"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asked him if he ever regretted, and his answer was to crush her in his arms and smother her lips with his. His answer, a minute ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... moulder in the cave is proof enough, of itself, that none survived to bury the dead. I am inclined to believe, from the appearance of the place, that smoke could scarcely have been the real agent of destruction; then, as now, it would have taken a great deal of pure smoke to smother a Highlander. It may be perhaps deemed more probable, that the huge fire of rafter and roof-tree piled close against the opening, and rising high over it, would draw out the oxygen within as its ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... faith," he grew hopeful, happy, and strong. Here is a living seed, but it is very small an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and despotic princes, and a persecuting priesthood will overlay and smother, as the heavy furrow covers the microscopic mustard-seed. But the living seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How great it grew and how far it spread history tells to-day. We have cause to thank God for the greatness of the Reformation, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... much,' in his ears, he sat down to a cigarette, before a dying fire. The heat was out of him—the glow of cutting a dash. It was all a damned heart-aching bore. 'I'll be even with that chap Jolly,' he thought, trailing up the stairs, past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was trying ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... halls of Mirth are crowded, Portentous, on the wanton scene— Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded, Awakes and awes the souls of Men— Before that Stranger from ANOTHER, Behold how THIS world's great ones bow— Mean joys their idle clamour smother, The mask is vanish'd from the brow— And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd, Fly all the craven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Uncle Thomas. He knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five years. And he came ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... him justice, seemed trying to smother his grief; and, in the meanwhile, the two girls had been spreading a pure white cloth on a neighboring rock, cutting fruit plates out of the thick mangoe leaves, cooling the Rockhouse malaga in the brook, and giving ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature in which she would seem to ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Kisse in two let's breake, Confounded with the touch, But halfe words let vs speake, Our Lip's imploy'd so much, 60 Vntill we both grow weake, With sweetnesse of thy breath; O smother me to death: Long let our ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... usually eventful, and he cannot be denied the praise of activity, perseverance, fertility of resource, and general military capacity. But he was cruel and fickle; he disgraced his ministers and his generals on insufficient grounds; he allowed himself, from considerations of policy, to smother his religious convictions; and he risked subjecting Persia to the horrors of a civil war, in order to gratify a favoritism which, however justified by the event, seems to have rested on no worthy motive. Chosroes was preferred on account ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. You may take ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... she could bear at all times. Knowin' the breed o' the man as well as I knowed it, I could tell that he was troubled, whether by wrath or grief, there was no knowin' which, an' would explode one way or t'other afore long. He must on deck for a fresh breath o' the wet night, says he, or smother; an' he would presently drop below again, says he, in command of his temper an' restlessness. I seed, too, that the lad wished t' follow—he watched the skipper up the ladder, like a doubtful dog, an' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... themselves to the awakened fury of a whole people; for, in the present state of general agitation, whoever disbelieves the least tittle of the enormous improbabilities which have been accumulated by these wretched reformers, is instantly hunted down, as one who would smother the discovery of the Plot. It is indeed an awful tempest; and, remote as we lie from its sphere, we must expect soon to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to "slay them ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... dry and tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless medium that would smother it. And just beyond the edge of the hard sand, following the long curves of the wash, lay a dark, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... imagine that the great cases were swaying and dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come a-toppling down and smother her—and she didn't care much if they would; but they never did. She was the mother of two children—the boy Robert, born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a daughter came, and this closed the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a momentous crisis would have riveted the attention of the most indifferent. And the fact really was that I dared not speak now, so intense was the excitement for fear lest my uncle should smother me in his first joyful embraces. But he became so urgent that I was ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... but only played her former part, without awakening attention by greater harshness. She experienced extraordinary pleasure in deceiving Camille and Madame Raquin. She was aware she was doing wrong, and at times she felt a ferocious desire to rise from table and smother Laurent with kisses, just to show her husband and aunt that she was not a fool, and ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... dragging him into a long, dark, cell-like room, threw him violently upon the floor. Then returning to the room, the officer took Tommy by the arm, and marching him into the same room, shut the door to smother his cries. The little fellow was so frightened, that he burst into an excitement of tears. The room was dark, and as gloomy as a cavern. He could neither lie down, sleep, nor console himself. He thought of Manuel, only to envy his ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... matures them both. A people content with the thoughts made for them by the priests of a church will be content with Royalty by Divine Right,—the Church and the Throne mutually sustaining each other. They will smother schism and reap infidelity and indifference; and while the battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only sink the more apathetically into servitude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... is, 'They were but they are not!' Forbid it, my countrymen! forbid it, Heaven! I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... in order to do that, I erected large kilns, twenty-five feet in diameter, twelve feet high, circular in form, hooped around with iron at the top, arched over so as to make a tight place in which to put the wood, with single bricks left out in different places in order to smother the fire out when the wood was sufficiently burned. After having burned the coal in one of these kilns perfectly, and believing the fire entirely smothered out, we attempted to take the coal out of the kiln; but when we had got it about half-way ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... Napoleon, angrily, "were my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... seldom comes in our way, scarcely occurs to our thoughts; and when some secret misgivings begin to be felt on this head, company soon drowns, amusements dissipate, or habitual occupations insensibly displace or smother the rising apprehension. Professional and commercial men perhaps, especially when they happen to be persons of more than ordinary reflection, or of early habits of piety not quite worn away, easily quiet their consciences by the plea, that necessary attention ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... matter? what's the matter? What is't that ails young Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Of waistcoats Harry has no lack, Good duffle grey, and flannel fine; He has a blanket on his back, And coats enough to smother nine. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... mused, and then he bethought him to consult the countenance of his companion. The marble of the pilaster, against which he leaned, was not more cold and unmoved than the face of the inquisitor. The man had learned to smother every natural impulse in the assumed and factitious duties of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... once my soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by thee upon ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... their tiny cottage and garden, as though it sought to draw them in and merge them in itself. Its great, deep-breathing soul resented the mockery, the insolence, the irritation of the prim garden at its very gates. It would absorb and smother them if it could. And every wind that blew its thundering message over the huge sounding-board of the million, shaking trees conveyed the purpose that it had. They had angered its great soul. At its heart was ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... thing that will cover you; overcoat, blanket, rug, wrap it tightly around you at the neck first to prevent flames from burning the face and lie down and roll over and over. This will smother the flames quickly. If you can get nothing to wrap around you, lie down and roll slowly over and beat the fire with your hands covered by some part of your ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... though you thought our MINDS were GREEN, We never thought your HEART was YELLOW. We knew you liberal, generous, warm, Quick to assist a falling brother, And, with such virtues, what's the harm All memories of your faults to smother? ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... cover Gwendolyn's mouth. But not to smother mirth. A startled cry had all but escaped her. A little bird! She knew of that bird! He had told things against her—true things more often than not—to Jane and Miss Royle. And now here he was ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it. The act of slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but always ignoble. Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what we've been. But don't talk to me about military virtue because I've ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... been published the year before, and tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good man to smother with silence. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... were driven against their faces. The storm increased in fury. The stinging particles changed to dry, powdery snow dust that whirled and eddied about them so thickly that Connie could not see the dogs from the rear of the toboggans. Covering their noses and mouths, the two bored on through the white smother—a slow moving, ghostly procession, with the snow powder matted thick into the hairy coats of the dogs and the clothing of the mushers. Not until darkness added to the impenetrability of the storm did 'Merican Joe halt. In the whirling blizzard, without protection of timber, ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... who satisfied their consciences by being as honest as they could. The thoughtful ones knew the system was wrong but felt themselves utterly unable to replace it by a better one, and feeling no responsibility for it, they were satisfied to smother their sensibilities and drift along. They had their living to make, and, though they were not making it in an ideal way, they did not know that any other kind of work would be more satisfactory to ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... at opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... baby from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKTA down.) It's your doing, and you must ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... a public speaker today is in no dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... and saw there an expression that transfixed her with astonishment. Slowly, as though not daring to face the sight, she turned her eyes towards Greif. There was a faint colour in his sunken cheeks, and he was breathing regularly. Hilda pressed her hands to her breast with all her might to smother the cry of joy that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... up here I think we'd better light a fire and have warm food," said Boyd. "We can smother the smoke, and anyway it will pay us to ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... says it. By standing far off you pass for it. Smother it with a life that passes for it. But beauty—(getting it from the flower) Beauty is the humility breathed from the shame ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... like children—for where will you find children who are younger than the "Tommies"? Even the wards where there are only "cot cases" are decorated, and the men lie in bed and watch the invaders from other wards who come in and smother the place with evergreens. There is one ward where a man lies dying of cancer—here, too, they come, making clumsy attempts to walk on tip-toe, and smiling encouragement as they hang the mistletoe from the electric light ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... screaming in the "shires," kept on every now and then putting in a word of caution to restrain the rector from admitting too much; for little by little he was yielding to me. I spoke of letting down the nets for a draught, and catching men, not to smother and kill them in some Church system, or by some erroneous teaching, but to keep them alive. "This," I said, "is the meaning of the word in the original;" and we looked it out in the Greek. It was very interesting. We then talked over the difference between ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... short, lay them in a basin of warm water for ten minutes, then put them into plenty of water, and boil them about half an hour; if large ones, three quarters; if very old, an hour: smother them with plenty of white onion sauce (No. 298), mince the liver, and lay it round the dish, or make liver sauce (No. 287), and send ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... detecting the truth behind the monstrous accumulation of impieties with which they veil it, is proclaimed by the Church as condemned to perdition. The guiding light of this Church, which they are not ashamed to smother or to procure the smothering of, by which nevertheless they hold their authority, to be plain, the word of God, should at least teach them, if they set any value on the Spirit of Christ, that their Papal Bulls ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the world fairer in loue to you. A iewell dropt in mire to sight ilfauoured, Now, as before, in worth is valued; An orient pearle hung in an Indians eare, Receiues no blemish, but doth shew more faire; One Diamond, compared with another, Darks his bright lustre, & their worth doth smother; Where poised with a thing of light esteeme, Their worth is knowen, and their great beauty seene. Set white to white, and who commendeth either? Set white to blacke, and then the white's the fairer. The glorious Sunne, when in his glittring pride, Scowring the heauens, in progresse ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... of no use," they screamed. "We did not know soon enough, and now it is too late; we should smother if we tried to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... The plea for comprehension, for an ear that would not turn away from her plain story, never was made. In a smother of words he halted her. Affectionately, with a gentleness that achieved absolute finality. She was overwrought. She carried paradox too far. In her innocence she used a form of speech that she didn't know the meaning ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... engaged in his employment Or maturing his felonious little plans. His capacity for innocent enjoyment, Is just as great as any honest man's Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not a ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... the depot," said Nat, who was plainly nervous. Now that the trick had been played he was becoming alarmed over the possible consequences. "You don't think he'll smother?" ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... street, and through this flurry Bill shuffled with unerring instinct, dragging Mr. Shrimplin from lamp-post to lamp-post, until presently down the street a long row of lights blazed red in the swirling smother of white. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... it did not smother the flames of discord. In 1916, when an American naval commander suggested that a rebellious Minister of War leave the capital, he agreed to do so if the "fairest and freest" of chosen Presidents would resign. Even after both of them had complied with the suggestions, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... market classes Had slimy hands upon England's rod, And sword in hand upon Afric's passes Her last Republic cried to God. For the men no lords can buy or sell, They sit not easy when all goes well. They have said to each other what naught can smother, They have seen each other, our ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... get into touch with it, if from it no breeze can blow, no current come, if no road be there for the free goings and comings of travellers, then the dead things that accumulate around us never get removed, but continue to be heaped up till they smother all life. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... "I've no duty; that is, no official duty. Washington is off my beat. My course, however, must depend upon circumstances. As far as I may, I shall smother every mention of to-night's work. If the papers get hold of one end of it, and begin to haul it ashore, they will bring in yourself and Mr. Harley and Senator Hanway in a manner not desired at this time. Besides, the Secret Service people, goaded by publicity, might pinch Steamboat Dan ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... still hold out? If they should be for spiting you to the last! You'ld best keep on at them: think out a list Of frantic things for them to do, when air Is scorching smother and the sin they did Frightens their hearts. You'll shout them into fear, I undertake, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... to make enemies. The "Classics" were positive that he was defiling the well of Classic French, and they sought to write him down. But by writing a man up you can not write him down; the only thing that can smother a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... herself supported by a couple of men, and it became clear to her in an instant that she had just been lifted from that pit below where she could see the glint of flame and the blinding smother of smoke, and from which came such heartrending cries that she instinctively tried to cover her ears. In the movement she realized that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently dead. In the dim light ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... seemed on the long Pacific roll! Rushing up a maddening mountain, she would poise like a cockle-shell on the giddy summit, breathless and rolling, leap outward and down into the yawning chasm beneath, and bury herself in the smother of foam at the bottom. Then the recovery, another mountain, another sickening upward rush, another poise, and the downward crash. Abreast of him, to starboard, like a ghost of the storm, Chris saw the cook dashing apace with the schooner. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... nicely bred, crowded close up to the street, instead of standing back from it with arms akimbo, like the mansion-houses. Their little front-yards were very commonly full of lilac and syringa and other bushes, which were allowed to smother the lower story almost to the exclusion of light and airy so that, what with small windows and small windowpanes, and the darkness made by these choking growths of shrubbery, the front parlors of some of these houses were the most tomb-like, melancholy places that could be found anywhere among ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... generations. The whalers filled their casks at this spring, working every hour of the twenty-four because the flow was small. Famous harpooners, steersmen who winked no eye when the wounded whale drew their boat through a smother of foam, shanghaied gentlemen, sweepings of harbors, Nantucket deacons, pirates, and the whole breed of sailors and fighting fellows, congregated here to bathe and to fill their water-casks. Near this crystal rivulet they ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... usage observed in that age at the opening and the closing of the gates of Geneva: nor had it yet sunk to a form. The nearness of the frontier and the shadow of those clutching arms, ever extended to smother the free State, gave a reality to the faith of those who opened and shut, and with arms in their hands looked back on ten years of constant warfare. Many a night during those ten years had Geneva gazed from her watch-towers on burning farms and smouldering ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Nights Dream, for example, the practical affairs of life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... always drinking in fountain-goodness, and fills itself more and more, till it be filled with all the fulness of God." "It is not a melancholy kind of sitting still, and slothful waiting, that speaks men enlivened by the Spirit and power of God. It is not religion to stifle and smother those active powers and principles which are within us.... Good men do not walk up and down the world merely like ghosts and shadows; but they are indeed living men, by a real participation from Him who ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... carbon dioxide is also used as a fire extinguisher. Some of the portable fire extinguishers are simply devices for generating large amounts of the gas. It is not necessary that all the oxygen should be kept away from the fire in order to smother it. A burning candle is extinguished in air which contains only 2.5% of ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... time, utterly refused to raise another, and devoured all the eggs which were given to them for that purpose! This colony was afterwards supplied with an unimpregnated queen, but they refused to accept of her, and attempted at once to smother her to death. I then gave them a fertile queen, but she met with no better treatment. Facts of a similar kind have been noticed, by other observers: thus it seems that bees may not only become reconciled, as it were, to living without a mother, but may pass into such an unnatural state ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... he whispered, reassuringly, passing his arm unchidden about her slight waist. "Don't be frightened, dear! It wasn't a man cut in half. It was the upper half of a man who was wiggling down into a tunnel hidden by that smother of underbrush .... And here I was just wondering why people should bother to come all the way through this path, instead of skirting the woods! Answers furnished while ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... cried. White-faced, I stared at him, tremblingly, pleadingly. There was a cloud in my brain that seemed to be coming down; it threatened to smother me—but I held fast to my courage. It was life itself for ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... he entered the great dining-room he saw once more his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, his own failure of all life's things worth ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... read the report, the Governor-General said: "What is now to be done?" To this I answered that I thought the best thing to do was to seek as quickly as possible to smother the disturbance at its birth, because every minute now lost would lend additional strength to the disturbers of the peace. It was my impression that twenty to thirty armed men should immediately be sent on horseback to West End in order ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... sitting opposite to Mr. Falkirk at dinner; and when that gentleman had taken his departure, the young mistress of the house fell into a sudden state of activity; her last move being to smother herself in a huge dingy cloak, akin to those worn by the mill people in their ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... fallen leaves should be raked carefully away, as they tend to smother the grass if permitted to lie until spring. Now comes the chief opportunity of the year, in the form of a liberal top-dressing of manure from the stable. If this is spread evenly and not too thickly in November, and the coarser remains of it are raked off early in April, the results will be astonishing. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... outraged soul! The mysterious, uncomprehended, incomprehensible soul! The irrepressible, unquenchable, immortal soul, whose every mark is everlasting! Every secret sin committed against it cries out from the house-tops. Cunning may strive to conceal, will may determine to smother, love may fondly whisper, "It does not hurt"; but the soul will not BE outraged. Somewhere, somehow, when and where you least expect, unconscious, perhaps, to its owner, unrecognized by the many, visible only to the clear vision, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... who your feuds would smother, Take from us a moral! Two who wish to love each other, Need only ...
— Faust • Goethe
... fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... acted like a monstrous space fleet, ready to pour down war-headed missiles in such numbers as to smother the planet in atomic flame. Patrolman Willis could not imagine admitting that such a supposed fleet needed another fleet to help it. A military man, bluffing as Sergeant Madden bluffed, would not have dared offer any terms less onerous than abject surrender. But Sergeant ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... received them from her hand; and I have brought them to you, that you may return them to him and tell him that I stand in no need of such gifts from him, because, thanks be to God and my husband, I have purses and girdles enough to smother him in. And if after this he leave me not alone, I pray you as my father to hold me excused if, come what may, I tell it to my husband and brothers; for much liefer had I that he suffer indignity, if so it must be, than that my fair fame should be sullied ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... three weeks only. Never, perhaps, in history has a monopoly been so rigidly and relentlessly enforced—a monopoly which not only rested upon the nation at home, but which made bold incursions into the sovereignty of foreign states in order to smother their independent trade, or, as in Norway, utterly to stamp ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... muck beside Freckles and began stroking his hair and hand. He lay with his face of agony turned to hers, and fought to smother the groans that would tell her what ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... prosaic, unromantic mind, Hal. You just like to write newspaper articles, and type letters, and smother your imagination ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... crib where Willie lay sleeping. In an instant, however, the thought "What shall I do?" was followed by the remembrance of what her mother had often said, "If in any way your dress should ever take fire, you must try to smother it at once; never run away, but throw yourself down, or wrap yourself in ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimly warm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that might otherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been (and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angle of the deck, halted and tactfully melted away) heard. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... There was a smother of foam under the stern of the Gem, which trembled and throbbed with the vibration. Betty turned on more power, until finally the maximum, under the circumstances, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... That is the installation of a system of perforated pipes in the dead air spaces behind all walls connected with storage tanks of carbon dioxide under pressure. If a fire breaks out, turning on this system will flood the house with a gas that will smother all flame. Mount Vernon is a notable example of ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I whisper'd ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that sudden drop in the air as though ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... makes, another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he gets away with; and that the other fellow's loss makes him and his as miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, 'I have decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against gambling, but no duty to him or ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... dwelling upon the pleasant repast that was soon to be spread before her) made the task of communicating the cruel repulse she had received tenfold more painful. Without uttering a word, she threw herself upon the bed beside her sister, and, burying her face in a pillow, endeavoured to smother the sobs that came up convulsively from her bosom. Mary asked no question. She understood the meaning of Ellen's agitation well; it told her that she had been disappointed in the expectation of receiving the money ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... nothing to smother the fast-spreading blaze. Not a thing. Not even a sack or a hat. We tore off parts of the clothes from our scantily clad bodies. Ma took off her petticoat. There was a sack in the barn which we wet in a keg ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... months of October and November wore away, the darkness grew more and more intense and the anxiety more oppressive. A blow had to be inflicted quickly that would be sharp and mortal, to ward off intervention and invasion by European powers, to smother the spirit of secession in southern Illinois and Indiana, and to prevent financial bankruptcy, which of ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... handed the telescope without a word, and at another time we should all have had to turn away to smother the desire to burst out laughing, as we recalled the irritable remarks about the idiot to whom the glass belonged, and the wretchedness of his eyesight, coupled with an opinion that he ought to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... to say was never finished. Falkner's powerful arms had gripped his head and throat in a vise-like clutch from which no smother of sound escaped, and three or four minutes later, when the second man came through the door, he found his comrade flat on his back, bound and gagged, and the shining muzzles of two short and murderous-looking revolvers leveled at his breast. He was a swarthy breed, scarcely larger ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... you all and will awhile uphold The unyoked humour of your idleness. Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at, By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours, that did ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... rich nature, and the thoughtfulness of the West was added to the fine emotional sensibility of the East; forming by their union a being of rare susceptibility, and of quick yet deep feeling, who still could control those feelings, and smother them, even though the concealed passion should consume ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... for extinguishing it, which was happily done in a short time, though its appearance at first was extremely terrible. It seems some cartridges had been blown up by accident between decks, whereby a quantity of oakum in the after hatchway near the after powder-room was set on fire, and the great smother and smoke of the oakum occasioned the apprehension of a more extended and mischievous fire. At the same instant, too, the galleon fell on board the Centurion on the starboard quarter, but she was cleared without doing or receiving any ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... don't run for help, that will fan the flames; lie down, roll up in an overcoat or rug. If nothing can be found to roll about you, roll over slowly beating out the flames with your hands. If another person is on fire throw him on the ground and smother the fire with a rug away ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... (these last rushing from their dark hiding places) down to fluttering little wrens and tomtits. 'Twas of those that the great cloud was made, and it hung just over the town like a dark wave that would soon smother the townsfolk. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... hope to find in each The wisdom each denies the other; These mazes of conflicting speech All theories of culture smother. I'll raise and reap, with honest hand, The native harvest of my land; Do thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... case," the youth said solemnly, and Nancy's old happy laugh rang out as he flung the plaster Psyche in a smother of white ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... of the door, almost strangled by the smoke. A thousand dollars had been offered to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had dared to make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the smoke did not blind and smother the man who passed them before ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... them, full of despite, from her hands and have brought them to you, so you may return them to him and tell him I want none of his trash, for that, thanks to God and my husband, I have purses and girdles enough to smother him withal. Moreover, if hereafter he desist not from this, I tell you, as a father, you must excuse me, but I will tell it, come what may, to my husband and my brothers; for I had far liefer he should brook an affront, if needs he must, than that I ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... In vain, in vain I smother All the torture that racks me. I love Mimi, she is my only treasure! I love her, but, oh! ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... steps the mazes rove, A laugh, half-smother'd, thy pleas'd ear shall meet, And, sportive in the charming wiles of love, Betray the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the portrait as a painting ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... could scarcely smother, Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy, She added,—"While they were about it, mother, I wish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... had gained a sufficient distance I followed. It seemed as if the disgusting water would smother me as I laid myself down into it, and such was my agitation that it appeared almost impossible that I should escape making such a noise as would attract the guard's notice. Catching hold of the roots and limbs at the side of the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... pad which she must keep moist. The difficulty of the task had suddenly become increased, for the pad seemed to become an animate thing. Now it appeared to retreat into the distance, and again it came floating back until it seemed about to smother her. There was a droning note in her ears; the words spoken by the other two sounded ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... soon should waste! Or so sweet a bliss As a kiss Might not for ever last! So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious, The dew that lies on roses, When the morn herself discloses, Is not so precious. O rather than I would it smother, Were I to taste such another; It should be my wishing That I ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... at large, Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, And lose himself in his unbounded home? By nature's hand magnificently fed, His meal is on the range of mountains spread; As in pure air aloft he bounds along, He sees in distant smoke the city throng; Conscious of freedom, scorns the smother'd train, The threat'ning driver, and the servile rein. Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest With thunder his robust distended chest? No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays; 'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils blaze; To paw the vale he proudly takes delight, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... said Johnny Stout (Mabel her laugh must smother), As he straightened himself in his roundabout, And said, "I'll sing you another." He sang and whistled with might and main, Till Mabel's ears were a-ringing, And she stopped them up, and exclaimed again "Why, Johnny, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... got together enough desultory information so that I could superintend the feed stone. The feed stone is used to grind hen feed and other luxuries. One day I noticed an odor that reminded me of a hot overshoe trying to smother a glue factory at the close of a tropical day. I spoke to the chief floor walker of the mill about it, and he said "dod gammit" or something that sounded like that, in a course and brutal manner. He then kicked my person in a rude and hurried ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... d'Argenson was not only defeated in his object, and interrupted in his speech, but he was expressly called to order for having alluded to facts unfortunately too certain, but which the Government wished to smother up by silencing all debate on ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "and, Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin's position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy; a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key, and the silence preserved ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... she was soon sensible of some mental change. The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest. She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath. Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lady Russell reverted ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen |
