"Deaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the meaning of the cry, and I did not enter the inner room. No, I walked back to my writing table, put my hands over my ears—to deaden the cry—and gave myself again to work. How long I worked I don't know, but presently I heard a loud knocking at the door of my room. I sprang up and opened it. My landlady ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and when the party's assembled on deck, it will hear no more noise than the buzzing of a big bee, as the exhaust is led away below the water-line. It won't be bad in the cabins either, even when they keep the sliding door open, for this screen of thick sail-cloth will deaden what sound there is. And it was a smart idea to utilize the power of the magneto to light up the whole ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... little brother!" returned Bob, smiling at His Highness. "You are quite an electrician. If the current is strong, or, in other words, if the discharge is a high frequency one, it does. Hence something has to be used to deaden the sound just as a muffler is used on a motor boat. It is important, however, that this muffler should not prevent the operator from watching the condition of his spark for otherwise he could not keep track of his battery ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... and he planned to arrive at midnight. Exactly on the hour Li and his picked guard were admitted, and in dead silence they marched into the Forbidden City. Every man had in his mouth a wooden bit to prevent talking, while the metal trappings of the horses were muffled to deaden all sound. When they arrived at the forbidden precincts, the Manchu Bannermen on guard at the various city gates were replaced by Li's Anhui braves, and as the Empress Dowager had sent eunuchs to point out the palace troops ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... feel good, are young, gay on the saddle, their blankets in a roll behind them, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movement and the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. The bugles play—presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd with other noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambulances commenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Even here, at times, Within these walls, where all should be at peace, I have my trials. Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. Ashes are on my head, and on my lips Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness And weariness of life, that makes me ready To say to the dead Abbots under us, "Make room for me!" Only I see the dusk Of evening ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... having procured the address from Mrs. Langton, he went on that same afternoon to Campden Hill, not knowing, nor indeed greatly caring just then, that this was not the way to deaden ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... willingly. But you will permit my drinking it while it sparkles. I hold it a heresy to let it deaden in my hand, while the glass of my compotator is being filled on the opposite side of the table. By-the-bye, Captain, you remember a passage in Athenaeus, where he cites Menander on the subject of fish-sauce: [Greek text]. (The Captain was aghast ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... wit and brilliancy transform evil into an angel of light. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned; but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as when clothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil, to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right and beautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. No man has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked world the only people who are justified ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... I think, that few intellectual men would really tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking and drinking. Even novelists have their moments of lucidity. Certainly these things soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their sceptical sensibilities. And just at the time when you were getting most ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... spirits overnight, and had run like a dark stain through her troubled dreams. Fatigue of body and lassitude of mind, the natural consequences of the passion and excitement of her adventure, combined to deaden her faculties. She rose aching in all her limbs—yet most at heart—and wearily dressed herself; but neither saw nor heeded the objects round her. The room to which poor puzzled Mrs. Olney had hastily consigned her looked over a sunny stretch of park, sprinkled ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... domestic purposes it is mostly ground, when it costs only about half the price of wheat flour, which is procured chiefly from Marseilles, Corsica itself producing very little. The ease with which the harvest of chestnuts is annually obtained tends to foster indolence and deaden enterprise among the peasantry. The one great danger to which the generous chestnut trees are exposed is a conflagration. Besides olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests of evergreen oaks, the Quercus Ilex, called also the holm oak. It has abundance of dark-green ovate ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... brothers each owning more than one hundred slaves acquired a large body of wild, undeveloped land, divided this acreage between them and immediately began to erect numerous log structures for housing themselves, their Negroes, and their stock, and to deaden the timber and clear the land preparatory to placing their crops the following season. The Wilborns arrived in Arkansas in the early fall of the year and for several months they camped, living in tents until such time that they were able ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... solid table stood near the divan, and he moved this immediately under the trap. Upon it he laid a leopard-skin to deaden any noise he might make, and then upon the leopard-skin he set a massive chair: he replaced his torch in his pocket and drew himself up on to the roof again. Reclosing the trap by means of the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... harsh breath and turned to him. Young Raleigh, who had written a monograph on engineering stresses, had still much to learn about the stresses that contort and warp the souls of men and women. He learned some of it then, when he saw the girl's face deaden to a blanker white and the flame of a hungry hope leap into her ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... without ceasing. The great quantity of hay opposite—or straw, I believe it actually was—seemed to deaden the sound of his voice, but the silence, too, had become so oppressive that I welcomed his torrent and even dreaded the moment when it would stop. I heard, too, the gentle ticking of my watch. Each second uttered its voice and dropped away into a gulf, as if starting on a journey whence ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... not, as might be supposed, one of those bravadoes of the timid, who shout before Death in order to deaden the sound of his footsteps. Horace was never more calm, more energetic, more master of his mind and of his soul, than in the works of his ripe age. The last lines of his that remain to us are the firmest and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... superstitious reverence for ancient things, as monks show relics and call them holy, the generality of mankind are deceived into the design. Governments now act as if they were afraid to awaken a single reflection in man. They are softly leading him to the sepulchre of precedents, to deaden his faculties and call attention from the scene of revolutions. They feel that he is arriving at knowledge faster than they wish, and their policy of precedents is the barometer of their fears. This political popery, like the ecclesiastical popery of old, has had its day, and is ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... gone forth. Her first bright star of anticipation had faded, and she had partaken deeply of the griefs of the two whom she loved so well. Not only had she to leave the one to his gloomy lodgings in the City, and the toil that was to deaden suffering, but the other must be parted with at the station, to return to the lonely house, where not even old Ponto would meet her—his last hour having, to every one's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, was entirely another affair. He could neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then? Was it what he had lost—the familiar world—rather than what ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... who up to now had looked around full of curiosity, began to be afraid. To deaden their fear they ate the sandwiches they had brought. Paul encouraged them, and refused the sausage ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... visible to every vulgar eye. Like the master-touches of art, her grief, as it was beyond the sympathies, so it lay beyond the ken of those whom excellence may fail to excite, or in whom absence can deaden affections. Still her feelings were true to all who had any claims on her love. The predominance of wasting grief over the more genial springs of her enjoyments, only went to prove how much greater is the influence ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... as to present as little surface as possible to the wind, and to let the drift pass over us. The mealy snow sifted into the folds of our clothing and in many places reached the skin. We were glad at first to see the snow packing about us, hoping it would deaden the force of the wind, but it soon froze into a stiff, crusty heap as the temperature fell, rather augmenting ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... through their new regulations as to penance, softened this distinction, and that not to the detriment of morality. For an entirely different treatment of so-called gross and venial transgressions must in every case deaden the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... might expect, the black, woolly-headed children of Nature show a strange distaste for glossy beads; so much so indeed, that the Venetians find it necessary to deaden the natural brilliancy which all glass obtains when it becomes cold, by grinding it, and thus softening the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... have been audible as a faint far wail. This was the sound he cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and guarded the stillness, so that it might prevail there till the inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh, should smother and deaden it—doubtless by the same process with which they would officiously heal the ache in his soul that was somehow one with it. It moreover deepened the sacred hush that he couldn't complain. He had given ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... ladies of Jerusalem had the practice of providing for those condemned to the awful punishment of crucifixion a soporific draught, composed of wine mixed with some narcotic like gall or myrrh,[1] to dull the senses and deaden the pain. It was a benevolent custom; and the cup was offered to all criminals, irrespective of their crimes. It was administered immediately before the frightful work of nailing the culprit to the tree commenced. This draught was handed to Jesus on His arrival at Golgotha. Exhausted with fatigue ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... strength. Lie in that cell again I would not. With body bent forward, and