"Deadened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effectively, creatively. If we succeed—and we sometimes do—our inner life is resurrected, the whole man is regenerated, and a living worship connects man with God. But if we fail—and we often do—the spiritual nature remains as if dead, and, on top of this, we pile a deadened body-mind. What should be a meeting for worship, a place where man and God come together, becomes a void. There is no life, only a sterile quietism. Sterile quietism is as bad as ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither, unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct the process by which that other spirit—which he would fain have believed his true spirit—had been drugged and deadened ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... horrible, unbelievable word. The man was incapable of feeling—every other pain was deadened in this ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... only have been the ingrained prejudice of the Restoration period against "metaphysical" verse that deadened Dryden's ear to the charm of such passages as these. Another less notable poet and playwright of the time showed more discrimination. This was Thomas D'Urfey, who in 1691 brought out a revised version of the play at the Theatre Royal. In a dedication ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... and the deadened jingle of gold upon green cloth, and the light grating of the croupiers' rakes, was the first impression upon Zoe's senses; but the mere game did not monopolize her attention many seconds. There were other things better worth noting: the great varieties of human type that a single ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... divers poise themselves before leaping down. Through a narrow opening opposite the fall the river makes its way onward. As I stood there a stone must have come down from the heights above. I did not see it, and the noise of the waterfall deadened any sound of its descent, but suddenly I felt a heavy blow between the shoulders, and I must have tumbled forward ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... hours passed by without any material change in their situation; a sortie became impossible; the thickened walls deadened all sound without. Altamont walked to and fro like a bold man in face of a danger greater than his courage. Hatteras thought anxiously of the doctor, and of the great danger awaiting him ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the brig-of-war, instead of being a slow sailer, was remarkably fast, and that, while we were in chase of her, she must, by towing a sail overboard, or by some other manoeuvre, have deadened her way, on purpose to allow us to come up with her. We had now, therefore, to put the schooner's best leg foremost to get away from her, even before she had got all her gear aloft again. To try and do her further damage, a gun was got over the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... front of their dwelling so much, that both Dominick and his brother found it impossible to sleep. Their sister, however, lay undisturbed, because she reposed in an inner chamber, which had been screened off with broken planks, and these not only checked draughts, but deadened sounds. ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... possibly allow her to devote so much time and trouble in that way without some return. What she earned from this source was quite sufficient to supplement her income to an amount adequate to meet the demands of her mode of living, and so, when time had deadened the first keen pangs and the subsequent sorrow occasioned by her husband's death, she was again quite contented and cheerful. Her life up to then had not been spent in such a way as to cause her now to feel the ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... In five steps I came to an iron wall, made of plates bolted together. Then turning back I struck against a wooden table, near which were ranged several stools. The boards of this prison were concealed under a thick mat, which deadened the noise of the feet. The bare walls revealed no trace of window or door. Conseil, going round the reverse way, met me, and we went back to the middle of the cabin, which measured about twenty feet by ten. As to its height, Ned Land, in spite of his own great height, could ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... first American "West." There every jewel of promise was ringed round with hostility. The cheap land the pioneer had purchased at a nominal price, or the free land he had taken by "tomahawk claim"—that is by cutting his name into the bark of a deadened tree, usually beside a spring—supported a forest of tall trunks and interlacing leafage. The long grass and weeds which covered the ground in a wealth of natural pasturage harbored the poisonous copperhead and the rattlesnake and, being shaded by the overhead foliage, ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... 1818, we have been accustomed. Scott is, if not the infinitely various but never mutable Scott of the earlier years, still constant in fun and kindness, in quaint erudition and hearty friendship, though he is all this in a slightly deadened and sicklied degree. But there are strange breaks-down and unfamiliar touches, now of almost querulous self-concern (the thing most foreign to his earlier nature), as where he complains that his companions, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... arrived. No communication had taken place between the natives and the "tabooed" prisoners. A limited supply of provisions was in the house, which the unhappy inmates scarcely touched. Misery deadened the pangs of hunger. The day passed without change, and without hope; the funeral ceremonies of the dead chief would doubtless be the signal ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Huxley so inconsistent with the recognized laws of political economy; and has been, by the cowardice of our old translators, so maimed of its vitality, that the frank Greek assertion of St. Michael's not daring to blaspheme the devil,[96] is tenfold more mischievously deadened and caricatured by their periphrasis of "durst not bring against him a railing accusation," than by Byron's apparently—and only apparently—less reverent description of the manner of angelic encounter for an inferior ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... his interest should deepen. This will almost never be the case where the first instruction is purely technical. Nothing, for instance, has deadened the interest of children in plant life so much as the study of botany. This is because the school methods have been wrong, the work being almost always approached from the wrong end. It is because the learner's mind is dammed up by difficult and to him empty technical terms. As a consequence, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... wiped away, my groans be turned to another tune, my cottage of clay be changed to this palace, my prison rags to these splendid robes'; 'for the former things are passed away.'" I can not think that Samuel Rutherford impoverished his spirit or deadened his affections, or diminished his labors by mental pilgrimages such as he counsels to Lady Cardoness: "Go up beforehand and see your lodging. Look through all your Father's rooms in heaven. Men take a sight of the lands ere they buy them. I know that Christ hath made the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... by Mrs. Chapman, the landlady of Russell House. He had found the door locked and forced it open. Mr. Morton was in an arm-chair, with several yards of rope wound loosely round him; he was almost unconscious, and there was a thick wool shawl tied round his mouth which must have deadened any cry or groan the poor gentleman might have uttered. But, as a matter of fact, the constable was under the impression that Mr. Morton had been either drugged or stunned in some way at first, which had left him weak and faint and prevented him from making himself heard or extricating himself ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... most annoying. When following some shy bird to its nest, or moving down toward the grove where are the brooklet and the birds' bathing-place, no matter how quietly one may approach, footsteps deadened by thick sand and no rustling garments to betray, the orchard oriole is sure to know it. He is not the only bird to see a stranger, of course; the brown thrush is as quick as he, but he silently drops to the ground, if not already there, and ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... disappointed cupidity cannot account for the proceedings of the next morning; proceedings which I shall not describe to you—but which I shall tell you of presently, not as a matter of conjecture but of actual fact. Meantime returning to that evening altercation in deadened tones within the private apartment of Miss de Barral's governess, what if I were to tell you that disappointment had most likely made them touchy with each other, but that perhaps the secret of his careless, railing behaviour, was in the thought, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... sill and apron. It was hard work. Newmark, watching, thought it impracticable. The current rendered footing impossible, so all the work had to be done from above. Wet wood gripped the long saws vice-like, so that a man's utmost strength could scarcely budge them. The water deadened the force of axe-blows. Nevertheless, with the sure persistence of the riverman, they held to it. Orde, watching them a few moments, satisfied himself that they would succeed, and so departed up river to take charge ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the good effect of the bracing northern air was partially destroyed. She lost her interest in the novelty of her surroundings, and as she says in one of her last letters, stayed much at home. But her perceptive faculties were not wholly deadened. She notes with her usual precision the indolence and dulness of the Danes, and the unwavering devotion of the Hamburgers to commerce, and describes the towns of Hamburg and Copenhagen with graphic force. These descriptions ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... door. But this had been so effectually barricaded against the cold, that she failed in her purpose, and, immediately turning back to the other side, she called, loudly,—"Guard! guard!" The press of carriages, however, at this point, so far deadened her voice, that it was some time before the alarm reached the other side of the encampment distinctly enough to direct their motions to her summons. Half a dozen yagers and an officer at length presented themselves; but the landlord had disappeared, she knew not in what direction. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... life has not dimmed nor deadened my faculties, for I am occupied at the present time with very important work and I write steadily. But my real life is passed in my visions, which take me into another world quite as real as this sensuous ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... organ builders now employ this thicker construction, and it is no uncommon thing to find Swell boxes measuring three inches in thickness and "deadened" with sawdust or shavings between the layers of wood of which ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... the idea of a God? A few enfeebled men, morose and disgusted with the world; a few, in whom the passions are already deadened by age, by infirmity, or by the strokes of fortune. Religion is a check, to those alone who by their state of mind and body, or by fortuitous circumstances, have been already brought to reason. The ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... administration of affairs. In these affairs every woman was interested to a degree that has had no parallel since, unless it may be, on the Southern side during our civil war. Politics and religion were one, and removal to Ipswich had not deadened the interest with which they watched and commented on every fluctuation in the stormy situation at "home," as they still called England, Cotton taking active part in all ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... and Planting.%—The land about the cabin was cleared by grubbing the bushes and cutting down trees under a foot in diameter and burning them. Big trees were "deadened," or killed, by cutting a "girdle" around them two or three feet above the ground, deep enough to destroy the sap vessels and so prevent the ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered multitude of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... flakes of denser darkness. He snatched the sword from the old man, whizzed it out of the scabbard, and thrust the point into the earth. Upon the thin, upright blade the silver hilt, released, swayed before him like something alive. He stepped back a pace, and in a deadened tone spoke fiercely to the vibrating steel: "If there is virtue in the fire, in the iron, in the hand that forged thee, in the words spoken over thee, in the desire of my heart, and in the wisdom of thy makers,—then we shall be victorious together!" He drew it out, looked along the edge. "Take," ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... hear anything, and she had to leave it so. It was with surprise that she observed how indifferently she finally acquiesced in being so cruelly misunderstood by him. In the deadened state of her feelings, she was not then able to appreciate the entire change in the nature of her sentiments which that indifference showed. Love, though rooted in the past, depends upon the surrounding atmosphere for the breath of continued ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... person could have used such a cartridge as I have here, made with smokeless powder, and the coat would have concealed the flash of the shot very effectively. There would have been no smoke. But neither this coat nor even a heavy blanket would have deadened ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... when the snow, falling in heavy flakes, darkened the sky and deadened the noises of the city, the citoyenne Gamelin, who was alone in the lodging heard a knock at the door. She started violently; for months now the slightest noise had set her trembling. She opened the door. A young man of eighteen or twenty walked in, his hat on his ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the burgomaster's house. Green tufts of grass bordered the shining pavement, and no one would have thought of tearing them away, for they deadened the noise made by ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the little New Yorker with the eye-glass was making himself as agreeable as he could to the young ladies on the cliffs above. It is true there was an angle in the cliffs which concealed his approach from the eye, and the soft sand deadened the sound of footsteps to the ear; but both the money-digger and the clam-digger would have deemed it impossible for any one to come into their presence without being heard. But then both of them were absorbed in the unearthing of the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... warm breath of the south-east trade wind, above them the blazing tropic sun, around them the wide, sailless expanse of the blue Pacific unbroken in its dreadful loneliness except for a wandering grey-winged booby or flocks of whale-birds floating upon its gentle swell, and within their all but deadened hearts naught but grim despair and a dulled sense ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... faint glimpse of the highly intricate difficulties raised by this problem of the comic. One of the reasons that must have given rise to many erroneous or unsatisfactory theories of laughter is that many things are comic de jure without being comic de facto, the continuity of custom having deadened within them the comic quality. A sudden dissolution of continuity is needed, a break with fashion, for this quality to revive. Hence the impression that this dissolution of continuity is the parent ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... hated her, or was angry with her, I could not be sure the feeling would not die. As it is, she has deadened me into a creature of indifference. So you just revise your viewpoint a little, Elnora. Cease thinking it is for you to decide what I shall do, and that I will obey you. I make my own decisions in reference to any woman, save you. The question you are to decide is whether I may remain ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... whom he came in contact every day and hour. When most members of a man's household or estate are absolutely at his mercy, when he has no feeling of any contractual relation with them, his sense of duty and obligation is inevitably deadened, even towards others who are not thus in his power. Can we doubt that the lack of a sense of justice and right dealing, more especially towards provincials, but also towards a man's fellow-citizens, which we have noticed in the two upper sections of society, was due in great part to ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an icthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed! I did not ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... flights, could say, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH, and this saying was a sublime one, even for a freeman; but, incomparably more sublime, is the same sentiment, when practically asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain—men whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their bondage. With us it was a doubtful liberty, at best, that we sought; and a certain, lingering death in the rice swamps and sugar fields, if we failed. Life is not lightly regarded by men of sane minds. It is precious, alike to the pauper ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... long waves themselves. But the sensations of that five minutes I shall never forget. Shot after shot hissed and splashed ahead of us, behind us; now dull, heavy, yet penetrating, and we knew that the ship lay close on our track; then farther off and deadened, and we hoped that she had lost us. Again dreadfully close, so that a shell struck the chart-room full, and crushed it into splinters not bigger than your finger, then dying away to leave the stillness of the mist behind it. An awful chase, enduring many minutes; ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... leisurely, though to my excited imagination the sound of the filing deadened every other sound. We were back to the fence again when I heard the whang of the second wire, and at that I dropped to the ground and began to ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... was only by nerving myself to the utmost, and forcing my eyes away from them, that I was able to stick to my seat and hold on to the reins. On and on we dashed, until trees, road, sky, universe were obliterated in one blinding whirlwind that got up my nostrils, choked my ears, and deadened me to everything, save the all-terrorizing, instinctive knowledge, that the figures by my side, were still there, stalking along as quietly and leisurely as if the horse had been ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... always appeared to me at her best in a blue tailor-made. Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white shoulders. Certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks, their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to conduct your gaze always to her wrist. And the wrist was at its best in a black or a dog-skin glove and there was always a gold circlet with a little ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the little bell of St. Stiff's has stopped, and many another vibratory sound is dying in the distance; flakes of snow are moodily descending—causing the fire to spit angrily, and the face of heaven to look black—all light appearing to come from the earth; sound is deadened, the carpet is darker than usual, and the ceiling lighter; Mr. Brown's eyes are up there, for he is lying, tracing amid the cracks and stains, vast palaces like pictures by Martin, or aerial phantasmagorias by Turner. Brown ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... the most positive of religions have appeared. Indeed, to deny God has been the sad privilege of very few in any society of men; and those few, if it be examined, have invariably been men in whom the power to experience was deadened, usually by ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... grim irony in their sitting here helpless in the face of coming death. To their reverie, moreover, the mention of love could not but give color. No woman has ever come to speak of love entirely unmoved, though her heart may have been deadened or crushed beyond the power of thrilling or quickening at any other thought. These two, who had led lives so happy, so protected, so rich, sat there silent before the possibilities which lay in the love of a girl; ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... irrespective of any considerations of public safety, or the benefit of the offender, pervades our criminal jurisprudence, both in theory and practice, and just so far as this is the case, is the last great object defeated, for his feelings are deadened, and his heart hardened by it. The most depraved wretch has that within him which testifies that his fellow worm has no right to inflict pain upon him solely as a punishment, and his heart rebels against what he feels to be oppression. On the more enlightened, the effect ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... by any means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit from being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use is to make all things of whatever kind entirely ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her, mentioned her discovery of the pleasant turret, and her wish to appropriate it to her own use. Whether Dorothee's taste was not so sensible to the beauties of landscape as her young lady's, or that the constant view of lovely scenery had deadened it, she forbore to praise the subject of Blanche's enthusiasm, which, however, her silence did not repress. To Lady Blanche's enquiry of whither the door she had found fastened at the end of the gallery led, she replied, that it opened to a suite of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... she cried, "if I have failed to express the full delight I experience in my restitution to you. The shock of your sad tale at first deadened my joy, while the suddenness of the information respecting myself so overwhelmed me, that like one chancing upon a hidden treasure, and gazing at it confounded, I was unable to credit my own good fortune. Even now I am quite bewildered; and no wonder, for many thoughts, each of different import, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to touch.] Numbness. — N. numbness &c. (physical insensibility) 376; anaesthesia; pins and needles. V. benumb &c. 376. Adj. numb; benumbed &c. v.; deadened; intangible, impalpable. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... other with appalling swiftness, and nothing was done. By imperceptible degrees his horror of San Giacinto began to invade his mind even when it was most deadened by drink. So long as an idea is new and has not really become a habit of the brain, brandy will drive it away, but the moment must inevitably come when the stimulant loses its power to obscure the memory of the thing dreaded. Opium will do it ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... were chafing our deadened ankles sprang to their places, while my brother reached out of the side of the wagon and dragged in two rifles, evidently their own, and Denham and I cocked the revolvers we had thrust back into ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... noise of thunder rolling on towards the ends of the earth. Crack! crash! went the trees, the tempest swept away in a rolling volley of reports, distant, more distant, until, long after the tumult had deadened, then ceased, the stunned forest echoed with the fall ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... deficient in filial affection. But they had never known each other, and were so different that neither had understood the other. The son, however, was ready to confess to himself that the chief fault had been with himself. It was natural, he thought, that a father's regard should be deadened by such conduct as his had been, and natural that an old man should not believe in the quick repentance and improvement of a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... world few people act from principle; present feelings, and early habits, are the grand springs: but how would the former be deadened, and the latter rendered iron corroding fetters, if the world were shown to young people just as it is; when no knowledge of mankind or their own hearts, slowly obtained by experience rendered them forbearing? Their fellow creatures would not then be viewed as frail beings; ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the lad's attention was that of a rapidly galloping horse, though it was so deadened by the sandy road that he did not hear it until the animal was close upon him. The light was very dim, and as Rod stood in a shadow neither the horse nor its rider perceived him until he started forward and shouted to attract ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... sickness near the banks of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The latter river rose to an unusual height in June, the waters of the small creeks were backed up, and a large surface of luxuriant vegetation was covered and deadened. This was succeeded by hot and dry weather. Bilious and intermittent fevers prevailed extensively. The seasons of 1819, '20, and '21 were usually sickly in Illinois and Missouri. Emigrants, in shoals, had spread ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... mistakes, he might start fresh and make something more out of life. He felt an intolerable loneliness. He almost regretted the penury which he had suffered during the last two years, since the desperate struggle merely to keep body and soul together had deadened the pain of living. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread: it was not a curse upon mankind, but the balm which ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... talking with me— since I had left home. My better nature returned strong upon me. Everything was in accordance with my state of feeling, and I experienced a glow of pleasure at finding that what of poetry and romance I ever had in me had not been entirely deadened by the laborious life, with its paltry, vulgar associations, which I had been leading. Nearly an hour did I sit, almost lost in the luxury of this entire new scene of the play in which I had been so long acting, when I was aroused by the distant shouts of my companions, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... pushing the potent drink away. "I cannot! Think how awful to awaken with the cruel flames wreathing round my body, and my cries for help useless, deadened by the yells of those people. I cannot—I ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... time, when the night was over, and its sufferings were hidden— in one of those intermitting gleams that for a moment or two lightened the clouds of her slumber, Kate's dull ear caught a sound that for years had spoken a familiar language to her. What was it? It was the sound, though muffled and deadened, like the ear that heard it, of horsemen advancing. Interpreted by the tumultuous dreams of Kate, was it the cavalry of Spain, at whose head so often she had charged the bloody Indian scalpers? Was it, according to the legend of ancient ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Benton's streets were full of drunken men, staggering back along the road upon which they had marched in. No woman now showed herself. The darkness seemed a cloak, cruel yet pitiful. It hid the flight of a man running from fear; it softened the sounds of brawling and deadened the pistol-shot. Under its cover soldiers slunk away sobered and ashamed, and murderous bandits waited in ambush, and brawny porters dragged men by the heels, and young gamblers in the flush of success hurried to new ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... producing a plain Bible in good German, I had only the needs of my own children at heart, then I allowed myself to be persuaded it might serve the multitude, now I see it is the Rabbis who need it most. But centuries of crooked thinking have deadened them to the beauties of the Bible: they have left it behind them as elementary, when they have not themselves coated it with complexity. Subtle misinterpretation is everything, a beautiful text, nothing. And then this corrupt idiom of theirs—than which nothing more corrupts a nation—they ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress and its surrounding walls. In freeing the soul from the body, he stops the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite deadened, speech is impossible. At other times all sensuous perceptions disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. This condition is of short duration. The rigidity passes away to some extent, the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... to remain with him at night. The rest were comforted by the assurance that Dr. May was still calm, and did not seem to have been injured by what had passed. Indeed, it seemed as if the violence and suddenness of the shock, together with his state of suffering, had deadened his sensations; for there was far less agitation about him than could have been thought possible in a man of such strong, warm affections and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and headlong yet well calculated style of sea fighting which led to Trafalgar and made England undisputed mistress of the sea."[1] It marked, therefore, the end of the Fighting Instructions, which had deadened the spirit as well as the tactics of the British navy for over a ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... real originality and grace not seldom visited his meditations; and he alone deserved the name of colorist among the painters I have as yet ascribed to the Bolognese School.[225] Guido affected a cool harmony of blue, white, and deadened gold, which in the best pictures of his second manner—the Fortune, the Bacchus and Ariadne of S. Luke's in Rome, the Crucifixion at Modena—has a charm akin to that of Metastasio's silvery lyrics. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... trade with ample funds and emerged in poverty. Nicholas Perrot and Greysolon Du Lhut were conspicuous examples. It was a highly speculative game. At times large profits came easily and were spent recklessly. The trade encouraged profligacy, bravado, and garishness; it deadened the moral sense of the colony, and even schooled men in trickery and peculation. It was a corrupting influence in the official life of New France, and even governors could not keep from soiling their hands in it. But most unfortunate of all, the colony was impelled to put its ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... listening to them for some time with thoughtful attention, I at length succeeded perfectly in translating their import. They were sounds occasioned by the artist in prying open the oblong box by means of a chisel and mallet, the latter being apparently muffled or deadened by some soft woollen or cotton substance in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... you remember, and discussing the merits of different espalier- pears which grew, and may grow still, in the old garden of the Hotel de Crequy. Towards morning both fell asleep. The old man wakened first. His frame was deadened to suffering, I suppose, for he felt relieved of his pain; but Clement moaned and cried in feverish slumber. His broken arm was beginning to inflame his blood. He was, besides, much injured by some kicks from the crowd as he fell. As the old ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the poor woman of the peon, or the mujer of the petty shopkeeper, casts no envious glance—but no, that would not be true! She casts them, but she will not strive to imitate. Is there not some virtue in such non-emulation, or is it but the spirit of a deadened race? Yet this rather sombre and unattractive apparel is found more among the peon class; the Indian girl in some parts of Mexico—as at Tehuantepec—wears a handsome native costume, derived from Aztec days, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the lower and the upper social class, whose differences were marked, and later led to the formation of two political parties throughout the colonies. In Pennsylvania, the combination of non-fighting Quakers and careful traders deadened energy in the cause, and the preachings of Dickinson, the venerable "Farmer," were interpreted as favoring a policy of conciliation; but this hesitation was only temporary. The new-made city of Baltimore was conspicuous in patriotism; and the lesser colonies, and many ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... "So drugged and deadened is the public mind by the conventional public utterances, so accustomed have we grown to public men talking this sort of pompous nonsense and no other, that we are sometimes quite shocked by the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... on the broad, soft, old-fashioned sofa, and with the river breeze upon her brow, and the song of its waters in her ears, and the deadened hum of the factory rumbling ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... along the towing-path to look at them; a reflected heaven smiled upon them from the river depths; wild rose-bushes overhung the water, and here and there stray poplars rose like land-marks into the sky. The heat, after a time, deadened conversation. Forbes every now and then would break out with some comment on the moving landscape, which showed the delicacy and truth of his painter's sense, or set the boat alive with laughter by some story of the unregenerate Oxford of his own undergraduate days; ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made din enough to have roused the Seven Sleepers. But, here, again the weather was on my side. About that time the wind was howling wildly,—it came shrieking across the square. It is possible that the tumult which it made deadened all other sounds. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... the strange, wild spirit of the stream, and it seemed to him fantastically that the running water called her. That afternoon he went along to the river. He made his way cautiously among the trees and the grassy path deadened the sound of his steps. Presently he came to a spot from which he could see the pool. Ethel was sitting on the bank, looking down at the water. She sat quite still. It seemed as though the water drew her irresistibly. He wondered what strange thoughts ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... be mean enough even if we accepted the contempt of the Power on whose pity we were trading; but to bargain for a crown of glory as well! that was too much for Ibsen: it provoked him to exclaim, "Your God is an old man whom you cheat," and to lash the deadened conscience of the XIX century back to life with a whip ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... sumptuous in all its appointments. A critical taste might have objected that the plush curtains which shaded the windows were too heavy for summer; that the begilded wallpaper "swore" a little at its own dado and frieze, as well as deadened the effect of the pictures which hung against it; and that the drapery of lace and velvet which veiled the fireplace made a fire inconvenient and almost impossible, however cold the weather might be. But a critical taste might have found the same faults ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... burned down, smouldered, and went out. No one had thought of replenishing it with fuel. Though there were faggots enough collected not far off, the toil of bringing them forward seemed too much for their wasted strength and deadened energies. Fire could be of no service to them now. It had done them no good while ablaze; and since it had gone out, they cared not to renew it. If they were to die, their last moments could scarcely be more bitter in ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... and she was provoked enough at Hemstead for having unconsciously given that aspect to her action and character, and still more annoyed and perplexed that her conscience should so positively side with him. Thus it will be seen that her conscience was unawakened, rather than seared and deadened. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... scorn; but I only shook my head and smiled. And now she struggled to break my clasp, fiercely, desperately; her long hair burst its fastenings, and enveloped us both in its rippling splendor; she beat my face, she wound her fingers in my hair, but my lips smiled on, for the hammer in my brain had deadened ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... crocuses, then she looked gratefully. He had not seemed to belong to her among all these others; he was different then—not her Paul, who understood the slightest quiver of her innermost soul, but something else, speaking another language than hers. How it hurt her, and deadened her very perceptions. Only when he came right back to her, leaving his other, his lesser self, as she thought, would she feel alive again. And now he asked her to look at this garden, wanting the contact with her again. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... ground, was a pack such as country peddlers often carry. The lad seemed in pain, for as the girls approached, their footfalls deadened by the soft dust of the road, they ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... thatch slid off the roof and fell into the road with a deadened thud, whilst white flakes of straw and wood-ash were flying in the wind like feathers. At the same time two of the cottages adjoining, upon which a little water had been brought to play from the rector's engine, were seen to be on fire. The attenuated spirt of water was as nothing upon the heated ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... was long and painful. It was reserved for Maltravers to break to her the news of the sudden death of Lord Vargrave, which shocked her unspeakably; and this, which made their first topic, removed much constraint and deadened much excitement in ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of Fredericksburg, and the "Bloody Angle," of any during the war. Negro troops were huddled together and forced to the charge by white troops—the poor, deluded, unfortunate beings plied with liquor until all their sensibilities were so deadened that death had no horrors. Grant must have learned early in the day the impossibility of breaking Lee's line by direct charge, for by ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... glow, the girl's presence, had given him a moment's illusion, had absorbed him for a moment, acting on his deadened nature like a narcotic at once soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilisation, towers, temples, and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands abashed and vaguely ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... out the stock so grows the vociferousness of their proprietors, and soon the ear becomes deadened by the striving rush of sound. Every stall and shop has its wide-mouthed laureate, singing its present glories and adding ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the little city, close to the city wall, and the courtyard lay just below it. We stole up like cats in the darkness, fearful lest someone might hear us and give the alarm. Everyone seemed to be asleep, however, or else the roaring of the wind deadened the noise of our footsteps. In any case we reached the wall in safety, and as we stood at the bottom of it waiting till the men tied the ladders together, we could hear the sentries in the courtyard challenge ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... room at the farther end of the gallery. He heard nothing of the girl's arrival or departure. Sound travelled but little through the thick walls of the Tower, and the gallery, muffled with rich carpets, with hangings and furniture, deadened both ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... once more shut up, and the cottage leveled to the ground. It was not, however, until fifty years had in some measure deadened the memory of the terrible transaction, that the ground was cultivated. It is now a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the sound of an echo, deadened by the mass of trees, a bugle-call had rung out, somewhere, through the air. It was an indistinct call, but Morestal was not ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... open a door and Chip was placed upon a bed. The room was sumptuously, even elegantly, furnished. Pictures adorned the walls, a heavy carpet deadened the sound of the feet, and rich curtains ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... added to the weirdness of his position, and made him draw farther back in the full expectation that the next moment the vivid green of the surroundings would be cut by a flash of light and then turn dim as it was deadened by the rising ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... again he had outwitted the man ahead when the latter had waited to scan the back trail for signs of pursuit; more than once he had gained ground when screened by timber growth close to the trail; every stretch of dust-filled trail had been taken advantage of, while the soft going underfoot had deadened the sound ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... grinds His poor people to powder All day and all night I can hear, Their cries growing louder and louder. Oh, God, have You deadened Your ear? ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dragged it from its holster. It was one of the black devils of chance that favored him again, for in his excitement he had not snapped the safety shut after shooting Baree. Now he had only strength left to pull the trigger. Twice his forefinger closed. Twice there came deadened explosion ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... he said, at last. "There is no sound to the west. Don't forget your instructions," and he turned his horse and disappeared in the darkness, the clatter of his horse's feet soon becoming deadened by ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... and feelings that had become deadened by experience, contribute to render the view less striking, less grand, in any way less pleasing than we had hoped to find it? So far from this, all our expectations were much more than realized. In one particular, touching which we do not remember ever to have seen anything ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... in strident tones. Feet were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Men rose and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate Indian step; and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall throbbed with confused sounds and the din deadened my thinking faculties. Even now, Eric might be slipping past. In that deafening tumult I could decide nothing, and when I tried to leave the table, all ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad; but he had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till, in time, I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for by showing that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... terror of her life, after she had discovered that she hated me. She need not have been afraid. Why should I have hurt her? In that last letter, she put her wedding ring with a lock of her hair wound in and out of it. Reanda knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. Do you wonder that it has deadened me ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... an axe and lifted it high in his right hand, while the boat tossed like a nutshell and the noise of the storm deadened ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... although the deadened roar of the explosion still sounded dully in his ears. His boots crunched on the plaster as he walked across the room and groped for the door. He had some trouble in pulling it open. It stuck so fast that he thought it was locked; then he remembered with a cold shiver ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... the beer had deadened his senses and his jealous anger had evaporated. Half an hour later his wife crossed the street cautiously and went inside. Doughy saw her and, having reached the maudlin stage, got up and lurched across the street, anxious to ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... feet away, could have heard her call and if there had been any answer, the roar of the storm deadened it. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... hard-working farmer sees nothing of this. What cares he for birds, unless they pull up his corn? What cares he for skies, unless he can make use of them for drying his hay, or wetting down his potatoes? The beautiful changes of nature do not touch him. His sensibilities are deadened by hard work. His nervous system is all imbedded in muscle, and does not lie near enough to the surface to be reached by the beauty and music around him. All he knows about a daisy is that it does not make good hay; and he draws no appreciable amount ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... creature. For the hour, at least, all serious consideration of her who should rightfully claim his attention had been completely blotted out. He had become a willing victim to a will infinitely stronger than his own, his conscience deadened by the poison of beauty; so, while my blood rioted in protest to his simpering French vanity, I could perceive no means by which I might arouse him to more manly action. To cross such a man only invites to the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... load the top of a piano with books, music, &c., as the tone is thereby deadened, and the disagreeable noise alluded to in the last paragraph is often ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... See the Essay in which he deals with Macpherson: "In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse—everything is defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened—yet nothing distinct."] ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... there, shaking, ghastly, staring down into the regions below, where relief lay within her reach. And she dared not even stare too long; she turned blindly, arms outstretched, feeling her way back. Every sense within her seemed for the moment deadened; sounds scarcely penetrated, had no meaning; she heard the grille clash, steps on the stair; she was trying to get back to the library, paused to rest at the door, was caught in two strong arms, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... between high hills,—and though he had no idea which way it led him, he was pleased to have reached a comparatively sheltered spot where the force of the hurricane was not so fiercely felt, and where the angry argument of the sea was deadened by distance. There was a lovely perfume everywhere,—the dash of rain on the herbs and field flowers had brought out their scent, and the freshness of the stormy atmosphere was bracing and exhilarating. He ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... little strip of forest which jutted into the road. The snow deadened the sound of his horse's hoofs. Branching into the road from the other side, he saw two men slinking along in the ditch, carrying a deer slung by its forelegs to a sapling. He thought he recognized the cut of the two men, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... certain amount of maneuvering he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering crawl, he was able to move across the ground. It might have proved a noisy business on a parquet floor; but Desmond moved only a foot or two at a time and the pile carpet deadened the sound. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... French malheur, misfortune, sorrow. Maronners; mariners. Martel; hammer. Meure; French moeurs, manners. Mordent; biting. Mortifyed; mortified, deadened. Mufyque; mufic. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... suddenly shot forth to the neck of his assailant. His muscular fingers closed in a deft and vice-like pinch directly below the silk handkerchief. It was the pneumogastric nerve, which he reached: a nerve which, when deadened by Oriental skill, paralyzes the vocal chords. Not a sound emanated from the mysterious man, even when Shirley's right hand shot forward, under the chin of the other, for a deft blow across the thorax. The other ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... an instance of grasping animal affection—if indeed such a feeling as this be deemed worthy of the august name of affection at all. Several colours bear their share in the production of its dull unpleasing hue, tinged as it is with the lurid gleam of sensuality, as well as deadened with the heavy tint indicative of selfishness. Especially characteristic is its form, for those curving hooks are never seen except when there exists a strong craving for personal possession. It is regrettably evident that the fabricator of this thought-form ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... the trail, and into the deep woods themselves where the moss and the carpet of dead leaves deadened their footsteps. Although the sun was still high, the trees were so thick that the light that came down to them was that of twilight, and ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... had come to punish. Camilla had not had the delicacy to separate her husband's from her lover's letters; she had carelessly thrown them in the same drawer. As Lord Elliot saw this he laughed aloud, a feeling of inexpressible contempt overpowered his soul and deadened his pain. He could not continue to love one who had not only been faithless to him, but wanting in delicacy to the partner ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Lord Jesus Christ will that no good work be lost, for in somewhat it shall avail. But forasmuch as the good works that men do while they be in good life be all amortised [killed, deadened] by sin following, and also since all the good works that men do while they be in deadly sin be utterly dead, as for to have the life perdurable [everlasting], well may that man that no good works doth, sing that new French song, J'ai tout ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... his hiding-place and came toward Jeanne. The carpet deadened the sound of his steps. The young woman was gazing into vacancy and breathing with difficulty. He looked at her for a moment without speaking; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... meadow, but when they reached it, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Hours passed in vain and anxious quest; no track, no sound, no clue assisted the seekers, and the shouts of the guide, if they reached, as doubtless they did, the spot where the lost boy lay, fell on ears as dull and deadened as those of a corpse. Nor could the boy, if crippled by his fall, and unable to show himself, give evidence of his whereabouts by so much as a single cry. Both tongue and ears were sealed by infirmity, and any low sound such as that he might have been able to utter would have been rendered ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... compass of every act, leads ever to Happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his conscience and get its approval, without using force or specious logic, then he begins to know what real Happiness is. But the individual must be careful that he is not appealing to a conscience perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecration, Concentration and Conquest, living from day to day as best he can, by the light he has, may rely explicitly on his Conscience. He can shut his ears to "what the world ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... blessings infinite. "Faith without works is dead." The foundation of enlightened faith is Christ's teachings and practice. It was our Master's self-immolation, his life-giving love, healing both mind and body, that raised the deadened conscience, paralyzed by inactive faith, to a quickened sense of mortal's necessities,—and God's power and purpose to supply them. It was, in the words of the Psalmist, He "who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... with a bite of frost in it. I dozed uneasily with horrid dreams as I sat on three inches of hard box, with my head jogging sideways. Always I was conscious of the evil smell about me, but when the peasant was still I was able to suffer' it, because of sheer weariness, which deadened my senses. It was when he moved, disturbing invisible layers of air, that I ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... me pick the creature up and let it crawl over my arm. At first I nearly felt mad with horror, but gradually custom deadened the sensation, and although it remained disagreeable, I could contemplate it ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... even thinking of this unlucky visit. Privately, she informed herself that Tilly's wealthy relations were a "rude, stupid lot"; and, stuffing her fingers in her ears, memorised pages with a dispatch that deadened thought. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... beamingly every day, but the chauffeur hated it. He was a city product and looked as much at home on that hill-top as a dancing-master in a hay-field. He smoked cigarettes and read the sporting page of the paper in the garage, where gasoline rather deadened the country smells of flowers and hay, and tried to forget his degrading surroundings, but he was overjoyed when the day to start for home arrived. I did not share his feelings, and yet I was ready to go. It had been a great success, and the only time I had felt lonely ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... self-indulgent old Sybarite, who dearly loved his own ease. And, indeed, every means and appliance of bodily comfort was at hand. Strong oaken shutters and thick, heavy curtains at the windows kept out every draft of air, and so deadened the sound of the wind that its subdued moaning was just sufficient to remind one of the stormy weather without in contrast to the bright warmth within. Old Hurricane, as I said, sat well wrapped up in his wadded dressing-gown, and reclining in his padded easy-chair, with his head thrown back ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... wither removed from all human companionship and sympathy. A spirit not in a condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and questioning deadened all sense of duty? Was this the end of my Absolute Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience and the moral law? Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such questions! yet any claim ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... finery, a coloured waistcoat or a vivid tie, would betake himself to the Eastry Arms billiard-room, or to the bar parlour of some minor pub where nap could be played. One soon sickened of his slow knowingness, the cunning observation of his deadened eyes, his idea of a "good story," always, always told in undertones, poor dirty worm! his shrewd, elaborate maneuvers for some petty advantage, a drink to the good or such-like deal. There rises before my eyes as I write, young Hopley Dodd, the son of the Wimblehurst auctioneer, the pride of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells |
