"Soporific" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vein, Sidney, after innumerable adventures, pastoral and warlike scenes, disappearances, unexpected meetings, scenes of deep love, of criminal, sweet or foolish love, comes at last to a sort of conclusion. King Basilius drinks a soporific draught; he is given up as dead. Queen Gynecia is accused of being the author of the deed; Zelmane, who has been found out to be a man is adjudged an accomplice; both are about to be executed. At that point, fortunately, the dead king springs to his feet; there are explanations, embracings, and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Ladies, the first, fresh edition (Ere critics have injured their powers of nutrition,) Are he thinks, for weak stomachs, the best sort of feeding. Satires irritate—love-songs are found calorific; But smooth, female sonnets he deems a specific, And, if taken at bedtime, a sure soporific. Among works of this kind, the most pleasing we know, Is a volume just published by Simpkins and Co., Where all such ingredients—the flowery, the sweet, And the gently narcotic—are mixt per receipt, With a hand so judicious, we've no hesitation To say that—'bove all, for the young generation— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... topic—but 't is not My cue for any time to be terrific: For checkered as is seen our human lot With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific Of melancholy merriment, to quote Too much of one sort would be soporific;— Without, or with, offence to friends or foes, I sketch your world ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... is generally understood 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
... just singing of one of the many knightly orphans of romance, exposed in woods to the nurture of bears, his father slain, his mother dead of grief—a ditty he had perhaps chosen for its soporific powers—when a gay bugle blast rang through the court of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... health of an apotheosized recusant, who was his supererogatory patron, and an assistant recognizance in the immobile nomenclature of interstitial molecular phonics. The contents of the vase proving soporific, a stolid plebeian took from its cerements a heraldic violoncello, and, assisted by a plethoric diocesan from Pall Mall, who performed on a sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... 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 lost myself ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... delightedly on the subject, as do all of Lawyer Putney's friends, in Mr. Howells's story, "Annie Kilburn"; and yet even the united testimony of Hatboro' fails to clear up our lingering doubts concerning Mr. Putney's wit. The dull people of that soporific town are really and truly and realistically dull. There is no mistaking them. The stamp of veracity is upon every brow. They pay morning calls, and we listen to their conversation with a dreamy impression that we have heard it all many times before, and that the ghosts ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... 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 the prodigious ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... 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 of trifling moment ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... colours, its lights shining from glasses and mirrors, its mellow odours of liquids and its softened sounds began to have a soporific effect upon Prescott, used so long to the open air and untold hardships. His senses were pleasantly lulled, and the voice of his friend, whom he seemed now to have known for a long time, came from far away. He could ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... from Aramis, disturbed their quietude: not a sound even was heard 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 noises and items of little moment that constitute ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the 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 is ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... a soporific, world-forgotten fragrance. There is no market here, no commercial or social life, save a few greybeards discussing memories on some doorstep; the only mirthful note is a swarm of young boys playing hockey on the sand-heaps, amid furious ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 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 the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Jerusalem had the practice of providing for those condemned to the awful punishment of crucifixion a soporific draught, composed of wine mixed with some narcotic like gall or myrrh,[1] to dull the senses and deaden the pain. It was a benevolent custom; and the cup was offered to all criminals, irrespective of their crimes. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... amounts in effect to saying that the sea is salt because of the large amount of saline matter which it holds in solution. Cheese is also a caseous preparation of milk; the duties of an archdeacon are to perform archidiaconal functions; and opium puts one to sleep because it possesses a soporific virtue. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... and exercise act as a soporific! That was a better chance than the new promise which Honora was vexed to find nurse holding out to poor little Owen, that if he would be a good boy, he was going to papa. She was puzzled how to act towards a person not exactly under ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... seeming injustice of their conduct. To my surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat 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 feelings as ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... the needle of this instrument that had pricked the skin of Lanyard's neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if not exactly a killing dose of some narcotic drug—cocaine, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... to contend that beside the opium there existed a real distinct objective entity, "its soporific virtue," he would be open to ridicule indeed. But the constitution of our minds is such that we cannot but distinguish ideally a thing from its even essential attributes and qualities. The joke is sufficiently amusing, however, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... ticket porter leans idly against the post at the corner: comfortably warm, but not hot, although the day is broiling. His white apron flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks with both eyes at once; even he is unable to withstand the soporific influence of the place, and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or two, and gazes out before him with eager wildness in his eye. Is it a job, or a boy at marbles? Does he see a ghost, or hear an organ? No; sight more unwonted still—there is ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... their 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. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... whose assiduity promotes the general welfare; oblige nature by your industry to open her immense stores, to become propitious to your exertions; do these things, and the gods will oppose nothing to your felicity. Leave to idle thinkers, to soporific dreamers, to waking visionaries, to useless enthusiasts, the unproductive task, the unfruitful occupation, of fathoming depths, from which ye ought sedulously to divert your attention; enjoy with moderation, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... do him good," returned Elizabeth demurely; "he was almost asleep when Mr. Charrington spoke to us. A comfortable chair, and moon-light, and a German lullaby are soporific influences." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... better fitted for his work. He came, a Scotsman, to a colony one-third Scottish, and the name of Bruce was itself soporific to the opposition of a perfervid section of the reformers. His wife was the daughter of Lord Durham, whom Canadians regarded as the beginner of a new age of Canadian constitutionalism. He had been appointed by a Whig Government, and Earl Grey, the new Colonial Secretary, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... wreck the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude, relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep. This, to the lady behind him, partook of the nature of an affront to her minister. Consequently she considered ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... whisperings of appeasers that Hitler is not interested in the Western Hemisphere, no soporific lullabies that a wide ocean protects us from him—can long have any effect on the hard-headed, far-sighted ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... 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 ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... cupboard in the lodger's room. There he had found the "criminal stories" mentioned in the journal—including the story of abduction referred to by Lady Rachel. This gave him the very idea which his lodger had already relied on for carrying Cristel away by the river (under the influence, of course, of a soporific drug), while her father was keeping watch on the road. The secreting of the oars with this purpose in view, had failed as a measure of security. The miller's knowledge of the stream, and his daughter's ready courage, had suggested the idea of letting the boat ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... smoked by the Indians. The flavor of Manila cheroots is peculiar to themselves, being quite different from that made of any other sort of tobacco; the greatest characteristic probably being its slightly soporific tendency, which has caused many persons in the habit of using it to imagine that opium is employed in the preparatory treatment of the tobacco, which, however, is not ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... later he appeared from 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 anything. For a while he had found going to bed on the bath-room floor a soporific; then one night ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 really beginning ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most soothing soporific. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... cracker came into the young lady's hand, she was full of admiration for the fine raised pattern. As she held it between her fingers it suddenly struck her that she had discovered what the tutor's fragrant smoke smelt like. It was like the scent of orange-flowers, and had certainly a soporific effect upon the senses. She felt very sleepy, and as she stroked the shiny surface of the cracker she found herself thinking it was very soft for paper, and then rousing herself with a start, and wondering ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it, the world which caricatured all great things, which regarded piety and religion, and absolutely all things related to greatness of soul, as burdens to be laid aside after death, toils to be repaid by a soporific beatitude; which made blessedness the prize of virtue instead of the synonym of virtue. Nay, nay, not even the unexpected patronage of the Most Serene Carl Ludwig could reconcile his thoughts with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a beverage eminently agreeable, inspiring and wholesome. It is at once a stimulant, a cephalic, a febrifuge, a digestive, and an anti-soporific; it chases away sleep, which is the enemy of labor; it invokes the imagination, without which there can be no happy inspiration. It expels the gout, that enemy of pleasure, although to pleasure gout owes its birth; it ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... so soundly indeed that I think there was some kind of soporific in the pick-me-up which looked like sherry, especially as the others who had drunk of it also ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... lazily in the afternoon sunshine, to the soft, rather soporific cooing of some caged doves, that live in the back-ground out of sight behind a screen of lemon trees in huge red jars, such as Morgiana must have been familiar with. Beyond the terrace wall we note the carefully tended vines, precious plants, for their ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... remained sunk in unpleasing reflections until he began to experience the incipient effects of his soporific draught. He then roused himself for an instant, and summoned ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... gathered under him, and his muzzle on the mole-hills; so that he had five supportings from his mother earth. Moreover, the linhay itself was full of very ancient cow dung; than which there is no balmier and more maiden soporific. Hence I resolved, upon the whole, though grieving about breakfast, to light a pipe, and go to sleep; or at least until the hot sun ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... handled his gun. He had never before realised the intensely soporific effect of the American sun, of the American air, the drowsy, sleep-compelling uproar of Niagara. Hitherto these things had on the ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... instead 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 ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... sleep; sound as a top, dormant, comatose; in the arms 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was unfolded this morning on the heights of Montmartre. The Baroness de Vibray, well known in the Parisian world and among artists, whose generous patroness she was, has been found dead in the studio of the ceramic painter, Jacques Dollon. The young painter, rendered completely helpless by a soporific, lay stretched out beside her when the crime was discovered. We say 'crime' designedly, because, when the preliminary medical examination was completed, it was clear that the death of the Baroness de Vibray was due to the absorption of ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Indians with his fingers upon his lips to enjoin me to silence, while his eyes were turned towards the open prairie. I immediately looked in that direction, and there was a sight that acted as a prompt anti-soporific. About half a mile from us stood a band of twenty Indians, with their war-paint and accoutrements, silently and quietly occupied in tying the horses. Of course they were not of our tribe, but belonged to the Umbiquas, a nation of thieves on our ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... cried; but there was a want of energy in his words, and five minutes after his efforts had grown feeble in the extreme. In another, he too had succumbed, not to a dangerous soporific vapour, but to the weariness produced by long exertion, and slept as soundly as his companion, and as if there ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... cultivation. More than this, the freedom engendered of revolt had 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 ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... powers of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined that Algernon was, or would become, his evil genius. In reality, Edward was the perilous companion. He was composed of better stuff. Algernon was but an airy animal nature, the soul within him being an effervescence lightly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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
... Mrs. Geer's social charms; but the enormity of the offence will be greatly modified by a brief review of the attending circumstances. If you will but consider that the crackling of burning wood in a huge Franklin stove is strongly soporific in its tendencies,—that the cushion of a capacious arm-chair, constructed and adjusted as if with a single eye to a delicious dose, nay, to a long succession of doses, is a powerful temptation to a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Morpheus. sleepy, sleepful[obs3]; dozy[obs3], drowsy, somnolent, torpescent[obs3], lethargic, lethargical[obs3]; somnifacient[obs3]; statuvolent[obs3], statuvolic[obs3]; heavy, heavy with sleep; napping; somnific[obs3], somniferous; soporous[obs3], soporific, soporiferous[obs3]; 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 of hours, and absolutely refused to tell her ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... enveloped us both with a soporific humidity; and equally immersed in one unconscious thought, we remained there side by ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... utilized 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 ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 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 Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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
... 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 included. "Do you not call ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... is 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 altitude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Dreading 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, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... be buoyant on the glistening bubble of Dignity, she had likewise a modest estimate of her dues. Alack, my poor heroine had no pride! Mrs. Ford's silent censure awakened no resentment. It sounded in her ears like a dull, soporific hum. Lizzie was deeply enamored of what a French book terms her aises intellectuelles. Her mental comfort lay in the ignoring of problems. She possessed a certain native insight which revealed many of the horrent inequalities of her pathway; but she found it so cruel and disenchanting a faculty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... over, for he doubted whether they could last 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
... stagnant air, and the church swung with sleepy influences. The very pews and desks, the pillars of the loft and the star-crowned canopy of the pulpit, seemed in their dry and mouldy antiquity to give forth soporific dry accessions to that somnolent atmosphere, and the sun-rays, slanted over the heads of the worshippers, showed full of dust. Outside, through the tall windows, could be seen the beech-trees of the Avenue, and the crows upon them busy at their domestic affairs. Children in the Square cried to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... long, deep breaths, until he has filled his lungs completely, when he begins slowly to emit the smoke from his nose, little by little, until it is all gone. The object of this with the Indian is to steep his senses more deeply with the narcotizing soporific. The tobacco they smoke is generally ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Coralio never varied. The recreations of the people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze of brunette ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fireflies. In some houses the thrumming ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a box of mochi, which are cakes of rice-flour sweetened with native sugar. The hungry ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... with pins, began on the long river of yellow-brown hair that flowed down Flora's back. The broad, pale face reflected beside her own in the mirror was reassuring by its serene indifference. She had soothing hands, Marrika. It was a luxury to be dressed by her, a mental soporific. But to-day it wrought no relaxation in Flora's tightened nerves. All the while she was being combed and laced and hooked her eyes were alertly on the dressing-table drawer, that remained a little open; and presently she caught herself vaguely speculating on how, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... 