"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... there you have it: wounded self-love and passion. That is quite enough motive for a murder. We have two of them in our hands; but who is the third? Nicholas and Psyekoff held him, but who smothered him? Psyekoff is shy, timid, an all- round coward. And Nicholas would not know how to smother with a pillow. His sort use an ax or a club. Some third person did the smothering; ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... reading, so suffice it to say, that with one man standing erect in the stern with a steering oar, and the others paddling like demons, the Ivory Coast boatmen invariably land their passengers, in a smother of foam which seems overwhelming, without spilling a drop of water on them. Not a visitor to this coast but has been impressed ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... there which cannot be shaken? THE PASSION OF FREEDOM is one of the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity of Babylon, or in the servitude of Rome. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... 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 ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... cut down the death-rate of most fevers fifty to seventy-five per cent already. Plenty of pure, cool water internally, externally, and eternally, rest, fresh air, and careful feeding, are the best febrifuges and antipyretics known to modern medicine. All others are frauds and simply smother a symptom without relieving its cause, with the exception of quinine in malaria, mercury, and the various antitoxins in their appropriate diseases, which act directly upon ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... no character could be more calculated to gain me the confidence of the Anglophobes of the Russian Court. I anticipated that they would smother me with attentions, and that from their hypocritical professions I should stand a good chance of learning what was actually ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might so easily conceal itself from ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, And Pity from thee more dear ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... worked so hard no one could imagine, unless it was for pure physical pleasure of using those great muscles. Unless, indeed, a fire, as it were, was burning in his mind, and drove him to labour to smother it, as they smother fires by beating them. Dolly was happier than ever—the gayest of the gay. She sang, she laughed, her white, gleaming teeth shone in the sunshine; it was as if she had some secret which enabled her to defy the taunts ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... unwilling eyes, I can scarcely tell whence and how at the last, the change came. I think that the pomp itself, the lord and the lackeys, the fine house, and all her state struck as it were cold at my heart, dooming to failure the mad appeal which they could not smother. But there was more; for all these might have been, and yet not reached or infected her soul. But when I spoke to her in words that had for me a sweetness so potent as to win me from all hesitation and make as nothing the whole world beside, she did not understand. I saw that ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... of thirty- five thousand people. Upon inquiring what they do in case of a fire, I learn that they don't even think of fighting the devouring element with its natural enemy, but, collecting on the adjoining roofs, they smother the flames by pelting the burning building with the soft, crumbly bricks of which Angora is chiefly built; a house on fire, with a swarm of half- naked natives on the neighboring housetops bombarding the leaping flames with bricks, would certainly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Heart knock at my Ribbes, Against the vse of Nature? Present Feares Are lesse then horrible Imaginings: My Thought, whose Murther yet is but fantasticall, Shakes so my single state of Man, That Function is smother'd in surmise, And nothing is, but what ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... of these eruptions were disastrous. The whole island was strown with volcanic ashes, which, where they did not smother the grass outright, gave it a poisonous taint. The cattle that ate of it were attacked by a murrain, of which great numbers died. The ice and snow, which had gathered about the mountain for a long period of time, were wholly melted by the heat. Masses of pumice ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... agents—every one of the inmates being removed to prison on the spot. The Sub-prefect, after taking down my "proces verbal" in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my passport. "Do you think," I asked, as I gave it to him, "that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother me?" ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... here for generations. The whalers filled their casks at this spring, working every hour of the twenty-four because the flow was small. Famous harpooners, steersmen who winked no eye when the wounded whale drew their boat through a smother of foam, shanghaied gentlemen, sweepings of harbors, Nantucket deacons, pirates, and the whole breed of sailors and fighting fellows, congregated here to bathe and to fill their water-casks. Near this ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... to betray to deserve to burst the handkerchief to smother you know what remains to be done to be dismissed there ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... with your bridle, my boy, we'll soon be out of this smother." It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it lightly over my eyes, and patting and coaxing he led me out of the stable. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shouted, "Here somebody! take this horse while ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... now that once the money has passed he won't be let to go off the place till he has heard all about the new enterprise and let in on the ground floor, and they hope he won't ever forget this moment when the money begins to roll in fit to smother him in round numbers. So Safety says he knows they're a good square set of boys, as clean as a hound's tooth, and he'll be over to-morrow to take over the stock ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... wool-soft paps I seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds my heart and me in durance, Hath life, death, love and all in ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... Then he that on the panniers rode, Let fly on th' other side a load, And, quickly charg'd again, gave fully In RALPHO'S face another volley. The Knight was startled with the smell, 825 And for his sword began to feel; And RALPHO, smother'd with the stink, Grasp'd his; when one, that bore a link, O' th' sudden clapp'd his flaming cudgel, Like linstock, to the horse's touch-hole; 830 And straight another, with his flambeaux, Gave RALPHO'S o'er the eye a damn'd blow. The beasts began to kick and fling, And forc'd the rout to ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by thee upon ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... been obliged to make use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, and ask her to substitute it in her memory for the inharmonic lines which he had used in order to smother the degenerate melody of a foreign lay. The other poem was intended for use in case his interview should not be successful. But on the way home Mr. Locker experienced an entire change of mind. He came to believe that it would be unwise for him ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... tyrants—for it was very seldom that the poor and ignorant New Mexicans were favored with a good, wise and just governor—governed on the principle of self aggrandizement. Being far separated from their home government, they took care to smother all evil reports, while the good, only, were allowed to circulate; and these, so far as the home government was concerned, solely by their authority, in order to have the desired effect to retain them in office. In this they were usually successful, as they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... 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
... coerce &c (compel) 744; curb, control; hold back, hold from, hold in, hold in check, hold within bounds, keep back, keep from, keep in, keep in check, keep within bounds; hold in leash, hold in leading strings; withhold. keep under; repress, suppress; smother; pull in, rein in; hold, hold fast; keep a tight hand on; prohibit &c 761; inhibit, cohibit^. enchain; fasten &c (join) 43; fetter, shackle; entrammel^; bridle, muzzle, hopple^, gag, pinion, manacle, handcuff, tie one's hands, hobble, bind hand and foot; swathe, swaddle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to shout with laughter, but caution made them smother it as much as possible. And just at this juncture, the door opened part way without even one little warning squeak, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... for one night he'd manage to sleep inside four stifling walls in a regular bed, like common people do. So Lon bedded him down in the guest chamber, but opened up the four windows in it and propped the door wide open so the poor fellow could have a breeze and not smother. He told this downtown the next morning, and he was beginning to look right puzzled indeed. He said the wayward child of Nature had got up after about half an hour and shut all the windows and the door. Lon thought first he was intending to commit suicide, but he didn't like ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... and the crash of falling spars, nor moved I for a space; lifting my head at last, I beheld on the littered decks below huddled figures that lay strangely twisted, that writhed or crawled. Then came the hoarse roar of a speaking trumpet and I saw Resolution, his face a smother of blood, where he leaned hard ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... he need be. My mother actually wanted him to stay on in the house—in her pink chintz room. Think of it! But he says houses smother him. I take it he's lived for years ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the Court House at that moment, Bill was forced to smother his resentment for the time being. There was nobody in Court except the Judge and the Usher, who were seated on the bench having a quiet game of cards ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... entered the great dining-room he saw once more his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, his own failure of all ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... a coupon election by arrangement with the Conservative Party to smother his opponents, hut asked Henry, before he consulted any one, what office he would take for himself and what he thought suitable for other people in his new Cabinet. Only men of a certain grandeur of character can do these things, but every one who watched the succeeding ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... beside. I knelt And thrust hands in and held my face away. Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating. A board is the best weapon if you have it. I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew, And said out loud, I couldn't bide the smother And heat so close in; but the thought of all The woods and town on fire by me, and all The town turned out to fight for me—that held me. I trusted the brook barrier, but feared The road would fail; ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... of the church party would simply throw Mexico back half a century in her march of improvement towards a higher state of civilization. It would check all educational progress, all commercial advance, and smother ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... below the darksome cloud Soon the night-wind roar'd, Wi' rainy storms that zent the zwollen streams Over ev'ry vword. The while the drippen tow'r did tell The hour, wi' storm-be-smother'd bell, An' over ev'ry flower's bud Roll'd on the flood, 'ithin ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... lifted the hopes of the people toward a government of equality, was hurrying on from the directorate to the consulate to the empire, and finally returning to the old monarchy somewhat worn and dilapidated, indeed, but sufficient in power to smother the hopes of the people for the time being. Numerous French writers, advocating anarchy, communism, and socialism, set up ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity which were not to be realized as the immediate result of the revolution. Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Cabet, and Louis Blanc set forth new ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... feelingly described became known to the lady's father, she was sent away at once, and Bulwer never saw her again. Very soon after, she was forced into a marriage against which her heart protested. For three years she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and when she sunk under the conflict, and death was about to relieve her, she wrote to Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had undergone, affirming her deathless love, and begging ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... pulling,) and the captain, who was steering, was not looking ahead, when, all at once, we heard the spout of a whale directly ahead. "Back water! back water, for your lives!" shouted the captain; and we backed our blades in the water and brought the boat to in a smother of foam. Turning our heads, we saw a great, rough, hump-backed whale, slowly crossing our fore foot, within three or four yards of the boat's stem. Had we not backed water just as we did, we should inevitably have gone smash upon him, striking him with our stem just ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 'er off Cape Stiff in the 'igh latitudes yonder, With her main-deck a smother of white an' her lee-rail dipping under, And the big greybeards drivin' by an' breakin' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... archives. The probability is that Aerenthal was at his work to demonstrate that Belgrade was a nest of vipers, so that Europe would not hearken to their protest when the time came for the House of Habsburg to smother them.[69] ... This same Austrian police-spy Nasti['c] had procured for Nikita a certain "revolutionary statue" which that personage made over to the Imperial authorities, for use against the Serbs at the Zagreb treason trial. This atrocious deed against his brother ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... I find that holy writ in many places Hath semblance with this method, where the cases Do call for one thing, to set forth another; Use it I may, then, and yet nothing smother Truth's golden beams: nay, by this method may Make it cast forth its rays as light as day. And now before I do put up my pen, I'll shew the profit of my book, and then Commit both thee and it unto that Hand That pulls the strong down, and ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case altogether; nor was it until ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 and picturesque ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... immediately after supper, with deep avowals of gratitude on the part of Eveley, and equally deep assurances of pleasure and good will on the part of the others. After they had gone, as Eveley inspected her stairway alone, she was comforted by the thought that she could fairly smother it with vines and all sorts of creeping and climbing things, and the casual comer would not notice how funny and wabbly it was. But as she went gingerly down, clinging desperately to the rail on both sides, she determined to take out ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... she is a goddess. Thou melter of strong minds, dar'st thou presume To smother all his triumphs, with thy vanities, And tye him like a slave, to thy proud beauties? To thy imperious looks? that Kings have follow'd Proud of their chains? have waited on? ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... astronomer on the planet Venus—assuming Venerians to be afflicted with terrestrial vices—and would cost no more than a very small war, to say nothing of employing thousands who would otherwise dissipate the taxpayers' money on Relief. A variant of this plan was to smother the weed with tons of dry cement and sand from airplanes; the rainy season, due to begin in a few months, would add the necessary water and the grass would then be encased in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... head off!'} exclaim the impetuous 'Smother the old witch!' } Hedzoff, the ardent Smith, and 'Pitch her into the ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... approaches, the bed should receive a mulch of leaves, manure or litter, to the depth of 4 inches or more, according to the latitude and the kind of material. If leaves are used, 3 inches will be enough, because the leaves lie close together and may smother out the frost that is in the ground and let the bulbs start. It will be well to let the mulch extend 1 foot or more beyond the margins of the bed. When cold weather is past, half of the mulch should be removed. The remainder may be left on till ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... place, a vast deal of snow had fallen; fallen, indeed, to such a degree, as even to cover the terrace, block up the path that communicated with the wreck, and nearly to smother the house and all around it. The winds were high and piercing, rendering the cold doubly penetrating. The thermometer now varied essentially, sometimes rising considerably above zero, though oftener falling far below it. There ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... smother of snow Sucatash came driving, head bent and hat brim pulled down to avoid the snow. The road was easy enough and he thought of nothing but getting along with all the speed possible. He did not notice that his horse, when emerging onto the bench, broke its ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... superior. He had long loved, or at least long aspired to the hope of marrying, the beautiful Zainab, sister of Abu-Bekr; but the fear of a repulse from the proud chief of his family had caused him to smother his inclination. He now disdained to supplicate for that chief's consent: he married the lady, and from that moment proceeded boldly in his projects of ambition. Having put the finishing touch to his magnificent city of Morocco, he transferred thither the seat of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... wasn't meant for bright lights, For the blaze of red and white lights, For the throngs that seems to smother In their selfishness, each other; For whenever I've been down there, Tramped the noisy, blatant town there, Always in a week I've started Yearning, hungering, heavy-hearted, For the home town and its spaces Lit by ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... very ill—oh! is he going to die?" was all the answer she could give in a hoarse whisper to Graham's attempts at comfort, trying the while to smother her sobs, so that they might not break out and wake ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... of the whole fun of this new situation lay the fact that these cliffs were inhabited by innumerable gulls. To catch one of these was Murphy's aim, and often was he washed out on to the sands in a smother of spindrift, in his mad eagerness to attain his end. The herring-gulls were the finest sport of all, with their constant melancholy cries—"pew-il," "pee-ole," or their hoarser note of warning, "kak-k-kak"; their bodies two feet in length; their spread of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... lamely, as necessity drove him—of what was to be. Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Saint of those Countries, called, Phantosteinaschap; in Latin, chap. de Saint Stephano; or in English, St. Stephen's: Here the Prince try'd all possible Contrivances, and a vast deal of Money it cost him; but the Feathers were so stiff they would not work, and the Fire within was so choaked and smother'd with its own Smoak, for want of due Vent and Circulation, that it would not burn; so he was oblig'd to take it down again; and from thence he carried it to his College of Bramyn Priests, and set it up in one of their Publick Buildings: There he drew Circles of Ethicks ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... song-sparrow trills, Every fir, and cedar, and yew Has a nest or a bird, It is quite absurd To hear them cutting across each other: Peewits, and thrushes, and larks, all at once, And a loud cuckoo is trying to smother A wood-pigeon perched on a birch, "Roo—coo—oo—oo—" "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! That's one for you!" A blackbird whistles, how sharp, how shrill! And the great trees toss And leaves blow down, You can almost hear them splash on ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a blanket over the smoking wood and smother it for a bit, to send up another big puff. Yes, that's what they call talking. Letters are formed by the puffs of smoke, just as we do the same with the wigwag flags, or the piece of looking-glass in ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... demanded by her or submitted to, and the result was satisfactory to the virtue of the accused damsel. Then naturally exploded the just indignation of insulted honour. Her brother, Lord Hastings, came up to town, saw Melbourne, who is said to have endeavoured to smother the affair, and to have tried to persuade Lord Hastings to do so; but he was not at all so inclined, and if he had been, it was too late, as all the world had begun to talk of it, and he demanded and obtained an audience of the Queen. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... knowed it, I could tell that he was troubled, whether by wrath or grief, there was no knowin' which, an' would explode one way or t'other afore long. He must on deck for a fresh breath o' the wet night, says he, or smother; an' he would presently drop below again, says he, in command of his temper an' restlessness. I seed, too, that the lad wished t' follow—he watched the skipper up the ladder, like a doubtful dog, an' got ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Bob reflected, dizzily—quite clearly he remembered marrying her. It was plainly as necessary, therefore, to shield her as to remove Jarvis Hammon and smother this accident. Or was it an accident, after all? Perhaps Lilas had shot the fellow. If that were true, then she ought to be arrested— certainly. But somebody had said, "She'll saddle it onto Lorelei to save herself." After all, it couldn't be murder, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband. Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin discovered several of Shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her own foc'sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... 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, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... "mamma," and most of us rather like to submit with simulated reluctance to the harmless extortion. If I had heard a certain tiny youth say, "Papa, when I'm a big man, and you're a little boy, I shall ask you to have some jam," I should have failed entirely to smother my laughter. Do you think the doleful one would have seen the fun of the remark if she had any power over the body or soul of that devoted child? Nay. She would have whined about slyness, and cunning hints, and greediness, and the probabilities of utter ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... forget, forget, Put by that glittering edge, put by; Slay the insect with light; Smother that smoky glow, Scatter the silver ash like snow When thy ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... but often, too, he repulsed him more sharply than the haughtiest upstart would repel the meanest of his servants. At last the slave took courage and called the lad by his name, for it seemed less hard to submit to a scolding than to smother the utterance of a strong, warm feeling, unimportant as it might be, which was formed in words in his mind. Antinous raised his head a little on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not the girl urged him on. It was the time of night when she had started to run away, and the same apprehension that filled her then came upon her with the evening. She longed to be out of the land which held the man she feared. She would rather bury herself in the earth and smother to death than be caught by him. But, as they rode on, she told her companion much of the habits of the curious little creatures they had seen; and then, as the night settled down upon them, she pointed out the dark, stealing creatures that slipped from their way now and then, or gleamed with a fearsome ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... narrow stream full of boats, and spanned by a handsome bridge, divides the town into two portions, and that a handsome clock-tower (both tower and bridge erected by some wealthy Chinese merchants) is a salient object below the Stadthaus. Trees, trailers, fruits, smother the houses, and blossom and fruit all the year round; old leaves, young leaves, buds, blossom, and fruit, all appearing at once. The mercury rarely falls below 79 degrees or rises above 84 degrees. The softest and least perceptible of land and sea breezes blow alternately ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... 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 for his wickedness. As far as we know, he never showed his ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... thrown as far as possible in another direction; otherwise he insists on joining the tadpole search, and, poking his snout under water, attempts to bark at the same time, with much coughing and smother. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... rails, straining their eyes into the dense smother, while whistles were blowing on all sides. The shrill shriek of the government tug, the hoarse bellow of the ocean liner, and the fog whistle on Yerba Buena Island, all joined in a strident warning, sending their intermittent blast ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... said, "that infimus hiland of which the innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with their cotton, and can't sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face, these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their Jessywhittickle ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... or most commonly used word has therefore been chosen; for instance, "mercury", "tranquil", "diaphanous", "suffocate", "salve", "renown", "fiddle", are not to be found, but "quicksilver", "calm", "translucent", "smother", ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... not 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 ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... days Hippolyte threw himself into his work, and to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. Study consoled him, though it could not smother the memories of so many tender hours spent ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... this delightful monastery of Valdemosa. I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to hide and smother it, not being able to make ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... word sounds like a gnome's irony from all the corners of my room, for my work is heaping up on all sides and threatens to smother me. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... upon the other, Which played within the tangles of her hair; And to contend with thoughts she could not smother She seemed by the distraction of her air. 'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother To leave together this imprudent pair,[t] She who for many years had watched her son so— I'm very certain mine would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... she appeared so poignantly desirable. He wanted to seize her in his arms, smother her with kisses, bury his face in her hair. And swiftly upon this desire came the thought that if she appealed to him so strongly, might she not appeal quite as strongly to the rogue? He laid the spoon on the rim of the ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Men bow before the power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it. To sum it all up in a phrase, if they fail to smother genius in the mud, they fall on their knees and worship it. Corruption is a great power in the world, and talent is scarce. So corruption is the weapon of superfluous mediocrity; you will be made to feel the point of it everywhere. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... forward and was lost in a whistling smother. It was as if an untrimmed hedge had suddenly gone mad. Andramark made the best of a bad business, guarded his face and the top of his head with his arms, ran swiftly, but not too swiftly, and kept his eyes out for feet that were thrust forward to ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... bad—really in its essence it is not bad at all. If we only give the other man a real chance. It is the pushing and pulling and demanding of one human being toward another that smother the best in us, and make life a fearful strain. Of course there is a healthy demanding as well as an unhealthy demanding, but, so far as I know, the healthy demanding can come only when we are clear of personal resistance and ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... heads bobbed above the rows of desks. The head clerk himself had to gaze window-ward to smother his smile. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... who brought all this." And he rapped immediately on the door. The jailer came to open it with Baisemeaux, who, devoured by fear and uneasiness, was beginning, in spite of himself, to listen at the door. Happily, neither of the speakers had forgotten to smother his voice, even in the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was born in a wild smother of flying snow, which died at dawn to let a pale, heatless sun peer tentatively over the southern mountains, his slanting beams setting everything aglitter. Frost particles vibrated in the air, coruscating diamond dust. Underfoot, on the path beaten betwixt ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unknown to his guests. He carefully gave each their portion to eat, but made so many odd movements that the Otter could not refrain from laughing, for he is the only one who is spoken of as a jester. The Manito looked at him with a terrible look, and then made a spring at him, and got on him to smother him, for that was his mode of killing animals. But the Otter, when he felt him on his neck, slipped his head back and made for the door, which he passed in safety; but went out with the curse of the Manito. The others passed the night, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... in to visit a few minutes, so she gave him the slate to see if he could read her copy, and by this ruse she found what the lines were. She was so overjoyed she opened her lips and then clapped both hands over them, to smother the ejaculation at her tongue's end. To distract Peter she stuck out her foot and moved ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... might deem Came forth from the shade, of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again. And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain "Not mine! not mine! now, Mary mother. Aid me the sinful hope to smother! Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong. But pure the heart of a knight should be,— Sleep on, sleep on, thou art safe for me. Yet shalt thou know, by a certain sign, Whose lips have been so near to thine, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... it! I've got so I believe I should sleep right through the racket, but he kicks me out of bed and howls for me to smother the thing. So you see I am bound to get up at the proper time. Once I am out of bed, I stay up. The first morning after I bought the clock the thing went off just as it was beginning to break day. I got up and stopped it and then ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... donned his spectacles, and once more started to rummage in the cupboard, and to smother his guest with dust as he untied successive packages of papers—so much so that his victim burst out sneezing. Finally he extracted a much-scribbled document in which the names of the deceased peasants lay as close-packed as a cloud of midges, for there were a hundred and twenty ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... anxious as you are to see them," came from Mrs. Tom Rover, as both of her sons gave her a warm hug. "There, there! don't smother me!" she added affectionately. ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... must be short, so I smother what remnant of modesty I have, covering nothing with the veil of circumlocution, but telling you plainly what I know you want to hear. I love only you and am true to you in every thought, word, and deed. I long for you, yearn for you, pray for you, and be your fortune ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... 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 I did not want ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... 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
... I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... possibilities concerning which he wondered that he had never thought of them before: if he had he could not have left the castle! What might not a man in the mental and moral condition of the earl, unrestrained by law or conscience, risk to secure the property for his son? Might he not poison her, smother her, kill her somehow, anyhow that was safest? Then rushed into his mind what the housekeeper had told him of his cruelty to his wife: a man like that, no longer feeling, however knowing the difference between ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these being moved ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... he said. "It's only the outdoor things that are really important,—how to climb mountains, how to stop a runaway horse,—how to smother a grass fire!" ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... not know a great man's power and might In spite of innocence can smother right, Colour his villainies to get esteem, And make the honest man the villain seem? I know it, and the world doth know 'tis true, Yet I protest if such a man I knew, That might my country prejudice or thee Were he the greatest or ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... smother the divine fire of youth or we may feed it. We may either stand stupidly staring as it sinks into a murky fire of crime and flares into the intermittent blaze of folly or we may tend it into a lambent flame with power to make clean and ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... witness—and hers, too. But just here a policeman comes along and closes her wicket with a bang and cuts her off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come only as shrieks from a lost soul in an underground dungeon. He also threatens to cut us off and smother us if we don't shut up. I wonder whether they've got her ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... her wrist, and they stood in silence. She could utter no word; but her mouth trembled and she tried to smother a sob that arose ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... hand, it was claimed that many Democrats who could only be held by party claims would not respect a mere indorsement. Southern delegates argued that if Democrats hoped to defeat their opponents they must encourage the revolt by giving it prestige and power rather than smother it by compelling Liberals to choose between Grant and a Democrat. The wisdom of this view could not be avoided, and after adopting the Cincinnati platform without change, the convention, by a vote of 686 to 46, stamped the Cincinnati ticket with the highest Democratic authority.[1378] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... distress Cower at a comet's loveliness Shaken across the midnight sky; Though the wind roars, and Victory, A virgin fierce, on vans of gold Stoops through the cloud's white smother rolled Over the armies' shock and flow Across the broad green hills below, Yet hovers and will not circle down To cast t'ward one the leafy crown; Though men drive galleys' golden beaks To isles beyond the sunset ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... The sighings of the patient little milliner, who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner, only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my companions should become aware of my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... his side, upon which his burnishing-iron was heating. The oil blazed up on the floor and ran toward the nearly finished pile of work. The cloth on the table caught fire. In a fever of terror and excitement, the slipper-maker caught it in his hands, wrung it, and tore at it to smother the flames. His hands were burned, but what of that? The slippers, the slippers! If they were burned, it was ruin. There would be no Yom Kippur, no feast of Atonement, no fast—rather, no end of it; ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 of discord was ever ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... sun-cured hay by the fierce summer heats. There is neither tree nor bush, the sky is grey, the earth buff, the air blae and windy, and clouds of coarse granitic dust sweep across the prairie and smother the settlement. Cheyenne is described as "a God-forsaken, God-forgotten place." That it forgets God is written on its face. It owes its existence to the railroad, and has diminished in population, but is a depot for a large amount of the necessaries of ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... torrent, and sullenly dash! But where is the brave one—the swift lightning-flash? Soft star of my soul, my mother, Sleep, the fire let ashes smother; Gaze no more, shine eyes are weary, Sit not by the threshold stone; Gaze not through the night-fog dreary, Eat thine evening meal alone, Seek him not, O mother, weeping, By the cliff and by the ford: On a bed of dust he's sleeping— Broken is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat, both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of boxing, nor could I distinguish to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... giggled,—then all three pretended to smother the demonstration with their handkerchiefs and behind their hands. Mary 'Liza looked scared and sorry. My father ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... objectionable feature. In my reference to sun baths in the preceding chapter on Blood Purification I placed special emphasis upon the value of light as a vitalizing and stimulating factor in life and health. Ordinarily we not only smother our skins so far as the air is concerned, but we also shut out the light, hiding our bodies in a cellar, so to speak. Our bodies need light as well as air and for this reason dark colored clothing cannot be recommended. For warmth when in the sunshine ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... of the brigs in chase were now under double-reefed topsails, and the way in which they drove along through the mountainous sea, now soaring up to the crest of a wave in a smother of spray, showing the whole of their fore-foot and some twenty feet of keel, and anon diving furiously into a hollow, burying themselves to the windlass bitts, was a sight worth seeing. The brig to windward had taken up the pursuit by edging broad away for us, but her people ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... down. She 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 to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... policy of the mighty outlaw was in many respects pure and lofty. It was this same influence, though, which won for Father Claude his only enemy in Torn; the little, grim, gray, old man whose sole aim in life seemed to have been to smother every finer instinct of chivalry and manhood in the boy, to whose training he had devoted the past nineteen years ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "being given more to religious exercises than reigning," says the historian. He would often exhibit his piety in order to draw attention away from His Royal Incompetency. He was not the first or last to smother the call to duty under the cry of Hallelujah. Like the little steamer engine with the big whistle, when he whistled the boat stopped. He did not have a boiler big enough to push the great ship of state and shout Amen ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... 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
... This voyage, and these gifts confer, in proof Of hospitality and unfeign'd love, Judging, with all wise men, the stranger-guest And suppliant worthy of a brother's place. 670 And thou conceal not, artfully reserv'd, What I shall ask, far better plain declared Than smother'd close; who art thou? speak thy name, The name by which thy father, mother, friends And fellow-citizens, with all who dwell Around thy native city, in times past Have known thee; for of all things human none Lives altogether ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... by whose pale beam I caught glimpses of bellying sails towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to the heaving seas or plunged in a white smother of foam. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... was not detained there more than a couple of minutes, though it may have seemed much longer to the anxious lad, for his heart beat so tumultuously that it really threatened to smother him. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... later, greatly revived, but with faces and hands intensely smarting from their burns, the boys replenished the cans of water—for they still had a two miles' run through the smother of smoke—and lifted the car onto the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... the good destroyed, we wish to believe no more in it as inherent in our being, and rather than suffer repeatedly from its disappearance, we prefer to smother it before perfect development. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... of attack is to smother the defense with a torrent of explosive shells, kept up incessantly for one or more days, and shatter the defense so they will offer but slight resistance to the infantry; then rush forward with the infantry and seize the positions while the enemy is demoralized, and consolidate them ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... cheerful face; and our women, like the Malabar wives, are forced to go smiling and painted to sacrifice themselves with their husbands; their relations being the most eager to push them on to their duty, and, under their shouts and applauses, to smother and hush their cries ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray |
