"Suffocate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could go back to the days when we were 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 to ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... as I did, I 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... hot. And the cook 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
... which appeared sometimes in the shape of a dog, sometimes in the form of a man, not to one person only, but to several, and caused them great pain, grasping their throats, and compressing their stomachs, so as to suffocate them. It bruised almost the whole body, and reduced them to extreme weakness, so that they became pale, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a 'huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the uneven sic-vos-non-vobis pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 kolereti. Sullen ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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
... 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 animals, vines and apple trees, grass, corn and ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... is 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 it a thought, especially one requiring a decision, abruptly, you do it a ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... to dig him out we shall suffocate him," cried Uncle Richard, speaking as if he had no doubt of the boy living still. "Look here, carpenter—David, there is only one way: three of us must be here with a rope fastened to this great root, and three others must work at a branch yonder. We shall have great leverage then, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... . if so he can sit, never loosing his will, and with a gesture of his hands that "breaks into very flame," he feels that he must draw her from "the house called hers, not mine," which soon will seem to suffocate her if she cannot ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... grew colder and colder, we huddled 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 convulsively during ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to free himself 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.
... likely to suffocate down here," returned Hal. "I can scarcely get my breath now. We'll have to take ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... I wish I could put you away from me; I suffocate in this intimacy, For all that I love you; How I have longed for this night in the train, Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain To God ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... and had it not been for those very timbers that cut him off from the air he was choking to breathe, he would have been crushed and battered out of all human semblance in a second. As it was, ere he had time to suffocate, MacPherson was ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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
... the night passed without anything unusual happening. Once the wind veered around a little, threatening to suffocate them with smoke from the camp-fire, but by the time they prepared to vacate the shelter the wind veered back to where it had first come from and gave ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... common; when this radius is greater than the line of least resistance, the mine is termed overcharged; and when the radius is less, undercharged. A mine of small dimensions, formed by sinking a shaft in the ground, is termed a fougasse. The term camouflet is applied to a mine used to suffocate the enemy's miner, without producing an explosion. Small mines made in rock or masonry, merely for the purpose of excavation, without any considerable external explosion, are ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... remained, neither would the 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, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... came here because I wrote something on a piece of paper. There has been a whisper that you were once a spy in this city—think of it; the name of spy does not sound well. Rumour has touched you but lightly, yet if I say the word it can envelope and suffocate you." ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... 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 ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... 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 ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... 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 grey ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them, but Simpleton would not permit it, and said, "Leave the creatures in peace, I will not suffer you to kill them." At length they came to a bee's nest, in which there was so much honey that it ran out of the trunk of the tree where it was. The two wanted to make a fire beneath the tree, and suffocate the bees in order to take away the honey, but Simpleton again stopped them and said, "Leave the creatures in peace, I will not allow you to burn them." At length the three brothers arrived at a castle where stone horses were standing in the stables, and no human being was to be seen, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... "Right after supper last night. I thought I was going to suffocate. Got up and walked the streets all night. ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... denounced as an interference with property rights. We see that even to-day men are very tenacious of "property rights," and the law describes them as sacred—however immoral or repugnant to common sense and common humanity they may be. So the effort to abolish the "right" of a slaver to starve, suffocate, mutilate, torture, or murder a black man in whom he had acquired a property right by the simple process of kidnapping required more than half a century to attain ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... 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 ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... Chelmsford, and there was time to look round at each other. Burnaby had come down from the netting and disposed his vast person amongst us and the bags of ballast. He was driven down by the smell of gas, which threatened to suffocate us all when we started. M. Wilfrid de Fonvielle, kneeling down by the side of the car, was perpetually "taking observations," and persistently asking for "the readings," which the gentleman from Cambridge occasionally protested his inability to supply, owing either to Burnaby having his foot upon ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... accident, violent death, 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 the head; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you thrust yourself upon my privacy? Why am I not alone? Fly! and let my miseries want, at least, the aggravation of beholding their author. My eyes loathe the sight of thee! My heart would suffocate thee with its ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... from room to room before a fire you should shut doors and windows behind you to prevent the supply of air which feeds the flames? Are you aware that by creeping on your hands and knees, and keeping your head close to the ground, you can manage to breathe in a room where the smoke would suffocate you if you stood up?—also, that a wet sponge or handkerchief held over the mouth and nose will enable you to breathe with less difficulty in the midst of smoke?—Do you know that many persons, especially children, lose their lives by being forgotten by the inmates of a house ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea. It must involve physical inconvenience of the most demoralizing sort simply to be in one for any length of time. A first-rate man who has been breathing carbonic acid and oil vapour ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... but 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 ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... 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 cheeks would ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... thus given to Janet. Something swelled in her throat as if to suffocate her, but there could be no reply, and to burst out crying would only make him think her younger still; so as he turned to his mournful task, she ensconced herself in a high-backed chair, and watched him from under her ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... he said hoarsely, "you would never respect me any more if I took advantage of your tenderness now. As soon—as soon as I really may, I will teach you every shade of love and its meanings. I will kiss those lips and unloosen that hair; I will suffocate you with caresses and make you thrill as I shall thrill until we both forget everything in the intoxication of bliss," and he half-closed his eyes, and his face grew pale again with ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... because the restaurants are very dirty—if you wipe your plate and glass carefully before using them, they need not stomach you; it is not because the rooms are cold—if you sit near the great vase of smoldering embers in the centre of each room you may suffocate in comparative comfort; it is not because the prices are great—they are really very reasonable; it is not for any very tangible fault that I object to life at the restaurants, and yet I cannot think of its hopeless homelessness without rebellion against ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Band," he said proudly and haughtily, scrutinizing the company with his confident gaze. "And you haven't yet got as far as the Golden Band, because you are cowards! Chuproff," he cried to one of his men, "go and take the mask off Finch, or the poor boy will suffocate, and untie his arms—and give him a good crack on the head to teach ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a fearful smell of paraffin in hell, enough to suffocate one. And suddenly it all vanished. Fyodor opened his eyes and saw his table, the boots, and the tin lamp. The lamp-glass was black, and from the faint light on the wick came clouds of stinking smoke as ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hot and suffocating on the brink of this lake that we cut eye-holes in our pocket-handkerchiefs and wore them as masks. Even then we had to run back every few moments for a breath of fresher air, though we were on the windward side of the lake. The gases on the leeward side would suffocate one instantly. Oh, the glory! This Hale-mau-mau, whose fire never goes out, is a huge lake of liquid lava, heaving with groans and thunderings that cannot be described. Around its edge, as you see in the picture, the red lava was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... everywhere crowd up the space. The beams, blackened by tobacco smoke, are hacked and carved, covered by the initials and remarks of bygone apprentices. Only the after one is kept clear; there the Board of Trade inscription (slightly altered by some inspiring genius), reads, "Certified to suffocate eight seamen." A dismal hole on a bright morning! Happily, one has not far to go for a breath of keen air. Ten minutes is my time, and I am back at the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... 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 ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some to the . . . Oh, my God! My God! What have I done? What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days. God pity me! Look down on a poor soul in worse ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... 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 ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Mortain began to wag his head about and pluck at the morse of his cope. "Air, air!" he gasped; "I strangle! I suffocate!" They carried him out of church to his, lodging, and there ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 would ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... clinched her hands above the sharp pain that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... no other day room. Two young people who purpose to live in a small cottage or a bungalow will be wise to have this one big room that will serve for dining-room, living-room, and all. The same house divided into a number of tiny rooms would suffocate them: there would be no breathing-space. In furnishing such a room it is well to beware of sets of things: of six dining-room chairs, of the conventional dining-table, serving-table, and china ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... feelings never allowed to come to the surface—I cannot bear it longer! Everything within me strives for freedom, for light and life. Let me leave it, father; do not confine me longer in such chains. I shall die, I shall suffocate!" ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... me, I wonder? I began this letter with a firm, and, as I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my tears suffocate me. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and jump ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... moments more, my beloved," she said, "and then we must part. But why are you so pale?" she asked of Hermann, whose heart was beating fast enough to suffocate him; for he was afraid now of ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... have set me preliminary to an honorable discharge. Next to theology and government finance there is no subject on which the doctors differ and dogmatize as in this matter of warming and ventilating, most of them preferring that the universe should suffocate rather than their pet theories and furnaces be found wanting. (I'm not speaking ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... But there's one thing I want even more than that—your happiness." He was staring steadily over the great stretch of open country to where Crowborough lay in the purple distance. "When you came to me last night, little Joan, I thought I should suffocate with the happiness of it. It seemed so gloriously trustful of you . . . though, I must admit that idea did not come at first. You see I'm only a man; and you're a lovely girl. . . ." He laughed a little shortly. "I'd made ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... room be swarming with these noisome insects, the most ready way of expelling them is to fumigate the apartment with the dried leaves of the gourd. If the window be opened, the smoke will instantly drive them out: or if the room be close, it will suffocate them. But in the latter case, no person should remain within doors, as the fume is apt to occasion the headache. Another way is to dissolve two drams of the extract of quassia in half a pint of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... just as everything is necessary and may even be said to be mechanical. There is neither merit nor demerit and the criminal is not culpable; only he is outside order, and everything must be in order. "He who is maddened by the bite of a mad dog is certainly innocent; yet anyone has the right to suffocate him. In the same way, the man who cannot govern his passions by fear of the law is a very excusable invalid; yet he cannot enjoy peace of mind, or the knowledge of God, or even the love of God, and it is necessary ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... violets and heliotrope there on the mantle, in the same blood-coloured Bohemian vase where they bloomed that day,—that May day,—all these bring back so overpoweringly the time that is for ever dead to me,—that I feel as if I should suffocate." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... cards, for a while, at the same table as Penton, and saw him smirk down upon his guests as no one, surely, but W. W. Penton ever smirked. Evan felt that he would suffocate unless he got away from that table. He wished he could stand on a chair and reveal the character of the manager as he knew it—but a smile from Mrs. Penton reached him, and he filled with pity for her. He knew that a revelation of Penton's real character would sound ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... ring! It will make us ridiculous. They'll think Americans don't know anything. There must be some way of dampening the stove; and if there isn't, I'd rather suffocate than give myself away." Mrs. March ran and opened the window, while her husband carefully examined the stove at every point, and explored the pipe for the damper in vain. "Can't you find it?" The night wind came in raw and damp, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Hurricane, 'there are cities everywhere. Over thy head while thou didst sleep they have built them constantly. My four children the Winds suffocate with the fumes of them, the valleys are desolate of flowers, and the lovely forests are cut down since last we went ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... Thus Aline expressed the silently communicated thought. She experienced a difficulty in breathing, felt the sudden need of air. Something in her throat was throbbing as if it would suffocate her; a mist came ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... 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 ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... matter-of-fact things of everyday strange? We do—because they aren't—us.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't us, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive—if it is anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that will go on—go on at last to quite beautiful real ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... odious vision came back again. First he seemed to hear a kind of roaring sound, such as is made by a threshing machine or the distant passage of a train over a bridge. Then he commenced to gasp, to suffocate, and he had to unbutton his collar and his belt. He moved about to make his blood circulate, he tried to read, he attempted to sing. It was in vain. His thoughts, in spite of himself, went back to the day of the murder and made him begin ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which at the first was infused and 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 ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... Homeburg on a big scale. I'm beginning to envy you city chaps now. That makes the fourth engine that's come past. You get more for your money than we do. Look at that chief hurdling curbstones in his little red wagon. If Homeburg ever gets big enough to have a chief's wagon, I'll suffocate with pride. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... the mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see under the feet of our ponies a mixture of moorland and bog—here, the strip of firm ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off, the strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends. This question of the moment is, What are we to ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... that imperturbable 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, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impossible, in view of the strong popular feeling, to remain in Scotland. He is believed to have died in England under an assumed name. From Burke's method of killing his victims has come the verb "to burke," meaning to suffocate, strangle or suppress secretly, or to kill with the object of selling the body for the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... she managed without disturbing the sleeping Adele, who occupied the same curtained recess with her, to slip out from the awning. Wrapped in a thick shawl, she made her way through the encompassing trees and bushes of the garden that had seemed to imprison and suffocate her, to the edge of the grain-field, where she could breathe the fresh air beneath an open, starlit sky. There was no moon and the darkness favored her; she had no fears that weighed against the horror of seclusion with her own fancies. Besides, they were camping OUT of the house, and if she chose ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... upon the leads, that Flora, who followed him, found herself in a dim twilight, and expected every moment the panting mountain, which had come between her and the sky, would lose the centre of gravity, and suffocate ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... 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 ate a sausage and ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... in search of the harmonious. It is at this oppressive season of the year that I would relieve my exhausted vision with the grateful greens of the dusky olive, the pale pea, and the lively emerald. I pant for a plantation which shall shelter and not suffocate. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... breath of 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! We should be quickly poisoned by the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... ought 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 be soaking in poisonous sulphur ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Tomerus the inhabitants were found living on the low ground near the sea, in cabins which seemed calculated rather to suffocate their inhabitants than to protect them from the weather; and yet these wretched people were not without courage. Upon sight of the fleet approaching, they collected in arms on the shore, and drew up in order to attack the strangers on their landing. Their arms were spears, not headed with ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... he seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... impressive. Occasionally, one of us would remove his pipe from his mouth and say, "Superb! magnificent! Beautiful! but-by the Lord God Almighty, if we attempt to sleep in this little patch tonight, we'll never live till morning! for if we don't burn up, we'll certainly suffocate." But he was persuaded to sit up until we felt pretty safe as far as the fire was concerned, and then we turned in, with many misgivings. When we got up in the morning, we found that the fire had burned small pieces of drift wood within six feet of our boat, and had made its way ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and 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
... as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her promise bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the home-wreck at Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed the Secret Trust in her sister's presence, had been all laid before him. Nothing that she had done, nothing even ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 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 of them, at different stages and on different diets. We seemed to be ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... will suffocate me!" Hsiang-lien observed, and, with this remark, he abandoned Hseh Pan to his own devices; and, pulling his horse, he put his foot to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... no head-protectors, 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 ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... making conversation had not been cultivated among the Californians, and Ysabel plied her large fan with slow grace, at a loss for further remark, and wondering if her heart would suffocate her. But Don Vicente had the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... of the internal organs before it appears upon any of the external tissues. These cases are very liable to prove quickly fatal. The animal dies from paralysis of the heart, due to the formation of poisonous principles within the system; it may suffocate by reason of the action of these same poisons upon the tissues of the lungs, or it may choke to death as a result of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... 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 and ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... recipient subjects turn all things that inflow into such things as are in agreement with their own forms, just as the white light of the sun is turned into ugly colors or into black in those objects whose substances are interiorly of such a form as to suffocate and extinguish the light, and as stagnant ponds, dung-hills, and dead bodies turn the heat of the sun into stenches. From all this it can be seen that even evil uses are from the spiritual sun, but that good uses are changed in hell into evil uses. It is evident, therefore, that ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... these wretches. One of them rushed close to the king, and endeavoured to kill one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him, but he again fell upon his victim, rolled him on the ground, and attempted to suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he still strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who had waited our coming, and who seemed to have been left behind as a savage and barbarous token of ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... for Susanna merely a wild, uneasy dream. In the delirious fantasies of fever she again lived over the impressions of the mountain journey, but in darker colours. She saw the subterranean spirits, how in terrible shapes they raged about in the now wilderness, and sought to suffocate her beneath piles of snow and ice, which they flung upon her. Susanna combated with desperate exertions against them, for she knew that if she fell, the defence for those she loved would be taken away, and that the subterranean ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... 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
... the rest of the family; but her surprise to see me now, by this most un expected journey, when she had concluded me inevitably shut up from her sight for the remainder of her life, joined to the natural warmth of her disposition, seemed almost to suffocate her. I was very sorry to leave her, but my time was unavoidably short and hurried. I inquired after Chesington, and heard ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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
... 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
... grape, especially native species, because the vines of 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 ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... friend, so short a time thou'rt missing, And hast unlearned thy kissing? Why is my heart so anxious, on thy breast? Where once a heaven thy glances did create me, A heaven thy loving words expressed, And thou didst kiss, as thou wouldst suffocate me— Kiss ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... snakes, I saw primroses. They were everywhere: they fawned on me in wreaths and festoons; swarmed over me like parasites; flew at me like flies; till it seemed that the whole world had conspired to suffocate me under a sulphurous canopy of those detestable little atoms. Can you imagine the horror of it, Doctor, to a sane—a hitherto ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... frame is strained with convulsive efforts to escape, but the cords only sink into the bloating flesh, and she lies there crisping like a log, and as powerless to move. The dense, black smoke hangs over her like a pall, but prostrate as she is, it cannot sink low enough to suffocate and end her agony. How the bared bosom heaves! how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... in his gorgeous warrior trappings, Carthoris, my son. These three fell upon Dejah Thoris as we entered the apartment, and though the lives and training of royal Martians tend not toward vulgar demonstration, I thought that they would suffocate her ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... draws is like a stab; for the ball pierced the left lung, broke a rib, and did no end of damage here and there; so the poor lad can find neither forgetfulness nor ease, because he must lie on his wounded back or suffocate. It will be a hard struggle and a long one, for he possesses great vitality; but even his temperate life can't save ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... struggled about the bed. He was sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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
... 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 always bare ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... cultivation, the Englishman discovers some productive germ that with his indefatigable energy brings forth a thousand fold. Nor is Colonial work, industrial activity and commercial thrift disturbed by bureaucratic sophistry or immoderate fiscal pretentions, that so frequently suffocate the most promising and audacious undertakings in ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... did not desire to step from the Kansas Hell to the hell of the future, and that by feigning death he hoped to be taken to the hospital, placed in a coffin, then taken out to the prison graveyard, and buried alive, so that he would suffocate ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... 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 ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... too much 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 a ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... doctor, when he saw what I had done. "Do you wish to suffocate us? That will let the air out perfectly, but how are you going to close it to admit the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... speechless. She lacked the strength to rise. Her hands were pressed upon her heart. She thought its beating would suffocate her. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... beauty. Oh! what unutterable joy to hold her in his arms and whisper passionate love words in her little ears, to live again the dream of her dainty head lying prone there on his breast. Every pulse in his being throbbed to bursting, seeming almost to suffocate him. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... a haze was forming over his eyes. His heart was pounding until he believed that he must suffocate. Then he reeled suddenly, lost his balance and ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Lord God, thou knowest! Their babes have been torn from their bosoms and cast upon the plains to die of hunger, or to be devoured by hyenas or jackals. The little innocents would die on the "Middle Passage," or suffocate between the decks of the floating slave-pen, freighted and packed with unparalleled human woe, and the slavers in mercy have cast them out to perish on their native shores. Such is the beginning, and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... "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
... depressing influence of that narrow room, of the forbidding white walls, and the 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 ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... like bleached skeletons in the dry ungenial air. Yet inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal palace, with its terrible Glaciere, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber, funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate—so runs tradition—the shrieks of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... made a safe descent, but d'Arlandes got the royal consent to accompany Rozier, and the criminals lost their chance. Rozier and d'Arlandes made a voyage lasting for twenty-five minutes, and, on landing, the balloon collapsed with such rapidity as almost to suffocate Rozier, who, however, was dragged out to safety by d'Arlandes. This first aerostatic journey took place on November ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... The house has but one story, with attics in the mansard roofs, like those of a farmhouse in the country. I fancy Antony fled thither for a few moments, from the visitors who weary him; breathing the freshness of that dewy garden in the very midst of Paris. As for me, I suffocate this summer afternoon in this pretty Watteau chamber of ours, where Jean-Baptiste is at ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... 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
... light had gone away; and as the sun went down there was nothing but a spectral whiteness over the sea and the sky; and the atmosphere was so close and sultry that it seemed to suffocate one. Moreover, there was a dead calm; if they had wanted to get away from this exposed place, how could they? They could not get into the gig and pull this great ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... from the fire must not come out into the room to blind our eyes or suffocate us; the chimney is built to take care of the smoke and gases, and there must be a way for them to get into the chimney; the stove pipe is for this. But the game you have to play with your stove is to let the smoke and gases run up chimney, but to save all the heat ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... roof, never using our tents or open faced shack except in bad weather; but here, the ornamented tester of the bed and the ceiling itself seemed to be resting on my chest; in spite of the wide open windows the room seemed stuffy and oppressive. I felt as if I would suffocate. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite suffocate him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt death, the gypsy would have been reduced to powder before she ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... chimney-sweeper got in! I assure you it's enough to frighten one to death, for every time he moves the soot smells so you can't think; quite real soot, I assure you! only conceive how nasty! I declare I wish with all my heart it would suffocate him!" ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking. And this neglection of degree it is That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd By him one step below, he by the next, That next by him beneath; so ever step, Exampl'd by the first ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... evidently thought I was still behind the head-board,—both gave one prolonged shriek that literally roused the house. The brawnier of the two,—a magnificent creature, with her corsets outside of her dress,—after holding her sides with laughter until I thought she would suffocate, sank upon the sea-chest, from which her companion rescued her just as Mme. Flamand and Baeader opened the door. All this time my chin was resting on the jagged rim of the tub, and my ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... suffocates, and we pull him up dead, an' give him decent burial. Keep yourself easy, my lad, an' you'll know all about it in good time. I'll soon give 'ee the chance to suffocate or ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... himself patiently upon his hind feet and stepped about so slowly that the organ-man growled at him and struck the organ again. Then the dancer moved faster; but the ears did not fly and every motion was a jerk. Nevertheless, the princess's heart had now begun to suffocate her. She recalled Gabriel's story of washing off the brown color from the dingy fur in the brook, and her eyes swam with tears at the mere possibility that this might be the object of her search. She had just sense enough to keep still and leave ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rose from the trampling of so many feet in successive dense columns, and completely enveloped the whole brigade, almost blinding the men, so that they could hardly see the man before them, and getting into their noses and mouths so as nearly to suffocate them; however, they bore it manfully, and marched straight through it like Britons. Our encampment that night was at a place called Golam Shah, on the Buggaur, one of the branch streams of the Indus. We found ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... 