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. And then, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... knows all about it. She brought me the decanter herself. She and Amy thought it would freshen me up. But I distrusted it; I was afraid the effect would be soporific—" ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... 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 ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... James Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she finds it impossible to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend upon continuous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, viz., the child's movements, preliminary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so—the consequence being that ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on." Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience. It was agreed further that small type—Parliamentary debates and the like—was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable forms of literature. It was not to be wondered at that old Mrs. Prichard should go ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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 strikes up a well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the most momentous kind, and on questions concerning which men cannot reason ill with impunity. We think it, under these circumstances, an absolute duty to expose the fallacy of their arguments. It is no matter of pride or of pleasure. To read their works is the most soporific employment that we know; and a man ought no more to be proud of refuting them than of having two legs. We must now come to close quarters with Mr Bentham, whom, we need not say, we do not mean to include in this observation. He charges ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near upon L8000 sterling. Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should be ratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I have no doubt put some soporific drug into the liquor; for my uncle and I both slept till very late the next morning, and woke with violent headaches and fever: we did not quit our beds till noon. He had been gone twelve hours, leaving our treasury empty; and behind him a sort of calculation, by which he ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... peers by his skittish references to the coming Conference on the Second Chamber. When he expressed the hope that Lord CURZON would make an explicit statement, on the ground that their Lordships' House was in no need of a soporific, I fully expected one of the occupants of the mausoleum to rise and reprove him in the words of Dr. JOHNSON, "Sir, in order to be facetious it is not necessary to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... 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
... quo; and where, as with Wesley, there was revolt, its impetus directed the mind to the source of salvation in the individual act. It may, indeed, be generally argued that the religious teachers acted as a social soporific. Where riches accumulated, they could be regarded as the blessing of God; where they were absent their unimportance for eternal happiness could be emphasized. Burke's early attack on a system which condemned "two hundred thousand innocent persons ... to so intolerable slavery" ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... dark," and of "slips of yew sliver'd in the moon's eclipse," a practice which was long kept up. The plants, too, which formed the witches' pharmacopoeia, were generally selected either from their legendary associations or by reason of their poisonous and soporific qualities. Thus, two of those most frequently used as ingredients in the mystic cauldron were the vervain and the rue, these plants having been specially credited with supernatural virtues. The former probably derived its notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... precisely, Anthony 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
... 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 ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... dozing amid parched wheat fields. The paint was off it; nothing much more exciting than a crop failure ever happened there. The main topic of conversation was the weather and, as Mark Twain said, everybody talked about it, but nothing was done. Within sixty days this soporific village became a roaring bedlam; every town lot was leased, derricks rose out of chicken runs, boilers panted in front yards, mobs of strangers surged through the streets and the air grew shrill with their bickerings. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that they progress when they have a certain sufficient amount of variability in their nature. This seems to be the old style of explanation by occult qualities. It seems like saying that opium sends men to sleep because it has a soporific virtue, and bread feeds because it has an alimentary quality. But the explanation is not so absurd. It says: 'The beginning of civilisation is marked by an intense legality; that legality is the very condition of its existence, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... called upon to take the 'big ha' Bible,' in the good old fashion of Burns' Saturday Night: and some progress had been already made in the service, when the good man of the farm, whose 'tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell says, 'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of 'By ——! here's the keg at last!' and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing, a day before, of the advocate's approaching ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... sovereignty were lined up in front of a black Republican office, thirsting for black Republican whisky. Bottle after bottle, was passed down the line, and as it gurgled down the throats of these enthusiastic marchers they smacked their lips with as much gusto as did Rip Van Winkle when partaking of the soporific potation that produced his twenty years' sleep. One of the cardinal principles of the Democracy, at that time was to "love rum and hate niggers." As the entire stock was disposed of before the club resumed its line of march, the host of the occasion concluded that ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... 