"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the great door, with Tylo panting by his side. The poor Dog was half-dead with fright, but his pride and his devotion to Tyltyl obliged him to smother his fears: ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... 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 ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... express his doubt," suggested Mr. Perry with a smile; "for, if a man must doubt, he'd better shout than smother his ideas in a ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... made Leslie giddy to look at. And so furiously 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 a heavy sea; but he had ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... you. For that thing in your heart—the thing that is fighting for air—the thing you won't own—the thing that drove you to Grange for protection—will never die. That is why you are miserable. You may do what you will to it, hide it, smother it, trample it. But it will survive for all that. All your life it will be there. You will never forget it though you will try to persuade yourself that it belongs to a dead past. All your life,"—his voice ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior Nilaus was ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous
... trumpet—a voice so stern, abrupt, and imperious that forthwith ceases the fiendish fandango. Up dashes a warrior mounted on horseback, leaps to the ground, and now at the death-pile seizes the fagots and scatters them broadcast, stamping upon them with moccasined feet to smother the flames till all ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... large nut trees is that it is not practicable, from the fact that the lower limbs outgrow the grafted ones and eventually smother them and cause them to die out, leaving the tree in a disfigured condition. The better way is to plant several trees of a good pollenizing variety near one another to get ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... a mask of quiet dignity. The tragedy in the woman's heart made the more pathetic the comedy of the half-drunken husband. Besides, he was philosopher enough to know that more than half the drunkenness of the world was the pitiful effort to smother ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to feed your remembers on in days when pleasures are scarce. I can't believe ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... off tolerably well until the final scene, but then the nerves of the Frenchmen were put to a trial they could not by any possibility endure. The sight of a Moor and an Infidel, endeavouring to smother a lady and a Christian, so completely aroused all the gallant and religious sensibilities of the audience, that shouts of terrible, abominable, resounded from every part of the house, and Monsieur Othello was (theatrically) damned ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he had to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 it, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of the plain French Republic,—of its sober, unornamental, business government,—the contrast is vivid with the glitter and "go" of Louis Napoleon's regime. And the nation feels it, and involuntarily grieves over it. The twenty years have far from sufficed to smother that certain inborn Gallic joy in monarchy,—autocratic rule, a brilliant court, leadership in fashion, and all the pomp and pageantry which the French love ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... have seen the fellow, for she continued leaning over the rail, and Barnaby True, standing at her side, not moving, but in such a tumult of many passions that he was like one bewildered, and his heart beating as though to smother him. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Her pleasure to smother, To see the sick lamb Jump up to its mother. In spite of the gout, And a pain in her knee, She went dancing about: Did ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... anxious as you are to see them," came from Mrs. Tom Rover, as both of her sons gave her a warm hug. "There, there! don't smother me!" she ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... morning, and sleep in the afternoon. Sounds elderly, doesn't it? But I do enjoy that sleep. The hour after lunch is the most trying of the school day. It's all I can do sometimes to smother my yawns, and not upset the whole class. It's part of the Sunday rest to be able to let go, lie down hugging a hot bottle, and sleep steadily ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... digest 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 scarce sixty ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to cool our parched tongues. Anxiety was depicted in every visage, and our spirits were clouding like the heavens over them. Capt. Hilton, whose sickness and debility had been increased by fatigue and hunger, could no longer smother the feelings that were struggling within.—The quivering lip, the dim eye, the pallid cheek, all told us, as plainly as human expression could tell, that the last ray of that hope which had supported ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... dissemble, nor smother that Fire; Your Blushes, and Eyes betray your Desire. The Practis'd, not Innocent, dally with Bliss, Then prithee be kind, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... bagpipes. It was an unremitting storm of bagpipes—silent, but assailing me bodily from all quarters—now small as motes in the sun, and hailing upon me; now large as feather-beds, and ready to bang us about, only they never touched us; now huge as Mount AEtna, and threatening to smother us beneath their ponderous bulk; for all the time I was toiling on with little Davie on my back. Next day I was a little better, but very weak, and it was many days before I was able to get out of bed. My father soon found that it would not do to let Mrs. Mitchell attend upon me, for I ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... for a communicator powerful enough to reach the Scorpius, but knew it was useless to try with his helmet circuit. The carrier waves of the snapper-boats were on the same frequency, and they would smother the faint ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... The steeds fire-breathing from their lofty stalls, Ambrosia fed, and fix the sounding reins. Then with a sacred ointment Phoebus smear'd The face of Phaeton,—unscorch'd to bear The fervid blaze; and on his head a crown Of rays he fix'd. His smother'd sighs within His anxious breast, sad presages of woe Suppressing, thus he spoke:—"If now my words "Though late, thou heedest, spare, O boy! the lash, "But tightly grasp the reins: unbid they run, "They fly; to check their flight ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... midge, in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe's got the smother-fly in these infernal ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... she was soon sensible of some mental change. The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest. She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath. Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lady Russell reverted to their former hopes and fears, and spoke her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... —Round to the door, and in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... he said, "I cannot do without you—that's the discovery I made. I have been lonely—lonely for this broad prairie and you. The Old Country seemed to stifle me; everything is so little and crowded and bunched up, and so dark and foggy—it seemed to smother me. I longed to hear the whirr of prairie chickens and see the wild ducks dipping in the river; I longed to hear the sleighs creaking over the frosty roads; and so I've come home to all this—and you, Martha," ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... been the center of life in Vait-hua. Old wives' tales had been told here for generations. The whalers filled their casks at this spring, working every hour of the twenty-four because the flow was small. Famous harpooners, steersmen who winked no eye when the wounded whale drew their boat through a smother of foam, shanghaied gentlemen, sweepings of harbors, Nantucket deacons, pirates, and the whole breed of sailors and fighting fellows, congregated here to bathe and to fill their water-casks. Near this crystal rivulet they slashed each other in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... get him out in a hurry," said Cowboy Jack anxiously. "The little fellow might easily smother ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... cat clinging high in the top boughs of a birch and looking calmly down at us. The tree-top swayed, quivering, as it held the great dun beast. My heart was like to smother me when D'ri raised his rifle and took aim. The dog broke away at the crack of it. The painter reeled and spat; then he came crashing through the branches, striking right and left with his fore paws to save himself. He hit the ground heavily, and the dog was on him. The painter lay ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... really, except Creation, and that's not our affair; we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation. We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against, from half a dozen different points of view—and most things that men argue over can be—and anything that has been ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... As often as read to her, the letter had seemed to sparkle and overflow with sweet humor and exquisite wit to that degree that she had to smother her laughter from beginning to end. Mr. March was finishing it a second time and had not smiled. Twice or thrice he had almost frowned. Yet as he pushed its open pages across the table ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the night the pain grew so severe that she could not keep from crying and groaning. She did not want to wake any one, so buried her face in the pillow to smother the sound of her sobs; but presently a gentle hand touched her caressingly, and mamma's sweet voice asked, "What ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... subject is, 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
... southern Antares shone with diamond glitter close to the ground during summer nights. She tried to reason with herself during the dreadful smoke fogs; she said to herself that they were only half-a-mile thick, and she carried herself up in imagination and beheld the unclouded azure, the filthy smother lying all beneath her, but her dream did not continue, and reality was too strong for her. Worse, perhaps, than the eternal gloom was the dirt. She was naturally fastidious, and as her skin was thin and sensitive, dust was ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... drove me on, and I don't remember thinking much about the virginity, only that the cunt looked different from the two others I had known. The next instant I laid my belly on hers. "Oh! you are heavy, you smother me," said she rousing herself, "you're going to hurt me,—don't sir, it hurts," all in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... furniture vans, all endeavouring to deliver furniture you don't require and never heard of before, while your staircase is a mass of flowers and fruit constantly increasing upon you and threatening to smother you with their amount no less than with their scent. It would gradually appear that the deliveries both of the flowers and the furniture were being executed in accordance with the orders of one of your friends, and that you had to grin and bear it as best you might. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... question—Would she hold her way long enough to cant in the proper direction? And, as luck would have it, just then there came hissing and foaming down upon us a particularly heavy sea, into which the frigate dived until she was all a-smother for'ard. Yet, notwithstanding this, her head continued to sweep round—slowly, it is true; still—"Mainsail haul!" bellowed the first luff through his trumpet, and round swung the after yards, the men bracing them well up and rounding in on the main-sheet. Now her head was beginning to pay ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... accorded to that article. Are you moved to a keen sense of the ridiculous, as a curve in the road discloses the figures of your elongated party, unused to riding, and rendered the more grotesque by their mountain-equipment? A laugh unshared is no laugh at all, so you may as well smother it at once. Does the scenery through which you are passing awaken emotions of sublimity? It would be sacrilege to shout out your sentiments to the occupant of the next mule in such tones as a watchman would employ to cry, "Fire!" No,—if you are essentially a social ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... for hearts 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 ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... rounds a minute with a percussion shell that broke into about 30 fragments, did much to defeat the French (1870-71). At Sedan, the greatest artillery battle fought prior to 1914, the Prussians used 600 guns to smother the French army. So thoroughly did these guns do their work that the Germans annihilated the enemy at the cost of only 5 percent casualties. It was a demonstration of using great masses of guns, bringing them quickly into action to destroy the hostile ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... I had to smother a chuckle when that came out, for I'd already recognized some of the symptoms of a motion picture mind while Ellery was sketchin' out this ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... got the name of Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, And there, all smother'd up in shade, doth sit, Long after fearing to creep forth again. 1744 SHAKS.: Venus and A., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... the Fort. The yard was still as Parfaite had described it— full of rank grass, through which one path trailed to the open door. On the stockade walls grass grew, as though where men will not live like men Nature labours to smother. The shutters of the window were not open; light only entered through narrow openings in them, made for the needs of possible attacks by Indians in the far past. One would have sworn that anyone dwelling there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... That's nothing new, Except to me; I'll bear for custom's sake. More blood will follow; like the royal sun, I shall go down in purple. Fools for luck; The proverb holds like iron. I must run, Ere laughter smother me.—O, ho, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... He knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five years. And he came ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... In the midst of this, while the lady's mind was racked by love, pity, and disappointment, the young physician pressed for a further contemplation of his suit, and met with a repulse; which, though kind, and expressive of gratitude, was such as to smother any hope that he might have entertained of the possession of her devotion. To her father, this decision was the annihilation of a long cherished expectancy; but respecting his child's feelings, and being ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the world was stretched in white repose. At length they paused to rest in the lee of a cottage that seemed more like a hulk drawn up on shore than any house, but matted from ground to chimney in a smother of woodbine. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prince!" Mrs. Orton Beg responded, raising her slender white hand to smother a yawn. "And it must be good-night, too—or rather, good-morning! Just look at the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... for both of them when she laid her hand in his. The blood in both of them leaped to the thrill of contact. The impulse to clasp her in his arms, to smother her with kisses, to hold her so close that nothing could ever unlock his arms, was so overpowering that his head swam dizzily and for an instant he was deprived of vision. How he ever passed through that crisis in safety was one of the great mysteries of his life. She ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... top of this, an empty and hollow formality, meant as a substitute for education and culture, turned existence, that of woman in particular, into a veritable treadmill. Thus the spirit of the Reformation degenerated into the worst pedantry, that sought to smother the natural desires of man, together with his pleasures in life under a confused mass of rules and usages that affected to be "worthy," but ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... fearfully hard; he's upright, and plucky. He's not stingy. But he's smothered his animal nature-and that's done it. I don't want to see you smother anything, Guy. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... may also be applied to other voyagers of space, the sailors of the air. One minute all seems fair, with the sun shining; another, and a white squall is dashing down upon the ship, to catch the crew unawares and perhaps smother them with ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... 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
... the S. P. 888 was fully prepared for rough weather. Not only the depth bombs, but everything else on her decks were lashed. Passing between the capes, she plunged into a regular smother of rough water, and at once the decks were drenched from ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... man could live in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them from starvation. The hunting ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... view by a distinguished statesman, since Chancellor of England, when he said, that "the country could well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle the manufactures of other nations?" Has not this been the object of every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does not the following diagram represent exactly what ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... thing that will cover you; overcoat, blanket, rug, wrap it tightly around you at the neck first to prevent flames from burning the face and lie down and roll over and over. This will smother the flames quickly. If you can get nothing to wrap around you, lie down and roll slowly over and beat the fire with your hands covered by some part of your clothing ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... 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 you think I ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... such things. All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Jack felt sick and lay down upon his crooked old bed. Somehow, his crooked old money-box got upon his breast and seemed to smother him. Then his crooked account-books piled themselves upon him, and it seemed impossible for him to breathe. He tried to call out, but his voice died to a whisper, and the only answer he received was a low growl from the crooked old dog. Then ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... may befall. Beware of looking back, but go on steadily, holding in mind the teaching that has been given thee. Be sure to enter every day anew into the garden of thy soul with the light of faith to pull up every thorn that might smother the seed of the teaching given thee, and to turn over the earth; that is, every day do thou divest thy heart. It is necessary to divest it over and over; for many a time I have seen people who seemed to have divested themselves, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... 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
... I find that holy writ in many places Hath semblance with this method, where the cases Do call for one thing, to set forth another; Use it I may, then, and yet nothing smother Truth's golden beams: nay, by this method may Make it cast forth its rays as light as day. And now before I do put up my pen, I'll shew the profit of my book, and then Commit both thee and it unto that Hand That pulls the strong down, and makes weak ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... poet to a woodlouse—"Thou art certainly my brother; I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole; And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother, In the colours shaded off thee, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... could—I wish to Heaven I could!" cried the poor Major, in a despair that required all the warnings of his legal adviser to smother it down, so as to keep their conference private. "I've been driven nearly mad going from broker to broker in the City to-day. I might as well attempt to sell out shares in the Elysian Fields as in that ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... dark In the candleshine against the wet black glass, Like moths about a lanthorn ... I lay and watched, Till the pains were on me ... And they buzzed like bees, The snowflakes in my head—hot, stinging bees ... It snowed again, the night he went.... In the smother I lost him, in a drift down Bloodysyke ... I couldn't follow further: the snow closed in— Dry flakes that stung my face like swarming bees, And blinded me ... and buzzing, till my head Was all ahum; and I was fair betwattled ... I've not ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a sea anchor, by means of which he hoped to prolong their struggle for at least a few hours. It was hardly got overboard, however, before a giant surge snapped its cable and hurled the little craft helplessly towards the crash and smother with which the furious seas warred against an ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... of women pursued by sex cruelty, the gentlest threatened by brute force. How could he save her? He could not, for she would not be saved. He sat there until the dark in the corners crept toward him like fates, their mantles held up in shadowy hands, to smother him, and then suddenly remembering Nan and hospitable duties down below, he got up, chilled, went out, and locked the hut behind him. The house he found was a blaze of windows. Charlotte had lighted lamps and candles all over it. He was half amused ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... 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
... go to sleep again. 5 A.M.—Have been to sleep twice, and have fallen off my box bodily into the fire in my wet blankets, and should for sure have put it out like a bucket of cold water had not Xenia and Kefalla been roused up by the smother I occasioned and rescued me—or the fire. It is not raining now, but it is bitter cold and Cook is getting my tea. I give the boys a lot of hot tea with a big handful of sugar in, and they then get their own ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... than the others, yet three days after, when 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 were, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the least degree. On the contrary, his whole being seemed saturated and impregnated with the wildest hilarity and delight. Twice in less than a hundred yards, he was compelled to stop and lean upon his cane owing to the breathlessness which supervened upon his attempts to smother the delighted chuckles which came surging up from the inmost recesses of his capacious frame. At the second halt he wriggled his hand inside his tight-breasted coat, and after as many contortions as though he ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be angered when Salvator bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment of splintery crag, which an Alpine snow-wreath would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two growing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. A man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Saxon did not win to sleep quickly; the little creeping mother came and went; and in the intervals the face of Billy, with the cloud-drifted, sullen, handsome eyes, burned against her eyelids. And once again, as sleep welled up to smother her, she put to herself the question IS THIS ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... late years I protect my plants by inverting small boxes over them. The sides of these boxes are bored full of holes to admit air, which must be allowed to circulate freely about the plant, or it will smother. I invert a box over the plant after filling it with leaves, and draw more leaves about the outside of it. This prevents water from coming in contact with the soft, sponge-like foliage, and the plant comes out in spring almost as green as ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... whole mass of humanity began to writhe and swell, as a frightened crowd does in the dark, so that every one feels as if all the other people were growing hugely big, as big as elephants, to smother and crush him; and each man makes himself as broad as he can, and tries to swell out his chest, and squares his elbows to keep the weight off his sides; and with the steady strain and effort every one breathes hard, and few speak, and the hard-drawn breath of thousands ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... lions, with horrid laughing jaws; 10 They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous 15 smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... great care of the cauliflower plants sown early in summer; and as they now begin to show their heads, break in the leaves upon them to keep off the sun and rain; it will both harden and whiten them.—NOVEMBER. Weed the crops of spinach, and others that were sown late, or the wild growth will smother and starve the crop. Dig up a border under a warm wall, and sow some carrots for spring; sow radishes in a similar situation, and let the ground be dug deep for both. Turn the mould that was trenched and laid up for fallowing; this will destroy the weeds, and enrich the soil by ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... has a slight headache," Mary answered, giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I yielded to impulse, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... o'erbrim, Deep drifts smother the paths below; The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb, And all the air is dizzy and dim With a whirl of dancing, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... ventilation; convection," Jacquemont said. "But you go to sleep in here, and you'll smother in a big puddle of your own exhaled CO2. Just watch what the smoke from that ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... locked, an unknown destroyer rammed Shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin discovered several of Shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her own foc'sle, where they ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... romance had faded from her marriage, had their profoundest sympathy. Yet when the curtain rises on a human drama, however tragic its development, the little thrill that runs over the audience is not altogether unpleasant. Regrettable as it is that Othello should smother his wife, there seems a certain gratification in making ourselves familiar with the details of the operation. It was the consciousness of this unacknowledged satisfaction which rendered Mrs. Warren's guests abashed at ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the little princes. They have got a feather-bed or something there, and they are going to smother them while ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they must ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... see myself, such as bodies half eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... heart, all are equally cherished, Every thought of exclusion within me I smother, None is dearer to me than another, In their turn, I for ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Passion 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 ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed all my plans, and instigated her husband ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... you damned lily- fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship you out on the first wagon to-morrow morning and let you report to Greenfield that you were fired because you didn't know your work yourself and hadn't intelligence enough to listen to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... she 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
... these eruptions were disastrous. The whole island was strown with volcanic ashes, which, where they did not smother the grass outright, gave it a poisonous taint. The cattle that ate of it were attacked by a murrain, of which great numbers died. The ice and snow, which had gathered about the mountain for a long period of time, were wholly melted by the heat. Masses of ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... detained there more than a couple of minutes, though it may have seemed much longer to the anxious lad, for his heart beat so tumultuously that it really threatened to smother him. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... charge of the throne, he made a great mistake. Ethelwolf was a poor 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 ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... shrieked in ecstasy as they rushed forward to smother "Toodlums," as they irreverently called the Cherub, with kisses. Inez, a handsome, dark-eyed girl, relinquished her burden cheerfully to the two adoring "aunties," while Uncle John kissed Louise and warmly shook the hand of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... broke at once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... piece of 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, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of slain was tabled, Some were drunk and some disabled, Still we found it true. In the darkness and the smother We'd been belting one another; Jack Macpherson bashed ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson |
