"Soporific" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sydney Smith that she could not sleep,—"I can furnish you," he said, "with a perfect soporific. I have published two volumes of Sermons; take them up to bed with you. I recommended them once to Blanco White, and before the third page—he ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... powerfully over the gallant. If, as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, for they ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... this instrument that had pricked the skin of Lanyard's neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if not exactly a killing dose of some ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... would tend to irritate the bees into a highly dangerous, if warrantable, frenzy, and that they would take immediate steps to abate the nuisance in their own simple way. But that, my brothers, is where we are wrong. Where bees are concerned, the 'smoker's' fumes are of a soporific and soothing nature. Indeed, before a puff of its smoke a bee's naughty malice and resentment disappear, and the bee itself sinks, gently humming, into the peaceful, contented ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the same condition, was soon after seen his wife, who, of weaker conformation, had more quickly yielded to the soporific effect of the upas poison, from which, when it has once pervaded the blood, there is ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... arranged in a very elegant fashion; the sofa was soft and warm; scents, pomades, and soaps adorned the marble washstand, and the pale light fell from the ceiling with a soft glow, like the gleams of a lamp suspended in an alcove. Macquart, amidst this perfumed soporific atmosphere fell asleep, thinking that those scoundrels, the rich, "were very fortunate, all the same." He had covered himself with a blanket which had been given to him, and with his head and back ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of June was too strong a soporific for Remember's desire to keep awake and hear the catamounts scream, as he had heard they did in those woods. Hannah was left quite alone to keep watch and to tend the fire, her heart in her mouth, jumping and starting at every shadow ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... conventual seclusion and mental vacancy of the preceding months, the sudden, almost instantaneous change in her surroundings, had been like a burst of air and sunlight which dissipates the soporific atmosphere of a sleeping-room. It had brought back her thoughts and feelings all at once to their normal standards, making her recollection of that infatuation seem like a fantastic, grotesque dream; unreal, impossible, yet shamefully real. Every time she entered her ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... at his counter with the help of the abacus; many of them were sitting at the doors of their houses, smoking in the evening air; the barbers were still at work preparing their customers for the night. Like Washington Irving, these may have considered a good clean shave the best soporific. Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of two sedans in these narrow ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... served me sufficiently to eat with, but not for enjoyment. Nothing has a zest in my present widowed state. [Thus far I had written, when Mr. Emerson called.] After dinner, I lay down on the couch, with the Dial in my hand as a soporific, and had a short ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the afternoon sunshine, to the soft, rather soporific cooing of some caged doves, that live in the back-ground out of sight behind a screen of lemon trees in huge red jars, such as Morgiana must have been familiar with. Beyond the terrace wall we note the carefully tended vines, precious plants, for their ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake. But now this began to fail me. When I had read two or three of the small hours away and was as wide awake as ever, I found that a drink furnished the soporific effect. Sometimes two ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... needs of conversation, in a Roman corner of Africa. He was amused by the southern exuberance and joviality of a doubtlessly corpulent man. He seemed a salacious, gay crony compared with the Christian apologists who lived in the same century—the soporific Minucius Felix, a pseudo-classicist, pouring forth the still thick emulsions of Cicero into his Octavius; nay, even Tertullian—whom he perhaps preserved for his Aldine edition, more ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... sir, but I don't know who you are; and if you mean Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying. She was very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say, but she is having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific medicine, and we are ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude, relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep. This, to the lady behind him, partook of the nature of an affront to her minister. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the soporific scene [vi] I'll turn mine eye, as night grows later, To view, unheeded and unseen, [vii] The studious sons of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... one of the many knightly orphans of romance, exposed in woods to the nurture of bears, his father slain, his mother dead of grief—a ditty he had perhaps chosen for its soporific powers—when a gay bugle blast rang through the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular fashion. People's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the necessity for a surgical operation. In 1847, for example, George Frederick Watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall of Euston Station, and had been refused—Watts, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... molded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting nobody. He was sufficiently sure of his command of language at length to look at Katharine and again at Denham. All this talk about Shakespeare had acted as a soporific, or rather as an incantation upon Katharine. She leaned back in her chair at the head of the tea-table, perfectly silent, looking vaguely past them all, receiving the most generalized ideas of human heads against pictures, against yellow-tinted walls, against curtains of deep crimson ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... In the soporific scent of the lilies and the stocks, the night drowsed in the darkness of the garden; Mike unlocked the gate and passed into the shadows, and hypnotized by the heavenly spaces, in which there were a few stars; by the earth and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that plain meant bad news. Will Somers heard, and might be said to have seen, that cry. He had taken down the shutters of his employer's store, and was hanging in the windows two very gaudily lettered placards, "A balm for all, Jenkins's Soporific," "The need of an aching world, Muggins's Liniment." Will heard that magic cry, "Fire—re—re!" He turned and saw a man coming down the street. He was not only coming, but running, his hat off, and his mouth open wide enough to take in a ten-cent loaf of brown bread, ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... collection of poems for mothers and friends to use at the twilight hour. They are not of the soporific kind especially. They are wholesome reading when most wide-awake and of such a soothing and delicious flavor that they are welcome when the ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... multitude of her wrinkles, as well as the yellowness of her dangling gold earrings and the texture of her parchment-like arms, which were the color of glossy brown leaves. Sometimes she would awaken me from soporific melancholy by allowing herself to be found upon her knees in her bedroom, a bare and colorless abode, her great black crucifix hanging in majestic solitude upon the wall above her handsome old head. I thought her temporarily insane to pray so much, and at all to an audience; but I recognized ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... munificently reward those whose assiduity promotes the general welfare; oblige nature by your industry to open her immense stores, to become propitious to your exertions; do these things, and the gods will oppose nothing to your felicity. Leave to idle thinkers, to soporific dreamers, to waking visionaries, to useless enthusiasts, the unproductive task, the unfruitful occupation, of fathoming depths, from which ye ought sedulously to divert your attention; enjoy with moderation, the benefits attached to your present existence; augment their number ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native vitality, but to the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... eating them in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home; but in Spain, when I think of it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific in this country; but in Spain I should listen as reverently as ever, for proprietors must set a good example on ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... occupied an armchair on the other side of the table at which I sat, head on hand reading, and she would be darning stockings or socks or the like. We achieved an effect of rather stuffy comfortableness that was soporific, and in a passive way I think she found these among her happy times. On such occasions she was wont to put her work down on her knees and fall into a sort of thoughtless musing that would last for long intervals and rouse my curiosity. For like most young people I could not imagine ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... somnolism; dogsleep. Associated Words: hypnology, hypnotic, agrypnotic, hypnosis, hypnotism, narcotic, opiate, dwale, somniloquence, somniloquism, somnial, somniferous, hypnophobia, hypnogogic, stupefacient, mesmeric, soporific, dormitive, soporiferous, soporous, somnific, somnolent, somniloquous, antihypnotic, morphean, oversleep, morphine, narcosis, lullaby, incubation, hypnogenic, Mara, Morpheus, Hypnos, Somnus, dormitory, diurnation, cubicle, insomniac, hibernation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... last much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than the flirtations—though boisterous beyond all conventional ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... not, however, made allowance for his own extreme weariness or for the soporific effect of the alcoholic fumes with which his comrade's breath was redolent. When six o'clock struck at the church of St. Eustache, the young detective's alarm resounded faithfully enough, with a loud and protracted whir. Shrill and sonorous as was the sound, it failed, however, to break ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... abstract terms have something very seductive about them, they give a scientific appearance to a proposition. But it is only an appearance, behind which scholasticism is apt to be concealed; the word, having no concrete meaning, becomes a purely verbal notion (like the soporific virtue of which Moliere speaks). As long as our notions on social phenomena have not been reduced to truly scientific formulae, the most scientific course will be to express them in terms ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Clancy; "'tis no use. The strongest soporific in the world wouldn't give me sleep this night. I tell you, Sime, I have ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... eat only such things as could not possibly have anything soporific introduced into them. Two eggs and some fruit composed my repast; then I drew another glass of water from my protecting fountain, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... moisture of the air, and the condition of the hops, and calls for critical judgment and accuracy. Often, tired out with the previous ordinary day's work, we had much ado to keep awake at night, and it was fatal to arrange a too comfortable position with the warmth of the glowing fire and the soporific scent of the hops. Then Tom would announce that it was "time to get them little props out," which, in imagination, were ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... as substitute preacher by our good pastor, who was much afflicted with what Mrs. Partington calls "brown creeturs." He had harped on one string of his vocal apparatus so long that like Jeshuran of old "it waxed fat and kicked." Exceedingly monotonous and soporific was his voice, and it was necessary to strain every nerve to tell whether he was preaching, praying or reading, the words were much the same ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... nineteenth century mind it seems rather an odd life for an artist: at least it strikes one as a life, despite Haydn's own opinion, not particularly conducive to originality. To use extreme language, it might almost be called a monotonous and soporific mode of existence. Probably its chief advantage was the opportunity it afforded, or perhaps the necessity it enforced, of ceaseless industry. Certainly that industry bore fruit in Haydn's steady increase of inventive power as he went on composing. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... keep the weary eye; But ah! Oblivion's nod to get In rattling coach is harder yet. Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 5 Who lovest with limbs supine to lie; Soother sweet of toil and care Listen, listen to my prayer; And to thy votary dispense Thy soporific influence! 10 What tho' around thy drowsy head The seven-fold cap of night be spread, Yet lift that drowsy head awhile And yawn propitiously a smile; In drizzly rains poppean dews 15 O'er the tired inmates of the Coach diffuse; And when thou'st charm'd our eyes to rest, Pillowing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tell you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour. After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone—when I was seeking sleep and could not find it—a volume of my published sermons was tried, and sometimes very successfully, as a soporific. I was familiar with them, and yet they presented as much novelty as to divert my mind from my troubles. And what if this failed? then came the Reminiscences to entertain me, and while away the long hours when all hope of getting sleep's ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... because of the large amount of saline matter which it holds in solution. Cheese is also a caseous preparation of milk; the duties of an archdeacon are to perform archidiaconal functions; and opium puts one to sleep because it possesses a soporific virtue. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... The Baroness de Vibray, well known in the Parisian world and among artists, whose generous patroness she was, has been found dead in the studio of the ceramic painter, Jacques Dollon. The young painter, rendered completely helpless by a soporific, lay stretched out beside her when the crime was discovered. We say 'crime' designedly, because, when the preliminary medical examination was completed, it was clear that the death of the Baroness de Vibray was due to the absorption ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... forced to live so. Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. It makes me wild to think of it. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... and, getting out of bullet range, put my back against a tree and tried to read. Mercury was ever a blithe and sportive god, and his gambols on Mount Olympus were noted in days of yore; but the modern namesake—or else my present position—had soporific tendencies; and fear of the target shooters growing dimmer and dimmer, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Henschel concert. I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's latest book, and getting quite interested in occult philosophy. Unfortunately I have to do all my reading in bed, and I don't find the book as soothing a soporific as most new books. For keeping one awake I find Theosophy ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... rather the fusion of realism with romance more simply happy and harmonious: the rescue of the injured wife by a faithful lover from the tomb in which, like Juliet, she has been laid while under the soporific influence of a supposed poison could hardly have been better or more beautifully treated by any but the very greatest among Heywood's fellow-poets. There is no merit of this kind in the later play: but from the dramatic if not ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... men like yourself, Mr. St. John," Mrs. Sillenger began in her quiet diffident way, "continue so prejudiced on this subject. How you could help on the moral progress of the world, if only you would forget the sweet soporific 'poetry of the pulpit," as Mrs. Malcomson calls it, and learn to think of us women, not as angels or beasts of burden—the two extremes between which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... following day. She spent the hours in loneliness and misery. Mr. Wyvern called, but even him she begged through a servant to excuse her; her mother likewise came, and her she talked with for a few minutes, then pleaded headache. At nine o'clock in the evening she went to her bedroom. She had a soporific at hand, remaining from the time of her illness, and in dread of a sleepless night she had ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... river of yellow-brown hair that flowed down Flora's back. The broad, pale face reflected beside her own in the mirror was reassuring by its serene indifference. She had soothing hands, Marrika. It was a luxury to be dressed by her, a mental soporific. But to-day it wrought no relaxation in Flora's tightened nerves. All the while she was being combed and laced and hooked her eyes were alertly on the dressing-table drawer, that remained a little open; and presently she ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... losing what there was not any soporific in adopting was not agonising. There had not come to be division. There was that article. They saw that away. It was not a comfort. They had that to keep the place away. They were not blameworthy. They had ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... reading daily. It was there the gentlemen visitors, chiefly diplomats, who wanted to speak to him, joined him; while the lady visitors sat round the Queen's table, at which the conversation was general, if occasionally soporific. It used to brighten up again with the arrival of any ladies whose wit or beauty attracted the men who had scattered about the drawing-room. This was always the case on the appearance of Mesdames ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... with his weakness; to gain force from his enervation. He saw the eyes, large, limpid, soft, and black as a deer's; the pearls in the dark hair, and the pearls in the pink mouth; the lips curling to a kiss, a flower-kiss; and a fragrance seemed to float to his senses, sweet, strange, soporific,—a perfume of youth, an odor of woman. Rising to his feet, with strong resolve he pronounced again the sacred invocation; and he recited the holy words of the Chapter ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... observed, looking up at her host pleasantly, "I can see what is going to happen. Mr. Dartrey came out here to talk to you upon most important matters. This place, the beauty of it all, is acting upon him like a soporific. If we don't shake him up presently, he will go away with wonderful mind pictures of your cliffs and sea, and his whole ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on as usual. The boat was loaded almost to her guards, and did not make much speed. The wheels kept their persistent beat upon the water, and the engines kept their rhythmical clangor going, until August found himself getting drowsy. Trouble, with forced inaction, nearly always has a soporific tendency, and a continuous noise is favorable to sleep. Once or twice August roused himself to a sense of his responsibility and battled with his heaviness. It was nearing the end of his watch, for the dog-watch of two hours set in at four ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... muse for "the violent desire to be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness." He once said of Keats: "They are attempting to resuscitate him, I believe." He regarded Wordsworth as a soporific merely. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? Or ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... A soporific quality lurked in the quiet solitude, and Varney, sunk in a deck-chair, yawned. They had decided at dinner that they would do nothing that night but go to bed, for it seemed plain that there was nothing ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on." Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience. It was agreed further that small type—Parliamentary debates and the like—was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. Prichard should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the nose to continue for three days together; and that he has known a paralysis of the mouth and tongue cured by one dose. He recommends this medicine in stubborn disorders of the head, proceeding from viscid tenacious matter, in palsies, and in soporific distempers. The leaves are an ingredient in the pulvis sternutatoris ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... their quietude: not a sound even was heard throughout the whole vast palace. Outside, however, the guards of honor on duty, and the patrol of musketeers, paced up and down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers, while the murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the fountains whose waters tumbled in the basin, still went on uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises and items of little moment that constitute ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her husband would no doubt have protested, demanded explanations, insisted upon being put down at once, had they been able; but, whether it was that the car had some peculiarly soporific tendency, or whether it was merely the sudden swift rush through the upper air, a torpor had already fallen on the whole Stimpson family. It was even questionable if they remained long enough awake to hear ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... feel the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,—I do not mean that as religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our own ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... obstinate little dog of his chapel. "If you won't work, I'm [participle] if you shall pray." The boy missed the recreation of hearing Mr. Jones hum the Liturgy; missed it in a way you cannot conceive. Your soporific was his ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... leans idly against the post at the corner: comfortably warm, but not hot, although the day is broiling. His white apron flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks with both eyes at once; even he is unable to withstand the soporific influence of the place, and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or two, and gazes out before him with eager wildness in his eye. Is it a job, or a boy at marbles? Does ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Nothing but the conscientious desire to embellish our "copy" with enough facts and references to make a showing of erudition ever induced Field or any of the active members of the editorial staff to borrow the library key from Ballantyne to break in upon the soporific labors of Mr. Plumbe. Here the editorial conferences, which Field ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... contraction for Lull-a-baby. The Welsh are celebrated for their Lullaby songs, and a good Welsh nurse, with a pleasing voice, has been sometimes found more soporific in the nursery, than the midwife's anodyne. The contrary effects of Swift's song, "Here we go up, up, up," and the smile-provoking melody of "Hey diddle, diddle," cum multis aliis, are too well known to be enumerated or disputed. "The Good Nurse" give us a chapter ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... rushing between the combatants, receives in her own bosom the blade intended for ——, etc. But of course not enough blade to endanger the happy ending. So there you are. A placid, undistinguished tale, that may be commended as nourishment or soporific according to the taste ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... the nation; they are only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. Our National wish and purpose are to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease; the Negation ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the sun ascends,—deepens deliciously. The warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my face,—the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems to burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start, I fancy that everything is turning blue,—myself included. "Do you not call this the real tropical ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... they talk about! You wrote me to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better. You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... do him good," returned Elizabeth demurely; "he was almost asleep when Mr. Charrington spoke to us. A comfortable chair, and moon-light, and a German lullaby are soporific influences." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and Garrett knew nothing of this, and were all abroad, but they thought Rooke must have the key; so they proceeded to drink with him, and were just about to administer a really effective soporific in his grog, when they and all the merry party were suddenly startled by violent ringing at the bell, and thundering and halloaing at the hall door. The men jumped to their feet and balanced themselves, and looked half wild, half stupid. The women sat, and began ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... you shall sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sound sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative &c 174. Adv. inactively &c adj.; at leisure &c 685. Phr. the eyes begin to draw straws; bankrupt of life yet prodigal of ease [Dryden]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sooner got to bed than I determined, by a violent effort, to sleep. I had always a ready soporific at hand. It was a repeating and re-repeating of a pious little ode by a late fashionable poet. It seldom failed to produce somnolency at about the twelfth or thirteenth repetition. I would recommend a similar prescription ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... various technical figures of compositions all the technic necessary. This method is infinitely more trying to the teacher than the old-fashioned, easy-going ways. "Play me No. 22 for next time!" was the order, and in a soporific manner the pupil waded through all the studies of all the Technikers. Now the teacher must invent a new study for every new piece—with Bach on the side. Always Bach! Please remember that. B-a-c-h—Bach. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... peers by his skittish references to the coming Conference on the Second Chamber. When he expressed the hope that Lord CURZON would make an explicit statement, on the ground that their Lordships' House was in no need of a soporific, I fully expected one of the occupants of the mausoleum to rise and reprove him in the words of Dr. JOHNSON, "Sir, in order to be facetious it is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... murderous visage peeped out, with a lantern. 'Hush!' he uttered, in a threatning tone, and the affrighted animal stole back to his kennel. The door of the chaise flew back, the stranger put down the lantern, and clasped his dreadful arms around me. It was certainly the effect of the soporific draught, for, instead of exerting my strength, I sunk without motion, though not without sense, on his shoulder, my limbs refusing to obey my will. I was carried up the steps into a close-shut hall. A candle flaring ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... soon occurred, owing to the sultan's departure for twenty days upon a hunting excursion. In a day or two after his absence, the sultana invited Koout al Koolloob to an entertainment, and having mixed a strong soporific in some sherbet, presented it her to drink. The effect of the potion was instantaneous, and she sunk into a trance; when the sultana putting her into the chest, commanded it to be given to a broker, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... mark, and hits neither the heads nor the hearts of his congregation. At length the discourse is ended, and all rise to join in the closing hymn, which is 'deaconed off' by the minister, and responded to by the negroes in a monotonous 'yah, yah.' They have not recovered from the soporific effect of the sermon, and, besides, can hardly be blamed for not catching the feebly uttered words. But their time is coming. No sooner is the benediction pronounced, than one of the negro elders strikes up a well known hymn, and, suddenly rousing from their stupor, the whole congregation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and let his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Although I had little to expect from the apprehension of any of these troubles, as my person was, from my short residence, most likely unknown to any of the authorities—yet did Morpheus refuse his soporific balsam to the mind—I could not help thinking of my young and giddy companions, of the kind-hearted Eglantine, immured within the walls of a dungeon; of the noble-spirited Echo, maltreated and disfigured by the temporary loss of an eye; of the facetious Bob Transit, so bruised and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Aix-les-Bains next day, but the state of his wife's health rendered it impossible for her to quit the hotel, and he could not very well separate himself from her. She continued for some time in shrieking hysterics, varied by fainting fits; and when she became quieter, under the influence of a soporific administered by the doctor, she declared herself quite too ill and exhausted to rise from her bed. Her husband remained with her night and day, until the second morning, when he escaped from her sight and ken for a couple of hours, and absolutely refused to tell her where ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... wheel of his cart in the rut. The cutter wearied not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe, and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of the circling haven, and ceased not in her flight until the first wave of the Ocean leaped up against her bow with so much rude impetuosity that her hull staggered under its force, and her gaff-topsail ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted—though exhausted very much; and that all he needed was rest, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... is announced, has acquired a new play in four Acts entitled Bed Rock. Surely the lullaby touch in the title is a mistake? Audiences are quite prone enough to fall asleep without these soporific aids. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance. One will never know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or whether, indeed, one is not just a long soporific. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Pete—a son?" Ben put the question calmly, considering his elation at his good luck. He had made up his mind that he might have to spend days in this soporific hamlet. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... Anthony Dexter's old housekeeper rang the rising bell. Drowsy with the soporific he had taken, the doctor did not at once respond to the summons. In fact, the breakfast bell had rung ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... by fatigue than by excitement and anxious thought, I fell into a profound sleep, natural this time and not provoked by any soporific drug. When I awoke, after a length of time which I could not reckon, the "Terror" had not yet returned to the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... do not stand in the way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things. But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. He is just the man to tell us all about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Friends about her: You may charge yourself unsuspected with the superintendence of her funeral, and cause her to be buried in the Vaults of St. Clare. Their solitude and easy access render these Caverns favourable to your designs. Give Antonia the soporific draught this Evening: Eight and forty hours after She has drank it, Life will revive to her bosom. She will then be absolutely in your power: She will find all resistance unavailing, and necessity will compel her to receive ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most soothing soporific. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... mignonette, think of it as a soporific. Just yawn and say you've been working like a fire-horse on the Fourth.... You see, it isn't what happens that gets out to the others, including those we care about, but what is imagined by minds ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of its liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose after chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of Mrs Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's rapt interest in the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch from the position she had taken ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdroeckh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... suck, nurse naked, nude murder, homicide dead, deceased dead, defunct dying, moribund lust, salacity lewd, libidinous read, peruse lie, prevaricate hearty, cordial following, subsequent crowd, multitude chew, masticate food, pabulum eat, regale meal, repast meal, refection thrift, economy sleepy, soporific slumberous, somnolent live, reside rot, putrefy swelling, protuberant soak, saturate soak, absorb stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive house, domicile eye, optic walker, pedestrian talkative, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... curled his length inside the bee-hive, and made himself comfortable with Gard's cloak and blanket, and was presently snoring like a whole pig-sty. And that had a soporific effect on Peter. He had only stopped behind to oblige John, and personally had little expectation of anything coming of it. Moreover, the night air was chilly. If he could get that cloak from John now! He crawled in to try, but big John was rolled up like ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, preliminary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so—the consequence ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... one of the soporific drugs of which they know the secret in my drink, for I did not wake up till very late the next day. I was rather feverish, and had a violent headache. It was some time before the memory of the terrible scene ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... form a sort of variety museum of all manner of bizarre and even grotesque figures. Critics naturally marvelled at this; and as in the days of old, men explained the effects of morphine by saying that it contained the soporific principle, and the action of the pump by nature's abhorring a vacuum, so critics explained this fact, so strange in the healthy, clear-eyed, measure-loving Turgenef, by saying that he had a natural fondness for the fantastic and ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... speak of "root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark," and of "slips of yew sliver'd in the moon's eclipse," a practice which was long kept up. The plants, too, which formed the witches' pharmacopoeia, were generally selected either from their legendary associations or by reason of their poisonous and soporific qualities. Thus, two of those most frequently used as ingredients in the mystic cauldron were the vervain and the rue, these plants having been specially credited with supernatural virtues. The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... and handled his gun. He had never before realised the intensely soporific effect of the American sun, of the American air, the drowsy, sleep-compelling uproar of Niagara. Hitherto these things had on the whole ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... appeasers that Hitler is not interested in the Western Hemisphere, no soporific lullabies that a wide ocean protects us from him—can long have any effect on the hard-headed, far-sighted ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... existence is! The world turns round as gently as ever; the flowers bud into life; and the winter nips them. Man lives, thinks, and dies. All very wondrous truisms. Well, after a half-hour—or perchance more—you will be gradually relapsing into a state of soporific nothing-at-all-ness (the best word I can find to express my meaning.) May there be some clear little stream just behind you, laughing along its idle way;—some chirping birds, singing their roundelay—some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... the cheerfulness and happiness of those on whom it acts. Instruction in reading, arithmetic, geometry, and various other things is made exceedingly amusing; smiling countenances and sparkling eyes are observable all around when it is communicated; and what was dull and soporific, according to the old plan, is now insinuated so agreeably, that the child, while literally at play, is acquiring a large amount of valuable knowledge. At play he sees Nature's book, that world of beauties: he loves to look into it, there is no flogging to induce ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... horses made cropping the grass in a hollow behind us, for the Armenians were well content to ruminate. Most likely they would have fallen asleep if we had not been there to keep an eye on them, for prolonged subjection to too much fear is soporific, so that tortured poor wretches sleep ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... her Memoirs, says that this Queen, already languishing, had lost her sleep, and was given soporific pills, on account of which Henrietta of France awoke no more; but it is probable that the servants, and not the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Nothing is more soporific to any (save a philosopher or moneyed man) than the operation of figures; and when in bed, the effect is irresistible. Sir Geoffrey fell asleep in the act of calculating King Ryence's height, from the supposed length of his mantle. Indeed, had he not stumbled on this abstruse ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes, I saw one of my Indians with his fingers upon his lips to enjoin me to silence, while his eyes were turned towards the open prairie. I immediately looked in that direction, and there was a sight that acted as a prompt anti-soporific. About half a mile from us stood a band of twenty Indians, with their war-paint and accoutrements, silently and quietly occupied in tying the horses. Of course they were not of our tribe, but belonged to the Umbiquas, a nation of thieves ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... enjoys himself hugely. But Nemesis awaits him. His fish diet has a soporific effect; gorged with food he becomes stupid and is easily taken. Man's trap for him is simple and ingenious. A century and a half ago it was to be seen at Pointe au Pic and to-day it is in operation at ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... invented to divert the mind from actualities. This colour scheme was beautifully light in tone and harmoniously gay, whether in tapestries, draperies and upholstery of velvets, or flowered silks, frescoes or painted furniture. It had the appearance of being intended to act as a soporific upon society, whose aim it was to ignore those jarring contrasts which lay beneath ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... that opium frequently occasions restlessness, thinks, "that in most cases it would be better to induce sleep by the abstraction of stimuli, than by exhausting the excitability;" and adds, "upon this principle we could not have a better soporific than an atmosphere with a diminished proportion of oxygene air, and that common air might be admitted after the patient was asleep." (Observ. on Calculus, &c. by Dr. Beddoes, Murray.) If it should be found to be true, that the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... foresight or who are uninformed. Against them stand the great mass of loyal Americans, who, when they see the right, and receive moral leadership, show that they have in their souls as much of the valor of righteousness as the men of 1860 and of 1776. The literary bureau at Washington has acted as a soporific on the mind and conscience of the American people. Fine words, designed to work confusion between right and wrong, have put them to sleep. But they now stir in ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... what he expected: the boat made fast to one of the cross timbers, with a big swarthy man in a blue jersey asleep in the stern, and a rough-looking, shock-headed boy also asleep in the bows, the hot sunshine having a soporific effect ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... questions concerning which men cannot reason ill with impunity. We think it, under these circumstances, an absolute duty to expose the fallacy of their arguments. It is no matter of pride or of pleasure. To read their works is the most soporific employment that we know; and a man ought no more to be proud of refuting them than of having two legs. We must now come to close quarters with Mr Bentham, whom, we need not say, we do not mean to include in this observation. He charges us ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... luscious purple than any of them. Near its junction with the Mandragora it runs uphill for several miles, with the result that the canoes were constantly capsizing. The waters of Mandragora are of a curiously soporific character, while those of the River Madeira have a toxic quality which renders them dangerous when drunk ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... stopping with his hands behind him to gaze abstractedly out of the windows to the wondering envy of the little ones. A faint hum, as of invisible insects, gradually pervaded the school; the more persistent droning of a large bee had become dangerously soporific. The hot breath of the pines without had invaded the doors and windows; the warped shingles and weather-boarding at times creaked and snapped under the rays of the vertical and unclouded sun. A gentle perspiration broke out like a mild epidemic in the infant class; ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... agonizing gasp Mott was awakened and suddenly sat erect and stared stupidly about him, the good-hearted, but boyishly irreverent audience, it is safe to affirm, was decidedly more interested in the slumbering sophomore than in the soporific speaker, though few doubtless thought them related ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... evening sun surrounded by gold-and-scarlet bedizened gentry of the desert, and drank strong coffee and smoked until we too were satisfied, if not surfeited; animals like the rest. Silence fell on us. This was a new life to two of us; to Warham it was familiar, therefore comfortable and soporific. I leaned back and languidly scanned the scene; eyes halfshut, senses half-awake. An Arab sheikh passed swiftly with his curtained harem; and then went filing by in orderly and bright array a number of Mahommedans, the first of them bearing on a cushion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that only those readers who appreciated the one could swallow the other. Mercifully, Mr. BURROUGHS writes so continually at the top of his voice that after a time the clatter comes to have an effect merely soporific. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... furnished even by demonologists, that all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have related their journey through the air, their amusement at the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw there. In the instance told by Hoffman, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... truth, these soporific parts are so many scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public that whenever he was dull they might be assured there was a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... wretch, the wretch," cried Rudolph. "Do you know, Morel, what he gave her to drink?" The artisan looked at Rudolph, but made no reply. "The housekeeper, his accomplice, had put in the drink of Louise a soporific—opium, without doubt; the strength, the senses of your child have been paralyzed for some hours; when she awoke from this lethargic sleep, the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... very little circumlocution broke to her the news of the promised invasion and the suggested panacea. Finding that Mrs. Jessop took the matter on the whole amiably, he felt considerably relieved in mind, and began placidly to smoke his pipe over the Times. The leading article was stupid, soporific, the tobacco soothing, the fire hot; he was just hovering in delicious languor upon the very borders of dreamland when a knock at the door roused him abruptly. Of course, he ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... rabbits smiled sweetly in their sleep under the shower of grass; they did not awake because the lettuces had been so soporific. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... house, under the great trees; Feliu and Captain Harris leading the way. It was sultry and bright;—even the sea-breeze was warm; there were pleasant odors in the shade, and a soporific murmur made of leaf-speech and the hum of gnats. Only the captain entered the house with Feliu; the rest remained without—some taking seats on a rude plank bench under the oaks—others flinging themselves down upon the weeds—a few stood still, leaning upon their rifles. Then Carmen came out to ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... When one would not do any thing to promote it, when one would do any thing to put a period to it, when one is too insignificant to contribute to either, I must own I see no blame in thinking an active age more agreeable to live in, than a soporific one. But, O my dear Sir, I must adopt your patriotism-Is not it laudable to be revived with the revival of British glory? Can I be an indifferent spectator of the triumphs of my country'? Can I help feeling a tattoo at my heart, when the Duke of Newcastle makes as great a figure in history ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... attacks of insomnia brought about by agitation of the spirit, he thought he would try to read. How many times had a short reading served him as a narcotic! So he got up and went into his library to choose a good and soporific work; but his mind, aroused in spite of himself, eager for any emotion it could find, sought among the shelves for the name of some author that would respond to his state of exaltation and expectancy. Balzac, whom he loved, said nothing to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... mouth he draws in the smoke in long, deep breaths, until he has filled his lungs completely, when he begins slowly to emit the smoke from his nose, little by little, until it is all gone. The object of this with the Indian is to steep his senses more deeply with the narcotizing soporific. The tobacco they smoke ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... is it that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple lights of rare old wines aloft, yet from his altitude he can look below upon a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Cockburn drank from a tortoise-shell wassail cup to the health of an apotheosized recusant, who was his supererogatory patron, and an assistant recognizance in the immobile nomenclature of interstitial molecular phonics. The contents of the vase proving soporific, a stolid plebeian took from its cerements a heraldic violoncello, and, assisted by a plethoric diocesan from Pall Mall, who performed on a sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect something more soporific. Martesie takes the place of her absent mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for "Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not that Cyrus would, of course, die rather ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and colour, because she knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if they walked the English lanes together. His intimacy with her neighbours, and her neighbourhood, was one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking of old Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of soporific measure, when he lay awake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham, of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even found an old engraving of Lady Alanby in her youth. Her evident liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They were people whose dignity and admirableness were ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... other. But although she classifies her poems in this volume according to the opening pair of symbols, and although she gives twice as much space to poppies as to swords, her poetry is always more stimulating than soothing. Her poppy seeds won't work; there is not a soporific ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... cheap reprints; the modern reader shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's slumber may be deeper than that of most men of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... once when Uncle Frank had come to visit them. He rubbed his clenched fists in his eyes and wondered if he dared light the gas to read. He could keep his geography near as an excuse if anyone discovered him. Then, hastened possibly by the soporific influence of that school book, sleep came ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... cried; but there was a want of energy in his words, and five minutes after his efforts had grown feeble in the extreme. In another, he too had succumbed, not to a dangerous soporific vapour, but to the weariness produced by long exertion, and slept as soundly as his companion, and as if there was nothing ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... them the playthings, pinafores, and other paraphernalia of their first childhood. In a special apartment, to be called the "Nursery," the cradle (or crib) of reposing age will be rocked successfully by skilful nurses or experienced Fogies, instructed on the Mainzerian system in the most soporific lullabies. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... awakened by the ceremony, had been restored to his white crib. To soften his mood, his bottle of supper had been handed to him a little ahead of time. But, unwilling to lay aside the prominence which had been his, all day, he brandished the bottle as if it were a weapon instead of a soporific. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... Hemingway, and devotedly attended by Ned Bashford. They encouraged her whims and laughed at her follies, while she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty and delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This desire no longer prodded her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of Billy, the more certain she had been that she could not live away from Daisy. The more she saw of Ned Bashford, the more she forgot her pressing ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... most. Of Byron he has quaint things to say, and of Wordsworth things that are neither quaint nor wise. We recall the man in the field in the twenty-second chapter of The Romany Rye who used Wordsworth's poetry as a soporific. And throughout his life Borrow's position towards his contemporaries in literature was ever contemptuous. He makes no mention of Carlyle or Ruskin or Matthew Arnold, and they in their turn, it may be ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter |
