"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... depend, entirely wrong. I cannot be deceived in Charles. From you such words produce no effect but one of regret that you should so much err in your estimate of any one. From any one but yourself they would have produced in me a feeling of anger I might have found it difficult to smother." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle. Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her punished, deeming it ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... table, for I was dazed for a few moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraid to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in the darkness and smother me. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel Idle for ever to waft her or wind her ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... respect for our mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... wind—something of small fashion, but long and indubitably capacious—something with a hood. A little cloak, possibly: I don't know. But I am sure that it could envelop, that it could boil or roast, that it could fairly smother—a baby! It was lined with golden-brown, crackling silk, which Pattie Batch's mother had left in her trunk, upon her last departure, poor woman! from the sordid world of Swamp's End to regions which were now become in Pattie Batch's loving vision Places of Light. ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... and sons through sinless lands dispersed, With red flame shod, Made accurst the name of man, and thrice accursed The name of God. Lest for those past fires the fires of my repentance Hell's fume yet smother, Now my blood would buy remission of my sentence; ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lawn, but care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so close together as to prevent the growth of the grass by obstructing either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of gloominess ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remain in the ashes. Fire only preys upon the moisture, which is its natural nourishment. Indeed, water, wine, and other liquors, having abundance of earthy and heavy parts in them, by falling into fire part it, and by their roughness and weight smother and extinguish it. But oil, because purely liquid, by reason of its subtility, is overcome by the fire, and so ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... 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
... some nefarious trick, and he had watched them from the time they borrowed the wheelwright's punt. He went on to describe how he had offended them by keeping his eye upon their movements, and told how they had tried to smother him by leading him into a dangerous morass, while just at dusk, as he was watching their boat, he saw them start towards him, and evidently believing that they were unseen from where they had tied their punt, they had deliberately taken aim ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... 'tis not true. In vain, in vain I smother All the torture that racks me. I love Mimi, she is my only treasure! I love her, but, oh! ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... my "kind Mamma" as soon as I had read this note, and when she had consented that I should go to see that dear old Aunt of mine in London, did not I half smother her with kisses. I thought the first of May would never come,—but it did; and Tom-tit was sent to London with me by the railway to ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... allowed to present accusations, and to prosecute capital offences. Punishments vary according to the quality of the crime. Traitors and deserters they hang upon trees. Cowards, and sluggards, and unnatural prostitutes they smother in mud and bogs under an heap of hurdles. Such diversity in their executions has this view, that in punishing of glaring iniquities, it behooves likewise to display them to sight; but effeminacy and pollution must be buried and ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... to find in each The wisdom each denies the other; These mazes of conflicting speech All theories of culture smother. I'll raise and reap, with honest hand, The native harvest of my land; Do thou the same, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Howell. "We've utilized all our own ideas; that is, all but one, and I don't like that. I suppose we can dig a pit around the pipe and smother the blaze. But that's goin' to be quite a job, and I'm ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... bowed head and Jeekum's white face turned to it? There was a steady pressure on Nathaniel's arm now, a warning, frightened pressure, and the hand that made it trembled. Jeekum feared the worst—but his fear was not greater than the chill of disappointment that came to smother the excited beating of Nathaniel's heart. What had the jailer meant to say? What did he know about Marion and Winnsome, and why had he given birth to new hope in the same breath that he ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... a noble other, Went he, whispering soft and low: "Good-bye — pray for me, my mother; Sister! kiss me — farewell, brother;" And he strove his grief to smother. Forth, with footsteps firm and fearless, And his parting gaze was tearless Though his heart was lone and cheerless, Thus from all he ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... bury the dead. I am inclined to believe, from the appearance of the place, that smoke could scarcely have been the real agent of destruction; then, as now, it would have taken a great deal of pure smoke to smother a Highlander. It may be perhaps deemed more probable, that the huge fire of rafter and roof-tree piled close against the opening, and rising high over it, would draw out the oxygen within as its proper food, till at length all would be exhausted; and life would go ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... down," literally and metaphorically, on this point, absolutely determined that boots and saddle-bags should share my fortunes. Eventually I compromised things, by investing in a colossal pair of overalls, warranted to smother and obliterate the proportions of any human ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... went up from the watching thousands. It was silhouetted against the night clouds in a faint line of fire. The hue deepened, the glow spread all round, and the doomed airship began its crash to earth in a smother of flame. The witnesses to this amazing spectacle naturally supposed that a shell had struck the Zeppelin. Its tiny assailant that had dealt the death-blow had been quite invisible during the fight. Only on the following morning did the public learn of ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child—she will press it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger—another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes—those eyes which, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shaped a joke, Jason felt them like a veneer on the outside. Something plastered on with a life of its own. Inside he was numb and immovable. His body was stiff as his eyes still watched that arch of alien flesh descend and smother the one-armed Pyrran with ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... and more, till it be filled with all the fulness of God." "It is not a melancholy kind of sitting still, and slothful waiting, that speaks men enlivened by the Spirit and power of God. It is not religion to stifle and smother those active powers and principles which are within us.... Good men do not walk up and down the world merely like ghosts and shadows; but they are indeed living men, by a real participation from Him who is ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he gets away with; and that the other fellow's loss makes him and his as miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, 'I have decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... cannot be denied the praise of activity, perseverance, fertility of resource, and general military capacity. But he was cruel and fickle; he disgraced his ministers and his generals on insufficient grounds; he allowed himself, from considerations of policy, to smother his religious convictions; and he risked subjecting Persia to the horrors of a civil war, in order to gratify a favoritism which, however justified by the event, seems to have rested on no worthy motive. Chosroes was preferred on account of his beauty, and because he was the son ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Mary managed to smother her emotions on the subject of the brandy, and the old woman chattered on, throwing out the news of the village in a series of humorous fragments, tinged in general with the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... District of Columbia as a violation of the rights of the citizens of that District derived from the implied conditions on which that territory was ceded to the General Government." Instead of denying the constitutional power, they virtually admit its existence, by striving to smother it under an implication. In February, 1836, the Legislature of North Carolina "Resolved, That, although by the Constitution all legislative power over the District of Columbia is vested in the Congress of the United States, yet we ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... at the wheel. The Commander glanced aft through the trail of smoke at the next astern swinging round in the smother of his wake. "Well, we shan't be long now before we tie up to the buoy—curse these fellows! Here come all the drifters with mails and ratings for the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... younger Brother, A Daulphine, and two Dukes, in pieces hewen; To them six Earles lay slaine by one another; There the grand Prior of France, fetcht his last groane, Two Archbishops the boystrous Croud doth smother, There fifteene thousand of their Gentrie dy'de With each two Souldiers, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... shouted Ebearhard, but the warning came too late. The young man flung the bag into the torrent, where it disappeared in a smother of foam. He rose to his feet ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... 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 the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... detective had a lingering suspicion that he was making more of a fool of himself than ever. He tried to smother this, and to appear frank and genial before Bordine. If the man before him was not Barkswell, then he resembled him so closely as to defy ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... and leave the office to himself: he could not see her naked charms, her arms stretched out to receive a lover, with impatient joy, without madness; to see her clasp him fast, when he threw himself into her soft, white bosom, and smother him with kisses: no, he could not bear it now, and almost lost his respect when he beheld it, and grew saucy unperceived. And it was in vain that he looked back upon the reward he had to stand for that necessary cypher a husband. In vain he ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... rapids and it was exhilarating fun at first. Then Bob's heart came up into his throat for a minute as he looked ahead and could see only a smother of foam. Mr. Waterman steered straight for what seemed the worst part of it. In another moment they were in it and Bob thought that the canoe would never rise to the wall of water ahead. But it did. In a second, they were shooting down ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... shutting up of churches; but he might as well, I can warn him, or he will preach to empty pews; it beats all, and to-day was communion day, too; I should have thought more would have turned out; but, I declare, I thought I should smother when I went up to the rails; and, to cap all, that old Mrs. Godfrey, who weighs at least three hundred, came and knelt close by me, and just completely crushed all one side of my flounces; I was provoked ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... smother his wrath during the brief moments he was giving his orders; but no sooner had the seemingly pliant tools of his will left, than he again foamed over, and pacing back and forth, continued his cursing, as though he would spend his impotent ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... became an outlaw, in the same way that the James boys became outlaws—through accident, and not through choice. Social disgrace is never sought, and obloquy is not a thing to covet—these things may come, and usually they mean a smother-blanket to all worldly success. But Ann and Wendell had their love; and each had a bank-account, and then they had a pride that proved a prophylactic 'gainst the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry up, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... open the throttle and endeavor to raise water until both injectors would put enough water into the boiler to make it entirely safe to close the throttle. If unable to raise the water level to the lower gauge cock would smother the fire or put it out entirely, if necessary, ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... she, my friends, my little Hulda, whom I have brought back with me from Dal," said he. "And this is Joel, her noble brother; but pray, my good friends, do not smother them!" ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... could live in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them from starvation. The hunting will be mighty poor next fall, for the deer and other ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... score or so of valuable prizes have been snatched from under the very knife of the guillotine, then, there is much gnashing of teeth and useless cursings, but nothing serious or definite is done to smother those accursed English flies which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... true," his generous patrons say, "Of genius he ne'er had a ray; Yet, all his faults to smother, The youth inherits, from his sire, A name which all the world admire, And dearly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... the laborers' camp, skirting the railroad at the edge of town, looking for Carson. He found the big Irishman in one of the larger tent-houses, talking with the cook, who was preparing breakfast amid a smother of smoke and the strong mingled odors of frying bacon and coffee. Corrigan went only to the flap of the tent, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... oppressions, and complain of the violence and injustice of Lord Macartney, I am insulted by his affected construction that my communications are dictated by the insinuations of others, at the same time that his conscious apprehensions for his misconduct have produced the most abject applications to me to smother my feelings, and entreaties to write in his Lordship's favor to England, and to submit all my affairs to his direction. When his submissions have failed to mould me to his will, he has endeavored to effect his purposes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... waiting for him, Griffith introduced Blake to the engine-driver of the bridge-service train, two or three foremen, and several of the bridge workers. But the moment McGraw reappeared in arctics and Mackinaw coat, Griffith hurriedly led the way out of the smother of smoke ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... which those women stand asking for work, on one side stands an orthodox disciple of St. Paul, and on the other a dainty exquisite; and the one says, it is not religious, and the other says, it is not fashionable, for woman to be anything but a drudge. Now, strangle the one in his own creed, and smother the other in his own perfumes, and give to those thousand women freedom to toil. Let public opinion only grant that, like their thousand brothers, those thousand women may go out, and wherever they find work to do, do it, without a stigma being set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wires on poles and roof-tops. They had done this, not because it was cheap, but because it was the only possible way, so far as any one knew in that kindergarten period. A telephone wire required the daintiest of handling. To bury it was to smother it, to make it dull or perhaps entirely useless. But now that the number of wires had swollen from hundreds to thousands, the overhead method had been outgrown. Some streets in the larger cities had become black with ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... 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 ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... chopper and a lean-bladed knife. Your earnest shopper is never abroad before nine o'clock in the evening, and many of them have to await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up his wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfully fingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers' shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherless brothers and sisters with the few shillings which Dad has doled out. Who knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... might die very soon, the living was placed by his side, his face to his till the very lips met, and extending along limb to limb and foot to foot, and nestled down into his couch of rottenness, to impede his breathing as far as possible and smother his cries. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... Republic bred her free-born sons To smother conscience in the coward's hush, And had to have a freedom-champion's Blood sprinkled in her face ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... see you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to "slay them ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... tell—" Her voice broke in a half-sob she tried to smother. "No one can ever know what it meant to me, but I knew she understood, and suddenly the something that had been tight and cruel snapped, and for the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... thought that a mile lay between him and shelter, but it was a relief to know that he would have the wind at his back. Darkness was settling over the land. The lofty hills seemed to be closing in as if to smother the breath out of this insolent adventurer who walked alone among them. He was an outsider. He did not belong there. He came from the lowlands and he was an ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Bouncer, who was addicted to uncontrollable fits of laughter at improper seasons, was so tickled at some sotto voce remark of Frederick Delaval's, that she burst into a hearty ringing laugh, which, ere she could smother its noise with her handkerchief, had startled the watchful ears of the monarch ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... 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 ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... flight off the ground, run down towards the water until obstructed by the hedge, when they are driven towards the centre, where a hole about five feet deep is prepared to receive them; in this they effectually smother each other. The birds are then plucked and their carcasses generally thrown in a heap to waste, whilst the feathers are pressed in bags and taken to Launceston for sale.* The feathers of twenty birds weigh one pound; and the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... the Lass slowed, and the pursuing vessel overhauled them rapidly. With a great smother of foam at her bows she ducked into the choppy sea and came like a race horse. In half an hour she was almost abreast on the port quarter. A man with a megaphone appeared on her poop deck and leveled the instrument at the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... pathway we're roaming, Mid flow'rets may lie, But soon will life's gloaming, Come dark'ning our sky. Then seek not to smother Kind feelings in thee, And scorn not thy brother, Though poor ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... shouts sounded through the mist from the bow of the ship, which was no longer visible in the dense smother. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... vacant was the sudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy step crush her life out,—as he would have done, she thought, choking down the icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose, though it cost his own heart's life to do it. He would trample her down, if she kept him back from his end; but be false to her, false to himself, that ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... arms and driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the last in each ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... rolled in the dust outside, yelling vigorously at all times. Specialists declare that the reason for all great singers coming from lowly origin is found in this early development of the muscles of the throat. Parents of means employ nurses or sedatives to suppress or at least to smother these infantile protests against being thrust inconsiderately into the turmoil of human beings. Flora yelled or slept, as the case might be; her parents were equally indifferent. They were too busily concerned with the getting of bread and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... where the Bay of Biscay fights the white horses of the North Sea, the Island of Guernsey rides at anchor. Its black and yellow, red and purple coast-line, summer and winter, is awash with surf, burying the protecting reefs in a smother of foam. Between these drowned ridges of despair, which warn the toilers of the sea of an intention to engulf them, tongues of ocean pierce the grim chasms of ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... he bethought him to consult the countenance of his companion. The marble of the pilaster, against which he leaned, was not more cold and unmoved than the face of the inquisitor. The man had learned to smother every natural impulse in the assumed and factitious ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I whisper'd something to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... smother-out technique," Verkan Vall grinned. "I only heard a little talk about the 'Flying Saucers', and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... lust of power, of so many of its advocates and confessors, at which the adversaries of the Christian view of the world so willingly point, are but a confirmation of its value. For they show us how divine and heavenly the gift must be, if even such errors were not able to smother its fruits. If we do not wish to suppose that mankind has foundations and ends which up to the present it is not yet allowed to know, we certainly must look for these foundations and ends where we find the best ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... greatest joy is, that you have now so hoisted your top-sail, that your wife cannot any more call you a Dry-boots, or a John Cannot; which were for you such disrespectfull names, and yet for quietness sake you were forced to smother them in your breast, because you could have no ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... him. On the other 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 ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... where will you find children who are younger than the "Tommies"? Even the wards where there are only "cot cases" are decorated, and the men lie in bed and watch the invaders from other wards who come in and smother the place with evergreens. There is one ward where a man lies dying of cancer—here, too, they come, making clumsy attempts to walk on tip-toe, and smiling encouragement as they hang the mistletoe from the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... 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 went back to bed. Hartwick growled, but we both ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... mother, Mother, beautiful and faithful! Wilt thou weep when I have perished, Fallen on the field of glory, Fallen from thy race forever?" Thus the mother speaks in answer: "Canst not fathom love maternal, Canst not smother her affection; Bitterly I'll mourn thy downfall, I would weep if thou shouldst perish, Shouldst thou leave my race forever; I would weep in court or cabin, Sprinkle all these fields with tear-drops, Weep great rivers to the ocean, Weep to melt the snows ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... noticeable fact that Mr. Clark's complexion invariably grew more sultry than its wont, and that his eyes, forever moist, grew dewier, and that his lips and tongue would seem covertly entering upon some lush conspiracy, which in its incipiency he would be forced to smother with his hastily drawn handkerchief. Then the eccentric Mr. Clark would laugh nervously, and pouncing on some subject so vividly unlike the one just preceding it as to daze the listener, he would ripple ahead with a tide of eloquence that positively overflowed and washed ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 wing no ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... a cry of rage, caught her to his breast, and pressed her to him as though he would smother her. Then, bounding from the portico, he rushed in the direction of the firing with the speed of a deer pursued ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the first place, the smoke will smother us. Then suppose we reached the spot? We might be nearer the rebels than our friends. They know where we are. If they are not taken, they will come back for us. If they are taken, we must do our best to get to our lines and send out a scouting party. Be guided by me, youngster. I am an older hand ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... smother some of them yet," said Eddie Parsons, looking back at the Ruth. He felt pretty good, because he had the wheel when we ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... quickly had a little blaze. The others fed this in a cautious manner, so as not to smother it by too much fuel. As a result the fire was in a short time burning freely, and diffusing a genial warmth around that proved very ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... The irrepressible, unquenchable, immortal soul, whose every mark is everlasting! Every secret sin committed against it cries out from the house-tops. Cunning may strive to conceal, will may determine to smother, love may fondly whisper, "It does not hurt"; but the soul will not BE outraged. Somewhere, somehow, when and where you least expect, unconscious, perhaps, to its owner, unrecognized by the many, visible only ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... hope that the past With its misunderstandings we'll smother; And you, sir, and I, sir, be throned here at last As equals, the ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... "Smother not your good intentions; and remember, if you contemplate violence to any among us, that the arm of that law you affect to despise, reaches far, and that though its movements are sometimes slow, they ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which the small gilt initials "M.E." stood forth as a melancholy memento. He put the key into the lock and half turned it. Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked about him. Was that a sound at the back of the room? It was just as though someone had laughed and then tried to smother the laugh with a cough. A slight shiver ran over ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... not call Susan. Oh, was she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris—she did not care if they were in Paris—if only the baby wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was very ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... boarding-school girl comes to think kindly of Rome, and rebukes all opposition to the church as bigotry or ignorance on the part of those with whom she associates. The influence is noticeable. It is fashionable to attend the Papal Church, fashionable to contribute to its prosperity, fashionable for men to smother their opinions, fashionable for the politician to seek the favor of that power that furnishes, in its subtlety and in its power to work in darkness, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... escaped," exclaimed Andrew Zane. "As long as that tigress accompanies him he has expiation to make. Voluptuous, jealous, restless, and, like a snake in the tightness of her folds and her noiseless approach, she will smother him with kisses and sell ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... for he had a presentiment he would fall on this very day. First, that sin he committed in Liverpool, when, in an evil hour, yielding to the advice and example of wicked companions, he took to drink in order to smother the thought of it; and drink caused him to rob the widow, and to shun further the thought of these crimes he enlisted in the army; but yet, here, in the very ranks, with drums beating, and music playing, amid the shouts of Indians and din of battle, the sins were ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders and toadstools; ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... it too, Sebald! When heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat, Its black-blue canopy suffered descend Close on us both, to weigh down each to each, And smother up all life except our life. So lay we till ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... scolded. Mother, dear, if you only knew how sweet home looks after the Sheen Valley! Don't smother me any more, girls. I want to tell you something that will surprise you;" and Bessie, still holding her mother's hand, but looking at Hatty, gave a rapid and somewhat indistinct account of her meeting with ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who was to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou wakedst this morning, and wast thou content even with false accusations, that is, rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not, than to smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spentest that hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment upon Herod, tetrarch ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for God's sake, take hur ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... wore two rows of shining buttons down his braided coat and was never without white gloves and morning, noon and night paraded about in the duckiest little skull-cap cocked very much to one side like a Grenadier's!" And Dinky-Dunk told me to go to sleep or he'd smother me with a horse-blanket. So I squirmed back into my blanket and got "nested" and watched the fire die away while far, far off somewhere a coyote howled. That made me lonesome, so I got Dinky-Dunk's hand, and fell asleep holding ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... one of the oaks—his watch-tower in other periods of stress—he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and pausing only long enough to take up his mother ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... would-be lovers in order to open my door more freely to the man of my choice—an action which no one holds against me, however, because I am only an actress, and the public classes us in a separate category, so that they may more readily offer up to us the incense with which they smother us! Be it so! There are also in my profession disinterested hearts which may serve as examples—and I pretend to the very highest rank as an actress in every role I assume, even in this city. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 stride and threw up its head as though ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... adding consciousness without confusing instinct. This success, unfortunately so rare in man's life as to seem paradoxical, is its whole achievement. Spirituality ought to have been a matter of course, since conscious existence has inherent value and there is no intrinsic ground why it should smother that value in alien ambitions and servitudes. But spirituality, though so natural and obvious a thing, is subject, like the lilies' beauty, to corruption. I know not what army of microbes evidently invaded from the beginning the soul's physical basis and devoured its tissues, so that sophistication ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... wind raged on and the snow piled its drifts. Joshua Ward sat silent by the fire, his head in his hands, or stood in the "dingle," gazing mournfully out into the smother of snowflakes. It would be a mad undertaking to venture abroad. He realized it ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... concerning "mort main"—the dead hand. This hand of the past reaches up into the present to smother the rising flame of modern ideals, to reforge our chains when we have broken them, to arrest progress. It is the hand of such as have lived on earth but have not loved humanity. At the call of those who fear progress and freedom, it ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing, they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second time, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... gifted place at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the morning. It is good: it is superabundant—and there is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill of such a country! When I do, pone me pigris campis: smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me! At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles: and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the guide raised the rifle, took quick but careful aim, and fired. There was no puff of smoke, for the new high-powered, smokeless powder was used. Following the shot, there was a commotion in the water. Amid a smother ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... up with the yoke, Brown as the sweet-smelling loam, Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke The ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things which ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... it would, I can't help it—what would you do, Matthew? It blows like thunder: I can't tell how fast she's going,—I don't want to over-shoot the light, and then have to thrash back through such a smother ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,—this it is to be slave-masters ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... point until the creature broke water. At the same instant the weapon left his grasp, apparently without any force behind it; but we on deck, holding the line, soon found that our excited hauling lifted a big vibrating body clean out of the smother beneath. "'Vast hauling!" shouted the mate, while as the porpoise hung dangling, the harpooner slipped the ready bowline over his body, gently closing its grip round the "small" by the broad tail. Then we hauled on the noose-line, slacking away ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Lady Susan Hetth, sister of Colonel Bob 'etth, V.C., creeping out h'of a gentleman's rooms at three h'o'clock of the mornin' an' payin' me 'ush money—think of h'it. Now what 'ev you got to say. Why don't you be sensible an' quiet, gal? I've got yer, it ain't no use kickin'. Be sensible an' I'll smother you in di'monds, give yer two Rolls-Royce, yacht, Monty Carlo any time, Park Lane—make every other woman want ter scratch yer eyes out—what more could yer want? Now what have yer got ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... difficulty Ducie managed to wrench open the smashed door. Then he called the Russian by name; but there was no answer. He could discern nothing inside save a confused heap of rugs and minor articles of luggage. Under these, enough in themselves to smother him, Platzoff must be lying. One by one these articles were fished out of the carriage, and thrown aside by Ducie. Last of all he came to Platzoff, lying in a heap, white and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be; resist every object of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Gray, whose picture you will see in the drawing-room, a distant relation of my father's, who had, however, a handsome part of cousin Menie's succession. There are none living that can be hurt by the story now, though it was thought best to smother it up at the time, as indeed even the whispers about it led poor cousin Menie to live very retired. I mind her well when a child. There was something very gentle, but rather tiresome, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... made Leslie giddy to look at. And so furiously did the over-pressed catamaran charge into the formidable seas that came rushing at her weather bow that she took green water in on deck at every plunge, that swept aft as far as her mast ere it poured off into the dizzy smother to leeward, while her foresail and mainsail were streaming with spray to half the height of their weather leeches. Leslie knew that he was not treating his craft fairly in driving her thus recklessly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... (alone) Ah, he is gone! What tidings struck mine ears? What fire, half smother'd, in my heart revives? What fatal stroke falls like a thunderbolt? Stung by remorse that would not let me rest, I tore myself out of Oenone's arms, And flew to help Hippolytus with all My soul and ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... . . it has been so ever since I was at college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those who came were those I did not want to come, and I ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... doth dwell For ever with the thirsty fiends of hell — Dark brood of that dread mother, The seven-necked snake, whose poisoned breath doth smother The fourth celestial sphere; In fine, its horror and its misery drear Within me reach so far, That I myself upon myself make war, When in the arms of sleep A living corse am I, for it doth keep Such mastery o'er my life, that, as I dream, A pale ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... mother. Mother! Daughter, they're shouting for you! Let me hold your flowers, darling; they'll smother you!... You mean the one with the yellow curls, madam? The valedictorian? ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... winde; sometimes their zeale depends upon the life of Jehoiada; sometimes on the company of the Prophets: commonly in the beginning they blaze like straw-fire, but in the end goe out in smoake and smother; whereas in their entrance into profession, they galloped into shewes, and made some girds at hand, they tire, give in, and end in the flesh, whereas all naturall motions are swiftest toward ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... furniture vans, all endeavouring to deliver furniture you don't require and never heard of before, while your staircase is a mass of flowers and fruit constantly increasing upon you and threatening to smother you with their amount no less than with their scent. It would gradually appear that the deliveries both of the flowers and the furniture were being executed in accordance with the orders of one of your friends, and that you had to grin and bear it as best you might. I cannot say that the victim ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various |
