"Deafen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entirely for her own use. Furthermore, Elisha reassured her as to the power of the royal princes to do her harm: "The God who will close the jaws of the lions set upon Daniel, and who did close the jaws of the dogs in Egypt, the same God will blind the eyes of the sons of Ahab, and deafen their ears, so that they can do thee no harm." (8) Not only was the poor widow helped out of her difficulties, her descendants unto all times were provided for. The oil rose in price, and it yielded so much profit that they ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... numbers were increasing so fast that the surrounding sea was fairly alive with them. Lower and lower sank the sun, deeper and darker grew the gloom upon our faces, till suddenly Samuela leaped to his feet in our midst, and emitted a yell so ear-piercing as to nearly deafen us. He saw the ship! Before two minutes had passed we all saw her—God bless her!—coming down upon us like some angelic messenger. There were no fears among us that we should be overlooked. We knew full well how anxiously and keenly many pairs of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... caught up by all,—Germans, Celts, Saxons, till the little town rang with the thunder of voices, all uttering the name of the grim old Moloch, whom—more than any one save Hunter—Virginia hates. Suddenly, as if by rehearsal, all hats would go up, all bayonets toss and glisten, and huzzas would deafen the winds, while the horses reared upon their haunches and the sabres rose and fell. Then, column by column, the masses passed eastward, while the prisoners in the Court-House cupola looked down, and the citizens peeped in fear ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... its voice of thunder, as balls, more destructive than the fabled bolts of Jove, were thrown into the massive columns marching to the dreadful onset. A few moments later, and the cry, the uproar, and the confusion of the battle would blind every eye and deafen every ear. La Noue, almost frantic with the desire to stop the needless effusion of blood, at the imminent risk of being shot, galloped between the antagonistic armies, waving energetically the white banner of peace, and succeeded in arresting the battle. His ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... creditor. Dunny, in the provincial dialect of several counties, signifies DEAF; to dun, then, perhaps may mean to deafen with importunate demands: some derive it from the word DONNEZ, which signifies GIVE. But the true original meaning of the word, owes its birth to one Joe Dun, a famous bailiff of the town of Lincoln, so extremely active, and so dexterous in his ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... saunter. Danders, cinders. Daurna, dare not. Deave, to deafen. Denty, dainty. Dirdum, vigour. Disjaskit, worn out, disreputable-looking. Doer, law agent. Dour, hard. Drumlie, dark. Dunting, knocking. Dwaibly, infirm, rickety. Dule-tree, the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who have the least to say; go to Will's, and you'll hardly hear the Great Wycherley speak two Sentences in a quarter of an Hour, whilst Blatero, Hamilus, Turpinus; and twenty more egregious Coxcombs, deafen the ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... from this Palace of sin! The demons, the terrible powers Of the air, that haunt its towers And hide in its water-spouts, Deafen me with the din Of their laughter and their shouts For the crimes that are done within! Sink back into the earth, Or vanish into the air, Thou castle of despair! Let it all be but a dream Of the things of monstrous birth, Of the things ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... she adores. Without this submission on her part we could count on no united Krovitch. Our country worships her and will follow no king who will not seat her upon his throne. Get that angel face out of your heart. Deafen your ears to her voice before, like me, you try too late. Oh, I know, I saw," he hastened on as Carter would have stopped him, "love makes all eyes keen. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... only look for them. What should such mediums fear? Do not Mlle. Smith and Mrs Piper, when they allow competent persons to study their mediumship, render more valuable services to society than do so many social encumbrances, so many flies on the wheel who deafen us with their buzzing? Have they any reason to ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... audience does not deafen you with applause, but Mr. Thomas Hard, my chairman, was so appreciative that he seemed to set the fashion to laugh and ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... me of making phrases, but it is you who deafen yourself with words. What, after all, is that crown of Illyria that you are always talking about? It is worth nothing except on a king's head; elsewhere it is obstruction, a useless thing, which for flight is carried ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... must be Bigger! Bigness means Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became a mighty Will. We must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax them here! Bribe them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get them! Shout them into coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of people; all kinds of people! We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the fault-finder! Scream and bellow to the Most High: Bigness is patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and life and happiness! Bigness is Money! ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... of the deck, and place himself in such a manner as to be always an object in the eye of his father. In vain the cannon thundered, in vain from the ship sounded the long and lordly tumult, responded to by immense acclamations from the shore; in vain did the noise deafen the ear of the father, the smoke obscured the cherished object of his aspirations. Raoul appeared to him to the last moment; and the imperceptible atom, passing from black to pale, from pale to white, from white to nothing, disappeared for Athos—disappeared very long after, to all the eyes ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thee think Thy bride will die, shamed. Swear me not again She shall not: all our trust is set on thee. What eyes and ears are keen about us here Thou knowest not. Love, my love and thine for her, Shall deafen and shall blind them. Be but thou A bridegroom blind and dumb—speak soft as love, And ask not answer louder than a sigh - And when to-morrow sets thy bride and thee Here face to face again, thy soul shall ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... In plain English, Why do you deafen me with your croaking? The disconsolate tone in which you bade me farewell at Noble House, [The first stage on the road from Edinburgh to Dumfries via Moffat.] and mounted your miserable hack to return ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... with the rest of the budget," Sir Blaise answered. "And what kind of a creature is your captive? Does he deafen you with psalms, does he ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... even have sworn to a case of intoxication, merely as a matter of form to afford employment. There were no immoral females to disgrace the public streets; neither were there any beggars, vagrants, organ-grinders, or perambulators to worry, deafen, or upset you. My country was a picture of true harmony. We had no complex machinery of law; there was no such difficulty as an estate in Chancery; no Divorce Court, or cases of crim. con. that necessitated an appeal. Adultery would be settled ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the scheme I've laid is fair and safe; Your mistress may be with you at your father's Without detection; by the self-same means I shall procure the sum you've promis'd her, Which you have rung so often in my ears, You've almost deafen'd them.—What would ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, Banner so broad advancing out of the night, I sing you haughty and resolute, I burst through where I waited long, too long, deafen'd and blinded, My hearing and tongue are come to me, (a little child taught me,) I hear from above O pennant of war your ironical call and demand, Insensate! insensate! (yet I at any rate chant you,) O banner! Not houses of peace indeed are you, nor any nor all their prosperity, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... go on to the hotel and eat?" he asked Jack Baldwin softly. "No use staying and letting that fellow deafen us ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... he cried within him, "Not that—not that!" Seeking to deafen his ears to a voice that at once charmed and terrified him, for it was the voice of a demon which possessed the allurements of an angel—a demon he reckoned he had long ago fast bound in chains from which it would ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... your proud will to make those nobler choices Which bring to soul and heart enduring health. Deafen your ears to those contending voices, Look in your heart, learn your own being's wealth. Its resources vast, its undiscovered treasure Waiting for these same idle hands to mine. Learn that the grandest of Nature's creations May not be bounded by ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Casanova, an unmalignant Aretino, he sang as vulgar nature prompted; but he always kept on singing. His partiality for detonating dissonances, squibs and crackers of pyrotechnical rhetoric, braying trumpets and exploding popguns, which deafen and distract our ears attuned to the suave cadence of the cantilena, is no less characteristic of the Neapolitan. Marino had the improvisatory exuberance, the impudence, the superficial passion, the luxurious delight in life, and the noisiness ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Nature's design in my formation—where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... a shout loud enough to deafen all Saint Dominic's. The ball was flying fifty feet up in the air, and Raleigh was slowly walking, bat in hand, back to the tent he had ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... have I not a shield and sword? To battle! To battle, Balder! Let thy broad sword glitter! Lift high the sword, cleave down the haughty warrior, And dip thy spear in blood, thou son of Odin! Ha! din of shield 'gainst shield, and battle's bellow, They, they shall gladden me—and deafen Nanna! And I will cool this ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... a Boulangist?" cried a young and ardent writer of the party.[1] "Why are my friends Boulangists? Because the general is the only man in France capable of carrying out the expulsion of mere talkers from the Chamber of Deputies,—men who deafen the public ear, and are good for nothing. Gentlemen, a few hundreds of you, ever since 1870, have carried on the government. All of you are lawyers or literary men, none of you ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... there.' But the little group stood paralyzed with fear, unable to attend to the directions which were given them, or perhaps unable to hear them, for the fire was roaring and crackling enough to deafen any one. Three brave men of the fire-brigade went with a ladder round to the back of the house, while the engines kept the fire somewhat down by constantly playing on the front, as far as the confined space would allow of their doing so. In reality, I suppose, not many minutes elapsed from ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... the wheel flies round, With no ungrateful sound Do adverse voices fall on the world's ear. Deafen'd by his own stir The rugged labourer Caught not till then a sense So glowing and so ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... some way of deliverance commensurate with the immensity of their needs. But to resign oneself to the present condition of things as inevitable seems to me almost as heartless as to fold our hands helplessly at a time of absolute famine. To deafen our ears to the immediate distresses of the submerged tenth may be less criminal in degree but ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... the innocence of my heart, entirely ignorant of what was to come next. Our guide, departing from that heroic grandeur of manner which had hitherto distinguished him, suddenly commenced screaming and hooting in a most unparalleled style. The echo was enough to deafen one, to be sure, and the first blast of it made us all jump. I could think of nothing but Apollyon amusing himself at the expense of the poor pilgrims in the valley of the shadow of death; for the exhibition was persisted in with a pertinacity inscrutable ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is not applicable to a man who deliberately goes about to stir the wild beast. He is laughed at, plucked, hustled, and robbed, by those who deafen him with their "plaudits"—their roars. Did you see his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion gathering down in the North, near my part of the country? A great-coat and a packet of letters. He offers a reward of L10. But that's honest robbery compared ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great beauty of the play lies in hitting her a thump with the heel of the shoe on that side least capable of making a defence. It was in this manner that my eldest daughter was hemmed in, and thumped about, all blowzed, in spirits, and bawling for fair play, fair play, with a voice that might deafen a ballad singer, when confusion on confusion, who should enter the room but our two great acquaintances from town, Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilelmina Amelia Skeggs! Description would but beggar, therefore it is unnecessary to describe this new mortification. Death! To be seen ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... greoning. For heavy is his groaning, and seohrful is his woaning. and sorrowful his wailing. and all reowliche his sith. and all rueful his lot, mid seorwe biwunden. 30 with sorrow encompassed. him deaueth tha aeren. His ears deafen, him dimmeth tha ei[gh]en. his eyes become dim, him scerpeth the neose. his nose sharpens, him scrincketh tha lippen. his lips shrink, him scorteth the tunge. 35 his tongue shorteneth him truketh his iwit. his sense faileth, him teoreth his miht. his strength wasteth, ...
— The Departing Soul's Address to the Body • Anonymous
... eye. So, poets' songs are with us, tho' they die Obscured, and hid by death's oblivious shroud, And Earth inherits the rich melody Like raining music from the morning cloud. Yet, few there be who pipe so sweet and loud Their voices reach us through the lapse of space: The noisy day is deafen'd by a crowd Of undistinguished birds, a twittering race; But only lark and nightingale forlorn Fill up the silences of night ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... have had her, each man for his own. Even that day there were three princes at the castle, each one wanting the queen to marry him; and the wrangling and bickering and squabbling that was going on was enough to deafen a body. The poor young queen was tired to death with it all, and so she had come out into the garden for a bit of rest; and there she sat under the shade of an apple-tree, fanning herself ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... weep your eyes blind, you may shout your throat dry, you may deafen the ears of your world for half a lifetime, and you may never get a truth believed in, never have a simple fact accredited. But the lie flies like the swallow, multiplies itself like the caterpillar, is accepted ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... better off than I am," said the proud little grain. "The birds can fly and sing, the children can play and shout. I am sure I can get no rest for their shouting and playing. There are two little boys who make enough noise to deafen the ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... glacial ice lay uncovered. Its surface was split by numberless yawning crevasses. Water drenched their sides. Every little while ice would break away, and then reports, similar to the ones I had heard on my way up, would nearly deafen me. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... his hands over his ears. "She can deafen a man when she cannot set her mark on him otherwise. Let us speedily get rid ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... advantage that all they write is a part of knowledge, but they are powerless before events and have often but one visible strength, the strength to reject from life and thought all that would mar their work, or deafen them in the doing of it; and only this so long as it is a passive act. If Synge had married young or taken some profession, I doubt if he would have written books or been greatly interested in a movement like ours; but he refused various opportunities of making money in what must have been an almost ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... instrument, but scraped along its back over the scales, which emitted a noise similar to the letting off simultaneously of innumerable crackers. This noise was kept up during the whole of the ceremony, and what with the drum and this tiger instrument it was sufficient to deafen one. During the ceremony, an official crier used to call out the different orders, such as when to kneel, bow, stand up, kowtow, etc., etc., but with the noise it was quite impossible to hear a single word of what he uttered. Another ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... But if they are not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong, yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man's ear, and harden his heart, to the really noble ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... roar was heard, such that the women screamed and covered their ears; it was the ex-theological student blowing with all the strength of his lungs on the tambuli, or carabao horn. Laughter and cheerfulness returned while tear-dimmed eyes brightened. "Are you trying to deafen us, you heretic?" cried ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... two days, the paint varnished, the paper hung, and the dirt all cleared away. The workmen had finished it off as though they were playing, whistling away on their ladders, and singing loud enough to deafen the whole neighborhood. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... awry, or to bungle every touch. Melchior cried out, then roared, and blows began to rain. He had a heavy ruler. At every false note he struck the boy's fingers, and at the same time shouted in his ears, so that he was like to deafen him. Jean-Christophe's face twitched tinder the pain of it; he bit his lips to keep himself from crying, and stoically went on hitting the notes all wrong, bobbing his head down whenever he felt a blow coming. But his system was not good, and it was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... out of the door, (a storm at sea did not deafen one like that!) Melindy following, in silence such as our blessed New ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... deafen one ear and listen with the other. You've got to learn to hear in a hubbub. Go on then, I'm through. But I haven't forgotten that I missed the Thanksgiving banquet last year because Phil broke his ankle that very ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... occasions when the solemnity of the entertainment increases in proportion to the noise made, there is a full orchestra. The choruses bawl, the bamboos deafen one with their loud noise like that of huge wooden bells, the krobs sob desperately at the way they are treated by the plectrum, the ciniloi whistles and laments, and all without any fixed measure of time or modulation of tones, in a confusion of sounds ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... instead of this, defiance based on ignorance and falsehood expressed the prevailing temper. But those who refused to listen to the intelligible language of Jehovah would be compelled to hear Him speak in Assyrian speech in a way that would deafen and blind them. Isaiah shows himself no less indignant against the crowd that stupidly stared at his excitement than against the God-forsaken folly of the king, with his counsellors, his priests, and his prophets. They do not suffer themselves to be shaken out of their ordinary ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... verbalization. As long as one continues talking, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the field. The return to life can't come about by talking. It is an act; to make you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation, I must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing you, as Bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for purposes of practice and not for purposes of insight. Or I must point, point to the mere that of life, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... going off close to the ear of Dick. He leaned over slightly in his saddle, fearing he had been hit. But in another instant he realized that Bud had fired, with a pistol held so close to the eastern lad's ear as nearly to deafen him. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... things, which Napoleon has discovered the art of obscuring in the eyes of those who have only read his journals, and listened to his agents. I do not even know if Napoleon's adversaries on the continent, constantly surrounded with a false opinion which never ceases to deafen them, can venture to trust themselves without apprehension to their own feelings. If I can judge of them by myself, I know that frequently, after having heard all the advices of prudence or meanness with which one is overwhelmed in the Bonapartist atmosphere, I scarcely knew what to think ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... repeated, and I hoped the sound of his own voice would deafen him to that other sound, that was so loud to me. "You saw the Houstons' guests, and their servants! You never thought of seeing the expert who was down from New York about the heating of Mrs. Houston's new ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... see," protested Selina, struggling to uproot his small body from the scrawl it guarded. But Harold clung limpet-like to the table edge, and his shrill protest continued to deafen humanity and to threaten even the serenities of Olympus. The time seemed come for a demonstration in force. Personally I cared little what soul-outpourings of Harold were pirated by Selina—she was pretty sure to get hold of them ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of his species. The bear offers no injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind? Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a woman, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... they were waving wide, Their glaives were glancing clear, The pibrochs rung frae side to side, Would deafen you to hear. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... ancient mines which were situated in a gorge. I believe them to have been silver mines. The gorge was long and narrow, and the moment we entered it there rose from every side a sound of groaning and barking that was almost enough to deafen us. I knew what it was at once: the whole place was filled with baboons, which clambered down the rocks towards us from every direction, and in a manner that struck me as being unnaturally fearless. Stella turned a little pale and clung to ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... for sixty leagues along a river, without being able to find any bridge or ford at which they could pass over. In one place they found this river to form a cataract of 200 fathoms in perpendicular fall, making such a noise as was almost sufficient to deafen any person who stood near. Not far beyond this fall, the river was found to glide in a smooth channel, worn out of the rock; and at this place they constructed a bridge by which they passed to the other side, and entered into a country called Guema, which was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr |
