"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,—this it is to be slave-masters indeed; ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... A thick smother of flakes whirled down into the deserted streets and cutting short Grandfather Harling's story, the visitors ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... persons of such dubious aspect. Dreadful surmises flitted across his brain; and terrors which he could neither combat nor examine imperceptibly stole into his mind; but alone, and beyond the reach of assistance, he resolved to smother his suspicions, or at least not increase the danger by revealing them. The room to which he retired for the night had a confused and desolate aspect; the curtains seemed to have been violently torn down from the bed, and still hung ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... daughter knew it to be true. But what could be done? There had grown up something for her, holier, greater, more absorbing even than a mother's love. Happily for most young wives, though the new tie may surmount the old one, it does not crush it or smother it. The mother retains a diminished hold, and knowing what nature has intended is content. She, too, with some subsidiary worship, kneels at the new altar, and all is well. But here, though there was abundant love, there was no sympathy. The cause ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... slowly paid off and gathered away the white squall broke upon them. The sea was a-smother with mist and rain. The wind whipped through the shrouds and rigging, but everything held. Taking a great bone in her teeth the old Almirante Recalde heeled far over to leeward and ripped through the water to ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... You are not white. They will not have you. Sit down—" The words had fallen on her ears with a cold, deadly smother. There came a chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her, which suddenly robbed the eyes of their brightness and gave a drawn look ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the young soldier, could not have startled or paralyzed him more. He was actually struck dumb by it Here was the chalice dashed from his lips at last. He turned away in despair; but as he was for duty, he was constrained to smother the tumultuous feelings within his breast. When alone, however, and pacing his lonely round with his musket on his shoulder, he had time to measure, with sufficient calmness and accuracy, the length, breadth and depth of the great misfortunes that had befallen him. ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... hedges, the vermin in the thickets, the rats in the drains. More and more and more. This is only a beginning. The insect world will rise on us, the plant world, the very fishes in the sea, will swamp and drown our ships. Tremendous growths will obscure and hide our houses, smother our churches, smash and destroy all the order of our cities, and we shall become no more than a feeble vermin under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its own begetting! And all for nothing! Size! Mere size! Enlargement and da ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... our book before the fire. Outside in the night ghostly shapes pass by, ghostly faces press against the window, and at the corners of the house ghostly voices pause for parley, muttering thickly through the swirl and smother of the snow. Inside burns the fire, kindling into glorious pink and white peonies on the nearest wall and glowing warm and sweet on her face as she reads. The children are in bed. She ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... quiet now, sir; I hope he aren't hatching any noo tricks again' us. Tell you what it is; I'm going down to him to-morrow with a mattress to see if I can't smother him down till I've got his shooting irons away. We shan't feel safe till that's done. My word! I should like to chain him up in the cable tier till we could hand him over to the ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... the organization of slaves at Beaufort, Mr. Lincoln exclaimed, "Slavery is a big job, and will smother us!" It will, if dealt with in ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... 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, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... mills and sympathized with us because we worked with our shirts off. To withstand the heat we stripped to the waist. We didn't want to wear a shirt. It would have clung to our flesh and hampered our moving muscles. We were freer and cooler without any cloth to smother us. It was a privilege to go shirtless. Adam enjoyed that blessing in the Garden of Eden. And when he sinned they punished him by putting a shirt, collar and necktie on him. And yet this theorist in the mills demanded working conditions that would let us wear shirts. Why? Who was asking for ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... tuning-forks of gold Take I my key for singing; From Upper Seats no order bold Can set my music ringing; But groans the slave through sense of wrong, And naught my voice can smother; As flame leaps up, so leaps my song For my ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... I turned to Drake bruskly to smother the sob of sheer happiness I felt rising in my throat; and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... "Smother that light in your eyes, my girl; it is dangerous. And you have lived under your mother's eye all your life! You see what I have done,"—indicating Leonora with his eyebrows,—"taken a baby ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... as it passed: sprang to her feet and across the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Joubert in the Northern Transvaal in the 'eighties, and saw the Boers (whose primitive artillery could not dislodge a native tribe that was impregnably entrenched inside a cave) closing up the mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler which brought about the peace of Southern Rhodesia. In the siege of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... desperate efforts to climb out of a deep mud-hole. The creature would get part way up the slippery bank, and then slide back again over his head in mire and water. Lincoln said to himself: I suppose that I ought to get out and help that pig; for if he's left there, he'll smother in the mud. Then he gave a look at his glossy new clothes. He felt that he really couldn't afford to spoil them for the sake of any pig, so he whipped up his horse and drove on. But the pig was in his mind, and he could think of ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... see in the drawing-room, a distant relation of my father's, who had, however, a handsome part of cousin Menie's succession. There are none living that can be hurt by the story now, though it was thought best to smother it up at the time, as indeed even the whispers about it led poor cousin Menie to live very retired. I mind her well when a child. There was something very gentle, but rather tiresome, about poor ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... always believed . . . it has been so ever since I was at college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those who came were those ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... 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
... 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
... is always asking me what he is to do with some forlorn lady or gentleman, 'Oh, smother her!' I said the other day. 'Well,' said he, with a melancholy gravity, 'I'll try it; but I fear it won't answer.' Poor Charley! what a friend you have been to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Vince, who the next moment passed from the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature to the grotesque; for he covered his lips with one hand to smother a laugh, and pointed with the other to a huge square patch of drugget laboriously stitched upon the back of the solid-looking trousers to strengthen them for sitting upon the thwart of a boat, a rock, or a bush of furze, which, when so guarded against, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... demanded, or had his miraculous luck turned his head? Otherwise, why would he so publicly utter a prophecy that on the morrow must certainly smother him with ridicule. The explanations were varied. The men in the clubs held he was driven by a desire for notoriety, the men in the street that he was more clever than they guessed, and had made the move to suit his own book, to alter the odds to his own advantage. Others frowned ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... black woman, who stood and stretched forward, in the carriage as before. She gathered a rich silk and gold handkerchief that was in her fingers up to her lips, and seemed to thrust ever so much of it, fold after fold, into her capacious mouth, as they thought to smother her laughter, with which she seemed convulsed, for she was shaking and quivering, as it seemed, with suppressed merriment; but her eyes, which remained uncovered, looked angrier than they had ever ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... my amorous kinsman much longer staid, The perfume would have seal'd his obit; For he had a nicer nose than the wench, Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, In the arms of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... uproar. We are about to enter the sacred precincts of Assembly Hall. I feel that on account of my years of experience I must make myself responsible for the behavior of you children. Smother that giggle, Nora O'Malley," he commanded, looking at Nora with an expression of severity that set oddly on his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... those odours that do rise From out the wealthy spiceries; So smells the flower of blooming clove, Or roses smother'd in the stove; So smells the air of spiced wine, Or essences of jessamine; So smells the breath about the hives When well the work of honey thrives, And all the busy factors come Laden with wax and honey home; So smell those neat and woven bowers All over-arch'd ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the town, yet nothing town-like. No sooty smother hung above the house-tops and smirched the garden leafage; no tramp of crowds, no clatter of hot-wheel traffic, sounded from the streets hard by. But at hours familiar, bidding to task or pleasure ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the world may call me gay, yet my feelings I smother, For thou art the cause of this ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... smother a sigh, but he made no comment, and walked softly with Lannes to the little room high up that had been assigned to him. Here when he was alone with his candle he ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and Jeekum's white face turned to it? There was a steady pressure on Nathaniel's arm now, a warning, frightened pressure, and the hand that made it trembled. Jeekum feared the worst—but his fear was not greater than the chill of disappointment that came to smother the excited beating of Nathaniel's heart. What had the jailer meant to say? What did he know about Marion and Winnsome, and why had he given birth to new hope in the same breath that ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... one in that coat, he would smother right away," said Little Black Bear, scratching his head. "But there is something in it! See how its sides bulge out! I'll just give it a good poke and ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... dangerous is that you can never tell when it is suddenly going to change from its ordinary wildness to a pitch of really savage fury. A ground swell, hardly perceptible on the surface of the sea, will kick up no end of a smother on the rock. The engineer lost no time in his survey. He had already made a study of the rock from every point of the sea around it, so that he was able to do his actual survey ashore quickly. Less than an hour was enough. By that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... is to use so little that a plateful would be considered plenty. With this quantity no good work can be done. You need to turn on to a board or dish at least a quart of crumbs, or a whole box of cracker meal. This will enable you to smother the article until every part is covered, instead of sprinkling a little over and under (which generally falls off as fast as put on, and leaves a surface yellow with egg in parts), as you must do ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... raving clamour and drunken halloo. Now as I reached the quarter-deck, some one of these hurled after me a belaying pin and this, catching me on the thigh, staggered me so that I should have fallen but for the rail; so there clung I in a smother of sweat and blood while great moon and glittering stars span dizzily; but crouched before me on his hams, almost within arm's reach, was this accursed negro who gaped upon me with grinning teeth and rolled starting eyeballs, his breath coming in great, hoarse gasps. And I knew great ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... good use to convey secret Intelligence without any danger of Discovery or mistrusting. But to come again to the point. The Irregularities of it are caused by three or four coadjutors, one of which is, the uneven surface of the paper, which at best appears no smother then a very course piece of shag'd cloth, next the irregularity of the Type or Ingraving, and a third is the rough Daubing of the Printing-Ink that lies upon the instrument that makes the impression, to all which, add the variation made by the Different ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... abrupt, and imperious that forthwith ceases the fiendish fandango. Up dashes a warrior mounted on horseback, leaps to the ground, and now at the death-pile seizes the fagots and scatters them broadcast, stamping upon them with moccasined feet to smother the flames ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Convinced, at length, that accuracy was not to be had from her, and satisfying himself with dissatisfaction, he one morning threw from him the little ruled book, and declared, in a wrath which he sought to smother into dignified but hopeless rebuke, that he would trouble himself with her no further. She burst into tears, took up the book, left the room, cried a little, resolved to astonish him the next Monday, and never set down another item. When it came, and breakfast was ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... can't help it—what would you do, Matthew? It blows like thunder: I can't tell how fast she's going,—I don't want to over-shoot the light, and then have to thrash back through such a smother of ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... the 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 same, my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... up to the great door, with Tylo panting by his side. The poor Dog was half-dead with fright, but his pride and his devotion to Tyltyl obliged him to smother his fears: ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother a cry of anguish. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... were lying motionless in a still stagnant atmosphere, with our starboard broadside presented fair to the approaching squall. But as the last words left Mendouca's lips the squall swooped down upon the boats, and in an instant they were lost sight of in a smother of mist and spray, while the roar of the approaching squall, that had come to us at first as a faint low murmur, grew deeper and hoarser, and more deadly menacing in its overpowering volume of tone. Then the air suddenly grew damp, with a distinct taste of salt in it; the roar increased ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... was almost caught. In spite of his bulk, he turned and sprang away with the agility of a wildcat; but if his snowshoes had turned and hindered him for one half second, he would have been struck down and trodden to a jelly in the smother of snow. Seeing the imminence of his peril, the other woodsmen threw up their rifles; but Uncle Adam, though extremely busy for the moment, saw them out of the corner of his eye as he ran, and angrily ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... were then troubled with returned upon you. By my Care you outgrew them, to throw away the Vigour of your Youth in the Arms of Harlots, and deny your Mother what is not yours to detain. Both your Sisters are crying to see the Passion which I smother; but if you please to go on thus like a Gentleman of the Town, and forget all Regards to your self and Family, I shall immediately enter upon your Estate for the Arrear due to me, and without one Tear more contemn you for forgetting the Fondness ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... ought to go out in some vessel which was not so encumbered with troops, so that they might remain on the main-deck; but they replied, that the invoices were made out and could not be altered. But now to act. My idea is to keep the hatches on, so as to smother it if possible." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... very beautiful so." And to vary that in a hundred different ways. To keep himself cool, to bear himself like a nobleman, to have a free tongue and a modest one, to endure with a smile all the evils the devil may invent on his behalf, to smother his anger, to hold nature in control, to have the finger of God, and the tail of the devil, to reward the mother, the cousin, the servant; in fact, to put a good face on everything. In default of which the female escapes and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... put it by the side of the fire, but do not let it keep boiling. Have the steaks cut of an equal thickness, broil them over a very clear fire, turning them often, that the gravy may not escape. In about 8 minutes they will be done, then put them on a very hot dish; smother with the oyster sauce, and the remainder send to table in a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... I feel, Mistress." And Janet covered her mouth to smother her laughter; first of all because she felt seasick, and secondly the child's words stirred in her no such youthful enthusiasm. She ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... The millets are objectionable as nurse crops through the denseness of the shade which they furnish and also because of the heavy draught which they make on soil moisture. Peas and vetches should not be used as nurse crops, since they smother the young clover plants through lodging in the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... he should accomplish it. Here was his match in size; here was one against whom his veils were powerless; here, too, was a creature who melted from his grasp when he thought to seize and twist him. What, then, remained for him to do? This only: to overtop him and smother him by casting himself down ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... almost drew her off her balance as amazed, stunned, nerveless, she halted. She caught a glimpse of Randerson's profile as he swept into a circle and threw his rope. There must be no missing—there was none. The sinuous loop went out, fell over the steer's head. Thereafter there was a smother of dust in which the girl could see some wildly waving limbs. Outside of the smother she saw the pony swing off for a short distance and stiffen its legs. The rope attached to the pommel of the saddle grew taut as a bow string; there was an instant of strained suspense ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... And these boys, whose fathers were for the most part bad men, drunkards, thieves, and who beat their wives, jostled each other to press closer and closer, as though they, the legitimate ones, would smother by their pressure ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... 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 ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the keel of the Sylph and came up on the other side. Then he went the whole length of her, under water, starting at the stern and ending at the bow, where he brought the submarine to a rest in a smother of foam. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... for a couple of hours, not speaking a word or daring to move a toe. The fire got low, but we dared not make it up; and of course we both had awful desires to sneeze and cough—you always do at such times—and half killed ourselves in our efforts to smother them. We could hear the cabs and omnibuses in Fleet Street keeping up a regular roar; but no footsteps came near us, except once when a telegraph boy (as we guessed by his shrill whistling and his smart step) came and dropped a telegram into the box. I assure you the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... stretching into the evening light, of the tepees, of the river beyond, of the face of Edmonton Ridgar, and of all these etched distinctly in that effect of sun and shade which picks out each smallest detail sometimes of a rare evening in early summer. Then the whole scene went out in a smother as an avalanche of bodies descended upon him. He could smell the heavy odour of flesh half-naked, the scent of the hidden paint, he felt arms that fought to grip him and fingers that clutched like talons. Under it all he went down ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Then I crawled into my bag and composed myself to listen. Frank soon began to snore, so brazenly, so fictitiously, that I wondered at the man's absorbed intensity in his joke; and I was at great pains to smother in my breast a violent burst of riotous merriment. Jones's snores, however, were real enough, and this made me enjoy the situation all the more; because if he did not show a mild surprise when the catastrophe ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... servant Jocrisse had closed the boudoir door behind M. Cambray, the suffering countess sprang lightly from her couch, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips to smother her laughter; the little Amelie, overwhelmed by merriment, buried her face in her mother's skirts; the maid giggled discreetly; while Jocrisse, clasping his rotund stomach with both hands, bent his head toward his knees, and betrayed his suppressed hilarity by his shaking shoulders. Even ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... on 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 ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The door was open and a gust of wind blew her dress in the fire. She dropped me and she screamed and run out into the yard. Old Miss saw her from the house. She grabbed a quilt and started out. She got to my mother and she wrapped her in the quilt to smother out the fire. But my mother done swallowed fire. She died. That's the story they tell me. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... has a slight headache," Mary answered, giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I yielded ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... brow, "Take off your hats. Take off your hats, and go to your seats." The conviction immediately rushed upon our minds, that this must be our new teacher. The first emotion was that of surprise, and the second was that of the ludicrous; though I believe we contrived to smother the laugh, until we got out into ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... He endeavoured to read in her withered and dark countenance, as the lamp threw its light upon her features, something that promised those feelings of compassion which females, even in their most degraded state, can seldom altogether smother. There was no such touch of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... us in war, once, long ago. Now you want peace. What would you do, clasp us to your bosom, smother us in your idiotic music? Or have you gone on to ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... remained with me all the time I was away, but when I reasoned with myself I would smother it as well as I could with argumentative attempts at self-assurance. I would say over and over to myself that Mary could not fail, and that even if she did, there was Jane, dear, sweet, thoughtful, unselfish Jane, who would not allow her to do so. But as far as ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... o'clock it seemed as if the children would smother for lack of air! It was very peculiar. Even the janitor noticed it. He spoke about it to Kara at the head of the back stairs, and she held her hand so as to let him see the new silver ring on her fourth finger, and he ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... entertained a species of solemn horror. But the excitement consequent on the unexpected recovery of the diamond ring, and the still more unexpected accession of wealth consequent thereon, had induced her to smother her dislike to railways for a time, and avail herself of their services in order to run down to a town about twenty miles off for the purpose of telling the good news to Netta, who chanced to be on a short visit ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... fire-breathing from their lofty stalls, Ambrosia fed, and fix the sounding reins. Then with a sacred ointment Phoebus smear'd The face of Phaeton,—unscorch'd to bear The fervid blaze; and on his head a crown Of rays he fix'd. His smother'd sighs within His anxious breast, sad presages of woe Suppressing, thus he spoke:—"If now my words "Though late, thou heedest, spare, O boy! the lash, "But tightly grasp the reins: unbid they run, "They fly; to check their flight ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... their post, and after many whispered remarks and tittering, the younger thrust his handkerchief into his mouth to smother a burst of irrepressible laughter, while the other, assuming a modest ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... "What a fuss-budget you are to be sure, Tom. If there was a fire, this rain would smother it. Oh! Did it ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of such heavenly hot chocolate and wore two rows of shining buttons down his braided coat and was never without white gloves and morning, noon and night paraded about in the duckiest little skull-cap cocked very much to one side like a Grenadier's!" And Dinky-Dunk told me to go to sleep or he'd smother me with a horse-blanket. So I squirmed back into my blanket and got "nested" and watched the fire die away while far, far off somewhere a coyote howled. That made me lonesome, so I got Dinky-Dunk's hand, and fell asleep ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... "Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... torment that doth dwell For ever with the thirsty fiends of hell — Dark brood of that dread mother, The seven-necked snake, whose poisoned breath doth smother The fourth celestial sphere; In fine, its horror and its misery drear Within me reach so far, That I myself upon myself make war, When in the arms of sleep A living corse am I, for it doth keep Such mastery o'er my life, that, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the devil Thy melancholy. The fire burns well; What need we keep a stirring of 't, and make A greater smother? Thou ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... fault of education, or rather want of education, and the corrupting advice of sycophants and flatterers. She could not know, or perhaps did not in that moment consider, that in a soil where no care is taken to eradicate tares, they will outgrow and smother the wholesome seed, even if the last is more natural to the soil. For, as Dr. Rochecliffe informed her afterwards for her edification, promising, as was his custom, to explain the precise words on some future occasion, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... you, little mother, With your boy so far away; May the joy of service smother All your grief this Christmas day; May the magic of his splendor Thrill your spirit through and through And may all that's fine and tender Make a smiling day ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante eyed one another with curiosity; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of man for gain has smothered and will ever smother the human conscience. The slave trade, under the denunciation of piracy, still exists, and will exist until African slavery ceases throughout the world. So long as there is a demand, at good prices, this wicked traffic will go on, and in the jungles of Africa there will be found stealers ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... up in ashes of my burning breast, Break out at length and to the clouds aspire, Urging the heavens to afford me rest; But let my body naturally descend Into the bowels of our common mother, And to the very centre let it wend, When it no lower can, her griefs to smother! And yet when I so low do buried lie, Then shall my love ascend unto ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... shall be delivered to the morn Out of these pangs, if ever indeed another Morn shall succeed this night, or this vast mother Survive to know the blood-spent offspring, torn From her racked flesh?—What splendour from the smother? What new-wing'd world, or mangled ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... guy thats a fresh air feend. His name is Angus MacKenzie. Hes Scotch. Hes so close himself that he has to have lots of air or hed smother. Every nite he pulls up the side of the tent by his bed. No one likes fresh air in its place better than me, Mable, but when its as fresh as this air is ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... toil and work at the opening, to smother it up. The angry element leaks through, bursts, gushes—is choked back with a ready turf; and squirts up in their faces. Mother is stunned to see the power of so small a stream when the attempt is made to check it thoroughly; she is not mechanically-minded by ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... one in supporting his adverse fortune, we accuse and reproach in our friends when the evil is our own; we are not satisfied that they should be sensible of our condition only, unless they be, moreover, afflicted. A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief. He who makes himself lamented without reason is a man not to be lamented when there shall be real cause: to be always complaining is the way never to be lamented; by making himself always in so pitiful ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... than anything on earth—for he loved my mother only a little while. When Mrs. Gay first came to live with him, she was so beautiful and so delicate, that she looked as if a wind would blow her away—so soft that she could smother a person like a mass of feathers. He felt after that that he had entangled himself, and it was only at the last when he was dying that he had any remorse. With all his wickedness there was a terrible kind of religion in him—like a rock that is buried under the earth—and he wanted ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... The others went out of sight at once, but the trumpeter—being, as I said, a powerful man as well as a tough swimmer—rose like a duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and came in on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him broke like an egg at their very feet; but when the smother cleared, there he was, lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the men that happened to have a rope round him—I forget the fellow's name, if I ever heard it—jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he began to slip back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... northward. The wood-lot hid from her sight both dock and mooring—and all but the gables of the hotel, as well—but she soon espied the motor-boat standing away on a straight course for the mainland: driven at a speed that seemed to her nearly incredible, a smother of foam at its stern, long purple ripples widening away from the jet of white water at the stem, a smooth, high swell of dark water pursuing as if it meant to catch up and overwhelm the boat and its occupants. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... funge, a golden ass, a monster of men, to have many good men, wise, men, learned men to attend upon him with all submission, as an appendix to his riches, for that respect alone, because he hath more wealth and money," [336]"to honour him with divine titles, and bombast epithets," to smother him with fumes and eulogies, whom they know to be a dizzard, a fool, a covetous wretch, a beast, &c. "because he is rich?" To see sub exuviis leonis onagrum, a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, assume this unto ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... every danger. In the first place, the smoke will smother us. Then suppose we reached the spot? We might be nearer the rebels than our friends. They know where we are. If they are not taken, they will come back for us. If they are taken, we must do our best to get to our lines and send out a scouting party. Be guided by me, youngster. I am an older ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... 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
... about a quarter of an hour there was a ring at the door, and in another moment Mysie and Gillian were hugging one smother, Valetta hanging round Mysie's neck, Fergus pulling down her arm. The four creatures seemed all wreathed into one like fabulous snakes for some seconds, and when they unfolded enough for Mysie to recollect and kiss her aunts, there certainly was a taller, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... loved little lad so changed was too much for even his man's courage, for, with a cry he in vain strove to smother, he sunk on his knees with his ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... But even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits against a stone which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua or a picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother." ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... they were likely to be overheard, or when they could not trust the man to whom they were speaking. If no one feared Astrardente, no one trusted him either. Valdarno consequently judged it best to smother his annoyance at the old man's words, and to retaliate by striking him ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 between ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... appeals to common-sense. A man does not light a lamp and then smother it. The act of lighting implies the purpose of illumination, and, with everybody who acts logically, its sequel is to put the lamp on a stand, where it may be visible. All is part of the nightly routine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Passion smother, Perjur'd Caelia loves another; In his Arms I saw her lying, Panting, Kissing, Trembling, Dying: There the Fair deceiver swore, As once she did ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... grace, the grace we receive, to shine. We love to see things that bear a good gloss; yea, we choose to buy such kind of matter to work upon, as will, if wrought up to what we intend, cast that lustre that we desire. Candles that burn not bright, we like not; wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat; wherefore great folks care not much, not so much, for such kind of things, as for them that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bear, and the brown dish Shall be escheated. All your daintiest Dells too I will deflower, and take your dearest Doxyes From your warm sides; and then some one cold night I'le watch you what old barn you go to roost in, And there I'le smother you ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... themselves anew and with undiminished interest 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 on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... powerful enough to reach the Scorpius, but knew it was useless to try with his helmet circuit. The carrier waves of the snapper-boats were on the same frequency, and they would smother the ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... found myself walking about in it! It was no picture that I saw; it was no peep-show, but reality itself. This it is that is really and truly to be found in a thing which is no bigger than a cabbage, and which, on occasion, an executioner might strike off at a blow, and suddenly smother that world in darkness and night. The world, I say, would vanish, did not heads grow like mushrooms, and were there not always plenty of them ready to snatch it up as it is sinking down into nothing, and keep it going like ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... incompatible with cruelty. It has been maintained that the notorious cruelty of the lower and war-like races is manifested only toward enemies; but this is an error. Some of the instances cited under "Sentimental Murder" and "Sympathy" show how often superstitious and utilitarian considerations smother all the family feelings. Three or four more illustrations may be added here. Burton says of the East Africans, that "when childhood is past, the father and son become natural enemies, after the manner ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... characters often really more difficult in the long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... any change. The subject divided the Budget Committee of the Reichstag, the question being whether its discussion should be permitted in open session. The outcome was that the committee decided, by a vote of 24 to 4, to smother the agitation by refusing to permit its ventilation in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of this arduous journey was defeated by the loss of the provisions I had brought. I despaired of winning the attention of the fugitive to supplications, or arguments tending to smother remorse or revive his fortitude. The scope of my efforts was to consist in vanquishing his aversion to food; but these efforts would now be useless, since I had no power to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with all the incombustible ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... sex cruelty, the gentlest threatened by brute force. How could he save her? He could not, for she would not be saved. He sat there until the dark in the corners crept toward him like fates, their mantles held up in shadowy hands, to smother him, and then suddenly remembering Nan and hospitable duties down below, he got up, chilled, went out, and locked the hut behind him. The house he found was a blaze of windows. Charlotte had lighted lamps and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... fertility of imagination. Othello, we know, was actually performed, and went off tolerably well until the final scene, but then the nerves of the Frenchmen were put to a trial they could not by any possibility endure. The sight of a Moor and an Infidel, endeavouring to smother a lady and a Christian, so completely aroused all the gallant and religious sensibilities of the audience, that shouts of terrible, abominable, resounded from every part of the house, and Monsieur Othello was (theatrically) damned ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels cannot long cover ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... to Pilate, who was to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou wakedst this morning, and wast thou content even with false accusations, that is, rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not, than to smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spentest that hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment upon Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, who was at that time at Jerusalem ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman, you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator. List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... then 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 ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... man who such doings would smother!— On, Luther of Bavan! On, Saint of Kilgroggy! With whip in one hand and with Bible in t'other, Like Mungo's tormentor, both "preachee ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... men are to blame for most of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness by applying ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... despairing at opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to smother and overbear the something ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Priam's keep Got up from their mahogany; They smoked their pipes in silence deep Till there was such a fog—any Attempt to discover the priest in the smother Had bothered old Airy and Adams and t'other And—Every son ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of Session had cherished sentiments of loyalty for the exiled family; these were transmitted to Alaster Dhu. The gallant Lochiel and the chief of Glengarry were therefore disposed to smother in their feelings of loyalty the feuds which too often raged between clans nearly approximate. They therefore formed a compact to promote, in every way, the interest of the royal exiles; and in this vain attempt at restoration which ensued, the fate of their clansmen was sealed.[250] ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... 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 ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... these Northern Islands, the Clouds are so short, and narrow, and by fickle changes are sometimes emptied upon us, sometimes so neer, as may make so little variation in the weight of the whole Atmosphere of Air, as may sometimes deceive us, or smother and hide from us the causes of fixedness, or of changes. I wish I could see a good Calendar or Journal taken in taken in Tangier, and in some of our Northern and most Southern parts of America. I have store of Hygroscopes of divers kinds; and I do remark ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... also by violent agitations of body; by clapping their hands and beating their breasts; by shaking and trembling; by faintings and convulsions; and sometimes by excessive bleeding at the nose. While they were in this distress, the minister often called out to them, not to stifle or smother their convictions, but to encourage them; and, after sermon was ended, he retired with them to the manse, and frequently spent the best part of the night with them in exhortations and prayers. Next day before sermon began, they were brought out, commonly by ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's life was still rolling on through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dressed, it had altogether gone, and she only knew that she had had a restless night. She went out on the deck, longing for the tonic of pure air. The morning was misty—it had rained during the night—and clouds hung heavy and low over the city. Out from this gray smother the city gleamed like a veiled opal. Neither Felix nor her aunt was to be seen. When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back and forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her triumphant youth showing no sign ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... sure am I, to see them make up an hypocrite's face, and fall to dancing, when their hearts are like to break. Why, sweeting! thou lovest rather to see Frank happy than woeful; but dost thou therefore desire her to smother her tears, and force a smile, rather than come and lodge her little troubles with thee? Nay, rather do I believe that to do such were to insult God. I could tell thee of that I have seen, where I do verily believe ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the gas and went downstairs to stand at the parlour window to scan more clearly every face that might pass, and—yes, she would be honest with herself now—to spring into his arms the moment he entered, smother him with kisses and beg him to forgive the bitter words she ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... Tilly was trying to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew the cause ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... step behind this Hanging—there's a Chimney which may shelter ye till the Storm be over,—if you be not smother'd before. [Puts him behind ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... that whilst all these things are true, there is yet a solemn possibility that men—even good men—may stifle and smother and shroud their light. You can do, and I am afraid a very large number of you do do, this; by two ways. You can bury the light of a holy character under a whole mountain of inconsistencies. If one were to be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and mirroring the sky. Leaving this wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his lips, but smother it he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees trembling, his mind in a sudden and ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, they hand yuh your check, an', ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... shrieked in ecstasy as they rushed forward to smother "Toodlums," as they irreverently called the Cherub, with kisses. Inez, a handsome, dark-eyed girl, relinquished her burden cheerfully to the two adoring "aunties," while Uncle John kissed Louise and warmly shook the hand of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne |
