"Suffocate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were speaking we were still ascending; we passed the whole night going up, or to speak more scientifically, in an ascensional motion. The fearful noise redoubled; I was ready to suffocate. I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances you do not choose your own thoughts. They ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... panting breath seemed to suffocate him, the strain had been so fearful; now he could do no more, he seemed to make no effort to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... after I had been a few hours on the road, the wind began to blow directly in my face, and soon enveloped me in a cloud of sand from which there seemed no escape, and which threatened actually to suffocate me. To avoid this I left the highway, but keeping what I supposed to be in the general direction of the road, I struck out into the adjacent fields. There was nothing for a considerable distance to repay me for this detour, except that I thus was rid ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... such enormous brutalities have fled before the benign enlightening influence of the gospel. To suffocate a man, in order to drive out an imaginary evil spirit, was like the popular trial for witchcraft. The poor woman, if cross, and old, and ugly, her hands and legs being tied together, was thrown into deep water; if she floated, it was a proof of guilt to hang her, if she sunk and was drowned, she ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... leap from a spree to a nightmare of violence and disgust. Her hair got loose, her hat came over one eye, and she had no arm free to replace it. She felt she must suffocate if these men did not put her down, and for a time they would not put her down. Then with an indescribable relief her feet were on the pavement, and she was being urged along by two policemen, who were gripping her wrists in an irresistible expert manner. She was writhing to get her hands loose and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... curious little tubes developed for this purpose, oddly enough from their tail-ends. If some kind of film could be spread over the surface of the water, through which the larvae could not obtain air, they would suffocate. The well-known property of oil in "scumming over" water was recalled, two or three stagnant pools were treated with it, and to the delight of the experimenters, not a single larva was able to develop under the circumstances. Here was insecticide number one. The cheapest ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... indeed, after trying to suffocate me, but it was never answered. The air was on a sudden filled with the weirdest row I had ever heard. It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their shrillest and ghostliest. This was followed by a splutter of musketry, and this ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... won't be so bad in the other valley. Certainly this sand is going to try its best to suffocate us. Whew, there she comes!" as a ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... all the generations of man. Why was he beaten out of heaven? Because he was less brave than God? less proud? less aspiring? No! A thousand times no! God was more powerful, as he said, Whom thunder hath made greater. But Lucifer was a free spirit. To serve was to suffocate. He preferred suffering in freedom to all the happiness of a comfortable servility. He did not care to serve God. He cared to serve nothing. He was no figure-head. He stood on his own legs. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... anything to help us? Whatever is done, it can only be done quickly; for the moss is rising rapidly in the shaft, and even though some of the men are safe in the upper workings, it is only a question of a very short time till the moss will rise and suffocate them, or until the black damp does so. If you have any idea that can help, out with it and let us make a trial, for the inactivity is ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... very much, but every little while the wind would blow a cloud of sulphurous vapor from the crater, and nearly suffocate us. We walked to the edge of the crater and looked down, but we couldn't see much, because of the vapor. One of the guides went down into it a little way, and brought us up some pieces of sulphur. The cinders were so hot they burned our feet, and when we poked sticks into some cavities they ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... it but to clear out (through a portrait of the All-Highest), leaving Kit in the safe to suffocate. Enter police (comic). Where is Kit? Brain-wave. In the safe, behind secret panel. Problem: how to open it. The service was evidently so secret that it had never told one of its brightest young men about combination letter-locks. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... young and took those trips to Cowichan. It is pretty hard to go!" I fully agreed with him then, but when later he got so bad and suffered so much, he prayed to go, and I again agreed with him, poor fellow. This latter time was when to speak made him cough and suffocate. "Old man, I cannot talk to you," and he would lie back in an exhausted state, and I would go, sorry that I was unable to do anything to relieve him, to slightly repay all his kindness ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... out of its shell! It makes a little chip with its beak, and then sometimes it can't get any further, and you have gently to crack the hole bigger. Unless you're very careful you may kill it, but on the other hand, if it can't burst its shell when it's ready to hatch, it may suffocate, so it's a choice of evils. We put them in the drying pen first, and then in the 'foster mother.' They're like babies, and have to be fed every two hours. It's a tremendous business when you have hundreds ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... non-existent intelligence cannot grasp; to the martyr ones who disembowel themselves on the battlefield, who crucify themselves upon their stupidities; to the serious ones who mistake the sleep of their senses and the snores of their intellect for enviable perfections; to the serious ones who suffocate gently in the boredom they create (God alone has time to laugh at them); to the virgin ones who tenaciously advertise their predicament; to the virgin ones who mourn themselves, who kneel before keyholes; to the holy ones who recommend themselves tirelessly and triumphantly to ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... sober, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody—and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself—whither? for what purpose? To famish apart? To suffocate with his memories?—To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great—nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... oars, his long boating practice now standing him in good stead. The fumes from the burning oil were almost unbearable, threatening to suffocate the occupants of the yawl. Thirty yards away was the shore. The muscles in Shawn's arms were straining to their utmost. The heavily laden boat ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... never,—no, not in my first childhood, said one harsh word to me—who have sunk all a father's authority in a father's love,—how can I say all that I feel for you?—the grateful overflowing, (paining, yet—oh, how sweet!) remembrances which crowd around and suffocate me now?—The time will come when Ellinor and Ellinor's children must be all in all to you—when of your poor Madeline nothing will be left but a memory; but they, they will watch on you and tend you, and protect your ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quickly followed by a second, sprang past me and hurried to the top of the staircase. It was Pillot with a trusty comrade, and the dwarf, recognising me, shouted some directions, which, unfortunately, I failed to understand. The smoke filled my nostrils, I began to suffocate, but staggered on blindly, dragging Peleton with me. Below us the stairs had begun to burn—soon they would fall ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... top and bottom. The ropes by which the car was suspended being too short, the balloon soon covered the travellers like an immense hood. In endeavouring to secure the valve-rope, they made a rent in the balloon, and the gas escaped so close to their faces as almost to suffocate them. Finding that they were descending then too rapidly, they threw overboard everything available, including their coats and only excepting the instruments. The ground was reached at 10h. 45m., near Lagny. Of course no observations ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unheeding. If he spent the whole night on the ramparts, there was no one to know or care. It was better than tossing sleepless under a roof. He felt as if a roof would suffocate him. But sheer physical weariness began to oppress even his elastic frame at last. He awoke to the fact that ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... of moral life from doing them, and from thus manifesting the tendencies of his depraved will. Who cannot see that the Lord cannot flow in out of heaven into man and teach him and lead him until these evils have been removed? For they obstruct, repel, pervert, and suffocate the truths and goods of heaven, which present themselves from above, press down, and strive to flow in. For evils are infernal and goods are heavenly, and everything infernal burns with hatred ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... has come to our ears that numbers of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with demons, Incubi and Succubi; and that by their sorceries, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women, the increase of animals, the corn of the ground, the grapes of the vineyard and the fruit of the trees, as well as men, women, flocks, herds, and other various kinds of ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... coincidence that the dream should have occurred to him, at this moment. He at once announced his readiness to surrender; but his forty companions did not see the matter in the same light. The moment Josephus left them, the Roman soldiers would throw combustibles down the well, and suffocate them, if they did not come out ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face, but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on his shoulders had to be continually ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... midst of daily miseries, weaknesses, and mistakes. So that he attributed entirely to the idleness in which he had been living for some weeks past, the palpitation which at times made him feel as if he were going to suffocate. If he wished to recover his health he had only to take up ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... away. Snarling, struggling, choking, in a fresh madness of terror at this new outrage, Ben Bolt was slowly hoisted by his neck up from the floor, until, quite clear of it, whirling, squirming, battling, suspended by his neck like a man being hanged, his wind was shut off and he began to suffocate. He coiled and twisted, the splendid muscles of his body enabling him almost to tie knots ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... surely suffocate anon," said Marguerite. "Twenty-two years agone, on the Grand Friday, two hundred persons died stifled under the porch of The Annunciation. God have their souls in keeping! Ay, those were the good ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... I sew," returned the other, with a nod of energy. "I should suffocate if I just sat still and thought how warm it ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... don't we're likely to suffocate down here," returned Hal. "I can scarcely get my breath now. We'll have to ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... guard. He knew better than to make a false move from too great haste, and swam round cautiously, seeking for a place to board. The heat from that floating mass of belching flame was terrific, and more than once, as a gust brought down a cloud of fumes over him, the boy thought he would suffocate. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... terrible hours at the Raleighs' bungalow, scarcely conscious of her surroundings in her anguish of suspense. It possessed her like a raging fever, and she could not rest. At times it almost seemed to suffocate her, and then she would pace to and fro, to and fro, hardly knowing ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... her balance, but the pressure round her throat, tightening, bade fair to suffocate her; and reeling, while her hands tore ineffectually at the folds of the veil, she was drawn back and back, and tripped, falling half on, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... have air!" exclaimed the prince; "give me air or I suffocate! Where is the child of Annunziata?—I will at least atone to him for the wrong ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... garret. Before dying he had written a most touching letter to his faithless love. The idea of killing himself like a cook made him shudder. He saw the possibility of the horrible comparison. How ridiculous! And the Count de Tremorel had a wholesome fear of ridicule. To suffocate himself, at Belleville, with a grisette, how dreadful! He almost rudely pushed Jenny's arms away, and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... were pinioned close to her sides. What was the Thing thus crushing her? She strained to see, but the darkness was like black velvet; she could see nothing, only feel, breathlessly, chokingly. A horrible idea assailed her. Whatever it was, it was striving to suffocate her—yes, and it was going to succeed, unless she could muster the strength to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... for the pot is not there, but past indications, useless in a work of precision. And yet the disk to be cut out must have a fixed diameter: if it were too large, it would not go in; if too small, it would close badly, it would slip down on the honey and suffocate the egg. How shall it be given its correct dimensions without a pattern? The Bee does not hesitate for a moment. She cuts out her disk with the same celerity which she would display in detaching any shapeless lobe that might do for a stopper; and that disk, without further measurement, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... breathed over the mucaginous surface of the tonsils, the contagious atoms are liable to be arrested by the tonsil; which therefore becomes the nest of the future disease, like the inflamed circle round the inoculated puncture of the arm in supposititious small-pox. This swelling is liable to suffocate the patient in small-pox, and to become gangrenous in scarlet fever, and some other contagious fevers, which have been received in this manner. The existence of inflammation of the tonsil previous to the scarlet eruption, as the arm inflames in the inoculated small-pox, and suppurates ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... appeared to have no bottom. There was a growing sensation of suffocation; my boots hurt my feet, and the blister I had made upon my heel smarted, and all at once the pony, as it stood at the half-way house door, kicked out at me, just as I was beginning to suffocate; and this broke the rope, and I shot up ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... entrails, all prepared and cleaned, as neatly as though done by a skilful butcher; and, finally, under the oven was a bowl full of fresh blood. On his way to the magistrate of the district. the wretched man flung himself repeatedly on the ground, struggled with his guards, and endeavoured to suffocate himself by gulping clown clods of earth and stones, but was ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... trembling. "Right after supper last night. I thought I was going to suffocate. Got up and walked the streets all night. My God, ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... a pit with indefinite doom on it, Here, in the fumes of a feculent moat, Under an alp with inscrutable gloom on it, Squats the wild witch with a ghoul at her throat! Black execration that cannot be spoken of— Speech of red hell that would suffocate Song, Starts from this terror with never a token of Day and its loveliness all the year long. Sin without name to it—man never heard of it— Crime that would startle a fiend from his lair, Blasted this ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Balls are quickened into life evidently by the heat of the sun; in the cold season they disappear, and their place is taken by a much larger Ball. This Ball the champions kill by striking it with their feet and with their heads. But sometimes they will attempt to suffocate it by falling on it, some dozen of ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... explained to Vanamee, he must find expression. He felt that he would suffocate otherwise. He had begun to keep a journal. As the inclination spurred him, he wrote down his thoughts and ideas in this, sometimes every day, sometimes only three or four times a month. Also he flung aside his books of poems—Milton, Tennyson, Browning, even Homer—and addressed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... expression of countenance which she sometimes wore. She went straight to the group of which her husband formed the centre. "Do not detain those gentlemen here, count," she said; "they would prefer, I should think, to breathe in the garden rather than suffocate here, since ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his mother say a thousand times that she was pretty; he had laughed himself a thousand times at her quick wit. But he had never dreamed that it would make his heart come up into his throat and suffocate him whenever he thought of her, or that her lightest and simplest words, her most casual and unconscious glance, would burn ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... necessary to raise mankind from the savage to the civilised state. But for these antisocial propensities men would be gentle as sheep, and "an Arcadian life would arise, of perfect harmony and mutual love, such as must suffocate and stifle all talents in their very germs." Nature, knowing better than man what is good for the species, ordains discord. She is to be thanked for competition and enmity, and for the thirst of power and ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... nor carriages, nor go-carts, nor leading-strings. Or at least from the time when he begins to be able to put one foot before the other, he shall not be supported, except over paved places; and he shall be hurried over these. Instead of letting him suffocate in the exhausted air indoors, let him be taken every day, far out into the fields. There let him run about, play, fall down a hundred times a day; the oftener the better, as he will the sooner learn to get up again by himself. The boon of freedom is ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... was dying. He hurried to his bedside, and found him dead. Captain Steadman, sick in the next bed, and those around him, said he had been talking pleasantly with them, when he sat up to reach his cup of water on the table. As soon as he drank it he seemed to suffocate; and after tossing his arms wildly in the air, and making several fearful ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... shown us that a man can do without food altogether for forty days at a stretch, while he can't do without oxygen for a single minute. Cut off his supply of that life-supporting gas, choke him, or suffocate him, or place him in an atmosphere of pure carbonic acid, or hold his head in a bucket of water, and he dies at once. Yet, except in mines or submarine tunnels, nobody ever takes into account practically this most important factor in human and animal life. We toil for bread, but ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... cross to mark their resting place. It was a place well calculated to bring up thoughts of death, but Wunpost faced the coming day calmly. At the first flush of dawn the sand was still hot from the sun of the evening before; the low air seemed to suffocate him with its below-sea-level pressure, and the salt marshes to give off stinking gases; it was a hell-hole, even then, and the day was yet to come, when the Valley ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... his charmer might sit together under the shade of the sail for an hour at a stretch, he holding her hand in his and neither saying a single word, though at times the transports of poor Barnaby's emotions would go far to suffocate him with their rapture. As for her face at such moments, it appeared sometimes to assume a transparency as though of a light shining from ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... said with a sigh, laying her little hand on his heart. He could do so in all confidence, for its spasmodic throbbing threatened to suffocate him. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... structure with long eaves. It consisted of heavy beams of dry wood with rafters and laths, and all covered over with a thatch of rushes, a foot in thickness. It would make a tremendous blaze, and the smoke would be likely enough to suffocate the lion even before the blaze could get at him. The suggestion of Hendrik was adopted. They prepared ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... was that. Dust, the dust of indifferent time, of cold-hearted oblivion, was drifting over him, hiding his smile, his eyes, his tears. It seemed to mount, to suffocate her, as she ran, this dust, strewn by her mother's hand. Even in her own heart she had known the parching of its drifting fall, known that crouching doubts—not of him, never of him—but of his greatness, had lurked in ambush since her mother had come home;—known ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... grew worse, and on the following day Frank stood by her bed momentarily fearing that she would suffocate; once her face blackened and he had to seize and lift her out of bed, and place her in a chair. When she seemed a little easier he called Emma, and they made the bed and cleaned up the room together. Then he ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... clear that for a moment Stella's heart seemed to stop beating altogether, and she felt as if she would suffocate, and buried her face in her hands, expecting every moment to feel the claws of the terrible animal sink into the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... landlord, and while they hitched Queen to the buggy, the old man stood helplessly wringing and fumbling his big ugly hands, muttering incoherently, and tugging at his collar as though about to suffocate. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... westerner, either pleasant or convenient. It looks dingy and dark, doors are small and massive, windows are few and generally closed. This is partly because they are intended to keep out the tropical glare, and partly because the people seem averse to occupying an airy room. A westerner would suffocate in a room in which Hindus would delight to spend a night. It has always been a wonder to the writer that they thrive on so little fresh air ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... against it, being crushed slowly between this thin, gray membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back. I knew that if the membrane did not give, if I did not break through at last, I would suffocate and die. In fact I was already dead, the idea came to me with a weight of horror, I twisted, lashing out in total panic. Then the thin gray wall split and gave way, ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... his hands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had but one entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet in width that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feet square; but he would not suffocate—the priests did not intend that he should ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... to find a cave, and go in, Nick," continued the youth. "Suppose we do, and the sulphur fumes suffocate us? They must be just awful inside the mountain. This is a nice pickle for me to get into! If I stay out here I'm in danger of being drowned, or swept away by a landslide; if I go inside there's all the chance in the world that I'll ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... air, through the magic of chemical combination, forms nearly half the substance of the solid rocks. Deprive it of its affinity for carbon, or substitute nitrogen or hydrogen in its place, and the air would quickly suffocate us. That changing of the dark venous blood in our lungs into the bright, red, arterial blood would instantly cease. Fancy the sensation of inhaling an odorless, non-poisonous atmosphere that would make one gasp for breath! ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... together, I cannot tell, but my spirits are dreadfully depressed! There seems to be hanging over me a cloud of fate I cannot dispel. Every hour seems descending lower and blacker over my head, until it feels like some heavy weight about to suffocate or crush ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... together under our respective blankets in a vain attempt to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage, and my men covered their heads and everything with their blankets; but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to suffocate me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only was it more comfortable, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by Tibetans. My men moaned, groaned, and chattered their teeth ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... thus the king defied: Haste, son of Light, pour fast the winged war, The prince, the dying prince demands your care; Hear how his death song chides your dull delay, Lift longer strides, bend forward to the fray, Ere flames infolding suffocate his groan, Child of your beaming God, a victim ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... two men have found the skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who shot at the queen. "It's a great pity," he replied, very sensibly, "they couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance be better shots ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "No," he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, "if you suffocate 'em this way, they only die once: if you fumigate 'em in the new way, they come to life again, and die o' starvation; so the pangs o' death ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... "and so we are. I've had a sea biscuit and a spoonful of salmon in the last two days. We're on whack. You see, when we discovered the fire, we battened down immediately to suffocate the fire. And then we found how little food there was in the pantry. But it was too late. We didn't dare break out the lazarette. Hungry? I'm just as ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... for Charlie, who shook all over with suppressed laughter; nor was Miss Cass proof against the contagion—she was obliged to almost suffocate herself with her handkerchief to avoid ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of his uncle, and to atone in part for his previous neglect, Bog devoted only a half eye to the Minford family, and kept the rest of his optics on the fire. Just after its discovery, the smoke had loomed up dense and black, as if it were trying to suffocate the flames beneath. Then it changed rapidly to a light blue, and was chased faster upward by two tongues of fire. These tongues leaped aloft with a sudden impulse, and shed a revelation of light over acres of houses, and brought out church steeples in vivid relief against ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Nothing can be more wretched than travelling in rainy weather. The men, poor fellows, do not make the least attempt to keep themselves dry; but the passengers endeavour, by means of oiled cloths, to keep out the wet; and under this they broil and suffocate, till at last they are obliged to throw off the covering. Even were this not the case, we should still be wretched, as the rain always finds its way in somewhere or other; and I have been often awakened from ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... farms or gather in their crops, when it was safe so to do. None could approach within range of the muskets pointed from the loopholes at the entrance without being immediately shot down; nor could either fire or smoke suffocate or dislodge the inmates, as the caves have ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of Don Silvio at the protracted resistance of the party, and the security of their retreat. To get at them was impossible, so he determined to set fire to the room, and suffocate them, if he could do no otherwise. He gave his directions to his men, who rushed down for straw, but in so doing he carelessly passed under the trap-door, and Mesty, who had carried up with him two ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... given to the Body to live, might be released, that it should operate and penetrate as a Spiritual Essence, and Fire, having its Vent-holes left that it might burn and have no opposition, which might suffocate, suppress, or hinder the burning Life; whereas otherwise, if the separation of the Soul and Spirit from the Body should not first be done, there could not succeed any operation either effectual, profitable, or necessary; for whatsoever is visible, to be felt, and inseparably in ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... haunted by a horrible nightmare. She seemed to be lying on a bed of banknotes, whilst the Cochin-China, sitting heavily on her chest, reproached her bitterly for having handed her over to a stranger in exchange for a little filthy lucre. Mother Etienne, bathed in perspiration, seemed to suffocate under ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... the soft sand, but since the crust has formed, thanks to our efforts, it no longer sinks, but runs over the hard surface, pours in a flood down that steep incline at whose foot the fountains issue, and threatens to suffocate them with soil torn from its banks. The very life of the oasis was imperilled by our well-meant artifices. But now, with these little ditches, we hope to catch and tame the showers, and force them to ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... damp air occasionally. It breathes by lungs, as we have said; but, as it has no ribs, there is no chest to heave mechanically. The frog's air has to be swallowed, to be gulped down into the lungs. That is not possible unless the mouth is shut; and, therefore, as we might suffocate a man by keeping his mouth shut, so we should suffocate a frog by keeping his mouth open. Yet we should not suffocate him instantly; we should disable the lungs; but, in this class of animals the whole skin is a breathing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... vehemence of his griefe, he was contented a long time to shew a counterfaict ioy, which raised vnto him a liuely spring of sorowes and displeasures, which ordinarily did frette and boyle his minde so muche: as the force of his weping for vaine hope, was able to suffocate the remnant of life, that rested in his tormented hart, which caused certaine litle brokes of teares to streame downe, assailing the minde of this foolishe Louer. This faire and chaste Ladie was so resolued ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... sucxi. Sucking-pig porkido. Suckle mamnutri. Suction sucxado. Sudden subita. Sue procesi. Suet graso. Suffer (endure) suferi. Suffer (tolerate) toleri. Suffering sufero. Suffice suficxi. Sufficiency suficxeco. Sufficient suficxa. Suffix sufikso. Suffocate sufoki. Suffrage (vote) vocxdono. Sugar sukero. Sugar basin sukerujo. Suggest proponi, inspiri. Suicide memmortigo. Suicide, to commit sin memmortigi. Suit konveni. Suitable konvena, tauxga. Suite sekvantaro. Suitor (lover) amanto. Suitor plendulo. Sulk ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... at him, her face haggard, her heart beating high in her throat as if to suffocate her. "What do you mean?