Suppose this is what happens when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays or whatever is up there. Don't you see what could happen?" Bill was hoarse from fright and shouting. "Smother everything, grow ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... impressions, that the policy of the mighty outlaw was in many respects pure and lofty. It was this same influence, though, which won for Father Claude his only enemy in Torn; the little, grim, gray, old man whose sole aim in life seemed to have been to smother every finer instinct of chivalry and manhood in the boy, to whose training he had devoted the past nineteen years ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... revenge of the outraged soul! The mysterious, uncomprehended, incomprehensible soul! The irrepressible, unquenchable, immortal soul, whose every mark is everlasting! Every secret sin committed against it cries out from the house-tops. Cunning may strive to conceal, will may determine to smother, love may fondly whisper, "It does not hurt"; but the soul will not BE outraged. Somewhere, somehow, when and where you least expect, unconscious, perhaps, to its owner, unrecognized by the many, visible only to the clear vision, somewhere, somehow, the soul ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... smile she could scarcely smother, Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy, She added,—"While they were about it, mother, I wish they'd ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the experience of all ages and countries hath shown, that cruel and sanguinary laws defeat their own purpose, by engaging the benevolence of mankind to withhold prosecutions, to smother testimony, or to listen to it with bias, when, if the punishment were only proportioned to the injury, men would feel it their inclination, as well as their duty, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... poor man! The roof will fall in on him! He'll smother to death! Oh, why doesn't somebody go tell him to come away? Not you! Don't you think of such a trick! Oh, why does he risk his life for a lot of trash I wouldn't ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... did the over-pressed catamaran charge into the formidable seas that came rushing at her weather bow that she took green water in on deck at every plunge, that swept aft as far as her mast ere it poured off into the dizzy smother to leeward, while her foresail and mainsail were streaming with spray to half the height of their weather leeches. Leslie knew that he was not treating his craft fairly in driving her thus recklessly in a strong breeze against ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "Who ever has taken the eye and the tooth from the Graiai, the ancient daughters of Phorcys, may Mother Night smother him." ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... as it were, smothered. And it was from this meaning that the name came to be used as a general word. William Burke was an Irish labourer who was executed in 1829, when he was found guilty of having murdered several people. His habit had been to smother them, so that their bodies did not show how they had died, and sell their bodies to a doctor for dissection. From this dreadful origin we have the new use of this ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those who came were those I did not want to come, and I saw ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the while. He acted like a man who had gained experience in connection with flooded rivers, torrents, and occasional trips in fishing-boats at sea; and according to old notions, supposing his victim not to be already dead, he did the best he could to smother out the tiny spark of life that might ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... my enemy on my trial, accosting me in a courteous but ironical tone, while his look of insulting triumph seemed to belie his words. I would not make oath it was so, but my blood was then boiling, and I was trying to smother my passion. While they were praising me for my Christian patience, I had not a jot of it left me. "To-morrow," continued the Inquisitor, "I am sorry to say, you must appear and receive your sentence in public. It is a formality which ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... moisture." Think of living babies in such hell-holes; and make a note of it, you in the young cities who can still head off the slum where we have to wrestle with it for our sins. Put a brand upon the murderer who would smother babies in dark holes and bedrooms. He is nothing else. Forbid the putting of a house five stories high, or six, on a twenty-five foot lot, unless at least thirty-five per cent of the lot be reserved for sunlight ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... required for maturing the seed. Millet should not be sown in early spring, when the weather and ground are both cold. It requires the hot weather of June and July to do well; then it will keep ahead of most weeds, while if sown in April the weeds on foul land would smother it. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... not so, and so for evermore, That thou and I must live our lives apart; I with a patient smother at my heart, And thy hand resting on a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is starless, with a darkness so enveloping that it seems to possess palpability. As we reel westward in a smother of water the miracle of how any human being equipped with but five senses can find and keep his course in the chartless void that envelops ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... dagger in thy breast, Gaston," said Raymond, who was supporting the head of the dying man; "and failing that, he thought to smother thee in his bear-like clasp, that has crushed the life out of enemies before now, as we have ofttimes heard. When he felt other foes around him unloosing that clasp, and knew himself balked of his purpose, he clutched the weapon thou hadst dashed from his hand and buried it ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... practical—maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the distrust of the conservative, he would appear to retract and try to smother the flames in a cloud of conciliatory smoke. Only the restraining hand of Lincoln prevented him from committing fatal blunders at the outset of the Civil War, yet his handling of the threatening episode of the French in Mexico ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... in his own mines; a fond, weak, and over-indulgent father; the sorrows of too enthusiastic love, and the tortures of ungoverned passion. Here, too, you will witness, not without a shudder, the interior economy of vice; and from the stage be taught how all the tinsel of fortune fails to smother the inward worm; and how terror, anguish, remorse, and despair tread close on the footsteps of guilt. Let the spectator weep to-day at our exhibition, and tremble, and learn to bend his passions to the laws of religion ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the table, for I was dazed for a few moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraid to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in the darkness and smother me. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... before, and tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good man to smother with silence. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... she cried. "I'm going right back, I only came home for you. You must go right over. Randolph is wild. Oh, it's so dear and sweet! Just like a rose! I could smother it ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... speaking half to himself, half to Heaven. He rambled on from a petition for forgiveness into a broken thanksgiving for the mercy he already regarded as granted. His labours, the glamour of the present achievement, and the previous long strain upon his mind and body, united to smother reason for one feverish hour. Will walked blindly forward, now with his eyes upon the window under Newtake's dark roof below him, now turning to catch sight of the grey cross uplifted on the hill above. A great sweeping sea of change was tumbling through his intellect, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... need be. My mother actually wanted him to stay on in the house—in her pink chintz room. Think of it! But he says houses smother him. I take it he's lived for years in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... you will see in the drawing-room, a distant relation of my father's, who had, however, a handsome part of cousin Menie's succession. There are none living that can be hurt by the story now, though it was thought best to smother it up at the time, as indeed even the whispers about it led poor cousin Menie to live very retired. I mind her well when a child. There was something very gentle, but rather tiresome, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of no use," they screamed. "We did not know soon enough, and now it is too late; we should smother if we ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... lower the windows from the top about an inch. This is usually sufficient to prevent the breaking of the glass by the concussion of the air in the room, and not enough to attract attention from without. The safe is then wrapped in wet blankets, to smother the noise of the explosion. Holes are then drilled in the door of the safe near the lock, these are filled with powder, which is fired by a fuse, and the safe is blown open. The securing of the contents requires but a few minutes, and the false keys enable the thieves to escape ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... king, "being given more to religious exercises than reigning," says the historian. He would often exhibit his piety in order to draw attention away from His Royal Incompetency. He was not the first or last to smother the call to duty under the cry of Hallelujah. Like the little steamer engine with the big whistle, when he whistled the boat stopped. He did not have a boiler big enough to push the great ship of state and shout Amen ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... attraction, but my heart is still the same."—"Ever the same good heart!" repeated Eustace, as he rushed in, and caught her in his affectionate arms. "O! tell me, Isabel, where is my Constantia?" "Speak, low," said Isabel, attempting to smother a hysterical laugh. "Dear Eustace, how you are altered! Do not enter that room, the shock will ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of my choice—an action which no one holds against me, however, because I am only an actress, and the public classes us in a separate category, so that they may more readily offer up to us the incense with which they smother us! Be it so! There are also in my profession disinterested hearts which may serve as examples—and I pretend to the very highest rank as an actress in every role I assume, even in this city. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... smother'd sigh, Rose the snowy bosom high Of the blue-eyed lassie. Fleeter than the streamers fly, When they flit athwart the sky, Went and came the rosy dye On the cheeks ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... all are equally cherished, Every thought of exclusion within me I smother, None is dearer to me than another, In their turn, I for each ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... or smother the recollection, the tall military form of his late commander came full in view, for the purpose of reconnoitring. 'I can hit him now,' said Callum, cautiously raising his fusee over the wall under which he lay couched, at ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... what's the matter? What is't that ails young Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Of waistcoats Harry has no lack, Good duffle grey, and flannel fine; He has a blanket on his back, And coats enough to smother nine. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... ship; There's feud no force can smother; Their blood is up to fever-heat; They're cutting down each other. Buchanan here, and Douglas there, Are belching forth their thunder, While cunning rogues are sly at work In pocketing ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... hope you ain't," stammered Arlo Junior, unable entirely to smother a grin, and yet plainly anxious to pacify Janice. "You see, Janice, my mother was coming up from downtown and she Saw you whacking ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... boats were racing For the entrance to the harbor, When they plunged into the smother Of the breakers round the islands— Crashed upon the rocks and splintered. From the surf the foemen struggled To the rocks and ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... was all she could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is that these two women were the two flags of the French and the English party at Pumpernickel, and the society was divided in its allegiance to those ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the edge of the main kettle and the monster simply raised his hand to one of his retainers. This fellow tilted it up, sailor and all, into the smother of suds and water. Instantly there were roars of laughter, as all hands watched the man trying to get clear of the slippery iron tank. Every time he would get a hold, his fingers would be rapped sharply, and down he ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... ear-rings, I 'll hide 'em, and my best dress, and my gold smelling bottle. Oh, oh, oh! I think it 's mean to take a little girl's things away!" And Maud dived among the pillows to smother a wail of anguish at the prospect of ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... be constantly infallible. In these Northern Islands, the Clouds are so short, and narrow, and by fickle changes are sometimes emptied upon us, sometimes so neer, as may make so little variation in the weight of the whole Atmosphere of Air, as may sometimes deceive us, or smother and hide from us the causes of fixedness, or of changes. I wish I could see a good Calendar or Journal taken in taken in Tangier, and in some of our Northern and most Southern parts of America. I have store of Hygroscopes of divers kinds; and I do remark them, and the sweatings ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... of the negroes, enabled them to sling to each other the bags of sand which was put in the baskets on the top of the fort. My readers ask, what was the sand put on the fort for? It was to smother the fuses of such shells as reached the ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... "You want to smother me with him! I think I will not," I answered. "You can get on the solid well enough. I will ride home and bring help for your horse, poor fellow! Stay by him, talk to him, and keep him as quiet as you can. If he go on struggling, nothing ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... pell-mell, filling the night with raving clamour and drunken halloo. Now as I reached the quarter-deck, some one of these hurled after me a belaying pin and this, catching me on the thigh, staggered me so that I should have fallen but for the rail; so there clung I in a smother of sweat and blood while great moon and glittering stars span dizzily; but crouched before me on his hams, almost within arm's reach, was this accursed negro who gaped upon me with grinning teeth and rolled starting eyeballs, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... be To Labours, Christnings, where the Jollitry Of Women lies in telling, as some say, When 'twas they did at Hoity-Toity play; Whose Husband's Yard is longest, whilst another Can't in the least her great Misfortune smother, So tells, her Husband's Bauble is so short, That when he Hunts, he never shews her Sport. Now I, because I have my Maiden-head, Mayn't know the Pastimes of the Nuptial Bed; But mayn't I quickly do as Marry'd People may, I'll either kill my ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... full of false tenderness, for those women with the laudable and fine talent of knowing how to smother their husbands with caresses in order to make them oblivious of the existence ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... sent to fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and by the last stile but one, what do ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... ruin is, 'They were but they are not!' Forbid it, my countrymen! forbid it, Heaven! I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... news, that should smother all the rest, seemed now to take a terrible time in coming. All the gaffers were waiting who had waited to see the result of Mr. Cheeseman's suicide, and their patience was less on this occasion. At length the great Captain unfolded his broad sheet, but even then held it upside down for ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... contrary, it is as great an enemy to stiffness, as it is to looseness of carriage, and air. It equally reprobates an ungainly rusticity, and a mincing, tripping, over-soft manner. Its chief aim is to bring forth the natural graces, and not to smother them with appearances of study ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... all of you," ordered Tom Craig, after pulling himself out of the squirming heap of boys. "It's against the rules to smother the referee to death. He has to be ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock |