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 the sky, and put ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... indications, of course, 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 ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... enabled him to maintain his equilibrium in the 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 again his ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... foolishly we had neglected to keep a watch, was the unpleasant sensation of brawny savages kneeling on us and trussing us up with palm-fibre ropes. Also they thrust handfuls of dry grass into our mouths to prevent us from calling out, although as air came through the interstices of the grass, we did not suffocate. The thing was so well done that we never struck a blow in self-defence, and although we had our pistols at hand, much less could we fire a shot. Of course, we struggled as well as we were able, but ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... rage. But the very fact that it was unanswerable, and that he was helpless, only served to deepen and intensify his rage. Yet he said nothing; it was only in his face and manner that his rage was manifested. He appeared almost to suffocate under the rush of fierce, contending passions; big distended veins swelled out in his forehead, which was also drawn far down in a gloomy frown; his breath came thick and fast, and his hands were clenched tight together. Hawbury ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... to regain 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 ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... hide, Lady Sarah," chirped the former. "The Boers are on the premises." So saying, he was about to descend into the cavity, and evidently expected the companionship of his tall friend. When I pointed out to them that they would probably suffocate in this modern Black Hole of Calcutta, the little man proceeded to dance round the room, still shouldering his axe, jibbering the while: "I will not go to fight; I am an American. I will not be put in the front rank to be shot by the English, or made ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... 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 ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... he had once 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 himself to Mill, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... expression. I could not lose myself like that in your desert. When its vastness overwhelmed me, or its beauty dazzled me, or its loneliness weighed down upon me, I should have to record my impressions. Otherwise, I should suffocate." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... development, the larvae wiggled up to the surface and inhaled it through 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 ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... roof—a sloping 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 ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... strength of an argument for self reliance drawn from the example of a great man depends wholly on the greatness of him who uses it; such arguments being like coats of mail, which, though they serve the strong against arrow-flights and lance-thrusts, may only suffocate the weak or sink him the sooner in the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... 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 soft ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... does, you are still with your boat, rather than deserted on a rock for the rest of your life—which wouldn't be very long. When the power unit in your suit ran out of energy, it would stop breaking your exhaled carbon dioxide down into carbon and oxygen, and you would suffocate. Even with emergency tanks of oxygen, you would soon find yourself freezing to death. That sun up there isn't very ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... no use to sweat myself to death," he told himself. "I'd better be as quiet as I can. There is air enough coming under the door so I won't suffocate, so I might just as well wait and ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... 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 go there it is somewhere ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... 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 in ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... quickly, "I would almost sell my body into slavery to get free from debt. When I think of what I still owe, I feel as if I would suffocate." ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... 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. He was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... empty the stomach at the onset of a definite aura, for if the seizure occurs, the vomit will probably obstruct the trachea, and suffocate the victim. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... at length, in gratitude for all this, strangles its entertainer. Let. xv. A contest for air and light obtains throughout the whole vegetable world; shrubs rise above herbs; and, by precluding the air and light from them, injure or destroy them; trees suffocate or incommode shrubs; the parasite climbing plants, as Ivy, Clematis, incommode the taller trees; and other parasites, which exist without having roots on the ground, as Misletoe, Tillandsia, Epidendrum, and the mosses and funguses, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... shortly feign sickness, and do you on your side lavish your pains to provide for my tomb. Set your attention and care on this, that both tomb and bier be made in such fashion that I die not there nor suffocate, and let no one perceive you that night when you will be ready to take me away. And you will find me a refuge, such that never any save you may see me; and let no one provide me with anything of which I have need or requirement, ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... as a membrane, but impenetrably strong. I was pressing toward it, forcing my way, flattened 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, and ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... further welcome, but when Henry sought the blankets the third night he became conscious that the first flush of the return was over. The weather had turned very hot—it was now July—and the walls and ceiling of the room seemed to press upon him and suffocate him. He drew deep and long breaths, but there was not air enough to fill a chest that had long been used to the illimitable outside. It was very still in the room. He longed to hear the boughs of trees waving over him. He felt that only such a sound or the trickle of running water could soothe ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "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, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 |