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the scientists to stop the gap would avail them nothing: it was an impossible task now. The construction of the great shell had been a different matter; there was some natural atmosphere remaining in those days. And, finally, they would suffocate, every last one of them. They'd die miserably, purple of face and with swollen ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... the valley, and managed to swerve round without falling. But for an instant she could not, she dared not, raise her eyes. Clear on the frosty air came sounds that made her blood turn cold. She felt as if her heart would suffocate her. A brief blindness blotted out ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Tiberius is reported to have muttered, as he gazed at his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was to suffocate him with a mattress and rule ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... When they had recovered, they said simultaneously, "Go away at once, and never come back here again, you girl of infamous taste! Who are you? You are not the princess we left in the castle. You are of villain's blood, and the very air which you exhale does suffocate us. So with no ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... gracious' sake, let me talk! I feel sometimes as if I should suffocate. Everything about this house is so demure, and silent, and solemn, and Quakerish, and hatefully prim. If ever I have a house of my own, I mean to paste in great letters over the doors and windows, 'Laughing and talking freely allowed!' This is my birthday, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... my knees helping to extricate him from the position in which he lay, with one arm still bound to his side, and the dark cloth garment from which Tom had shaken the gold bound round and round his head and face, effectually gagging him; and if the intention of his captors had been to suffocate him, they had nearly ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... all are exceedingly deep-rooted. Moreover, grapes thrive best in a warm soil. While, therefore, the roots may make good use of nutritious solutions, if not too diluted, in an undrained soil, they suffocate and do not receive sufficient bottom heat. It must be made emphatic that the grape will not thrive ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... abundantly. For with the temptation He made a way to escape, that he might be able to bear it. Therefore, the envious enemy, considering that the new prelate {219} and the new man was flourishing with so manifold a grace of virtues, devised to send a burning blight of temptation, which might suffocate the germ of his merits already put forth. Nor was there any delay. He who severs a man from his God, and one friend from his neighbour, sowed irreconcileable quarrels between the king and ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... it, but observation and experience have taught me that the more you yield to these demons of vanity and worry, the more relentlessly they harry you. They veritably are demons that seize you by the throat and hang on like grim death until they suffocate and strangle you. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... as if his anger must suffocate him. "It is too disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make neither top nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our nose; we were all afraid we should put our foot in it without knowing it; and now that one wants to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... casualty. V. kill, put to death, slay, shed blood; murder, assassinate, butcher, slaughter, victimize, immolate; massacre; take away life, deprive of life; make away with, put an end to; despatch, dispatch; burke, settle, do for. strangle, garrote, hang, throttle, choke, stifle, suffocate, stop the breath, smother, asphyxiate, drown. saber; cut down, cut to pieces, cut the throat; jugulate[obs3]; stab, run through the body, bayonet, eviscerate; put to the sword, put to the edge of the sword. shoot dead; blow one's brains out; brain, knock on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... grim grating of the massive door. He was too sensible to feel any sense of disgrace in being thus wrongfully imprisoned; but the horror of the situation remained, and it seemed as though he should suffocate behind those bars if not ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... Frank Henley, greatly, ardently admire him; yet I certainly do not love: that is, I certainly do not permit myself to feel any of those anxieties, alarms, hopes, fears, perturbations, and endearments, which we are told are inseparable from that passion. I extinguish, I suffocate ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... blazed a fiercer flame, indignation against her father for the prohibition that raised a barrier between herself and Bryant Clinton. One moment she resolved to rush down stairs and give utterance to the vehement anger that threatened to suffocate her by repression; the next, the image of a stern, rebuking father, inflexible in his will, checked her rash design. Had she been in his presence and heard the interdiction repeated, her resentful feelings would have burst forth; but, daring as she ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sliding from her shoulders. She rested against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the ceiling. "For storage," he said again. He thought his throat had closed, and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings, handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a foot above their heads; an acrid and musty ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Six sitting round the table felt it grow very warm, and they thought this was because of their good fare; but when the heat became still greater and they wanted to go out, but found the doors and windows fastened, then they knew that the King meant them harm and was trying to suffocate them. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... he, "I saw by your looks that you wished to drink of that bottle, and I said within me, even though I suffocate, yet will I not leave one drop of the aguardiente of the Christian Cavalier to be wasted on that Jew, on whose head may evil ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Willie started the fire. The smoke refused to rise, but puffed out into the room, and Mrs. Barnes knew that if the chimney were closed they would probably suffocate, if they ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... have not taken some narcotic without knowing it!... Suppose the villains are going to inject into the room some gas which would suffocate me, and I should not know I was breathing it in? Suppose I lose consciousness and ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... that it was therefore high time to abandon it. I had ceased to think of the insecurity of the ground we trod, and scarcely noticed the mighty clouds of hot vapour which frequently surrounded and threatened to suffocate us, obliging us to step suddenly back with wetted faces. It was fortunate that these waters contain but a very small quantity of brimstone, otherwise we could scarcely have long maintained our ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... said I; 'it would fill in a moment and suffocate you. I see nothing for it, Peterkin, if you really can't keep your breath so long, but to let me knock you down, and carry you out while in a state ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the bones of the unfortunate person whom he thus entrapped. He managed to have a small chamber filled with some combustible in the side of the pit, which was to be set on fire, and, on the return of the platform to its place, suffocate his detenu with smoke. Whether he had performed any previous atrocities in this way, or whether the present instance was the commencement of his profession of homicide, is not told. By some means or other, having inveigled a stout countrywoman, coming with her eggs and apples to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... I suffocate!" cried he. "I feel as if this town lay on my chest like a hundred-pound weight, and that I have to conceal myself like a criminal from the eyes ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... the other side of the table, was arranging into piles the papers before him. He complained Of the draft, and Miss Maggie shut the window. He said then that he didn't mean he wanted to suffocate, and she opened the one on the other side. The clock had hardly struck three when he accused her of having forgotten his medicine. Yet when she brought it he refused to take it. She had not brought the right kind of spoon, he said, and she knew perfectly well ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... toads, for "Poisonous Mushrooms groweth where old rusty iron lieth, or rotten clouts, or neere to serpent's dens or rootes of trees that bring forth venomous fruit.[170:1]. . . Few of them are good to be eaten, and most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater. Therefore, I give my advice unto those that love such strange and new-fangled meates to beware of licking honey among thornes, lest the sweetnesse of one do not counteracte the sharpnesse and pricking ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... and have somewhat the appearance of hares, and burrow in immense quantities in the pampas. The only way to get rid of them was by puffing the fumes of burning sulphur down into their holes; and it was quite a part of the boys' regular work to go out with the machine for the purpose, and to suffocate these troublesome creatures. Their holes, however, are not so dangerous to horsemen as are those of the armadillos, as the ground is ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... amazingly small sum. The better class of Italians keep their apartments as neat as possible. Children of a genial clime, they are fond of warmth, and the temperature of their rooms stands at a stage which would suffocate an American. They are very exclusive, and herd by themselves in a section of the Five Points. Baxter and Park and the adjoining streets are taken up to a ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... going to leave France, change worlds and skies. My passage is taken for America. The murmur of ocean and forest must soothe my despair. A great sorrow requires immensity. I would suffocate here. I should expect, at every turn, to see your white dress gleaming among the trees. Richeport is too much associated with you for me to dwell here longer; your memory has exiled me from it for ever. I must put a huge impossibility between ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... did so, and the six men began to feel the room growing very warm, by reason, as they thought at first, of the good dinner; but as the heat grew greater and greater, and they found the doors and windows fastened, they began to think it was an evil plan of the king's to suffocate them. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... saw Hildegarde in the hotel gardens he did not avoid her but stopped by her chair. She rose. She had been waiting all day for this moment. She must speak out or suffocate with anxiety. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... us in suspense, Dad! Tommy will suffocate if you don't tell us now. She has been holding her breath ever since you began ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... were in vain. For hours he lay there, gasping for breath. Suddenly, when he was about to suffocate, the door was broken open, and he found himself fainting in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened, as if the judgment-hour were near at hand, and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... them. "Remember, Terence," Mike Murphy warned the chief, "when the blow-off comes at four o'clock and the uproar commences fore and aft, we have the means to keep them quiet. I'll go forward and you go aft. When we threaten to throw burning sulphur down the ventilators and suffocate them, they'll sing ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... simplest and most retired life would now please me, only I would not like to be confined to it, in case I grew weary, and now and then craved variety, for exhilaration. I want some scenes of natural beauty, and, imperfect as love is, I want human beings to love, as I suffocate without. For intellectual stimulus, books would mainly ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... you have thought of me, what would I have thought of myself had I left him to suffocate when I could just as well have brought him out? Do you think I could ever have looked you in the face again? You might not have ever known I could have saved him—but I should have hated myself every hour of my life. Men are ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tight squeeze for Zip, but he never thought of that until he had himself wedged into it. Neither did he think of his clean white coat. All he thought of was to catch the mice. So in he rushed, but he had to crouch down and literally squeeze himself through. And once or twice he thought he would suffocate from the amount of soot he shook down. He grew so tired creeping with his legs doubled up under him that when he was half way through he gave up ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... I'm talking straight. You've been selfish, kid. You've only been thinking of yourself; your regeneration; your past, your present, your future. You—you—you. You never thought of the folks you left down home; left to suffocate with the stink you raised. You cleared out scot-free, and, say, kid, you let a girl lie for you; lie for you. You did that. A girl, by heck! who wouldn't lie for the Almighty Himself. A girl who—who——" Drake searched frantically for a fitting ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... forced, by his avocations, to continue occupations requiring much thinking, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a patient suffering under delirium or stupor you may suffocate him, by giving him his food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently with a spoon and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food unconsciously, but with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If you offer ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... horrible even to contemplate, her own child who had gone from her mute and comes back to her speaking, I say we should think it natural in such a mother to seize this child, and, in the ecstasy of her love and joy, half suffocate it with her kisses and caresses. Not so here. I could see no glad tear in the lady's eye, no smile of welcome on her face. Her hands were snugly stowed away in a costly little muff, and she did not ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... existence and prosperity. Nature has so laid its plans that, at or near the equator in the warm climate tropical fruits grow better than they do in Iceland, while the pine trees, true to nature, thrive best in cold regions. The Polar bear enjoys the snows of Alaska, but would suffocate in the tropical heat of Borneo or Sumatra. True to the law of the survival of the fittest, the elephant and ostrich thrive in sunny Africa, but would perish in Norway's winters. These things are true, because ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... yours—and your guide into mine," he declared. After a moment's hesitation she gravely answered: "It might not hurt you to know something of my world after all. It's rather humanizing for an artist to free himself from a single environment. It is possible to suffocate ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... get out, Charley; I gotta get out and get air. I feel like I'm going to suffocate in here. It's this old cough takes the breath out ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... only time to observe this, when they thrust me into the box, closed the lid, placed it in the wagon, and drove rapidly away. I could not doubt for a moment into whose hands I had fallen, and when they put me into the box, I wished I might suffocate, and thus end my misery at once. But they had taken good care to prevent this by boring holes in the box, which admitted air enough to keep up respiration. And this was the result of all my efforts for freedom! After all I had suffered in making my escape, it was a terrible disappointment ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... beast upon its iron tether, a threefold movement, which is not three movements successively, but one triple movement all at once. In rage it would fain get at God to seize Him, dethrone Him, murder Him, and destroy Him; in agony it would fain suffocate its own interior thirst for God, which parches and burns it with all the frantic horrors of a perfectly self-possessed frenzy; and in fury it would fain break its tight fetters of gnawing fire which pin down its radical love of the beautiful Sovereign ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... her brain. What was it? What was she going to hear? Had Kenneth turned back half-way out to India for her sake? Had some trouble befallen him, in which he had come to seek her sympathy? What could it be? and her heart beating so as almost to suffocate her, she opened ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... might, perhaps, have carried out to some Backwood settlement or Atlantic island, as pretty a Utopian prescription, under the designation of a constitution, as could well be desired in the most philosophical community. But one of those sad trifles which suffocate great ideas, and sometimes terminate in suffocating philosophers, put a stop to my further enlightenment for the present, by drying up the treasury of the Socratics. The philosophers were the most civil as well as the most unfortunate people in the world. One or other of them ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... at the door, her heart would give a sudden jump and send the blood rushing to her head. Her lips would tremble slightly as she held out her hand to him; and as he sat and looked at her, she would become uncomfortably conscious of the beating of her heart; in fact at times it would almost suffocate her, and her ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "Stop, lads, you'll suffocate the poor fellows if you pour all that water down their throats!" exclaimed McTavish, the Assistant Surgeon of the corvette, who had been lent to the Supplejack. "Just a wine-glassful at a time, with a few drops of brandy in it, will be the best ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... papyrus was to give, as it were, but one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it. The Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of old sages, but also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress; for there is continual wandering in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... whispered. "You said nobody can't hear what goes on in this room. These curtains would suffocate a trumpet. Here, you," he cried to the third man, "don't stand shivering like that. Take that carving-knife out of his hand. Pull the trigger, Dick, ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... said the dry-goods merchant. "A man that'll pay double fare to have the whole earth to himself when other folks has to be packed into a berth and suffocate! The conductor said he paid double to Chicago to get that compartment, and he's only goin' out in the desert a little ways. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... make man something different from the dust which whirls about him on the highway, or the stone over which he stumbles. This is precisely the character of those speculative systems which deny the reality of action and substitute the idea for the deed; such a world does more than suffocate the individual soul; it destroys the very meaning of life by robbing it of moral order and meaning. The end of such a conception of the universe is necessarily annihilation, and its mood ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... iron trap-door, pierced with innumerable small holes, the object of which, as well as of a groove in the rock communicating with the subterranean passage, was to enable the garrison, by filling the passage with smoke and flame, to suffocate and blind the besiegers should they ever succeed by any accident in penetrating thus far—in itself, as it seemed to me, a very improbable contingency. We clambered up the face of the rock to its summit, whence we had an extensive view of the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant |
