"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got up a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal; I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stove griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire. The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good places for me in case of attack, but hard to ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... ever so long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clean and rested; of safety and yet freedom; of love that was always there, warm like sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed—a love that didn't irritate and didn't smother. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... to expose myself to those severe censures which the haughty but empty scorn of infidelity, or principles nearly approaching it, and effectually doing its pernicious work, may very probably dictate upon the occasion, rather than to smother a relation, which may, in the judgment of my conscience, be like to conduce so much to the glory of God, the honour of the gospel, and the good of mankind. One thing more I will only premise, that I hope none who have heard the colonel himself speak something of this wonderful scene, will be surprised ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel Idle for ever to waft her or wind ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed all my plans, and instigated ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... better sort of the inhabitants have enter'd into a resolution of injoying free liberty in Love, without being Troubled or disturbed by its consequences. These mix and Cohabit together with the utmost freedom, and the Chilldren who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smother'd at the Moment of their Birth; many of these People contract intimacies and live together as man and wife for years, in the course of which the Children that are born are destroy'd. They are so far from concealing it that they look upon it as a branch of freedom upon which ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the market classes Had slimy hands upon England's rod, And sword in hand upon Afric's passes Her last Republic cried to God. For the men no lords can buy or sell, They sit not easy when all goes well. They have said to each other what naught can smother, They have seen each other, our ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... not aware of any class of recollective remarks or inquiries which now and then break forth, and which you invariably smother with a thick blanket ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... that oft would make a mist and smother Some swain beset, and screen him from the crowd, I prayed for vapours; but his mind was other: Yet was I answered, though the god was proud, For, anyhow, I trod on Miss Pritt's mother And left beneath ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... I had to smother a chuckle when that came out, for I'd already recognized some of the symptoms of a motion picture mind while Ellery was ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... to see you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between speaker ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Of waistcoats Harry has no lack, Good duffle grey, and flannel fine; He has a blanket on his back, And coats enough to smother nine. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... trials! At last, the mother was made acquainted with her son's new mode of life, by the treasured 5s. which the poor boy thrust into her hand one evening, with a strange shy pride that brought all the blood into his face, while he kissed her with impetuosity to smother her reproaches. She asked him how he had got so much money—so much! and then he told her how, self-taught, he had learned to cut out figures—dogs and landscapes—in coloured paper, which he had taken to the bazaars and stationers' shops, and there ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... whole mass of humanity began to writhe and swell, as a frightened crowd does in the dark, so that every one feels as if all the other people were growing hugely big, as big as elephants, to smother and crush him; and each man makes himself as broad as he can, and tries to swell out his chest, and squares his elbows to keep the weight off his sides; and with the steady strain and effort every one breathes ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... guided by my host and hostess, and the second time rather adventurously alone. Forests of koa, sandal-wood, and ohia, with an undergrowth of raspberries and ferns clothe its base, the fragrant maile, and the graceful sarsaparilla vine, with its clustered coral- coloured buds, nearly smother many of the trees, and in several places the heavy ie forms the semblance of triumphal arches over the track. This forest terminates abruptly on the great volcanic wilderness, with its starved growth ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the Mary Sinclair had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror which is past. Allardyce, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... your bridle, my boy, we'll soon be out of this smother." It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it lightly over my eyes, and patting and coaxing he led me out of the stable. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shouted, "Here somebody! ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... turns to smoke, and the terrene and grosser parts remain in the ashes. Fire only preys upon the moisture, which is its natural nourishment. Indeed, water, wine, and other liquors, having abundance of earthy and heavy parts in them, by falling into fire part it, and by their roughness and weight smother and extinguish it. But oil, because purely liquid, by reason of its subtility, is overcome by the fire, and so ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and drawn the whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them down again in a smother ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the storm broke in all its fury—being little short, in violence, of a West Indian hurricane. On through the mist, through the smother of foam, over the big greenish-blue waves scudded the Tartar, the lieutenant, in oilskins, standing in the bows, peering ahead for a ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... our hunger or one drop of fresh water to cool our parched tongues. Anxiety was depicted in every visage, and our spirits were clouding like the heavens over them. Capt. Hilton, whose sickness and debility had been increased by fatigue and hunger, could no longer smother the feelings that were struggling within.—The quivering lip, the dim eye, the pallid cheek, all told us, as plainly as human expression could tell, that the last ray of that hope which had supported him during the day, was now fading away before the coming night. I had seen much ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... 'he is past rendering help to any. It was mightily suspected,' said he whisperingly, 'that he died of the Plague; but your great rich folks can smother these matters up. This is certain, that he had secret and hasty burial, and all his family are fled and gone, without so much as locking the door behind them, as it is said; but I think none have been so bold as to try that; men love their ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... his mouth to smother a laugh and his eyes fairly sparkled with mischief. "Who is ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... him on the border of the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... do what isn't reight, But conscience will keep prickin; He dreeads far mooar his mother's grief, Nor what he'd fear a lickin. Her trubbled face,—her tearful een, Her sighs shoo tries to smother, Are coals ov foir on the heead Ov th' lad ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... thoughts were they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... worked with our shirts off. To withstand the heat we stripped to the waist. We didn't want to wear a shirt. It would have clung to our flesh and hampered our moving muscles. We were freer and cooler without any cloth to smother us. It was a privilege to go shirtless. Adam enjoyed that blessing in the Garden of Eden. And when he sinned they punished him by putting a shirt, collar and necktie on him. And yet this theorist in the mills demanded ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France, except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half of the population silently letting on that they were not aware ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with all ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... mother, and to me she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," and Peggy found herself in an embrace which threatened to smother her. She blushed with pleasure. To be like her mother whom she scarcely remembered, for eight years had passed since that beautiful mother slipped out of her life, was the highest praise that could ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... murder at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case altogether; nor was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them seized him by the shoulders, and dragging him into a long, dark, cell-like room, threw him violently upon the floor. Then returning to the room, the officer took Tommy by the arm, and marching him into the same room, shut the door to smother his cries. The little fellow was so frightened, that he burst into an excitement of tears. The room was dark, and as gloomy as a cavern. He could neither lie down, sleep, nor console himself. He thought of Manuel, only to envy his lot, and would gladly have shared his imprisonment, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... myself, such as bodies half eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... beholding her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he had to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and by the last stile but one, what do ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" assiduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the time he had a heart of gold and they feel free to say now that once the money has passed he won't be let to go off the place till he has heard all about the new enterprise and let in on the ground floor, and they hope he won't ever forget this moment when the money begins to roll in fit to smother him in round numbers. So Safety says he knows they're a good square set of boys, as clean as a hound's tooth, and he'll be over to-morrow to take over the stock and hear the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... result seemed doubtful, so doubtful that Nick finally threw Cervera heavily to the floor, the better to press the matting closely around her and so smother the flames. In this he presently succeeded, but not before she was so severely burned as to be rendered ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... smother her emotions on the subject of the brandy, and the old woman chattered on, throwing out the news of the village in a series of humorous fragments, tinged in general with the lowest opinion ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heavier Weight upon a Man, or hinders Him more from shewing Himself to Advantage, and employing his great Abilities for the Service of Others; than the Quarrels and Contentions of Parties. Many have their Talents imprison'd, by being of the hated and sinking Side. Their Light is wholly smother'd and suppress'd, that it may not shine out with a Lustre on the Party to which they belong, whether it be in Politicks or Religion. And all Struggles of a Genius are vain, when a Man is born down at once by Clamour ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... martyrs, and secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, while their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another. "What," said they, "while the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for us? Our brethren invite ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... danger in him: I observed him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion, which he could not smother. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; he remains Yet in our power; I, for my own part, wear ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... unremitting, upon them, hard-handed, stoop-shouldered, dull-eyed and awkward. These were the daughters of rich farmers. Good girls they were, too, conscientious, careful, unselfish, thinking it a virtue to stifle every ambition, smother every craving ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Maurice de St. Genis, who was never absent from her side, and who seemed to hover over her with an air of proprietorship and of triumphant mastery which caused poor Bobby to grind his heel into the oak floor, and to smother a bitter curse which had risen ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... banished the architect do we see masonry of any merit. The engineers, who have at least a scientific problem to solve, create, in factories and railway-bridges, our most creditable monuments. They at least are not ashamed of their construction, or, at any rate, they are not allowed to smother it in beauty at thirty shillings a foot. We shall have no more architecture in Europe till architects understand that all these tawdry excrescences have got to be simplified away, till they make up their minds to express themselves ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... at the feet of the young soldier, could not have startled or paralyzed him more. He was actually struck dumb by it Here was the chalice dashed from his lips at last. He turned away in despair; but as he was for duty, he was constrained to smother the tumultuous feelings within his breast. When alone, however, and pacing his lonely round with his musket on his shoulder, he had time to measure, with sufficient calmness and accuracy, the length, breadth and depth of the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... "being given more to religious exercises than reigning," says the historian. He would often exhibit his piety in order to draw attention away from His Royal Incompetency. He was not the first or last to smother the call to duty under the cry of Hallelujah. Like the little steamer engine with the big whistle, when he whistled the boat stopped. He did not have a boiler big enough to push the great ship of state and shout ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... Jacynth of course was your servant; And if she had the habit to peep through the casement, How could I keep at any vast distance? And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, The Duke, dumb stricken with amazement, Stood for a while in a sultry smother, {310} And then, with a smile that partook of the awful, Turned her over to his yellow mother To learn what was decorous and lawful; And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, As her cheek quick whitened through all its quince-tinct. Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels cannot long cover ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... sorrows of too enthusiastic love, and the tortures of ungoverned passion. Here, too, you will witness, not without a shudder, the interior economy of vice; and from the stage be taught how all the tinsel of fortune fails to smother the inward worm; and how terror, anguish, remorse, and despair tread close on the footsteps of guilt. Let the spectator weep to-day at our exhibition, and tremble, and learn to bend his passions to the laws of religion and reason; let the youth behold with alarm the consequences ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Mr Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry up, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... I.iii.40 (415,8) function/Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is,/ But what is not] All powers of action are oppressed and crushed by one overwhelming image in the mind, and nothing is present to me, but that which is really future. Of things now about me I have no perception, being intent wholly on ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... the fifth ball, this time striking him in the face, and passing out, just missing the jugular vein. Falling, he lay unconscious with his face in his cap, into which poured the blood from his wound until it threatened to smother him. It might have done so but for still another ball, which pierced the cap and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself in my pocket-handkerchief." ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... said the widow; "I tell you I don't like it. You neither of you know Barry Lynch, as well as I do; he'd smother her av it come into ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the breast ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... told her exuberantly. "If I could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... for the opposite course, a little boldness, a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne outflanked Montecuculli, and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... arms and back as best I could, and then lay down, but not to sleep. No, I could not sleep, for I was suffering mental as well as bodily torture. My spirit rebelled against the unjustness that had been inflicted upon me, and though I tried to smother my anger and to forgive those who had been so cruel to me, it was impossible. The next morning I was more calm, and I believe that I could then have forgiven everything for the sake of one kind word. But the kind word was not proffered, and it may be possible ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... glimpses of bellying sails towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to the heaving seas or plunged in a white smother of foam. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... caravan of household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts into a goose's maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty's absolute necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and portieres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then—there was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe's got the smother-fly in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... so soon should waste! Or so sweet a bliss As a kiss Might not for ever last! So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious, The dew that lies on roses, When the morn herself discloses, Is not so precious. O rather than I would it smother, Were I to taste such another; It should be my wishing That I might ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... just can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, they hand yuh your check, an', say—it says forty-five cents. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... to my heart Thy boasted passion, pure; Dreamed thy affection, void of art, For ever would endure. Alas! in vain my woe I smother! I find thee very much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... said; "all a sweet, wholesome, gentle woman. See her now with her arms around the child; the little creature clings to her as if she were the mother it never knew. Ah! she is telling them. No need to smother her, children. I never really meant to separate you; no, indeed. I only wanted you to find out for yourselves, as I have found out for myself. No more solitude at Fernley, please God; from now on, young faces and hearts, and sunshine, ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... topsail halliards whilst calling to the men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea, and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twenty seconds I stood in a horrible fury and smother of frothing water, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every faculty in me so numbed and dulled by the wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew not whether in that space of time I was in the least degree sensible of what had happened ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... account whether the bones of those who were so dear to us, be exposed with the remains of malefactors, or laid in the sacred grave. To the dead all places are alike; and to the slave what signifies who is master. Let us therefore forget the past,—let us keep open the door of reconciliation,—smother all the wrongs we have endured, and kiss the proud foot of the trampler. We have our lives; we have been spared; the merciless blood-hounds have not yet reached us. Let us therefore be humble and thankful, and cry to Charles Stuart, O King live for ever!—for he has but cast us ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it in ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... your pardon," Mrs. Eyrecourt interposed, "I am afraid I fail to follow you. My silent son-in-law looks as if he longed to smother me, and my attention is naturally distracted. You were ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, As who beholds two currents thwart amid ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... aboard the ship; There's feud no force can smother; Their blood is up to fever-heat; They're cutting down each other. Buchanan here, and Douglas there, Are belching forth their thunder, While cunning rogues are sly at work In ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... with the yardmaster and walked over to the Silver Dollar saloon, where, in order to smother his distress, he played game after game of solitaire. Here, shortly after his arrival, he had learned of Borax O'Rourke's latest move, and when the latter entered the saloon an hour later, Harley P. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of the runners, so that there were intervals of rest for each two times an hour. Quickly the red glow over the southwestern forests faded away; the gloom grew thicker; far ahead, like an endless sheet losing itself in a distant smother of blackness, stretched the ice and snow of Lake Nipigon. There was no tree, no rock for guidance over the trackless waste, yet never for an instant did Mukoki or Wabigoon falter. The stars began burning brilliantly in the sky; far away the red edge of the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Hungarian Rhapsody, impetuous and brilliant as ever. How she hated it now—this symbol of the hurried, unheeding, relentless, hollow gaiety of the world! Yet she longed for the magic fingers of the player, that she, too, might smother ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... came to at last was, that I could not do better than smother my impatience for a whole week; taking, the while, excursions in every other direction so as, if possible, to blind any one who made a study of my movements. Then my journey to the cavern must be made by night, armed with spades, and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... perceptibly larger than the others, yet, in three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Bunny, he seemed to think them quite wonderful—for a time. He stood as near the edge as his father would let him, looking up the rapids down which the waters rushed, to fall over the rocky edge, dropping in a smother of foam to the blue lake below. Silently he watched the smooth waters glide down like some ribbon, and then, turning to his father, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... the launch nosed her way cautiously south-westwards, through the wet smother. Most of the time she kept fairly close under the Asiatic shore. There were fewer forts that side, and less ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of ashes came a shower of blazing stones, which fell uninterruptedly, setting fire to all parts of the city and blocking up the streets with burning masses. And then a fresh storm of ashes sweeping down would partly smother the flames, but, blocking up the doorways, would stifle those within the houses. And to add to the horror, the volumes of smoke that poured from the mountain caused a darkness deeper than night to settle on the doomed city, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... colder and colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in order to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage. My men covered their heads with their blankets, but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to smother me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only could I breathe more freely, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by the Tibetans. My men moaned and groaned and their ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... and even to recognize this perfection requires men who are not always to be found, and never in numbers sufficiently great to make themselves heard; whereas envy is always on the watch and doing its best to smother their voice. But with moderate talent, which soon meets with recognition, there is the danger that those who possess it will outlive both it and themselves; so that a youth of fame may be followed by an old age of obscurity. In the case of great merit, on the other hand, a man may remain unknown ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... they screamed. "We did not know soon enough, and now it is too late; we should smother if we tried to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... waistcoat as fine as a peacock; and when I gave the bottle-screw to my father, begging him to take it as a token of my affection for him, my dear mother burst into such a fit of tears as I never saw, and kissed and hugged me fit to smother me. "Bless him, bless him," says she, "to think of his old father. And where did you purchase it, Bob?"—"Why, mother," says I, "I purchased it out of my savings" (which was as true as the gospel).—When I said this, mother looked ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rug before the fire, and not far from the crib where Willie lay sleeping. In an instant, however, the thought "What shall I do?" was followed by the remembrance of what her mother had often said, "If in any way your dress should ever take fire, you must try to smother it at once; never run away, but throw yourself down, or wrap yourself ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... post of guardian to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... cannot do without you—that's the discovery I made. I have been lonely—lonely for this broad prairie and you. The Old Country seemed to stifle me; everything is so little and crowded and bunched up, and so dark and foggy—it seemed to smother me. I longed to hear the whirr of prairie chickens and see the wild ducks dipping in the river; I longed to hear the sleighs creaking over the frosty roads; and so I've come home to all this—and you, Martha," He ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... center, where it is warm; they always huddle together in cold weather, and herders are frequently compelled to remain right with them, nights at a time, working hard every minute separating them so they will not smother. One of the men, owner of the sheep, I presume, met us and said he would show me where to go so I could see everything that was being done, which proved to be directly back of a man who was shearing sheep. They told me that he ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... sat, with a contented mind, smoking my pipe, and staring out at the falling summer rain. And presently, chancing to turn my eyes up the road, I beheld a chaise that galloped in a smother of mud. As I watched its rapid approach, the postilion swung his horses towards the inn, and a moment later had pulled up before the door. They had evidently travelled fast and far, for the chaise was covered with dirt; and the poor horses, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... in him. I observ'd him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion which he could not smother; His looks grew full of sadness and surprise, All which betray'd a wavering spirit in him, That labour'd with reluctancy and sorrow. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... it in Tracy has satisfied my appetite: and even in that, the preliminary discourse of the analyzer himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between fact and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... next door and see if you can borrow a large snow shovel," called Mrs. Brown. "Don't stop to tell them what it's for, or Bunny may smother." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... ahead when Joe sprang out of his concealment and followed him, for he wanted to give Ollie time to pass beyond ear-shot of the orchard. As Joe made no attempt to smother the sound of his feet, Morgan heard him while he was still several yards behind him. He turned, stopped, and waited for ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the tip of my tongue when I wasn't no more'n knee-high to a grasshopper. But when a man has got a fire in him, they ain't no use trying to smother it. You either got to put water on it or else let ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... cried Mrs Belfield, who during this time had been busily employed in sweeping the hearth, wiping some slops upon the table, and smoothing her handkerchief and apron, "why the girl's enough to smother you. Henny, how can you be so troublesome? I never saw you behave ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!): 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... areas. Let a moist place be burned over and the aspen will quickly take possession, and soon establish conditions which will allow conifers to return. This the conifers do, and in a very short time smother the aspens that made it possible for them to start in life. The good nursery work of aspens is restricted pretty ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... coolness, and yet there was naught to show me that she had passed an anxious night. Ah, love, we demand that you shall not only be happy, but miserable at our wish. We would dim your eye when our own is blurred; we would smother your heart when our own is heavy, and would pierce it with a pain. Upon her children this old world has poured the wisdom of her gathered ages, and could we look from another sphere we might see the minds of great men twinkling like the stars, but the human heart is yet unschooled, yet has no range ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... suppressed desire, Raked up in ashes of my burning breast, Break out at length and to the clouds aspire, Urging the heavens to afford me rest; But let my body naturally descend Into the bowels of our common mother, And to the very centre let it wend, When it no lower can, her griefs to smother! And yet when I so low do buried lie, Then shall my love ascend unto ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... the power which these various substances possess to combine with oxygen. We open the draft of a stove that it may "draw well": that it may secure oxygen for burning. We throw a blanket over burning material to smother the fire: to keep oxygen away from it. Burning, or oxidation, is combining with oxygen, and the more oxygen you add to a fire, the hotter the fire will burn, and the faster. The effect of oxygen on combustion may be clearly ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... at opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... what mournful grace, For a lost parent, sits on Chudleigh's face Fair virgin, weep no more, your anguish smother! You in this town can never want ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... often the good destroyed, we wish to believe no more in it as inherent in our being, and rather than suffer repeatedly from its disappearance, we prefer to smother it before perfect development. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... turned to Drake bruskly to smother the sob of sheer happiness I felt rising in my throat; and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly forebore ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... actual, including the mean bread-and-cheese question, dissipated the phantasmal for a while, and compelled Jude to smother high thinkings under immediate needs. He had to get up, and seek for work, manual work; the only kind deemed by many of its professors ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal characters; ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands. Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray. From the binnacle amidships to the weather wing of the bridge was his dominion, while the watch officer straddled down to leeward; both with eyes boring at the darkness ahead and on either beam, where there came and went ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... young physician was called at night to the peon quarter, and to his amazement found that his patient was a lady, a girl whose patrician manner was proof against all her terror and suffering. She utterly refused to look at her child and threatened to smother it if he left it within her reach. He took it to the Hospicio to be cared for temporarily, and a few days later, going as usual to attend the young mother, he found her vanished. There was a lavish fee left for him, and a note, bidding him insolently to banish the whole ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... world is abhorrent to the marrow of us. Stevenson, with his delightfully irresponsible audacity, sighs for an occasional "furlough from the moral law"; and there are times for most of us when it seems as if we should choke and smother under the everlasting "Thou shalt not!" But the daring rebel, the defiant Titan, comes creeping back to the shelter of morality with a headache or something worse, and discovers that his Promethean boldness was but childish petulance; that it is futile and foolish to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... John and then following the directions of Trevor's eyes, he descried a blue-clad, golden-haired young lady lolling against the window, trying with a giant chiffon muff to smother a fit of hilarious laughter. One arched and smiling eye showed above the muff and the whole figure was instinct with Bacchanalian mirth. "Why that's," he began to explain, but young Trevor had vanished into ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... the crown of the plant, and that means failure. Of late years I protect my plants by inverting small boxes over them. The sides of these boxes are bored full of holes to admit air, which must be allowed to circulate freely about the plant, or it will smother. I invert a box over the plant after filling it with leaves, and draw more leaves about the outside of it. This prevents water from coming in contact with the soft, sponge-like foliage, and the plant comes out in spring almost as green ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... as I the threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior Nilaus ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous
... Guillette's fireside. The huge spit was twisted like a screw in the powerful hands that struggled for possession of it. A pistol-shot set fire to a small store of hemp in skeins that lay on a shelf suspended from the ceiling. That incident created a diversion, and while some hastened to smother the germ of a conflagration, the grave-digger, who had climbed to the attic unperceived, came down the chimney and seized the spit, just as the drover, who was defending it near the hearth, raised it above his head to prevent its being snatched from him. Some time before the assault, the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... made the husband willing, like a vanquished enemy, to compound for small matters, in order to preserve something. At least the poor man does not care to let his friends see his case; and so will not provoke a fire to break out, that he sees (and so do his friends too) the meek lady has much ado to smother; and which, very possibly, burns with a most comfortable ardour, after we ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... almost drew her off her balance as amazed, stunned, nerveless, she halted. She caught a glimpse of Randerson's profile as he swept into a circle and threw his rope. There must be no missing—there was none. The sinuous loop went out, fell over the steer's head. Thereafter there was a smother of dust in which the girl could see some wildly waving limbs. Outside of the smother she saw the pony swing off for a short distance and stiffen its legs. The rope attached to the pommel of the saddle grew taut as a bow string; there was an instant of strained ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... station, and the nurse scarcely liked to ask Suzanne for the child, who was holding it against her heaving bosom, and kissing it as if she intended to smother it, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant |