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 ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... He has all the time there is. If you are very busy he will wait. He is uniformly moderate and polite. He is a rare combination of oil, milk, and rose-water. He would not harm a syllable of the English language. His talking has a soporific effect. It acts as a lullaby. His speech is low and gentle. He never speaks an ill-considered word. He chooses his words with measured caution. He is what is known as a ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? Or ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the first degree was demonstrated upon the evidence beyond peradventure. At the conclusion of the case, the defendant not having dared to take the stand, the lawyer arose to address the jury in behalf of what appeared a hopeless cause. Even the old German in the back row seemed plunged in soporific inattention. After a few introductory remarks the lawyer raised his voice ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... habit of reading daily. It was there the gentlemen visitors, chiefly diplomats, who wanted to speak to him, joined him; while the lady visitors sat round the Queen's table, at which the conversation was general, if occasionally soporific. It used to brighten up again with the arrival of any ladies whose wit or beauty attracted the men who had scattered about the drawing-room. This was always the case on the appearance of Mesdames de St. Aulaire and de Castellane, of some charming members ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... 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, we ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... her husband would no doubt have protested, demanded explanations, insisted upon being put down at once, had they been able; but, whether it was that the car had some peculiarly soporific tendency, or whether it was merely the sudden swift rush through the upper air, a torpor had already fallen on the whole Stimpson family. It was even questionable if they remained long enough awake to hear ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of St. 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 ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of its liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose after chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of Mrs Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's rapt interest in the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch from the position she had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... blistering, and easy bravado, (Not to speak of hot water,) he 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 instance told by Hoffman, the dreamer was chained to the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... means. I have already told you of my passion for books, and cannot, therefore, dislike bibliography. I think, with Lambinet, that the greater part of bibliographical works are sufficiently dry and soporific:[95] but I am not insensible to the utility, and even entertainment, which may result from a proper cultivation of it—although both De Bure and Peignot appear to me to have gone greatly beyond the mark, in lauding this study as "one of the most attractive and vast ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in reply to Nort's obvious statement that he intended to administer some of the soporific ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... denial. It was one of those numberless books everybody is supposed to have read. For that reason he had found it almost impossible to begin. But he was desperate enough to read even a classic. He hoped that it would be a soporific. That was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again, and let ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... philosophy is in the same plight: all that the majority demand of it is, that it may teach them to understand approximate facts—very approximate facts—in order that they may then become adapted to them. And even its noblest exponents press its soporific and comforting powers so strongly to the fore, that all lovers of sleep and of loafing must think that their aim and the aim of philosophy are one. For my part, the most important question philosophy has ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it is 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 upon ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... had the horses ready, and all hurried from the spot, and were once more climbing up the mountain-path. Even the animals seemed to move slowly and lazily, as though they, too, had been under the influence of some soporific. But the pure cold air of the mountain soon produced its effect. All gradually recovered, and after cooking some charqui and ocas in the ravine, and making their breakfast upon these, they again felt light and fresh, and pursued ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... was indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the soporific emanations for these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously afflicted, so it was, that I fell ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... fine collection of poems for mothers and friends to use at the twilight hour. They are not of the soporific kind especially. They are wholesome reading when most wide-awake and of such a soothing and delicious flavor that they are welcome when ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... these soporific parts are so many scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public that whenever he was dull they might be assured there ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... 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
... himself by the ease with which he made this monstrous threat, but it seemed to have a soporific influence on his companion, for he gave out an "aw gwan" ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
