"Soporific" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wheel of his cart in the rut. The cutter wearied not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe, and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of the circling haven, and ceased not in her flight until the first wave of the Ocean leaped up against her bow with so much rude impetuosity that her hull staggered under its force, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... system they talk about! You wrote me to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better. You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but wakefulness. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... folios in the stuffy atmosphere of the heders and yeshibahs were now crammed with the ideas of positivism, evolution, and socialism. Sharp and sudden was the transition from rabbinic scholasticism and soporific hasidic mysticism to this new world of ideas, flooded with the light of science, to these new revelations announcing the glad tidings of the freedom of thought, of the demolition of all traditional fetters, of the annihilation of all religious and national barriers, of the brotherhood of all ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... weary eye; But ah! Oblivion's nod to get In rattling coach is harder yet. Slumbrous God of half-shut eye! 5 Who lovest with limbs supine to lie; Soother sweet of toil and care Listen, listen to my prayer; And to thy votary dispense Thy soporific influence! 10 What tho' around thy drowsy head The seven-fold cap of night be spread, Yet lift that drowsy head awhile And yawn propitiously a smile; In drizzly rains poppean dews 15 O'er the tired ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her poems in this volume according to the opening pair of symbols, and although she gives twice as much space to poppies as to swords, her poetry is always more stimulating than soothing. Her poppy seeds won't work; there is not a soporific page in ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... siesta; dormancy, lethargy; trance; sopor, coma, carus; somnipathy, somnolism; dogsleep. Associated Words: hypnology, hypnotic, agrypnotic, hypnosis, hypnotism, narcotic, opiate, dwale, somniloquence, somniloquism, somnial, somniferous, hypnophobia, hypnogogic, stupefacient, mesmeric, soporific, dormitive, soporiferous, soporous, somnific, somnolent, somniloquous, antihypnotic, morphean, oversleep, morphine, narcosis, lullaby, incubation, hypnogenic, Mara, Morpheus, Hypnos, Somnus, dormitory, diurnation, cubicle, insomniac, hibernation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... blended natures on which extremes of joy or of grief have a soporific effect. Now on a youth so compounded that he could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of opium. When the Prince had drunk the whole ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... the anti-administration newspaper of Charleston and, getting out of bullet range, put my back against a tree and tried to read. Mercury was ever a blithe and sportive god, and his gambols on Mount Olympus were noted in days of yore; but the modern namesake—or else my present position—had soporific tendencies; and fear of the target shooters growing dimmer and dimmer, I ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual soporific charm. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... previously been sleeping soundly, composed by the soporific effects of the dram, lulled by the music of the rising breeze, and the gentle undulations of the reeling vessel) he was flung several yards from his hammock, and received a contusion on the head, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... Mustapha went to bring his soporific, and having given it to the black slave, and shown him how much it was necessary to take for a dose, he went to Thiuli, and, telling him he must procure some medicinal herbs from the sea, hastened through the gate. On the shore, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... allowance for his own extreme weariness or for the soporific effect of the alcoholic fumes with which his comrade's breath was redolent. When six o'clock struck at the church of St. Eustache, the young detective's alarm resounded faithfully enough, with a loud and protracted whir. Shrill and sonorous as ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... because she knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if they walked the English lanes together. His intimacy with her neighbours, and her neighbourhood, was one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking of old Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of soporific measure, when he lay awake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham, of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even found an old engraving of Lady Alanby in her youth. Her evident liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They were ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... observed, looking up at her host pleasantly, "I can see what is going to happen. Mr. Dartrey came out here to talk to you upon most important matters. This place, the beauty of it all, is acting upon him like a soporific. If we don't shake him up presently, he will go away with wonderful mind pictures of your cliffs and sea, and his ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never thinks of them as evils at all. To be sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things. But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. He is just the man to tell us all about the demoralization ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... encumbering the ground around me. Their balmy odours filled my nostrils, the fresh air played round my brow, and the murmur of the stream sounded in my ears, till my pleased senses became completely overcome by the surrounding soporific influences, and wandered far away amid the regions of dreamland: in other words, I went fast asleep. At last I awoke, and rubbed and rubbed my eyes; I had good reason for rubbing them, for the beautiful landscape on which they had closed was no longer before them. There was the ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... have been serious in the affair. As I say, practically all the early characters are of little or no account, including Rhoda herself. Indeed, nobody looks like mattering at all, and the whole tale has, to be frank, taken on a somewhat soporific aspect, when lo! there enters a lady with a Russian name, no back to her gown and green face-powder. If I said of this paragon that she made the story bounce I should still do less than justice to her amazing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... complaining to Sydney Smith that she could not sleep,—"I can furnish you," he said, "with a perfect soporific. I have published two volumes of Sermons; take them up to bed with you. I recommended them once to Blanco White, and before the third page—he ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Beddoes. Who, after lamenting that opium frequently occasions restlessness, thinks, "that in most cases it would be better to induce sleep by the abstraction of stimuli, than by exhausting the excitability;" and adds, "upon this principle we could not have a better soporific than an atmosphere with a diminished proportion of oxygene air, and that common air might be admitted after the patient was asleep." (Observ. on Calculus, &c. by Dr. Beddoes, Murray.) If it should ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... bore to her husband, and he resolved on sacrificing the life of the unfortunate man whose connubial rights seemed to stand in his way. Full of impatience for the consummation of the diabolical project when once he had determined on its execution, and having given to his victim a strong soporific, which threw him into a heavy sleep, he proceeds to urge on the faithless wife to the act of stabbing her unconscious husband. This tragedy she performed with one of the unhappy man's own instruments of ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Louis is hopelessly monotonous. It is a big place. A great business is carried on there, but it seems to be done by people somnambulistically. The soporific atmosphere that the readers feel when perusing the "Globe-Democrat" or "Republic" is characteristic of the town. The great majority of the people seem unable to arouse themselves to any action, even of viciousness. The crowd just lives as if it were ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to Nort's obvious statement that he intended to administer some of the soporific to ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Boston with four bottles of lager-beer under his arms; lager-beer, he said now, was the only thing to make you go to sleep, and we provided that. Still later, on a visit I paid him at Hartford, I learned that hot Scotch was the only soporific worth considering, and Scotch-whiskey duly found its place on our sideboard. One day, very long afterward, I asked him if he were still taking hot Scotch to make him sleep. He said he was not taking ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... abacus; many of them were sitting at the doors of their houses, smoking in the evening air; the barbers were still at work preparing their customers for the night. Like Washington Irving, these may have considered a good clean shave the best soporific. Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of two sedans in these narrow streets ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... salacity lewd, libidinous read, peruse lie, prevaricate hearty, cordial following, subsequent crowd, multitude chew, masticate food, pabulum eat, regale meal, repast meal, refection thrift, economy sleepy, soporific slumberous, somnolent live, reside rot, putrefy swelling, protuberant soak, saturate soak, absorb stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a wakeful night, one of those enervating attacks of insomnia brought about by agitation of the spirit, he thought he would try to read. How many times had a short reading served him as a narcotic! So he got up and went into his library to choose a good and soporific work; but his mind, aroused in spite of himself, eager for any emotion it could find, sought among the shelves for the name of some author that would respond to his state of exaltation and expectancy. Balzac, whom he loved, said nothing to him; he disdained Hugo, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... poetry that is not dramatic. Performances of Pippa Passes and The Sunken Bell exert a very unpropitious influence upon the mood of the average theatre-goer. These poems are not plays; and the innocent spectator, being told that they are, is made to believe that poetic drama must be necessarily a soporific thing. And when this belief is once lodged in his uncritical mind, it is difficult to dispel it, even with a long course of Othello and Hamlet. Paolo and Francesca was a good poem, but a bad play; and ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... throughout the whole vast palace. Outside, however, the guards of honor on duty, and the patrol of musketeers, paced up and down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers, while the murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the fountains whose waters tumbled in the basin, still went on uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and, at others, a certain ancient baboon once observed in the Primates cage at the Bronz Zoo; the harried, anxious little clerk with his paradoxically grandiloquent intonation; the comedy assistant district attorney with his wheezy voice emanating from a Falstaffian body, who suffered from a soporific malady and was accustomed to open a case and then let it take care of itself while he slumbered audibly beneath the dais; even Ephraim Tutt, the gaunt, benignly whimsical-looking attorney, in his rusty-black frock coat and loose-hanging tie; ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... it that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple lights of rare old wines aloft, yet from his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew duda'im by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has shown (Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "didi" instead ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... out, less by fatigue than by excitement and anxious thought, I fell into a profound sleep, natural this time and not provoked by any soporific drug. When I awoke, after a length of time which I could not reckon, the "Terror" had not yet returned to ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... men like yourself, Mr. St. John," Mrs. Sillenger began in her quiet diffident way, "continue so prejudiced on this subject. How you could help on the moral progress of the world, if only you would forget the sweet soporific 'poetry of the pulpit," as Mrs. Malcomson calls it, and learn to think of us women, not as angels or beasts of burden—the two extremes between which you wander—but ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... grovelling idea! Wit-forsaken progeny of a more than soporific pericranium! Fight me!—Hear and be astonished, O Cicero, ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... conscientious desire to embellish our "copy" with enough facts and references to make a showing of erudition ever induced Field or any of the active members of the editorial staff to borrow the library key from Ballantyne to break in upon the soporific labors of Mr. Plumbe. Here the editorial conferences, which Field has illustrated, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... whispered. "The wind in my face and the sun are too soporific for me. Let us not say a word to ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... day. She spent the hours in loneliness and misery. Mr. Wyvern called, but even him she begged through a servant to excuse her; her mother likewise came, and her she talked with for a few minutes, then pleaded headache. At nine o'clock in the evening she went to her bedroom. She had a soporific at hand, remaining from the time of her illness, and in dread of a sleepless night she had recourse ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... suggest any means whereby I can grasp your jokes without being bored to weariness? They're more soporific than bromide. Anyhow, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... to visit them. He rubbed his clenched fists in his eyes and wondered if he dared light the gas to read. He could keep his geography near as an excuse if anyone discovered him. Then, hastened possibly by the soporific influence of that school book, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... consigned to the care of Grim Gribber, the porter of the castle, with directions to attach it to the wrist of the lady in the chamber of sleep, whither he accordingly proceeds for that purpose; but overcome by the soporific influences of the atmosphere of that enchanted place, he falls into a deep sleep ere his task is accomplished. The Prince Azoff, with his Squire Abnab, straying from a hunting party into the enchanted cedar grove, encounters the Fairy Blue-bell, protector of the Sleeping Beauty, who imparts ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... cattle,—are forced to live so. Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. It makes me wild to think of it. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... gathering them in New Hampshire woods are exquisite as ever to my taste, when I think of eating them in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home; but in Spain, when I think of it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific in this country; but in Spain I should listen as reverently as ever, for proprietors must set a ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... open the howling and whistling of the wind always acts on me like a soporific. Inside of a house it is just the reverse; I know nothing that will keep my nerves as much on edge and prevent me as certainly from sleeping as the voices at night of a gale around the buildings. I needed ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... lantern. 'Hush!' he uttered, in a threatning tone, and the affrighted animal stole back to his kennel. The door of the chaise flew back, the stranger put down the lantern, and clasped his dreadful arms around me. It was certainly the effect of the soporific draught, for, instead of exerting my strength, I sunk without motion, though not without sense, on his shoulder, my limbs refusing to obey my will. I was carried up the steps into a close-shut hall. A candle flaring in the socket, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... tears. I could see the poor girl was in a highly nervous condition, so I did my best to calm her by describing how I had once done the long hole in four. My friends tell me that there is no finer soporific, and it seemed as though they may be right, for presently, just as I had reached the point where I laid my approach-putt dead from a distance of fifteen feet, she became quieter. She dried her eyes, yawned once or twice, and looked ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy twins; all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... sound even was heard throughout the vast palace. Outside, however, the guards of honor on duty, and the patrols of the musketeers, paced up and down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers; while the murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the fountains, whose waters fell tumbling into the basins, still went on uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises and matters ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... sweetly in their sleep under the shower of grass; they did not awake because the lettuces had been so soporific. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... the edge of the wharf and looked over, to find exactly what he expected: the boat made fast to one of the cross timbers, with a big swarthy man in a blue jersey asleep in the stern, and a rough-looking, shock-headed boy also asleep in the bows, the hot sunshine having a soporific ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... and down before the fire, I had great difficulty in keeping my eyes open. The murmur of the stream as it flowed by, and the suppressed hum of insects with the occasional cry of some bird, had a very soporific effect. I kept walking about and stamping my feet, but every moment I stopped my head began to nod; and when I got a little distance from the fire and turned round to look at it, I could not make out whether it was the sun or the moon just rising. I pinched ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... same condition, was soon after seen his wife, who, of weaker conformation, had more quickly yielded to the soporific effect of the upas poison, from which, when it has once pervaded the blood, there ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... impossible longer to "look" at him, what shall she do! Tell her woe to the world, seek a soporific, repudiate the scheme of things, or from the vantage point of her failure turn to the untried relations of her life, call ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... much longer; but their powers of endurance were greater than he had supposed. It will readily be imagined that German songs with a good chorus, the solo parts being very short, and received with the utmost impatience by the chorus, were even less soporific in their effect than the flirtations—though boisterous beyond all conventional propriety—of ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... works hard, out of doors, all day. When evening comes he gets his newspaper, sits down by the fire and pretends to read. But I have noticed that he rarely reads ten minutes before he drops asleep. When he comes to church the same phenomenon occurs. He cannot resist the soporific tendencies of the furnaces. By the time Mr. Work gets fairly into secondly, Farmer Faragon is sound asleep. So he does not even listen to the preaching. Is he then a drone? Suppose you make a calculation how many mouths he feeds indirectly by the products of his farm. I cannot even guess. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... the soporific scene [vi] I'll turn mine eye, as night grows later, To view, unheeded and unseen, [vii] The ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... lost their soporific effect on me, or I acquired tolerance to the usual dosage, and the folks had to hunt up new things to give. I took soothing syrups and "baby's friends" galore. The night and the day were not rightly divided for me; when I slept, it was during the day when others were awake, and vice ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... a ruler for Afghanistan, and settle affairs with all speed. This was also desirable in view of the probability of a general election in the United Kingdom in the early part of the year 1880, the Ministry wishing to have ready an Afghan settlement to act as a soporific drug on the ravening Cerberus of democracy at home. Unhappily, the outbreak of the Zulu War on January 11, 1880, speedily followed by the disaster of Isandlana, redoubled the complaints in the United Kingdom, with the result ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... And do you take me for a soporific? If you think you can sleep here, stretch yourself on the couch and try." Saying which, she laughed and hurried back ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to a large glass on the table beside him, still half full of a soporific mixture with which he moistened his lips each time he woke; with the other hand he wiped the perspiration from his face. Matrena Petrovna stayed trembling near him, suddenly overpowered by the idea that he might discover there was someone there behind the door, who had seen and heard the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... he had come into the world Dr Lefevre was that night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted—though exhausted very much; and that all he needed was ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... hemmed, looked about with a slight degree of consternation, and then began to play with her ladyship's work-bag, which, however, she rather pettishly withdrew. The steady sound of the captain's voice was still too potent a soporific for the poor general; he kept gleaming up and sinking in the socket, until the cessation of the tale again roused him, when he started awake, put his foot down upon Lady Lillycraft's cur, the sleeping Beauty, which yelped and seized him by the leg, and, in a moment, the whole library resounded ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... his teeth he cut the broken leg off, and went away. It was supposed that he would not come again; but two nights afterwards he was found fast in a trap—in each case tempted by the castoreum. The stake was always licked, or sucked, clean. The substance seems to act as a soporific, as the creatures, after tasting it, always remain a day without coming out of their houses. So wary generally are the beavers, that a trapper is always careful not to leave his scent on the spot. To avoid this he frequently cuts down a tree, and walks on its branches towards the edge of the path, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... trousers, sat down in an armchair in front of the fire, filled his pipe, and began to smoke. His intention was to "take a few whiffs and then turn in," but the influence of the tobacco appeared to be soporific, for he soon began to nod; then he removed his pipe, stared earnestly at the fire, and established quite a nodding acquaintance with it. Presently he dropped his chin on his broad ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned from the path, and, followed by L'Isle, was soon ascending the hill. Moodie, somewhat under the influence of his soporific draughts, was in a reverie, wondering whether Lord Strathern would get his letter in time to send a troop of horse after the fugitives, and whether it might not come within the provisions of the military code to have L'Isle court-martialed and shot for running off with his General's ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... whose injudicious space, Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race, Where kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... My appetite served me sufficiently to eat with, but not for enjoyment. Nothing has a zest in my present widowed state. [Thus far I had written, when Mr. Emerson called.] After dinner, I lay down on the couch, with the Dial in my hand as a soporific, and had a short nap; ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sir, but I don't know who you are; and if you mean Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying. She was very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say, but she is having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific medicine, and we are ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as the sun ascends,—deepens deliciously. The warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with the blue light in my face,—the strong bright blue of the noonday sky. As I doze it seems to burn like a cold fire right through my eyelids. Waking up with a start, I fancy that everything is turning blue,—myself ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... turns round as gently as ever; the flowers bud into life; and the winter nips them. Man lives, thinks, and dies. All very wondrous truisms. Well, after a half-hour—or perchance more—you will be gradually relapsing into a state of soporific nothing-at-all-ness (the best word I can find to express my meaning.) May there be some clear little stream just behind you, laughing along its idle way;—some chirping birds, singing their roundelay—some buzzing flies—you will then be lulled into doziness. However, with or without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... a blunder and converts it to success. This was thy merit and distinction! It hath never been mine! I recognize thy superior genius. I place in thee unqualified confidence; and consigning thee to the arms of Morpheus, since I see that panegyric acts on thy nervous system as a salubrious soporific, I now move that this House do resolve itself into a Committee of Ways and Means for the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it seems rather an odd life for an artist: at least it strikes one as a life, despite Haydn's own opinion, not particularly conducive to originality. To use extreme language, it might almost be called a monotonous and soporific mode of existence. Probably its chief advantage was the opportunity it afforded, or perhaps the necessity it enforced, of ceaseless industry. Certainly that industry bore fruit in Haydn's steady increase of inventive power as he went on composing. But he only took ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of Morpheus, in the lap of Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful^; dozy^, drowsy, somnolent, torpescent^, lethargic, lethargical^; somnifacient^; statuvolent^, statuvolic^; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific^, somniferous; soporous^, soporific, soporiferous^; hypnotic; balmy, dreamy; unawakened, unawakened. sedative &c 174. Adv. inactively &c adj.; at leisure &c 685. Phr. the eyes begin to draw straws; bankrupt of life yet prodigal of ease [Dryden]; better 50 years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a substance which the imagination grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the SOPORIFIC POWER of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the PECCANT HUMORS of ancient medicine, are entites. The entite is the support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the argumentum ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... passes Sangrado. He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy, As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy: And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific, When taken, will prove to be no soporific. Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be Sole Agent down here for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... suddenly sat erect and stared stupidly about him, the good-hearted, but boyishly irreverent audience, it is safe to affirm, was decidedly more interested in the slumbering sophomore than in the soporific speaker, though few doubtless thought them related as ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... even tenor of her way, the Colonel's fidgets had a soporific effect on her nerves and created no corresponding alarms; her idol, Freddy, was satisfied with the new administration, and ceased to wage internecine warfare with his nurse; and certainly the unwonted tranquillity consequent was a decided ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... time Mack Nolan was snoring softly in deep slumber. Casey listened suspiciously, knowing too well how misleading a snore could be. But his own eyelids were growing exceeding heavy, and the soporific sound acted hypnotically upon his sleep-hungry brain. He caught himself yawning, and suddenly threw down ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the complaint which had so strangely overtaken him. His breathing was gentle and regular, though his face was covered with gorged mosquitos. The healthy moistness of the skin showed that my prescription had operated as a sudorific, no less than as a soporific. Altogether, there was a marked diminution of what we call febrile symptoms; and, better still, he had managed to turn himself over since ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... specially created for the needs of conversation, in a Roman corner of Africa. He was amused by the southern exuberance and joviality of a doubtlessly corpulent man. He seemed a salacious, gay crony compared with the Christian apologists who lived in the same century—the soporific Minucius Felix, a pseudo-classicist, pouring forth the still thick emulsions of Cicero into his Octavius; nay, even Tertullian—whom he perhaps preserved for his Aldine edition, more than for ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdroeckh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine-tenths ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... notion of doing organist's work, I naturally complied without a murmur. It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32—thirty-two verses. I resigned myself to my fate with stoicism. At the beginning I kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific effect. Little by little I became as stupid as a medium. When we had at last got through with all the verses, Bjoernson said: 'Isn't that fine. Now I will read it for you!' And so we got all thirty-two verses once ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... now encouraged the young artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular fashion. People's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the necessity for a surgical operation. In 1847, for example, George Frederick Watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall of Euston Station, and ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... doubting the doctrine of the Trinity, was led to recognize in the person of Jesus Christ the Alpha and Omega of his theology. It is possible that Archdeacon Wilberforce, and Chalmers, and Arnold, may never have perused the treatise in question; and it is equally possible that under the soporific influence of a heavy style, they may never have noticed passages for which their own minds possessed such a powerful affinity. But by the legitimate expedient of appropriate language—perhaps by means of some ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... her removal. For this a favourable opportunity soon occurred, owing to the sultan's departure for twenty days upon a hunting excursion. In a day or two after his absence, the sultana invited Koout al Koolloob to an entertainment, and having mixed a strong soporific in some sherbet, presented it her to drink. The effect of the potion was instantaneous, and she sunk into a trance; when the sultana putting her into the chest, commanded it to be given to a broker, and sold without examination of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the wise old woman had steeped therein a few leaves of the ronyilu weed, brought from the Abyss, a powerful soporific. And presently a certain calm and peace began to win possession of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... furnished even by demonologists, that all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have related their journey through the air, their amusement at the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw there. In the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... molded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting nobody. He was sufficiently sure of his command of language at length to look at Katharine and again at Denham. All this talk about Shakespeare had acted as a soporific, or rather as an incantation upon Katharine. She leaned back in her chair at the head of the tea-table, perfectly silent, looking vaguely past them all, receiving the most generalized ideas of human heads against pictures, against yellow-tinted ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... a book written in the dead language, is to read from a book that is unintelligible. To listen to such makes no tax upon the intellect, and with the right accessories is soporific, restful, pleasing and to be commended. If it does not supply an idea, it at least imparts a feeling. Mrs. Eddy's success in literature arose from the extreme muddiness of her thinking and her opacity ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... of repeating these soporific banalities, ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an existence more worthily human, ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... musical style. In none of his plays is the mixture or rather the fusion of realism with romance more simply happy and harmonious: the rescue of the injured wife by a faithful lover from the tomb in which, like Juliet, she has been laid while under the soporific influence of a supposed poison could hardly have been better or more beautifully treated by any but the very greatest among Heywood's fellow-poets. There is no merit of this kind in the later play: but from the dramatic if not even from the ethical point of view it is, on the whole, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the door, sniffing the air cautiously as he advanced. To his nostrils gradually came a slight scent, which though almost imperceptible made his senses reel. As he approached the hall door he found the atmosphere heavy with the soporific vapors from the broken vial, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... deeper and more luscious purple than any of them. Near its junction with the Mandragora it runs uphill for several miles, with the result that the canoes were constantly capsizing. The waters of Mandragora are of a curiously soporific character, while those of the River Madeira have a toxic quality which renders them dangerous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect: she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an initial F.; I broke it; the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect something more soporific. Martesie takes the place of her absent mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for "Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not that Cyrus would, of course, die rather than pay attention to anybody but Mandane herself, and that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... attended by Ned Bashford. They encouraged her whims and laughed at her follies, while she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty and delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This desire no longer prodded her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of Billy, the more certain she had been that she could not live away from ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,—I do not mean that as religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our own personal fate.... Because we live on the surface, we despair, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... did the lethargy into which he had fallen break for a moment. The irregular passage of the receptacle from one to another was at least a motion not ordered in the deliberate rhythm of decorum; and the clink of the money was pleasantly removed from the soporific. Bobby gazed with awe at the coins as they passed beneath his little nose. He supposed there must be enough of them ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Aix-les-Bains next day, but the state of his wife's health rendered it impossible for her to quit the hotel, and he could not very well separate himself from her. She continued for some time in shrieking hysterics, varied by fainting fits; and when she became quieter, under the influence of a soporific administered by the doctor, she declared herself quite too ill and exhausted to rise from her bed. Her husband remained with her night and day, until the second morning, when he escaped from her sight and ken for a couple ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Dexter's old housekeeper rang the rising bell. Drowsy with the soporific he had taken, the doctor did not at once respond to the summons. In fact, the breakfast bell had rung ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... sometimes experienced when the manager appeared on a darkened stage, with a fresh crackling manuscript. Then she had lolled back and listened to the first reading. She would have lolled back now—for the air was soporific—but, instead, she started suddenly. The old wound on Mr. Heatherbloom's head, heretofore concealed by the cap Francois had procured for him, had reopened as he exerted himself; he raised his hand quickly and seemed a little at a loss. She stepped ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... various technical figures of compositions all the technic necessary. This method is infinitely more trying to the teacher than the old-fashioned, easy-going ways. "Play me No. 22 for next time!" was the order, and in a soporific manner the pupil waded through all the studies of all the Technikers. Now the teacher must invent a new study for every new piece—with Bach on the side. Always Bach! Please remember that. B-a-c-h—Bach. ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... losing what there was not any soporific in adopting was not agonising. There had not come to be division. There was that article. They saw that away. It was not a comfort. They had that to keep the place away. They were not blameworthy. They had ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... over her heart after the sun went down. As she lay with clenched hands, counting the ten thousand woolly sheep whose agility in overleaping an obstructive wall is for some mysterious reason assumed to be soporific in its influence, she was conscious of a sort of terror of the thoughts lurking in ambush, ready to spring out upon her if she were off her guard for an instant. It was useless to tell herself that she was no poorer than ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... At length the discourse is ended, and all rise to join in the closing hymn, which is 'deaconed off' by the minister, and responded to by the negroes in a monotonous 'yah, yah.' They have not recovered from the soporific effect of the sermon, and, besides, can hardly be blamed for not catching the feebly uttered words. But their time is coming. No sooner is the benediction pronounced, than one of the negro elders ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... nerve-rending fault of readers who vainly endeavour to personate the characters in dialogue, and to give impressiveness in the descriptive portions. She never made a remark, or asked her hearer's opinion. If the Countess was in the humour to sleep, the reading was soporific; if she desired to listen, she felt that her companion was not trying to bias her judgment by the introduction of dramatic intonation and effect. With an even, untiring correctness of utterance, Miss Skeat read one book just as she read another—M. Thiers or Mr. Henry James, Mark Twain ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... "'tis no use. The strongest soporific in the world wouldn't give me sleep this night. I tell you, Sime, I have ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of June was too strong a soporific for Remember's desire to keep awake and hear the catamounts scream, as he had heard they did in those woods. Hannah was left quite alone to keep watch and to tend the fire, her heart in her mouth, jumping and starting at every shadow cast ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... honours of cheap reprints; the modern reader shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's slumber may be ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... as substitute preacher by our good pastor, who was much afflicted with what Mrs. Partington calls "brown creeturs." He had harped on one string of his vocal apparatus so long that like Jeshuran of old "it waxed fat and kicked." Exceedingly monotonous and soporific was his voice, and it was necessary to strain every nerve to tell whether he was preaching, praying or reading, the words were much the same in ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... and I spent an hour at my house before they walked home to bed, and Choti read as a soporific, with a few bottles of Munich beer, the "Sermon to the Fishes" of St. Antonius. As he read, we heard the joyous stridence of an accordion in a hula harmony. The upaupahura was beginning in the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien |
