"Soporific" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours that night, but when I finally went to sleep and heaven knows I needed it!—it was with the soporific resolution to put my house rigidly in order the very next day. I would be polite about it, but very firm. The Titus family (omitting the Countess and Rosemary) was to be favoured with an ultimatum from which there could be ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 is generally ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... we now get one; for it must be remembered that Arminianism is far more palatable to depraved nature than Calvinism." Again: "These brethren go too fast, get men into the visible kingdom too soon; lull them to everlasting sleep by their soporific measures and doctrinal anodynes, thereby breaking down the barriers which separate the Church from the world, and ruining hundreds of souls where they save one. Let our young men be made to feel rather that ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... Montmartre. 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 ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... understood a substance which the imagination grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the SOPORIFIC POWER of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the PECCANT HUMORS of ancient medicine, are entites. The entite is the support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the argumentum ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... cases prescribed, is consigned to the care of Grim Gribber, the porter of the castle, with directions to attach it to the wrist of the lady in the chamber of sleep, whither he accordingly proceeds for that purpose; but overcome by the soporific influences of the atmosphere of that enchanted place, he falls into a deep sleep ere his task is accomplished. The Prince Azoff, with his Squire Abnab, straying from a hunting party into the enchanted cedar grove, encounters the Fairy ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... 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 whatever ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... better fitted for his work. He came, a Scotsman, to a colony one-third Scottish, and the name of Bruce was itself soporific to the opposition of a perfervid section of the reformers. His wife was the daughter of Lord Durham, whom Canadians regarded as the beginner of a new age of Canadian constitutionalism. He had been ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... whose injudicious space, Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race, Where kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 than for ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the path, and, followed by L'Isle, was soon ascending the hill. Moodie, somewhat under the influence of his soporific draughts, was in a reverie, wondering whether Lord Strathern would get his letter in time to send a troop of horse after the fugitives, and whether it might not come within the provisions of the military code to have L'Isle ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... 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 ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... blended natures on which extremes of joy or of grief have a soporific effect. Now on a youth so compounded that he could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of opium. When the Prince had drunk the whole of the bottle of port, eaten half a fish and some portion ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mighty fascination of this Vedantism the people have been held through the centuries. And it is a doctrine which renders the highest morality impossible and has proved the mightiest soporific to the conscience. A few years ago a murderer in South India was being led from the court of justice to prison where, soon, he was to be executed for his crime. As he was struggling in the street with the police, a missionary accosted ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... joyously 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
... 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 head ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the moment when Barbara, 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 and fancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... parched wheat fields. The paint was off it; nothing much more exciting than a crop failure ever happened there. The main topic of conversation was the weather and, as Mark Twain said, everybody talked about it, but nothing was done. Within sixty days this soporific village became a roaring bedlam; every town lot was leased, derricks rose out of chicken runs, boilers panted in front yards, mobs of strangers surged through the streets and the air grew shrill with their bickerings. From a distance, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the soporific emanations for these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously afflicted, so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my imagination ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the anti-administration newspaper of Charleston 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, I lost myself ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 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. Suppose ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • 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 and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... attending a patient, falls fast asleep, like the fat boy in Pickwick; down there, under the cliffs, the men sleep all day in, or under, their boats. Why does not Charcot send all his nervous patients to Ireland? The air is not only a sedative, but a soporific. 'T is the calm of the eternal gods,—the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... 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
... Mr. Cathro could not see them, but a foot-board was nailed to it, and when he stood on this, as he had an aggravating trick of doing, softly and swiftly, they were suddenly in view. A large fire had been burning all day and the atmosphere was soporific. Mr. Cathro was so sleepy himself that the sight of a nodding head enraged him like a caricature, and he was on the foot-board frequently for the reason that makes bearded men suck peppermints in church. Against his better judgment he took ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... its rich colours, its lights shining from glasses and mirrors, its mellow odours of liquids and its softened sounds began to have a soporific effect upon Prescott, used so long to the open air and untold hardships. His senses were pleasantly lulled, and the voice of his friend, whom he seemed now to have known for a long time, came from far away. He could have closed his eyes and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... 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 ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... of fashion has waved in vain in the illuminated halls of folly-painted pleasure; my Angelina's eyes have withstood, yes, without a blink, the dazzling enchantment.—And will she—no, I cannot, I will not think so for an instant—will she now submit her understanding, spell-bound, to the soporific charm of nonsensical words, uttered in an awful tone by that potent enchantress, Prejudice?—The declamation, the remonstrances of self-elected judges of right and wrong, should be treated with deserved contempt ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... leaned back with half-shut slumberous eyes, and confessed she was pleased that it would be later, instead of this evening, that she would have the pleasure of meeting the master and mistress of Loringwood—the drive through the great stretches of pine had acted as a soporific; no society for the night so welcome ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... his work even on bread and water. Then the governor deprived the 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
... ingenious work lately published by Dr. Beddoes. Who, after lamenting 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 excitability of the system depends on the quantity ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the family enlarging delightedly on the subject, as do all of Lawyer Putney's friends, in Mr. Howells's story, "Annie Kilburn"; and yet even the united testimony of Hatboro' fails to clear up our lingering doubts concerning Mr. Putney's wit. The dull people of that soporific town are really and truly and realistically dull. There is no mistaking them. The stamp of veracity is upon every brow. They pay morning calls, and we listen to their conversation with a dreamy impression that we have heard it all many times before, and that the ghosts of our own morning ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew duda'im by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has shown (Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... connubial rights seemed to stand in his way. Full of impatience for the consummation of the diabolical project when once he had determined on its execution, and having given to his victim a strong soporific, which threw him into a heavy sleep, he proceeds to urge on the faithless wife to the act of stabbing her unconscious husband. This tragedy she performed with one of the unhappy man's own instruments ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... 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 only to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truth (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. ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... 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 ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... 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
... 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 Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... are three in camp. The altitude of Erzeroum is between six thousand and seven thousand feet; the September nights are delightfully cool, and there are no blood-thirsty mosquitoes. I am assigned a sleeping- tent close alongside a small waterfall, whose splashing music is a soporific that holds me in the bondage of beneficial repose until breakfast is announced both mornings; and on Monday morning I feel as though the hunger, the irregular sleep, and the rough-and-tumble dues generally of the past four weeks were but a troubled dream. Again the bicycle contributes its curiosity-quickening ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