my hands pressed hard against my left ribs to deaden the stings a little, I struggled on, keeping my eyes fastened upon the paving-stones that I might not be forced to bow to possible acquaintances, and hastened to the fire look-out. God be praised! it was only seven o'clock ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the dark, they suffer At their heart a spasm of fear; And, their inward pain to deaden, Sing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... reached the floor on which Rose's bedroom was, I stopped in the dark passage. A narrow streak of light showed me that her door was not quite shut. Then, gathering up my skirts to deaden their sound, I felt along the wall and crept softly, on tip-toe, so as to take her by surprise. With infinite precautions, I slowly pushed the door open. I first caught sight of a corner of the empty bed, with its white ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... we're going to ride around the end of this hill and plump into the Indian camp. The snow will deaden the hoofbeats of the ponies, but keep as still as possible. We'll surprise them, and probably be able to settle the whole thing without firing a shot. But don't bet on it, and keep your hands on your guns, but don't fire until they make the first crack, then rush them and drive them ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... you were off with the rest. That was all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I just took a little to deaden the pain." ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... strength appeared to gain by this change. He got stout and robust, and able to go through a greater amount of physical labour than in former days. What seemed to contribute to sooth and quiet—or, perhaps, deaden—his mental energies, was the habit of smoking, which he acquired from his companions. He would smoke for whole days and weeks, either working in the garden, or sitting on the stump of a tree in Epping Forest, without ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... is released at the highest point, a perfunctory performance with all its well-known side features, the waste and the idleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks, must set in and deaden ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... him's dead. The innicent little sweet. I do believe him's dead, or just going to deaden. I daren't lift him up. Oh dear, ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... objects around him, and even with the elements." It throws a curious light on the nature of the man that amid all the preoccupations of his mind and heart in Strassburg he could deliberately turn his thoughts to the cure of his jarred nerves. Loud sounds disturbed him, and to deaden the sensitiveness of his ears he attended the evening tatoo; to cure himself of a tendency to giddiness he practised climbing the cathedral; partly to rid himself of a repugnance to repulsive sights ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... comrades had all chosen to die rather than to retreat. And the enemy must be there before us, in that wood; they must be stealing up to us noiselessly. I fancied I could see them, gliding from tree to tree, holding their rifles high, trying to deaden the sound of their footsteps among the dead leaves. Presently they would reach the dark line that stretched before us, mute and mysterious; they would mass their dense reserves in the rear, and suddenly thousands of lightning flashes would illuminate the fringe of the thicket. I looked at my men ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... finding a small eyelet hole in the side of the mattress. He took out his knife, opened the pipe cleaner, and pressed the narrow blade into the aperture. There was a click and two doors, ludicrously like the doors which deaden the volume of ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... air. Rushing to the door, Mrs. Fischer saw that the barn was wrapped in flames. With a scream for help she ran out into the yard, where she discovered the uncle and several others endeavoring to deaden the flames, but their efforts ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... a local anesthetic," he remarked. "This is the sort of thing that might be injected into an arm or leg and deaden the pain of a cut, but that is all. It wouldn't affect the consciousness or prevent any one from resisting a murderer to the last. I doubt if that had anything directly to do with his death, or perhaps even that this is Cushing's ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... walk the world with a dreadful knowledge, And a heavy heart and a frowning brow; And thinking deeper than a man in college, Your eye will deaden, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... les dents [Fr.]. collapse, faint, swoon, fall into a swoon, drop; go by the board, go by the wayside; go up in smoke, end in smoke &c (fail) 732. render powerless &c adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable^; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple^, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten^, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [Fr.], spike the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... prospects—yawning over the papers and looking at their watches. They are not here. Where can they be? Only one room yet remains—one room at the very end of the passage—the billiard-room, shut off by double doors to deaden the sound of the balls. One of the double doors is wide open, the other closed—not absolutely shut, but not ajar. Musgrave pushes it, and we look in. I do not know why I do. I do not expect to see any one. I hardly think it will be lit, probably blank ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... audible. After half an hour of this I arose and sent a hail through the bank of mist, which I thought would reach a vessel within half a mile. There was no sound of an answer, the dank vapor appearing to deaden my hail and swallow up all noise a short distance beyond the boat. It was uncanny to feel how weak that yell appeared. I saw Jim looking at me with a strange light in his eyes as though he felt ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... faces of a group to a livid, deathly whiteness, and to destroy colors, wet a half teacupful of common salt in Alcohol and burn it on a plate in a dark room. Let the salt soak a few minutes before igniting. The flame will deaden the brightest colors in the room, and the dresses of the company will seem to be changed. Let each one put his face behind the flame, and it will present a most ghastly spectacle to those who stand before it. This is serviceable in tableau where terror of death is to be represented. The ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... and the darkness was opaque. It was impossible to move against the force of the wind and the deluge of water which descended. Speak we did not, but shut our eyes against the lightning, and held our fingers to our ears to deaden the noise of the thunder, which burst upon us in the most awful manner. My companion groaned at intervals, whether from fear, I know not; I had no fear, for I did not know the danger, or that there was a God to judge ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for study and investigation is to deaden the animal desires. Then with the reason as a guide and his body as a model, man acquires the knowledge of the corporeal world. From his rational soul he comes to the knowledge of the existence of a spiritual world. Finally he will learn ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... wise provisions—God's methods—for disintegrating and scattering, in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. There is also a great law continually operating whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher faculties of the one ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the disorder of the room, where the alfereza was sitting, and pierced the dusty and spider-webbed conches of the windows. The dame, according to her idle custom, was dozing in a fauteuil. To deaden the sound of the bombs, she had coifed her head in a handkerchief, from which escaped her tangled hair, short and thin. This morning she had not been to mass, not because she did not wish it, but because her husband had not permitted it, accompanying his prohibition with oaths and threats ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... to please; for if the eye be tired of show and glare, or the ear be weary with a ceaseless round of noise, the one may repose, turn almost where it will, on eager, happy, and expectant faces, and the other deaden all consciousness of more annoying sounds in those of mirth and exhilaration. Even the sunburnt faces of gypsy children, half naked though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It is a pleasant thing to see that the sun has been there; to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... light, I had a duty to perform. If Elsie had visited the house and purloined the fan, she would be very likely to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and I determined to keep watch. I drew the blinds, got into my dressing-gown and, reinforcing the lampshade with a newspaper to deaden ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... injury results to the smoker; and the reason assigned is, that the salival fluid, which should assist digestion, is in this manner dissipated, and taken from its office. But may not the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its evils also? May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action which is needful to digestion? And may not even the excessive quantity of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to a desiccation of the system, as injurious under general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... poetry should be studied, but not to so great an extent as to blind the eye or deaden the appreciation of its beauty and sentiment. Brown, who wrote the beautiful story Rab and His Friends, has said, "It is with poetry as with flowers and fruits. We would all rather have them and taste them than talk about them. It is a good thing to know about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... I gave it to him, and gave it to him strong—being certain that he was past hurting by it, and hoping that it might deaden his pain. And presently, when he asked for another drink, I gave ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... a circular form and fifteen feet in diameter, was made of wicker-work, strengthened with a slight covering of iron, and protected below by a system of elastic springs, to deaden the shock of collision. Its weight, along with that of the network, did not exceed ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... shrieked loudly when improperly lubricated, and the whole machine rattled like a runaway tin-peddler. Ingenious mufflers have subdued the sputtering exhaust, the gears are made to run in oil or are so carefully cut as to mesh perfectly, rubber tires deaden the pounding of the wheels, and carefully designed frames ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the brook, the row of Canadian poplars which bordered it kept up a continuous whispering, as was their wont, even on the stillest days. When Beth first heard them, they spoke a language to her which she comprehended but could not translate; but the immediate effect of her life with Dan had been to deaden her perception, so that she could not comprehend. Then the whispering became a mere rustle of leaves, appealing to nothing but her sense of hearing, and her delight in their murmur lapsed when its significance was ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... he lit a pipe and smoked. But tobacco brought no solace, no charitable thoughts. While, as a matter of fact, Cai tramped the highroads, mile after mile, striving to deaden the pain at his heart, 'Bias sat puffing and let his wrath harden down into a fixed mould ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... him his trade, and George was glad enough to work at it, both to deaden the stings of conscience and memory, and to procure the means of deadening them still further. But even here was something in the way of improvement, for hitherto he had applied himself to nothing, his being one of those dreamful natures capable of busy ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... enough; namely, that there is more sensation to be got out of three or four comparatively brief experiences, suited to our powers of perception, than out of one protracted experience, forced on us without relief, without contrast, in such a way as to fatigue and deaden our faculties. Who would not rather drink three, four, or five glasses of wine than put the bottle to his lips and let its contents pour down his throat in one long draught? Who would not rather see a stained-glass window broken ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... prince strive in the wild excitement of pleasure to kill thought and deaden his heart. But there would come quiet hours to remind him of the past, and, at times, in the middle of the night, he would start up from his couch, as if he had heard a scream, a single heart-piercing cry, which rang through ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (I.E., even while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... night hastened to cover up and deaden the colours of the sky, and the almost equally gorgeous tints of tree and hedge; and, by the time Mr Robins reached the Grays' cottage, darkness had settled down as deep as on that evening four months ago, when he carried the baby ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... as I know, I have not a single blood relation living—at least, none nearer than a third cousin. Two years ago I inherited my paternal estate. It was too small to support me in the manner of life to which I had been accustomed, and at the same time it was large enough to effectually deaden any inclination towards real work. As an inevitable consequent, I became a speculator. Little by little my fortune has disappeared in the abyss of stock gambling; now it is gone entirely. To add to my misfortunes, my apartments were entered last night by burglars and literally ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... abundantly, as though to deaden every sound, and to cover everything; therefore those last words came muffled to their ears, so that it seemed to each of them that they were already calling to ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the child loved to come when he could escape notice. Often at night, when all were asleep, he would steal away to the garret and work at the spinet, mastering difficulties one by one. The strings of the instrument had been wound with cloth to deaden the sound, and thus made only ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... spasm, against a seat placed near one of the open windows. At the same instant his ear caught a sort of indistinct sound on the stairs, followed by the measured tread of soldiery, with the clanking of swords and military accoutrements; then came a hum and buzz as of many voices, so as to deaden even the noisy mirth of the bridal party, among whom a vague feeling of curiosity and apprehension quelled every disposition to talk, and almost instantaneously the most deathlike ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... weather was grey and lowering, and though the rain had ceased, the air was still heavy with it, and every bush and branch dripped with moisture. It was a poor day for hunting, for the eye could not see forty yards; but it suited my purpose, since the dull air would deaden the noise of my musket. I was hunting alone in a strange land among imminent perils, and my aim was not to glorify my skill, but to find the means of life. The thought strung me up to a mood where delight was more ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... he thought, "what is the imaginary devil to the horror of this presence? Your own eye, your own voice, always with you, always following you! No darkness so dense that it can hide the sight, no noise so loud that it can deaden the sound!" ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... keen eyes grew dim with tears, and her ears seemed to become dull of hearing, from the very longing to see and hear more clearly. But she rubbed away the tears with her shawl, and pushed the tangled hair away behind her small ears, and with her hands pressed against her heart, to deaden its throbbing, she leaned forward to pierce, if possible, through the thick dark veil which ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... cannot deprive us of intellectual delights. It cannot deprive you of the comfort of affording me examples of fortitude and benevolence; nor me of the delight of consoling a beloved parent. It cannot deaden our taste for the grand, and the beautiful, or deny us the means of indulging it; for the scenes of nature—those sublime spectacles, so infinitely superior to all artificial luxuries! are open for the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... artist. One day a court concert was announced at the Tuilleries, at which Paganini was asked to play. He consented, and went to examine the room the day before. He objected to the numerous curtains, so hung as to deaden the sound, and requested the superintendent to see that they were changed. The supercilious official ignored the artist's wish, and the offended Paganini determined not to play. When the hour of the concert arrived, there was no violinist. The royalties and their ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... earth. But how came this to be so? Why, every imagination of the thoughts, or of the motions that were in the heart to sin, was evil, only evil, and that continuously. The imagination of the thoughts was evil—that is, such as tended not to deaden or stifle, but such as tended to animate and forward the motions or thoughts of sin into action. Every imagination of the thoughts—that which is here called a thought, by Paul to the Romans, called a motion. Now the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the building—almost maddened by despair—to seek an outlet, he entered the kitchen, where he perceived a vessel full of water. The sight filled him with joy. Perhaps water, taken in large quantities, might deaden the effects of the poison and save Julio's life. At any rate, he had no other remedy, and as it was his only hope, he grasped at it as if it were an ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... at the top with a couple of pounds or so of curried meat or fish; after which, glaring around him in a hungry and dissatisfied manner, calculated to raise unpleasant sensations in a nervous bystander, he would sullenly catch hold of the hookah common to the party, and seek to deaden his appetite by swallowing down long and repeated draughts of tobacco-smoke, until the tears came into his eyes, and he was forced to desist by ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... during that night. He paced his room, a prey to jealousy and envy and rage, which his calm temperament had kept him from feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of all that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud ambitious man, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be swung, so that the head butted with a deadly insistence upon the masonry of the wall. Meanwhile the enemy from the ramparts are doing their best to set the shed on fire, to break off the ram's head with heavy stones, to pull it upwards by a noose, or to deaden the effect of the shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... deaden our souls to the voice of conscience, disavow a belief in destiny and shut our eyes to those forces of the Invisible which, in spite of ourselves, we know to exist, but how is it, that no man ever succeeds in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... him to be a soldier? Thus was it with this blessed man; he was brought to God's foot with Abraham, and crucified to this world with Christ; he had passed a sentence of death upon all earthly pleasures and profits beforehand, that they might not deaden his spirit when he came to suffer for his profession (2 Tim 2:4; 2 Cor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... way that prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends unstopped the flue which opened into the chimney of the stove in the workroom, where the girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread ragged coverlets over the brick floor to deaden any sound that David might make, put in a truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and a chair. Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as no one had occasion to enter her room, David might defy his enemies one and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... especially as she had made as many exclamations as she could of "Really!" "Indeed!" "How extraordinary!" "You do not say so?" which, as she pronounced them, might have excited the curiosity of commonplace people, but which she knew would in her mother's mind deaden all desire to listen. However, Lady Masham had raised her voice, and from time to time had stretched her neck of snow beyond Lady Cecilia's intercepting drapery, so as actually to claim Lady Davenant's ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... What was the crucifying of another Jew or two to them? Before they lift the cross or fasten their prisoner to it, a little touch of pity, or perhaps only the observance of the usual custom, leads them to offer a draught of wine, in which some anodyne had been mixed, to deaden agony. But the cup which He had to drink needed that He should be in full possession of all His sensibilities to pain, and of all His unclouded firmness of resolve; and so His patient lips closed against the offered mercy. He would not drink because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sex and her many acquaintances of undisputed rank. Senator Peabody was never invited to her home, had never attended a single dinner, reception or musicale she had given, all of which was a part of the policy they had mutually agreed on to deaden any suspicion that might some time arise as to her relation to the Standard Steel Company. It was well known that Peabody had been put into the Senate by Standard Steel to look after ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... added before the cooking process is completed. Fruit should be cooked by stewing, or by gentle simmering; hard boiling will destroy the fine flavor of all fruits, and especially of berries and other small fruits. Cinnamon, cloves, or other spices, should not be added, as their stronger flavors deaden or obliterate the natural flavor, which should always be preserved as perfectly as possible. If desirable to add some foreign flavor, let it be the flavor of another fruit, or the perfume of flowers. For Instance, flavor apple with ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the main result of this long war; but there were other results not so fortunate. The efforts of Eusebius, Basil, and Lactantius to deaden scientific thought; the efforts of Augustine to combat it; the efforts of Cosmas to crush it by dogmatism; the efforts of Boniface and Zachary to crush it by force, conscientious as they all were, had resulted simply ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Montiers-en-Saulx and Sailly, where there were soldiers of the hostile party. Sire Bertrand and Jean de Metz were accustomed to such stealthy expeditions; they knew the byways and were acquainted with useful precautions, such as binding up the horses' feet in linen so as to deaden the sound of hoofs on ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and that, even if it is not his play now, yet the first two acts are as he wrote them, and that, if only to feel the thrill of the audience at that great scene between the Burglar and the Bishop (his creations!) he must deaden his conscience to the absurdity of a happy ending. But does he succumb? No. Heroically he tells himself: "Anyway, I can publish it; and I'm certain that the critics will agree with me that——" But the critics are too busy to bother about him. They are busy informing the world that the British ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... look of the place; the old, old fascinating reek of it; the click of glass on glass; the whirring flare of freshly-lighted Bunsen burners! In vain Brenton tried his best to deaden his senses to the lure of it; but it was of no use. The charm was in his blood; it would not down. The smell of hydrogen sulphide was dearer to him than any incense; his fingers shut upon the test-tubes with a greedier clutch than any they had ever ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... first and most obvious effect of opium, for example, is to deaden pain and to arouse pleasure; but while the drug is producing these soothing sensations, it interferes with bodily functions. Secretion, digestion, absorption of food, and the removal of waste matters are hindered. Continued use of the drug leads to headache, exhaustion, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... which repetition could never deaden, she stooped to kiss the last sentence he had written, before she turned carelessly to take up the strange foreign envelope, which she had thrown, with her veil and gloves, on the chair at her side. For a moment she pondered indifferently the address; then, almost as ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... his sense of touch he could separate it from the gold, found that he must first remove his pocket-handkerchief. As he drew it forth, alas! two golden sovereigns followed in its fold, fell, and jingled on the slate-paved floor. Not all the fresh sawdust strewn there could deaden the merry sound of wealth. The two coins ran trickling, the one to clash against a brass spittoon, the other to take hiding in a dark corner under the counter. "You might," said Mr Latter that evening, relating the occurrence to a circle of steady customers, "have ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to become a hollow conical cylinder with plenty of room inside, was further provided with powerful water-springs and readily-ruptured partitions below the floor, intended to deaden the dreadful concussion sure to accompany the start. It was supplied with provisions for a year, water for a few months, and gas for nearly two weeks. A self-acting apparatus, of ingenious construction, kept the confined atmosphere sweet and healthy ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... how to know the toughest hickory by hammering on its trunk; when twigs cut from the forest would grow, if thrust in the earth; and that secret day of all the year when an axe, stuck into the bark of a tree, would deaden it to ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... strong, to deaden This pain; then Roger and I will start. I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden, Aching thing, in place of a heart? He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could, No doubt, remembering things that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... deputies to the camp, to inquire into the state of the siege, the whole army gave him unanimously the highest commendations; the soldiers, as well as officers, nay, the very generals, with one voice extolled the merit of young Scipio: so necessary is it for a man to deaden, if I may be allowed the expression, the splendour of his rising glory, by a sweet and modest carriage; and not to excite jealousy, by haughty and self-sufficient behaviour, as this naturally awakens pride in others, and makes even ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... one of those interludes when early spring demonstrates that she could play August convincingly had she a mind to. The night was stifling. That the windows had to be shut tight, to deaden the noise of loosening brick and ripping board, made matters so much the worse. Surface was stripped to the waist, and it needed no second glance at him, as he stood now, to see that he was physically competent. There was ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... That studio-talk tends to deaden this sense of the open-air is just as certain. It runs not upon Nature, but upon the presentation of Nature. I am almost ready to assert that it injures a critic as surely as it spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mr. Wingate drove stood quiet in the road, else the matter might have had a different ending; for had she run and dragged her now helpless master, he would surely have been killed. As it was, she did not move, so there was nothing to deaden the sound of the sharp blows Fayette administered; and in the silence of the place and night this sound ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... fact that China's history has always had a decidedly inland character, that its political expansion has been landward, that it has practiced most extensively and successively internal colonization, and that its policy of exclusion has tended to deaden its outlook toward the Pacific, nevertheless China's direct intercourse with the west and its westward-directed influence have never, in point of significance, been comparable with that toward the east and south. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... it, in the pursuit of amusement or knowledge. Protestant ideas will not make the Catholic turn Protestant, there is not much danger of that, but they will tend to make him an infidel; they will destroy his principles without putting others in their place; they will relax and deaden the whole ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... at night or not, but supposed there was, and, if so, he would be likely to hear the grapnel when we threw it up and it hit the stones. We thought we could get over this difficulty by wrapping the grapnel in cotton wool. This would deaden the sound when it struck, but would not prevent the points of the hooks from holding to the inner edge of the wall. Everything now seemed all right, except that we had no object in view after we got over the wall. I always like to have some reason for doing a thing, especially ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... suffering, in a state of moral death; or both may be pure, obedient, acceptable in the sight of God, full of faith, peace, and joy, in a state of genuine life. Secondly, whatever tends in any way to the former result to make man guilty, feeble, and wretched, to deaden his spiritual sensibilities, to keep him from union with God and from immortal reliances is variously personified as "the Flesh," "Sin," "Death," "Mammon," "the World," "the Law of the Members," "the Law of Sin and Death;" whatever, on the contrary, tends in any way to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... words, To promise aid and safety in the fane Of his lov'd sister, who o'er Tauris rules. Thus the prophetic word fulfils itself, That with my life shall terminate my woe. How easy 'tis for me, whose heart is crush'd, Whose sense is deaden'd by a hand divine, Thus to renounce the beauteous light of day! And must the son of Atreus not entwine The wreath of conquest round his dying brow— Must I, as my forefathers, as my sire, Bleed like a victim,—an ignoble ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... better days for Paul. Each hour brought him back some health and vigour. Youth and strength were asserting their own again, and the absence of familiar objects, and the glory of the air and the blue sea helped sometimes to deaden the poignant agony of his aching heart. But there it was underneath, an ever-present, dull anguish. And only when he became sufficiently strong to help the sailors with the ropes, and exert physical force, did he get one moment's respite. The two elder men watched ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... task that it wrung his heart to perform. His horse must be put out of pain. He took off his coat, rolled it over his horse's head, inserted his gun under its folds to deaden the sound and to hide those luminous eyes turned ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... the eighth, not in the fourth year of the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war. This address ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the photograph,' said Miss Pew, who was not all inhuman, although she kept a school, a hardening process which is supposed to deaden the instincts of womanhood. 'And now, pray, Miss Palliser, what excuse have you ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... mouth spoke of days spent in fierce excitement—nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed—life and limb to be risked without ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... can produce a blister without external cause," said Serviss. "You hypnotic sharps have proved that it can also deaden nerves and heal skin diseases, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... a matter of course. It was clear that he had forgotten the catastrophe that had parted him from Hamlyn's Purlieu, and yet, strangely, he asked no questions. Lucy was tortured by the thought of revisiting the place she loved so well. She had been able to deaden her passionate regret only by keeping her mind steadfastly averted from all thoughts of it, and now she must actually go there. The old wounds would be opened. But it was impossible to refuse, and she set about making the necessary arrangements. The rector, who had been ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... shotgun; previous to that he had killed fourteen white, and two brown bears with his bow and arrow. The older people laugh as they relate how those standing near the man firing would place their hands over their ears to deaden the sound, while the little girls cried, declaring the ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... not conceive of a business partnership failing to be annulled by one partner who brought suit against another; yet we expect the marriage relation to survive this. As a matter of fact, such is its vitality that it often does. But many times the result of court action is only to deaden once and for all the tiny spark from which marital happiness might have been rekindled. As long as it survives, both man and wife feel in their inmost hearts that, no matter what his offense, to "take him to court" ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... knew that only time, that beneficent healer, could deaden her child's pain. Fern's gentle nature was capable of quiet but intense feeling. Nea's faithful and ardent affections were reproduced in her child. It was not only the loss of her girlish dreams over which Fern mourned. Her woman's love had unconsciously rooted itself, and could not be ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey |
