"Surfeit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a raid on the settlements, they abandoned even victory if they had once had enough fighting; as when they had a feast they glutted themselves, and then wasted what they had not eaten. They seemed now to have had such a surfeit of cruelty in the torture of Crawford that they took little trouble to secure Knight for a future holiday. They promised themselves that he should be burnt, too, at the town of the Shawnees, but in their ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... soul. It awoke in him echoes distant and profound. Through the feeling of perpetual reaction, which is in vigorous natures a vital instinct, the instinct of self-preservation, the stroke which preserves the quivering balance of the boat, and gives it a new drive onward,—his surfeit of doubts and his disgust with Parisian sensuality had for the last two years been slowly restoring God to his place in Christophe's heart. Not that he believed in God. He denied God. But he was filled with the spirit of God. The Abbe Corneille used to tell him with a smile, that like his namesake, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Shuberts can offer few but musical shows. In fact, neither side seems prepared to supply enough attractions. So altogether this matter seems at present almost hopeless of solution as long as the prevailing dearth of plays and actors and surfeit of theaters make it well-nigh impossible for one-night stands to fare well. In practice both sides to the controversy have been ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... praying his good lordship, and offering large satisfaction for the past and reasonable surety for the future. Doubt not but he will lend a favourable ear. A prayer without gifts is like a song without music: I surfeit him with promises, boys—I spare not to promise. What, then, is lacking? Nay, a great thing—wherefore should I deceive you?—a great thing and a difficult: a messenger to bear it. The woods—y' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... four months, during which time we took our surfeit of love's enjoyments. At the end of that time I left to pay a visit to an uncle who lived in the village of B—, in the state of Pennsylvania, a few miles from where I now reside. My uncle was a bachelor, possessed of large wealth, and it was generally understood ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... Strauss knows no other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative instinct and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the first century of the Christian era, than by supposing the existence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself brought about a state ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... from play, was proud to go with his big brother. He was ill next day owing to a surfeit of good things consumed at high pressure, but not too ill to discuss what he would purchase with the half-crown that seemed to have stuck to his hot ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... arraigns him, among other offences, for having "expressed himself to be an enemy to frequent preaching, inveighing in his sermons against long Sermons, saying that Peters sword cut off but one eare, but long Sermons like long swords cut off both at once, and that the Surfeit of the Word is of all most dangerous, and that the silliest creatures have longest eares, and that preaching was the worst part of God's worship, and that if he left out anything he would leave out that." And that, for Mr. Andrewes, was the end; a man who lost his living because he would rather ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... surfeit, which is the worst of monotonies, eagerly would the prince have joined the revolting troops, detachments of which he could perceive from the walls of the Kutub hastening along the sun-scorched ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... had, and strange ones; but for sufferings, instead of fetter-galls, I bring back, as you see, a new suit of clothes; instead of an empty and starved stomach, a surfeit from good victuals and good liquor; and whereas I went into Ely on foot, I came out on a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to surfeit criticism with similar examples; where Webster is writing in sarcastic, meditative, or deliberately terror-stirring moods. The same dark dye of his imagination shows itself even more significantly in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the seed whence the future is to spring. He who betrays his trust, which is to guard the seed,—what is that man—Emperor or President, Louis or George, Pharaoh or Caesar—but a traitor and a breaker of the Law? He may die by the axe, or he may die in a purple robe of a surfeit, but he dies! The people live on, and his memory pays. He has been a tyrant and a pygmy, and the ages hold him in contempt.... War! There are righteous wars, and righteous men die in them, but the righteous man does not love war. Conquest! Conquest of ignorance, superstition, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the effect of this wholesale disfranchisement of colored men, upon their citizenship? The value of food to the human organism is not measured by the pains of an occasional surfeit, but by the effect of its entire deprivation. Whether a class of citizens should vote, even if not always wisely—what class does?—may best be determined by considering their condition when they are ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... in season, and comprehend in brief the ends of many matters, less impeachment followeth of men; for surfeit blunteth the eagerness of expectancy; and city-talk of others' praise grieveth ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the end came. While a young man, he had suffered from a painful attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of fruit; "eating," he says, in a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an hundred golden pippins at a time." This had occasioned a deafness; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... upon seeing him go on in this way, felt prompted, with the idea of affording his mind some distraction, to think of this and to devise that expedient; but everything had been indulged in with surfeit by Pao-y, and there was only this resource, (that suggested itself to him,) of which Pao-y had not as yet had any experience. Bringing his reflections to a close, he forthwith came over to a bookshop, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... company we passed two or three months very agreeably, till the major and I both betook ourselves to our several nurseries; my wife being brought to bed of a girl, and Miss Bath confined to her chamber by a surfeit, which had like to have occasioned ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... passed, and when night had fallen and they had had a surfeit of Rikevir, of rabbit and of Dame Christine's "koechten" sprinkled with cinnamon. Mr. Seiler, happy and contented, full of joyous hope, ascended to his room, putting off until to-morrow his declaration, not doubting for a moment but that ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... certain jaded weariness in her outlook upon life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was well enough to look upon, he had no affectations, his instincts were apparently ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... of this stormy passion from the pure and unconscious Hope. But a new distress opened before him, from the time when he again touched Hope's hand. The close intercourse of the voyage had given him for the time almost a surfeit of the hot-house atmosphere of Emilia's love. The first contact of Hope's cool, smooth fingers, the soft light of her clear eyes, the breezy grace of her motions, the rose-odors that clung around her, brought back ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... daintily, Until her haunch is greased. Her drink is of the well, Where the water-cresses swell, Nor with the flowing shell Is the toper better pleased. The bent makes nobler cheer, Or the rashes of the mere, Than all the creagh that e'er Gave surfeit to a guest. Come, see her table spread; The sorach[117] sweet display'd The ealvi,[118] and the head Of the daisy stem; The dorach[119] crested, sleek, And ringed with many a streak, Presents her pastures meek, Profusely by the stream. Such the luxuries That plump their ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he disjoin'd, and backward drew The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth, Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew, Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth: 544 He with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth, Their lips together glu'd, ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... surfeit and from rapture's cloy, Keep fresh for Beauty service and employ, Grieving the One, that ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... With Us," by Wordsworth (1770-1850), is perhaps the greatest sonnet ever written. It is true that "the eyes of the soul" are blinded by a surfeit of worldly "goods." "I went to the Lake District" (England), said John Burroughs, "to see what kind of a country could produce a Wordsworth." Of course he found simple houses, simple people, barren moors, heather-clad ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... prophetic crows, Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. 155 These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. Here is the surfeit which to them who earn The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves 160 The tithe that will support them till they crawl Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want, And England's sin ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... counting best to be with you alone, Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure: Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, And by and by clean starved for a look; Possessing or pursuing no delight, Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... the superintendent's private room the privileged passenger by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there was "in this very harbour" ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... I will not say but the best men may die of a consumption, a dropsy, or a surfeit; yea, that these may meet upon a man to end him; yet I will say again, that many times these diseases come through man's inordinate use of things. Much drinking brings dropsies, consumptions, surfeits, and many other ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fed upon this woe already, And now excess of it will make me surfeit. 220 Doth Silvia ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... with enthusiasm, her lips were parted and her eyes were of a vivid, translucent blue, with the pupils like brilliant sardonyx, full of dark and mysterious lights. She was ready to meet love with a surfeit of the rich gifts which she had at ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... would get in with Zene and try the wagon awhile. Springs and cushions had become tiresome. He half-stood on the tongue, to bring his legs down on a level with Zene's, and enjoyed the jolting in every piece of his backbone. He had had a surfeit of woman-society. Even the horsey smell of Zene's clothes was found agreeable. And above all, he wanted to talk about J. D. Matthews, and tell the terrors of a bottomless ford and a ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... they were hanged, to the number of sixty. A small number were pardoned on account of their youth, and a few individuals who effected their escape when led to the gallows, were not pursued. The fact that the townspeople almost connived at the escape of these desperadoes showed that there had been a surfeit of hangings in Rotterdam. It is moreover not easy to distinguish with exactness the lines which in those days separated regular sea belligerents, privateers, and pirates from each other. It had been laid down by the archdukes ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... about the alterations I feel: for these doctors take advantage; when they have you at their mercy, they surfeit your ears with their prognostics; and formerly surprising me, weakened with sickness, injuriously handled me with their dogmas and magisterial fopperies—one while menacing me with great pains, and another ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... added hour or two in bed in the morning, but to lie in bed all day would be an infliction. So it ran indefinitely—this thin selvedge of advantage which money could buy—with deprivation on the one side, and surfeit on the other. Candidly, was it not true that more happiness lay in winning the way out of deprivation, than in inventing safeguards against satiety? The poor man succeeding in making himself rich—at ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the bottom, then some of the other ingredients, then Poppy again, and so untill the Glass be full; then put in the Aqua vitae, and let it infuse till it be strong of the spices, and very red with the Poppy, close covered, of which take two or three spoonfuls upon a surfeit, and when all the liquor is spent, put more Aqua vitae to it, and it will have the same effect the second ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... invisible guards. We have thronged with fiery faces and arms the fences of our gardens and parks. The plate-glass of our windows we have made more impenetrable than adamant. To our very infants we have given the strength of giants. Babies surfeit, while strong men starve; and the foetus in the womb stretches out unformed hands to annex a principality. Is this liberty? Is this Nature? No! It is a Merlin's prison! Yet, monstrous, it subsists! Has our ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who is both plain and elderly—one who is not suffering from a surfeit of love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women," says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the giver; whereas old ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and going at his caprice, stayed a month in every year at Longmeadow, where the townspeople, having had a surfeit of aboriginal names, called him John. He raised no objection, for that with half a dozen other Christian titles had been bestowed on him in baptism; and he entered the godly list of Williamses ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... man with a better stomach for a fight than Martin de Garnache, nor did he stop to consider that here his appetite in that direction was likely to be indulged to a surfeit. The sight of those three men opposing him, swords drawn and Fortunio armed in addition with a dagger, drove from his mind every other thought, every other consideration but ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Then there are such things as riots in the street, in which a rake's skull may be casually cracked; he may be overturned in a coach, overset in the river, thrown from a vicious horse, overtaken with a cold, endangered by a surfeit; but what I place my chief confidence in, is an hearty pox, a distemper which hath been fatal to his whole family. Not but that the issue of all these things is uncertain, and expedients might be found which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... garret and to turn any old place into a home,' He was so charmed with everything about the flat that he said he wanted to move into one right away, and make biscuits himself on a glass-topped table, and do stunts with the fireless cooker like Joyce. He has had a surfeit of ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and there was a touch of melancholy in his rich voice—"We are midges in a sunbeam,—emmets on a sand- hill...no more! Is there a next world, thinkest thou, for the bees who die of surfeit in the nilica-cups?—for the whirling drift of brilliant butterflies that sleepily float with the wind unknowing whither, till met by the icy blast of the north, they fall like broken and colorless leaves in the dust of the high-road? Is ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning Revolution. We are far from saying that such a thing happened. But ambitious royalists might have thought their money well expended in removing the son of the murdered king from the scene. The claim of the American dauphin, Eleazer Williams, may ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... to have been a surfeit of these internecine brawls for some time to come, and, indeed, stories of dissensions among the servants of the company in the East are plentifully sprinkled throughout its history, both in this century and the next. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... out of windows, and played the devil with everything, when he was called upon to put his Sire the Baron of Roche-Corbon some few feet under the turf. Then he was his own master, free to lead a life of wild dissipation, and indeed he worked very hard to get a surfeit of enjoyment. Now by making his crowns sweat and his goods scarce, draining his land, and a bleeding his hogsheads, and regaling frail beauties, he found himself excommunicated from decent society, and had for his friends only ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Davison," said Madeline indulgently. "You know I am delighted to have you here." She turned abruptly to the new-comers as though she had already had a surfeit of this subject. It is a pleasant thing to have had a good education, but one does not care to spend one's time thinking about it, any more than about how much money there is in ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... monstrous birth! I 2 Insolent Pride, if idly nursed On timeless surfeit, plenty accursed, Spurning the lowlier tract of Earth Mounts to her pinnacle,—then falls, Dashed headlong down sheer mountain walls To dark Necessity's deep ground, Where never foothold can be found. Let wrestlers for my country's ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... minds overloaded with useless information, and for a system of cramming, which at once takes the heart out of men, perhaps with good ability, just at the age when their mental activity is most keen; which, further, as the result of this surfeit, disgusts for the rest of his life and renders impotent for all intellectual effort, the unfortunate patient who has been condemned to undergo this treatment for five, eight, and sometimes ten years of ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... in England, a surfeit of materialism had produced a lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name. ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... foul monster Gluttony, Of wame[54] insatiable and greedy, To dance he did him dress; Him followed many a foul drunkart With can and collep, cop and quart,[55] In surfeit and excess. Full many a waistless wally-drag[56] With wames unwieldable did forth drag, In creish[57] that did incress; Drink, aye they cried, with many a gape, The fiends gave them hot lead to laip,[58] Their leveray[59] ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... at a time for some hours after meals. When the aliment has had time to ferment, and become acid, it produces cardialgia, or heart-burn. This disease is perhaps generally left after a slight inflammation of the stomach, called a surfeit, occasioned by drinking cold liquors, or eating cold vegetables, when heated with exercise. This inflammation of the stomach is frequently, I believe, at its commencement removed by a critical eruption on the face, which differs in its ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... bonnet. Her gaze was cooler and more impersonal than he was wont to encounter, but it crossed his burdened mind that a blooming face even if unfashionably sunburnt, and a supple vigorous body were somewhat attractive after a surfeit of dolls with their languid fine-lady airs and affectation of physical delicacy; which he, being no fool, suspected of covering fine appetites and stubborn selfishness. But while he was young enough to admire the fresh beauty of ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... inventions. The value of the inventions could be easily gauged; Mr. Mardale claimed to have invented a wheel of perpetual rotation. Sir Charles, however, had his impulses of kindness. He knew Mr. Mardale to be an old and gentle person, a little touched in the head perhaps, who with money enough to surfeit every instinct of pleasure, had preferred to live a shy secluded life, busily engaged either in the collection of curiosities or the invention of toy-like futile machines. There was a girl too whom Sir Charles remembered, a weird elfin creature ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... things at the best of times, and what we all want is to have you with us again for a little while. I am sure you must have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be luxurious and exotic in London for a change. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... hear you say that, mother dear; sweet to know that you love me so," Evelyn said in moved tones, bending down to press a kiss on the wan cheek, "and I mean to fairly surfeit you with my company in the days and weeks ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... so the place was a little drier than the road outside. The floor was strewn with broken glass, chairs, and bottles. I got hold of a three-legged chair, and by balancing myself against one of the walls, tried to do a bit of a doze. I was precious near tired out now, from want of sleep and a surfeit of marching. I told my sergeant to wake me when the order came along, and then and there slept on that chair for twenty minutes, lulled off by the shrapnel bursting along the road outside. My sergeant woke me. "We ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... of isolation is the commencement of war. It renders it more easy, less burdensome, therefore less unpopular. Let nations become permanent recipient customers each of the other, let the interruption of their relations inflict upon them the double suffering of privation and surfeit, and they will no longer require the powerful navies which ruin them, the great armies which crush them; the peace of the world will no longer be compromised by the caprice of a Napoleon or of a Bismarck, and war will disappear through lack of aliment, resources, motive, ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... other vermin. They destroy many noxious insects and reptiles. The severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the 'Python natalensis', when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims to their fierce onslaught. These ants never make hills like the white ant. Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England. Occasionally ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... short interval; so that if anyone is not sure what the clock meant the first time, he has a second chance of counting the strokes. This is no doubt an admirable plan under ordinary circumstances, but it does certainly try the patience of a sleepless dyspeptic after a surfeit of cafe-au-lait and honey; and when he has counted carefully the first time, and is bristling with the consciousness that it is only midnight, it is aggravating in the extreme to have the long slow story told a second time within a few feet of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... echo of the Schoolmen's guns. Whether the two-year-old baby who dashes his bread-and-butter on the floor, in wrath at the lack of marmalade, does it because of a prevailing effectual tendency in his nature, or in consequence of his federal alliance with Adam, or from a previous surfeit of plum-cake, is a question which seems to bear a general family likeness to the inquiry, whether there is such a thing as generic bread-and-butter, or only such specific slices as arouse infant ire and nourish infant tissue. But around both classes of questions strife has waxed hot. Both have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... content to think of looking beyond their own horizon. And yet we are good in essentials, and no tale of pity is unheeded—if only it be called forth loudly enough. Let us wake our languid rich folk. They suffer from a surfeit—an apoplexy—of money. An eager, wakeful, nervous American plutocrat, thinks nothing of giving a large fortune to endow a hospital or an institute for some petty Western town. Are we meaner or more griping ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... enormous quantities of refined sugar, but in tropical countries figs and dates are staple in many places and the inhabitants relish them day in and day out as we relish some of out staples. It is a matter of habit. Those who do not surfeit themselves do not weary quickly of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... surely will happen to the family during the ensuing year. Fortunately Nanoun's preventive measures averted this calamity; yet were they like to have overshot their mark. Only the cat's natural abstemiousness saved her that night from dying of a surfeit—and in agony surely provocative of the very cries which Nanoun ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... of the keen poetry in everyday life, Kipling was illuminating, in a totally different manner, the wealth of poetic material in things hitherto regarded as too commonplace for poetry. Before literary England had quite recovered from its surfeit of Victorian priggishness and pre-Raphaelite delicacy, Kipling came along with high spirits and a great tide of life, sweeping all before him. An obscure Anglo-Indian journalist, the publication of his Barrack-room Ballads ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... with surfeiting and with drunkenness. Let us give them all that, then, to their heart's desire.' This advice of Lucifer, our history tells us, was highly applauded in hell, and ever since it has proved their masterpiece to choke Mansoul with the fulness of this world, and to surfeit the heart with the good things thereof. But, my brethren, you will outwit hell herself and all her counsellors and all her machinations, if, out of all the riches, pleasures, cares, and possessions, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... his deep bay—you know how those bull-frogs bark—always reminded me of a bloodhound surprised while on a trail of aniseed. He was my constant companion in Northern Assam, where I was at that time planting rubber. He finally died of a surfeit of hard-boiled egg, of which he was passionately fond, and I was as miserable as if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... have only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they have asked us, 'What sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice?' (for if there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing it so often should give one a surfeit of it); 'and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds?' Nor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than of seeing one ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... are turn'd to Solitude and rural Pleasures. The Man, who desires to have his Body in Health, should rise from Table with some Remains of Appetite, and not be covetous of gorging to Satiety: So a Writer, who would not wish to surfeit the Town, should submit to give over Writing, before they begin to think he has harass'd them ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... rhubarb pies and have had a surfeit of dandelion salad or 'Salat,' as our neighbors designate it. Your Uncle calls 'dandelion greens' the farmers' spring tonic; that and 'celadine,' that plant you see growing by the side of the house. Later in the season it bears small, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... Oh! my dear, I have had such trouble in getting away! My husband ate such a surfeit of sprats last evening that he was coughing and choking the whole ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... value of a pre-war sixpence and a bit of paper that is called a Bradbury fetches half as much as the pound of five years ago. Compared with what other peoples are suffering from the same disease arising from the same surfeit of money in one form or another, this nuisance that we are enduring is not too terribly severe. It has entailed great hardship on a class that is small in number, namely, those who have to live on fixed incomes. ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... have seen this excess of work as compared with the power to do it; but the evil has increased with the surfeit of wealth, and there is no sign that the increase is near its end. The people of this country are a very strong people; but there is no strength that can permanently endure, without provoking inconvenient consequences, this kind of political ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... on. Edith eats her water ice, and talks very animatedly to her baronet. Balls (he has had a surfeit of them, poor fellow!) mostly bore him—to-night he is really interested. The Americans are an interesting people, he thinks that must be why. Then the redowa begins, and Charley returns and carries her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... could never imagine the possibilities of a Japanese side-show. On certain great holidays the showmen make their appearance, put up their ephemeral theatres of rush- matting and bamboos in some temple court, surfeit expectation by the most incredible surprises, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. The Skeleton of a Devil, the Claws of a Goblin, and 'a Rat as large as a sheep,' were some of the least extraordinary ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... determine controversies, and to punish those that are convicted of injustice; while he that does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment, as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself. When we offer sacrifices to him, we do it not in order to surfeit ourselves, or to be drunken; for such excesses are against the will of God, and would be an occasion of injuries and of luxury; but by keeping ourselves sober, orderly, and ready for our other occupations, and being more temperate than others. And for our duty ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have for supper that overgrown and shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and will not let any one else buy tea or toast for a less sum than he pays for his surfeit; it is he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk and the reluctance of the waiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of the saloon, with his womenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where Basil and Isabel sit. Personally, he is not so bad; he is good-looking, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... image, on our natures. Die! Consider well the cause that calls upon thee, And, if thou'rt base enough, die then. Remember Thy Belvidera suffers; Belvidera! Die!—damn first!—What! be decently interred In a church-yard, and mingle thy brave dust— With stinking rogues, that rot in winding-sheets, Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... or gaming: of whose madness they have only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they have asked us, what sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice? For if there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing of it so often should give one a surfeit of it: and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds? Nor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than of seeing one dog run after another; for if the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... I recognised at once the idea at the back of the question and appreciated the fact that it had been asked by one who, as some one has said, "called himself an advanced free-thinker, but was really a very ignorant and vulgar person who was suffering from a surfeit of the ideas of certain people cleverer than himself." But, as a full discussion of the matter would have taken at least as long as the lecture which I had just concluded, my reply was that before I attempted to explain it I would ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... in his followers, Indignation, Sturdiness, Malice, Hastiness, Wreck, and Discord. Next, Understanding summons his adherents, Wrong, Slight, Doubleness, Falseness, Ravin, and Deceit. Then come the servants of Will, named Recklessness, Idleness, Surfeit, Greediness, Spouse-breach, and Fornication. The minstrels striking up a hornpipe, they all dance together till a quarrel breaks out among them, when the eighteen servants are driven off, their masters remaining alone ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit of success? ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... in us there is A sense fastidious hardly reconciled To the poor makeshifts of life's scenery, Where the same slide must double all its parts, Shoved in for Tarsus and hitched back for Tyre, I blame not in the soul this daintiness, Rasher of surfeit than a humming-bird, In things indifferent by sense purveyed; It argues her an immortality 140 And dateless incomes of experience, This unthrift housekeeping that will not brook A dish warmed-over at the feast of life, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... day, and going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in an enervating day of July, one may have longed to dine upon humming-bird, with rose-leaves for dessert. But these are exceptional times; the abiding hope is, that we shall continue to eat, drink, and be merry. For the practical is in the imperative. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... quality of the food, always excepting a dark-looking liquid of revolting aspect, known as "beer porridge," and which I ate only through fear of starvation was generally good, and the quantity was sufficient to keep the patients alive, while they had no reason to apprehend ill consequences from a surfeit. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... that of the robin. Such open winters make one fear that his appetite for spring will be blunted when spring really does come; but he usually finds that the April days have the old relish. April is that part of the season that never cloys upon the palate. It does not surfeit one with good things, but provokes and stimulates the curiosity. One is on the alert; there are hints and suggestions on every hand. Something has just passed, or stirred, or called, or breathed, in the open air or in the ground about, that we would fain know more of. May is sweet, but ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... coaxingly, "haven't I done charity enough for one day? You will surfeit me at the start, and then I'll be just as little fond of it as I was before. When I must let dirty children climb all over me, I can dress for ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... this wondrous river, gay with summer and flushed with the laughter of early vineyards, so close is the network of legend that the swiftly read or spoken tale of one locality is scarce over ere the traveller is confronted by another. It is a surfeit of romance, an inexhaustible hoard of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... sort, as it is easier to stop Nature when she makes too much speed than to force her on when languishing and faint. Besides, what some say, that fullness is more to be avoided than emptiness, is not true; but, on the contrary, fullness then only hurts when it ends in a surfeit or disease; but emptiness, though it doth no other mischief, is of itself unnatural. And let this suffice as an answer to what you proposed. But you sparing men have forgot, that variety is sweeter ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... little—little world—so small—so small! your people like dull beasts pacing in a cage, believing that in the meat thrust in between their bars and the number of steps to be taken from side to side lies all the meaning of life; people who survey with their heavy eyes of surfeit the free souls of the world! Hypocrites! Pharisees! And to this cage you have consigned my child! and you would make of her, too, a creature of counted paces and of unearned meat! You would shut her in from the life of beauty and freedom that she has known! Ah never! never! there you do not ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of old, and 'tis said to-day, That wealth to prosperous stature grown Begets a birth of its own: That a surfeit of evil by good is prepared, And sons must bear what allotment of woe Their sires were spared. But this I refuse to believe: I know That impious deeds conspire To beget an offspring of impious deeds Too like their ugly sire. But whoso is just, though his wealth like a river Flow down, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Sir William Temple as his friend and domestic companion. When he had been about two years with Sir William, he contracted a very long and dangerous illness by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this surfeit he was often heard to ascribe that giddiness in his head which, with intermissions sometimes of longer and sometimes of shorter continuance, pursued him to the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... steps of antiquity, that is, to the most ancient rule, and profession, and practice of truth in scripture, to Christ and his apostles, but halt in their grandfathers' tombs. But sometimes things are commended, because new. The nature of man being inclined to change and variety, and ready to surfeit and loath accustomed things, even as the stomach finds appetite for new and unusual diets, so the mind of man hath a secret longing after new doctrines and things. Now we have both these combined together in this subject, which ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... vessel to amuse an idle young man's leisure! You are he that in that fool's hole of a Bosekop, is known as the 'rich Englishman,'—an idle trifler with time,—an aimless wanderer from those dull shores where they eat gold till they die of surfeit! I have heard of you,—a mushroom knight, a fungus of nobility,—an ephemeral growth on a grand decaying old tree, whose roots lie buried in the annals of a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Nobody had urged Washington for office because he had been a surveyor's lad; nobody had voted for Adams because stately old ladies designated him as "that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into office the people had just had almost a surfeit of regular training in their chief magistrates. There was a certain zest in the thought of a change, and the nation certainly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... appeared, and the usual English country-house breakfast followed: a haphazard banquet, a decorous scrimmage for a surfeit of eggs, and fish, and bacon, and tongue, and tea, and coffee, and porridge, and even Heaven itself hardly knows what. Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for appreciation ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... part? Oh dear! That alters the case. And, pray, what occasioned this indisposition? Not a previous mental surfeit, I hope." ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... narrow trench, the one in which the left side keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English communication trenches are narrow—so narrow, indeed, that a man with a pack often gets held, and sticks there until ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the regent, "heretic or not heretic makes but small figure. 'Twill take France a century to overcome her late surfeit of religion. For us, 'tis most a question of how to keep the king in the saddle ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... French history must employ a little of every day. I hope you will ride on horseback daily if the weather should permit—Sam [6] always with you. Visit your neighbours B. B. as often as you please, taking very great care not to surfeit the family with your charming company, which may happen much sooner than you would be ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... that thou pour'st them wheat, And they will acorns eat; 'Twere simple fury, still, thyself to waste On such as have no taste! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, Whose appetites are dead! No, give them graines their fill, Husks, draff, to drink and swill. If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not their palate ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... something like them in mere human operations—but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. I pity you for over-work, but I assure you no-work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I brag'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off, that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of a surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... power in the hands of firm, determined patriots, who can distinguish the misled from traitors, who will regulate the state (if such should be their fortune) with a discriminating, manly, and provident mercy; men who are purged of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever they have been admitted into the habit of their minds; men who will lay the foundation of a real reform in effacing every vestige of that philosophy which pretends to have made discoveries in the Terra Australia of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Rome has robbed men of their bodies and of their lives, and has torn them limb from limb wantonly, as a spoiled hawk tears a pheasant and scatters the bright feathers on the ground. Rome has robbed men of their souls and has fed hell with them to its surfeit. And now, in her turn, her grasping hands have withered at the wrists, her insatiable lips are cracking upon her loosening teeth, and the mistress of the world is the sport of ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... time) through immoderate fasting, have been frequently mad." Of such men belike Hippocrates speaks, l. Aphor. 5, when as he saith, [1436]"they more offend in too sparing diet, and are worse damnified, than they that feed liberally, and are ready to surfeit." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... veracious witnesses," Bame snuffled, "that the death of Robert Greene Was caused by a surfeit, sir, of Rhenish wine And pickled herrings. Also, sir, that his shirt Was very foul, and while it was at wash He lay i' the cobbler's old blue smock, sir!" "Gods," The voice of Raleigh muttered nigh mine ear, "I had a dirty cloak once on my arm; But a Queen's feet ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... beast who was invited to dine with the lion and saw that all the footmarks of his predecessors led into the lion's cave, and none away from it. He described in humorous detail his interviews with the Indiana lion, and the particulars of the surfeit of lobster as given in the President's dialect; he even repeated to her the story told him by Mr. Tom Lord, without omitting oaths or gestures; he told her how matters stood at the moment, and how the President had laid ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... is a slippery dame, and hath a two-edged sword in her hand. We may have enough of justice in our character as rebels to give us a surfeit of it. I would fain overtake these robbers that we may relieve them of their spolia opima, together with any other wealth which they may have unlawfully amassed. My learned friend the Fleming layeth it down that it is no robbery ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Marah Rocke in a home of safety, plenty and kindness, in the old doctor's house, we must run down to Hurricane Hall to see what mischief Cap has been getting into since we left her! In truth, none! Cap had had such a surfeit of adventures that she was fain to lie by and rest upon her laurels. Besides, there seemed just now nothing to do—no tyrants to take down, no robbers to capture, no distressed damsels to deliver, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... here. [To the CARDINAL.] Is it not said Somewhere in Holy Writ, that every man Should be contented with that state of life God calls him to? Why should I change their state, Or meddle with an all-wise providence, Which has apportioned that some men should starve, And others surfeit? I did ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... world has robbed me of my love, time has dried up hatred, and as the living individual must feel something, I live upon what remains to me. I must also say that he who feels and lives thus does not get a surfeit of happiness. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... undoubtedly very attractive, and enough to warm the heart of a benevolent enthusiast like Charles; but it is not advisable to set food in great quantities before a starving man, lest he eat himself into a surfeit. Ignorance is always in danger of using power very ill, since we see that even the enlightened are frequently prone ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... many ill consequences of the treaty of Utrecht, it was within a point of giving my uncle Toby a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet Calais itself left not a deeper scar in Mary's heart, than Utrecht upon my uncle Toby's. To the end of his life he never could hear Utrecht mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne |
