"Deaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assembled on deck, it will hear no more noise than the buzzing of a big bee, as the exhaust is led away below the water-line. It won't be bad in the cabins either, even when they keep the sliding door open, for this screen of thick sail-cloth will deaden what sound there is. And it was a smart idea to utilize the power of the magneto to light up the whole boat with those ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... of the cry, and I did not enter the inner room. No, I walked back to my writing table, put my hands over my ears—to deaden the cry—and gave myself again to work. How long I worked I don't know, but presently I heard a loud knocking at the door of my room. I sprang up and opened it. My landlady ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... from which we were distant 260 leagues. We had, at the same time, several porpoises playing about us; into one of which Mr Cooper struck a harpoon; but as the ship was running seven knots, it broke its hold, after towing it some minutes, and before we could deaden the ship's way. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... without ceasing. The great quantity of hay opposite—or straw, I believe it actually was—seemed to deaden the sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... law? The Master's approval is the servant's best wages. If we truly feel that 'the Lord liveth, before whom we stand, 'we shall want nothing else for our work but His smile, and we shall feel that the light of His face is all that we need. That thought should deaden our love for outward things. How little we need to care about any payment that the world can give for anything we do! If we feel, as we ought, that we are God's servants, that will lift us clear above the low aims and desires ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... holding each other's hands, in silence. They had not yet found their tongues, so full and crowded were their hearts. It was pathetic to see them, especially the girl, who had not Brandon's hopelessness to deaden the pain by ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... this comfort learn "In death, that by Achilles' arm thou dy'st." Thus far Pelides; and his massive spear Close follow'd on his words. With truth it fled; Yet did the steely point, unerring hurl'd, Fall harmless: with a deaden'd point his breast Was struck. Then he;—"O goddess-born! (for fame "Thy race to me has long before made known) "Why wonder'st thou that I unwounded stand?" (For wondering stood Pelides.) "Not this ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one to deaden," Verkan Vall said. "As it is, I feel like a murderer of babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn't handle a pistol at all. I suppose the old fellow, ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... refreshed and buoyant, all our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"—he sat down to the table and placed both hands again to his head—"and we have no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden ourselves for the day by tanking up on coarse, loathsome stuff like bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,—the kind that always loaded up when they had a chance because ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... sense you take the word, dispenses with justice; and I think no more of the people who do great things—as you say—at the expense of justice, than of poets who fancy they produce great beauties of imagination without regularity. I know that excessive exactitude tends slightly to deaden the fire alike of composition and of action; but there is a mean in everything. It has never been a question in our controversy of a capuchin who throws away his time in quenching the darts of the flesh (though by the way, in the total of time thrown away the term that expresses the time lost ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... emperor; and in this they succeeded. These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope, perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these appearances: eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an expansive joy. He therefore summoned all his generals, and triumphantly announced to them a speedy peace. "They had but to wait another fortnight. None but himself was acquainted with the Russian character. On the receipt ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... fear of punishment, but for conscience's sake. Even if you do not expect to be punished; even if you think no one will ever find out that you have broken the law, remember it is God's ordinance. He sees you. Do not hurt your own conscience, and deaden your own sense of right and wrong, by breaking the least or the most unjust ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... had paid the man and shut the door, she sat upon her box in the passage. Jill nestled beside her, whilst Mavis rested with her fingers pressed well against her ears, to deaden the continual crying of babies which came from various rooms in ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... should assist digestion, is in this manner dissipated, and taken from its office. But may not the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its evils also? May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action which is needful to digestion? And may not even the excessive quantity of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to a desiccation of the system, as injurious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... women began to sing a Boorah song. To deaden the sound of the dreaded voice, opossum rugs were thrown over the children, none of whom must hear, unless they are boys old enough to be initiated; the sound reveals the fact to such that the hour of their ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment, the labour of Mary and Fraeulein, pillows which could not bring peace to the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes, and for a few moments there was silence in ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... love now to deliver her from that sympathy, to deaden in her that hatred? Her whole soul cried out in denial. By daily life in natural relations with the poor, by a fruitful contact with fact, by the clash of opinion in London, by the influence of a noble friendship, by ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... least of the lingering agonies of that dreadful death. But he, whom some modern sceptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"—to meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of a will worn out by the tortures of an unassured spirit? What share fear contributed to unman him, it was impossible for him, in the dark, confused conflict of differing emotions, to determine; but doubtless a natural shrinking from danger, there being no excitement to deaden its influence, and no hope of victory to encourage to the struggle, seeing victory was dreadful to him as defeat, had its part in the sad result. Many men who have courage, are dependent on ignorance and a low state of the moral feeling for that courage; and a further progress towards ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... skylight in such a way that prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends unstopped the flue which opened into the chimney of the stove in the workroom, where the girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread ragged coverlets over the brick floor to deaden any sound that David might make, put in a truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and a chair. Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as no one had occasion to enter her room, David might defy his enemies one and all, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Directly her hand stopped her brain stopped too, and she began to listen. A paper-boy shouted down the street; an omnibus ceased and lurched on again with the heave of duty once more shouldered; the dullness of the sounds suggested that a fog had risen since her return, if, indeed, a fog has power to deaden sound, of which fact, she could not be sure at the present moment. It was the sort of fact Ralph Denham knew. At any rate, it was no concern of hers, and she was about to dip a pen when her ear was caught by the sound of a step upon the stone staircase. She followed it ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... bedding, which crept through the thin board partition, and hovered, heavy and suffocating, above his head, became even more overpowering. His mouth watered. He shut his eyes and forced himself to think of other things, in order to deaden his hunger. Then a light, well-known step sounded on the stairs and some one knocked on the door—it was Morten. "Are you there, Pelle?" he asked. But Pelle ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the way," and his mother or nurse managed to procure for him the forbidden delights; a small clavichord, or dumb spinet, with the strings covered with strips of cloth to deaden the sound, was found for the child, and this he used to keep hidden in the garret, creeping away to play it in the night-time, when everyone was asleep, or whenever his father was away from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to do more than just form a rough estimate of their size; but presently the boat drew up fairly abreast of them, and then I directed Billy, who was steering, to haul the fore-sheet to windward to deaden the boat's way, for I was curious to see what would be ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... school, they will realize its importance when their knowledge and experience increase. But however plausible this may seem, practically it is not what usually happens. The usual effect of constantly imparting to children an instruction they are not yet ready to receive is to deaden their sensibilities to the whole subject of religion.[169] The premature familiarity with religious influences—putting aside the rare cases where it leads to a morbid pre-occupation with religion—induces a reaction of routine which becomes so habitual that it successfully withstands ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... dressing-gown to Faith's room. Fearing to knock, she had entered the room with no more warning than a gentle rattle of the handle. But her warning was lost on Faith who, hot night though it was, was lying with her head buried under the bed-clothes, to deaden the sound of ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... words the good woman blurted out the truth, and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel lived a lifetime in ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... except when the swiftly-flying clouds obscured the moon's light. The soughing of the wind in the tree-tops, together with the soft springy turf, helped to somewhat deaden the sound of Golightly's hoofs. The good horse scented danger in the air and in the tone of his mistress's voice, and with true instinct galloped through the wood, conscious of the caressing finger-tips which ever and anon silently ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... think that the vivisectionists do their work without anesthetics? Do they not, as a rule, give something to deaden pain? ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... seemed to Phil as if he had forgotten all about the prisoners, for the time glided slowly on, while weariness began to deaden poor Phil's hunger pains, and he grew drowsy, nodding off twice, but starting up again when the French prisoners spoke more loudly or a ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... passage, which was silent and padded, as if to deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size and arrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upper portion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff that had enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... thrown on the dead-plate, and when ignited pushed on to the bars as before, and so it is continued. It is expected that the smoke while passing over the bright fire towards the bridge will be ignited, but only a very small portion of it becomes flame, and the smoke tends to deaden the bright fire to a great extent. The door has to be opened so frequently in this method, and in pushing the coals from the dead-plate to the bars a large amount of live fuel drops down into the ash-pit, and if this should be thrown into the furnace again, the fire is deadened immediately. ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... staircase are closed by tapestry of the fifteenth century, representing hunting scenes. Long cords of silk and gold loop back these marvellous hangings in the Italian style. Thick carpets, into which the feet sink, deaden the sound of footsteps. Spacious divans, covered with Oriental materials, are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a task that it wrung his heart to perform. His horse must be put out of pain. He took off his coat, rolled it over his horse's head, inserted his gun under its folds to deaden the sound and to hide those luminous eyes turned so ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... us see that its only practical tendency is to deaden all our present interests, not to create ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip between their skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of the iron ring on their ankles and instep; these pads, made of tow and rags, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... to him, and gave it to him strong—being certain that he was past hurting by it, and hoping that it might deaden his pain. And presently, when he asked for another drink, ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... short-story readers that is now scattered. Then came the generous opportunities of the Yellow Book, and the National Observer died only to give birth to the New Review. No short story of the slightest distinction went for long unrecognised. The sixpenny popular magazines had still to deaden down the conception of what a short story might be to the imaginative limitation of the common reader—and a maximum length of six thousand words. Short stories broke out everywhere. Kipling was writing short stories; ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... know me, when you imagined me insensible to your merit and forgetful of the happy days of our childhood,—the recollection of which has a thousand times made my tears flow. I thank Heaven that the evils which I have suffered have had no tendency to deaden my ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... finished knotting their ropes together. With weighted ends muffled to deaden their fall upon the rock floor, they began casting to get contact with ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... half blind, half deaf, and, in general, have great deficiency in the sense of smell. The use of spirituous liquors, and particularly of tobacco in the form of snuff, serves likewise in a remarkable manner to deaden this sense. ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... fragmentariness of utility should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton destructiveness, or production not less wanton, we shut out all the lights of our souls, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... "the richness of not having." Within the house, on every side, lie remembrances of what imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate children who have to do for themselves-much-needed lessons in these days of automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... in the wild excitement of pleasure to kill thought and deaden his heart. But there would come quiet hours to remind him of the past, and, at times, in the middle of the night, he would start up from his couch, as if he had heard a scream, a single heart-piercing cry, which ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... official watchmen. To add to the acknowledged interest, every person present was proclaiming his views freely on a diversity of subjects, and above all could be heard the clear notes of the musical instruments by which the officials sought to encourage one another in their extremity, and to deaden the cries of those whom ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... partially adopted; the lower face is considerably larger in diameter than the upper face, and the difference constitutes an annulus of pressure, which will cause the valve to open or shut with the same force as a spindle valve of the area of the annulus. To deaden the shock still more effectually, the lower face of the valve is made to strike upon end wood driven into an annular recess in the pump bucket; and valves thus constructed work with very little noise or tremor; but it is found in practice, that the use ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... one eye. And lying there, Cadger watched the two yeggs go through the whole operation of getting nitroglycerine planted, and using all sorts of clothes and even the rugs off the floor of the president's room to deaden ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... whizzed by him, and looking round, to his delight he saw a small arrow, with a piece of very thin string attached. The arrow was made of very light wood. Round the iron point was a thick wrapping of cotton, which would entirely deaden its sound, as it struck a wall. It was soaked in water, and Charlie had no doubt that the sound he heard was caused by its fall into the moat, after ineffectual trials to shoot ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... pardon; when I spoke of virtue, I referred to that smooth kind which is current, and seems more passive than active,—that soft amiability which appears to deaden enthusiasm, and to shut up the soul in a set of opinions, instead of expanding it widely to everything noble and generous, wherever ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... weight of earthly evil bent, In varied toils and woes thy days were spent; 'Till cold Misfortune, with unceasing lower, Weigh'd down thy soul, and deaden'd every power, Reflection's lamp withdrew her guiding ray, And fail'd to point thee on thy darkling way, And thy wild soul prepared to launch alone From Night's dark bosom into worlds unknown: When, sent by Heaven thy earthly deeds to guide, And o'er ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... announced from the throne. Thus the people of England felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a divided, a factious, and, in a great part, disaffected ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it, the great act of his conversion, was his extraordinary existence in the endless forests of the Okhotsk Province, with the loose end of the chain wound about his waist. A strip torn off his convict shirt secured the end firmly. Other strips fastened it at intervals up his left leg to deaden the clanking and to prevent the slack links from getting hooked in the bushes. He became very fierce. He developed an unsuspected genius for the arts of a wild and hunted existence. He learned to creep into villages without betraying his presence by anything ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind, deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but she was not mournful, any more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to let one be ready to leave it. Within a few years the beloved daughter was ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and he sunk down on a rustic bench near him, and burying his head in his hands, tried to shut out sight and sound till power and calmness would return. But though he could close his eyes on all outward things, he could not deaden hearing; and words reached him which, while he strove not to hear, seemed to be traced by a dagger's point upon his heart, and from very physical agony deprived him of strength ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... For domestic purposes it is mostly ground, when it costs only about half the price of wheat flour, which is procured chiefly from Marseilles, Corsica itself producing very little. The ease with which the harvest of chestnuts is annually obtained tends to foster indolence and deaden enterprise among the peasantry. The one great danger to which the generous chestnut trees are exposed is a conflagration. Besides olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... this last belief, than he again descended, and raising the ladder himself, bore it noiselessly to the spot whence it had been removed, then ordering the candle to be extinguished, and the embers to be drawn together, so as to deaden the light of the fire, he with Green and Weston crept up the ladder, Cass being left to complete the preparation of the turkey the best way he could, while Philips and Jackson, posted at the back and front doors, listened attentively for the slightest sound of danger, which being ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... merchandise can be ascertained), are so entirely speculative, and besides, are conducted in a manner so wholly determined upon by the wayward fancies and wishes of the crew, that they belong to enterprise rather than to industry, and are very far indeed from tending to deaden ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... coast; here and there, from some closed-up hut, beaten about by the inky rains, ponderous songs issued. Within, tables were spread for drinkers; sailors sat before the smoking fire, the old ones drinking brandy and the young ones flirting with the girls; all more or less intoxicated and singing to deaden thought. Close to them, the great sea, their tomb on the morrow, sang also, filling the vacant night with ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... to an extent, forgot Peter. He tried to deaden within him the impulses which Yellow Bird's conjuring had roused. He tried to see in them a menace and a danger, and he repeated to himself the folly of placing credence in Yellow Bird's "medicine." But his efforts were futile, and he was honest ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... advanced; but while some hold that the phalangeal articulations are flexed and the heel slightly raised, in order to relieve the pressure of the perforans tendon on the affected area, and so obtain ease, there are others who hold that the heel is pressed firmly to the ground in order to deaden the pain. It may be, and most probably is, that both are right; but, in our opinion, there is no doubt whatever that pointing with the heel elevated is by far ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... congregation would have accepted him. But doubts on the subject of public prayer began to weigh upon his mind. He suspected the practice by which one man offered up prayer vicariously and collectively for the assembled congregation. Was not that too, like the Communion Service, a form that tended to deaden the spirit? Under the influence of this and other scruples he finally ceased to preach (1838), and told his friends that henceforth he must find his pulpit in the platform of the lecturer. 'I see not,' he ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... of silence wrapped them in, for the snow, though not thick, was sufficient to deaden any noise, and the frost held things pretty tight besides. No sound but their voices and the soft roar of the flames made itself heard. Only, from time to time, something soft as the flutter of a pine moth's wings went past them through the air. No one ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... fact that China's history has always had a decidedly inland character, that its political expansion has been landward, that it has practiced most extensively and successively internal colonization, and that its policy of exclusion has tended to deaden its outlook toward the Pacific, nevertheless China's direct intercourse with the west and its westward-directed influence have never, in point of significance, been comparable with that toward the east and south. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Annie Gray, after a pause. "We couldn't keep it all to ourselves and be happy over it. We couldn't forget all the sick people to whom our purple springs would bring healing. Mind you, we tried to deaden our consciences; tried to make ourselves believe it was not our duty to give it to the world. We fought off these spells of conscience—we tried to forget that there was a world outside. But we couldn't—we owed a duty, which ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... you put in his way; I saw you. And what was your object? To deaden his conscience with liquor, his and your own, while you made him your fiendish proposal. Man, man, do you believe in God, and in a judgment to come for the deeds done in the body, that you can plan in cold blood to destroy ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... and structure of poetry should be studied, but not to so great an extent as to blind the eye or deaden the appreciation of its beauty and sentiment. Brown, who wrote the beautiful story Rab and His Friends, has said, "It is with poetry as with flowers and fruits. We would all rather have them and taste them than talk about them. It is a good thing to know about a lily, its scientific ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... wasted if you still insist upon model schoolmasters. So long as we require our schoolmasters to be politic, conforming, undisturbing men, setting up Polonius as an ideal for them, so long will their influence deaden the souls of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... midnight. Exactly on the hour Li and his picked guard were admitted, and in dead silence they marched into the Forbidden City. Every man had in his mouth a wooden bit to prevent talking, while the metal trappings of the horses were muffled to deaden all sound. When they arrived at the forbidden precincts, the Manchu Bannermen on guard at the various city gates were replaced by Li's Anhui braves, and as the Empress Dowager had sent eunuchs to point out the palace troops which were doubtful or that had openly declared for the conspirators, ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... pocket of his respectable black coat, and blew his nose resoundingly, and wiped his eyes. He was very deeply moved indeed, and Polson was profoundly sorry for him; but there was a sick whirl in the lad's mind which robbed him of any clear power of thought and seemed indeed to deaden feeling itself. Only he knew that nothing could undo his shame. Nothing could ever make him respect himself again. Nothing could give back to him the old sense of honour, the knowledge that ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... becomes a small faddist. You must wait till next month, and then read my article on the immorality of parting one's hair with a comb. A common table-fork is the only pure thing with which one can part one's hair. Combs deaden the conscience. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... Robert Peel defined Conservatism when he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its strength from the popular will, should diminish the risk and deaden the shock of collisions between the two branches ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... all those whom they control, and, as soon as that tension is released at the highest point, a perfunctory performance with all its well-known side features, the waste and the idleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks, must set in and deaden the work. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... thick blinds shut out all signs of the dreary dawning light. Walters followed us in a few seconds and set a tray of glasses and bottles on the table. I flung off my overcoat and sat down in an arm-chair, pressing the palms of my hands hard on my forehead in the vain effort to deaden the tearing pain. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... locked up the forged notes as usual in his escritoir. It happened the very next morning that Mrs. la Mode, the milliner, called upon Mrs. Ludgate. The ruling passion still prevailed, notwithstanding the miserable state to which this lady was reduced. Even palsy could not deaden her personal vanity: her love of dress survived the total loss of her beauty; she became accustomed to the sight of her distorted features, and was still anxious to wear what was most genteel and becoming. Mrs. la Mode had not a more ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... through the building—almost maddened by despair—to seek an outlet, he entered the kitchen, where he perceived a vessel full of water. The sight filled him with joy. Perhaps water, taken in large quantities, might deaden the effects of the poison and save Julio's life. At any rate, he had no other remedy, and as it was his only hope, he grasped at it as if it were an ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... past master in the craft; for he hath arranged the strings and tuned them like one who is a perfect performer.' Said I, 'It was I tuned it;' and said she, 'Then, Allah upon thee, take it and play on it!' So I took it; and, playing a piece so difficult and so rare, that it went nigh to deaden the quick and quicken the dead, I ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... delicate things to be used for tools. It is like taking the mainspring out of your watch, and notching it for a saw. It may be a wonderful saw, but how fares your watch? Especially avoid doing so in connection with religious things, for so you will assuredly deaden them to all that is finest. Let your feelings, not your efforts on theirs, affect them with a sympathy the more powerful that it is not forced upon them; and, in order to do this, avoid being too English in the ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... means for relieving the people." I omit many other traits equally forcible; we see that the ecclesiastical and lay seigniors are not simple egoists when they live at home. Man is compassionate of ills of which he is a witness; absence is necessary to deaden their vivid impression; they move the heart when the eye contemplates them. Familiarity, moreover, engenders sympathy; one cannot remain insensible to the trials of a poor man to whom, for over twenty years, one says good-morning every day on passing him, with whose life ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... upon the masonry of the wall. Meanwhile the enemy from the ramparts are doing their best to set the shed on fire, to break off the ram's head with heavy stones, to pull it upwards by a noose, or to deaden the effect of the shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... has been acknowledged repeatedly that the sternest type of Puritan theology, as a moral and political force, is full of inspiration; it does not deaden the soul; it stimulates the action of free-will; its moral earnestness has been a great power in molding national destinies. Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to declare that the great charters of human liberty are largely due to its strong conception of a divine and all-controlling ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... unbroken forests, through whose tangled paths the mysterious winter wind groaned and shrieked and howled with weird noises and unaccountable clamors. Along the iron-bound shore, the stormful Atlantic raved and thundered, and dashed its moaning waters, as if to deaden and deafen any voice that might tell of the settled life of the old civilized world, and shut us forever into the wilderness. A good story-teller, in those days, was always sure of a warm seat at the hearthstone, and the delighted homage of children; ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the man's private opinion may be, would still vote, for the best of reasons, and I am bound to think with perfect wisdom, with the Government. But anybody can see how directly, how palpably, how injuriously, an arrangement of this kind tends to weaken, and I think I may say even to deaden, the sense both of trust and responsibility in the non-official members of these councils. Anybody can see how the system tends to throw the non-official member into an attitude of peevish, sulky, permanent opposition, and, ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... to save it up an' invist it at th' right time or get nawthin' fr'm it. It's betther thin a doctor f'r a stubbed toe but it niver cured a broken leg. It's a kind iv a first aid to th' injured. It seems to deaden th' pain. Women an' childher cry or faint whin they're hurt. That's because they haven't th' gift iv swearin'. But as I tell ye, they'se no good wastin' it. Th' man that swears at ivrything has nawthin' to say when rale throubles ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... preparation. These things do not in themselves heal a cut, but they keep out the decaying elements, air and moisture, thus helping to preserve the branch and by protecting it to promote healing in nature's way. A little lamp black will serve to deaden the ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... in the water as far as he could, to deaden the blow in case of the fellow falling back on him, and screamed encouragement, threats, and promises up the well. Suddenly from above came a new voice altogether, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... interruption; the sun had set, and the darkness was opaque. It was impossible to move against the force of the wind and the deluge of water which descended. Speak we did not, but shut our eyes against the lightning, and held our fingers to our ears to deaden the noise of the thunder, which burst upon us in the most awful manner. My companion groaned at intervals, whether from fear, I know not; I had no fear, for I did not know the danger, or that there was a God ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... brothers had forgotten him altogether, little knowing that out of mere spite Lazuraque had kept back everything they had written. When these thoughts came into his head he worked away at the stone harder than ever, to deaden the pain which was almost too bad to bear. At last one day his efforts were rewarded, and he was able to take the stone in and out and speak to his fellow-captives, who, with sun and air about them, were more fortunate ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... smoke?" "No, sir," said the lady, astonished at this irrelevant question, and perhaps the more so, as the count's aversion to smoking was so well known, that none of his smoking subjects ventured to approach him without having taken every precaution to deaden any odour of the fragrant weed which might lurk about their clothes or person. "Does he take snuff?" said the viceroy. "Yes, your Excellency," said his visitor, who probably feared that for once his Excellency's ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to now had looked around full of curiosity, began to be afraid. To deaden their fear they ate the sandwiches they had brought. Paul encouraged them, and refused the sausage which they ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... their libraries and recommend them as proper reading. It has been said with reason, that "what is improper in the nudity of a statue is the fig-leaf and not what is underneath." It is, in fact, these fig-leaves—sculptured, painted, written or spoken—which awaken lewdness rather than deaden it. By drawing attention to what they conceal, they excite sensuality much more than simple nudity. In short, the eroticism which plays at hide and seek is that which acts with greatest intensity. The directors of ballets and other similar spectacles ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... condition of thought and feeling which does not paralyze action, but kindles it; does not deaden sensibility, but quickens it. Even when used in a religious sense, reverence does not stand for religion itself, but as a means or aid to religious thought ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... consider for a moment the result of Socialism as a permanent policy. It means the substitution, as already shown, of government or official judgment and initiative for that of the individual. The whole process would be one to deaden and atrophy the powers of the people in general, with the result that there would follow a leveling down to a plane of mediocrity rather than a leveling up according to individual capacities and ambitions, exercised through equality ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... catastrophe that had parted him from Hamlyn's Purlieu, and yet, strangely, he asked no questions. Lucy was tortured by the thought of revisiting the place she loved so well. She had been able to deaden her passionate regret only by keeping her mind steadfastly averted from all thoughts of it, and now she must actually go there. The old wounds would be opened. But it was impossible to refuse, and she ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... disorder. The door of a very small safe had been "souped," and now sagged open. Books and papers littered the floor, and were strewn over a mattress that, evidently dragged from the inner room, had been swaddled around the safe to deaden ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hope passed strangely into a deeper pang for all that the Surrey cottage stood for in her life, all the things that she had left to come to Imogen. She remembered. And, for a moment, the old vortex of whirling anguish almost engulfed her. Only long years could deaden the pang of that parting. She would not dwell on that. Eddy and Rose; to turn to them was to feel almost gay. Jack and Mary;—yes, on these last names her thoughts lingered and her gaze for them held tender presages. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... which repetition could never deaden, she stooped to kiss the last sentence he had written, before she turned carelessly to take up the strange foreign envelope, which she had thrown, with her veil and gloves, on the chair at her side. For a moment ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... tendency, excepting in the case of a few sensitive and tender spirits, is to deaden the consciousness of guilt, to still the remonstrances of the self-convicted mind, and to enable men of no religion and of no morals to hear these doctrines proclaimed from the pulpit without any salutary disquietude of heart. They do not really believe ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... Deaden the Noise of Steam While Blowing off Through a Wrought Iron Stand Pipe.—The sound may be much modified by enlarging the end of the pipe like a trumpet or cone; which should be long, 20 or 30 times the diameter of the pipe, opening to 4 or 5 times ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... opponents, through their new regulations as to penance, softened this distinction, and that not to the detriment of morality. For an entirely different treatment of so-called gross and venial transgressions must in every case deaden the conscience ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Hopkins University who knew him best said: "No strain of physical wear or suffering, no pressure of worldly fret, no amount of dealing with what are called 'the hard facts of experience', could stiffen or dampen or deaden the inborn exuberance of his nature, which escaped incessantly into a realm of beauty, of wonder, of joy, and of hope." Certainly the great bulk of his published lectures and his poems bear out this impression. His brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier, says ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... their neighbours—yes; but not if they be honest men," answered Aram, in one of those shrewd remarks which he often uttered, and which seemed almost incompatible with the tenor of the quiet and abstruse pursuits that he had adopted, and that generally deaden the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Clancy, "I was thinking it would be a good night tonight, seein' there's a strong wind blowing that would deaden the sound of ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... takes his life in his hands. He breaks a path which leads he knows not whither: it may bring him to a shore whence he has no ship to sail from; it may end in an abyss he cannot bridge. The thickets rend and sting him, poison may colour a tempting grain or berry, frost may deaden his energies and lull him to the sleep that knows no waking. He has but little aid from science: beyond food and medicine he carries little more than a watch, a compass, a rifle, and a cartridge ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... go straight to Carlisle, and remain as near as she could to the dear father who had rescued and cared for her when deserted. Gerard, who was with his father when the bones were exhumed at the spot indicated, soon realised the new situation. His passion for justice to his mother did not deaden his feeling for others. He felt that Falkner's story was true, and though nothing could restore his mother's life, her honour was intact. Sir Boyvill would leave no stone unturned to be revenged, rightly or wrongly, on the man who had assailed his domestic peace; ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... strings and tuned them after the fashion of one who is right skilled in the art." Quoth I, "It was I tuned it." "Then, God on thee," answered she, "take it and play on it!" So I took it and playing a rare and difficult measure, that came nigh to deaden the live and raise the dead, sang thereto ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... was a ghastly mockery, a blasphemous farce, a satire on Christianity infinitely more sardonic and mordant than anything I ever wrote or published. Soon after returning to my cell I was glad of the substantial dinner and drowsy ale to deaden the bitter edge ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... of our calling will turn away from earthly things. If you believe that God has summoned you to His kingdom and glory, surely, surely, that should deaden in your heart the love and the care for the trifles that lie by the wayside. Surely, surely, if that great voice is inviting, and that merciful hand is beckoning you into the light, and showing you what you may possess there, it is not walking according to that summons if you ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Who'll come gouge with me? Who'll come bite with me? Who'll come put his knuckles in my back? I'm Weasel-eye, the dead shot; I'm the blood-drinkin', skelp-t'arin', knife-plyin' demon of Sunflower Creek! The flash of my glance will deaden a whiteoak, an' my screech in anger will back the panther plumb off his natif heath! I'm a slayer an' a slaughterer, an' I cooks an' eats my dead! I can wade the Cumberland without wettin' myse'f, an' I drinks outen the spring without ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... she sped away followed by the three chums. They were out of sight not a moment too soon, for as they turned a corner, running across a lawn to deaden their footsteps, they ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... Certainly it cannot be natural for a shocked and agitated mind to observe, or to describe with such petty accuracy. Besides, the allusion is not sufficiently obvious. The reader pauses to consider what the poet means by 'mimic lace.' Such pauses deaden sensation and break the course of attention. A friend of the doctor's pleaded greatly that ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... first business of the enslaver of men to blunt, deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility. Conscience is, to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... in your ears, so as to deaden the noise of the report," said the lieutenant. "I've got some, though, so it doesn't matter. Here's a bit to stick in your ears—you'd better take my advice, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... bridges was burst by the strength of the current, but the delay thus caused mattered little as the surprise was complete. When the bridges of rafts had been swung and anchored, blankets and carpets were laid upon them to deaden the fall of marching feet, and during that silent tramp across the rolling bridges many a keen-witted Scot found it difficult to restrain a laugh as he trod on carpets richer by far than any that had lain in his best parlour at home. He could not see ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... out loud and clear, and a smell of burning wood and hay and clouds of smoke filled the air. Rushing to the door, Mrs. Fischer saw that the barn was wrapped in flames. With a scream for help she ran out into the yard, where she discovered the uncle and several others endeavoring to deaden the flames, but their ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... out of Dantesque scenes that I have lived through. Things that Gustave Dore had the courage to picture through the text of the Divina Commedia have come to pass, with all the variety and circumstance of fact. In the midst of labours that happily tend to deaden one's feelings, I have been able to gather the ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... of maize straw is used for bait. The boat sails to a distance of about 90 miles off the land and run back before the prevailing wind, until they are about nine miles from the shore or until they lose the fish. When the fisherman gets a bite the wind is spilled out of the sail so as to deaden the boat's way. The fish is then got alongside, promptly gaffed, and got on board. Tunny sells for about three halfpence a pound in Lequeito. The season extends from June to November. Bream are taken in the winter and spring, 9 to 12 miles off the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... disintegrating and scattering, in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. There is also a great law continually operating whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher faculties ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Her sanctity, is laid to rest, And blessing them I too am blest. My goodwill, as a springing air, Unclouds a beauty in despair; I stand beneath the sky's pure cope Unburthen'd even by a hope; And peace unspeakable, a joy Which hope would deaden and destroy, Like sunshine fills the airy gulf Left by the vanishing of self. That I have known her; that she moves Somewhere all-graceful; that she loves, And is belov'd, and that she's so Most happy, and to heaven will go, Where I may meet with her, (yet this I count ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... for them by the running water. While the voice sounds resonantly in the bath-room it is not half so fine and inspiring when the song is continued in the dressing-room. The reason is that the furniture of the dressing-room tends to deaden the reverberations."—Prof. W.H. BRAGG on "The World ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... climax for our halting-place. The pathway is well marked though somewhat stony and irregular; the valley-bottom is wider here and we are close by the side of the Gave. The hemp sandals prove surprisingly useful. Their half-inch soles of rope utterly deaden the inequalities of the ground, and the pebbly, hummocky path is as a carpet beneath the feet. The bearers tramp steadily onward, the chairs sinking and rising in easy vertical motion, much more grateful than the horizontal "joggle" of the Pyrenean saddle-horse. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the door, crouching like a cat ready to spring, his beady eyes half-frightened, watching the poison deaden the faculties of the other. He leaped through the door, glanced up and down the stable street—deserted at that hour except for a few drowsy attendants lounging in front of their stalls—jerked the door shut, hooked the open padlock through the iron fastenings, snapped ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... endure pain and anguish. When people are ill, the physician is summoned, and in trouble we are at hand. Things are as we take them—the gravest face may have a wart, upon which a jest can be made. When you have once laughed at a misfortune, its sting loses its point. We deaden it—we light up the darkness—even though it be with a will 'o the wisp—and if we understand our business, manage to hack the lumpy dough of heavy sorrow into little pieces, which even ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
