"Benumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of our youth so displeasing? Is love but the folly you say? Benumb'd with the Winter, and freezing, You scold at the revels ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... may be assured that the only prickles that sting from the Royal hedgehog are those which possess a torpedo property, and may benumb some of my friends. I am quite silent, and 'hush'd in grim repose.' The frequency of the assaults has weakened their effects,—if ever they had any;—and, if they had had much, I should hardly have held my tongue, or withheld my fingers. It is something quite new to attack a man for abandoning ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dews, Weak as I am, my remnant small of life Shall quite extinguish, and the chilly air Breath'd from the river at the dawn of day? But if, ascending this declivity I gain the woods, and in some thicket sleep, (If sleep indeed can find me overtoil'd And cold-benumb'd) then I have cause to fear 570 Lest I be torn by wild beasts, and devour'd. Long time he mused, but, at the last, his course Bent to the woods, which not remote he saw From the sea-brink, conspicuous on a hill. Arrived, between two neighbour shrubs he crept, Both olives, this ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... they should enchant and benumb you, as they did then," quoth Sancho, "what matters it whether we are in ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... who are in love; leaning her head upon her hand, she drew out the letters, one by one, from her bosom where she had placed them. She drank with her heart and eyes the poison these passionate words contained; she allowed herself to be swayed at will by these melodies which lulled but did not benumb. When one of those invincible appeals of imploring passion awoke all the echoes of her love, and ran through her veins with a thrill, striking the innermost depths of her heart, she threw herself back and imprinted her burning lips upon the cold paper. With one letter pressed to her ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... I will choose to go Where the northern winds do blow Endless ice and endless snow: Rather than I once would see But a winter's face in thee, To benumb my hopes ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... did you ever see a ghost? No; but you have heard—I understand—be dumb! And don't regret the time you may have lost, For you have got that pleasure still to come: And do not think I mean to sneer at most Of these things, or by ridicule benumb That source of the Sublime and the Mysterious:— For certain reasons ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... eye and thought, And meditation chastened down, enough; And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought; And of the happiest moments which were wrought Within the web of my existence, some From thee, fair Venice! have their colours caught: There are some feelings Time cannot benumb, Nor torture shake, or mine would now be cold ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... assail the prince in his palace and the peasant in his cottage? Does he not send before him monitors and messengers: acute pains, which wholly absorb the soul; deliriums, which render reason of no avail; deadly stupors, which benumb the brightest and most piercing geniuses? And what is still more awful, does He not daily come without either warning or messenger? Does He not snatch away this man without allowing him time to be acquainted with the essentials of religion; and that man, without ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... sinning becomes a second nature, and that of being a witch transforms itself into flesh and blood; and amidst all its ardour, which is great, it brings with it a chilling influence which so overcomes the soul as to freeze and benumb its faith, whence follows a forgetfulness of itself, and it remembers neither the terrors with which God threatens it, nor the glories with which he allures it. In fact, as sin is fleshly and sensual, it must exhaust and stupefy all the feelings, and render ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Labour, and diligently To keep your hearts from ease, and her base issues, Pride, and ambitious wantonness, those spoil'd me. Rather lose all your limbs, than the least honesty, You are never lame indeed, till loss of credit Benumb ye through: Scarrs, and those maims of honour Are memorable crutches, that shall bear When you are dead, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... say of alcoholics that they contain not an atom that can be converted into living atoms; they congest and irritate the stomach, and hence lessen digestive power; and benumb all the brain powers ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... self-absorbed, depressed and never smiled. And every time his face came close to mine I smelled the brandy on him. Conscience whipped Its venomed tail against his peace of mind. And so he took the brandy to benumb The sting of conscience and to dull the pain. He told me he had business in Montreaux Which would require some weeks, would there be met By people who had money for him. I Was twenty-three and green, besides I walked In dreamland thinking of the promised schooling In Paris—oh 'twas music, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... disagreeable subject with a jest. The shrewd man of the world guessed the secret of her failure. She herself must feel, before she could touch feeling. But he had systematically sought to chill and benumb her nature, meaning it to awake at just the time, and under just the circumstances, that should accord with his controlling ambition. Then reverting to Dennis, he continued: "It won't answer for Fleet to sweep the store any longer after ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... invent expedients for removing difficulties which are continually occurring. Invention is kept alive, and the mind is not suffered to fall into that drowsy stupidity, which, in a civilized society, seems to benumb the understanding of almost all the inferior ranks of people. In those barbarous societies, as they are called, every man, it has already been observed, is a warrior. Every man, too, is in some measure a statesman, and can form a tolerable ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith |
