"Deaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of flame caused by the close-range shot must have been extinguished by the murderer, or it would have continued to smoulder and expand in an ever-widening circle. And that thought led to another of much greater significance. The shot had been fired at close range to ensure accuracy of aim or deaden the sound of the report. But, whichever the murderer's intention, the second purpose had been achieved, intentionally or unintentionally. How had it happened, then, that the sound of the report ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Scripture comes as a rule Arithmetic. During the former lesson the teacher, acting under compulsion, does his best, as we have seen, to deaden the child's spiritual faculties. During the latter, he not infrequently does his best to deaden the child's mental faculties. In each case he is to be pitied rather than blamed. The conditions under which ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... in the house, including a number of pieces, our possession of which I had completely forgotten, seemed to have been collected and laid in rough order upon rugs, which had been piled one upon the other to deaden noise. One man was taking it up, piece by piece, scrutinizing it with an eye-glass such as watchmakers use, and dictating descriptions and particulars to a second, who was seated at the broad writing-table, entering ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Cost. The 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. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... no understanding? So many husbands died and left wives to weep and mourn for them, and he—he—she wouldn't shed a single tear for him, she was sure of that. She would laugh, laugh! Ha, and to-night she would dance, dance! She felt as though she must deaden ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... no response. The thick mist, which hid the surrounding objects, seemed to deaden all sound also. After a moment's pause he closed the door, but did not lock it, and retreating to the centre of the room remained blinking at the two candles and plucking some perplexing problem from his beard. Suddenly an idea seized him. Rosey! Where was ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... convention adjourned, the secret had been kept, and no one knew even the concrete result of its deliberations until the Constitution itself, and nothing else, was offered to the approval of the people. The high-way, upon which the State House fronted, was covered with earth, to deaden the noise of traffic, and sentries were posted at every means of ingress and egress, to prevent any intrusion upon the privacy of the convention. The members were not photographed daily for the pictorial Press, nor did any cinema register ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... and painful labour, acquire an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And, unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Those works were our favourite theme for satirical verse, which we did not pain our Professor by publishing. Professor Henry Morley lectured hour after hour to successive classes in a room half way down the passage, on the left. Even overwork could not deaden his enormous vitality; but I hope that his immediate successor does not lecture so often. Outside the classrooms I remember the passages, which resembled the cellars of an unsuccessful sculptor, the library, where ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... actually touch it except at certain points where communication with the main part was necessary; the rooms on the outer wing ran parallel for some distance with those in the house, but were separated by an interval of one or two feet. This was a precaution taken, it was said, in order to deaden the noise made by the children when they were in the nurseries situated in this part of the house. It had certainly been an effectual one; it was difficult to hear any sound proceeding from these rooms, even when one stood in ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... done; for all flesh had corrupted God's way upon the 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 imagination should, and would, had it been on God's side, so ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... claims to appointment and promotion, thus giving to the poor and meritorious at least an equal chance with the man of wealth and the base hireling of party. In actual service the system of exclusive seniority cannot exist; it would deaden and paralyze all our energies. Taking advantage of this, politicians will drive us to the opposite extreme, unless the executive authority be limited by wholesome laws, based on the just principles of merit ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... How to Deaden the Noise of Steam While Blowing off Through a Wrought Iron Stand Pipe.—The sound may be much modified by enlarging the end of the pipe like a trumpet or cone; which should be long, 20 or 30 times the diameter of the pipe, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... inward shudder Anstice recalled those months after Hilda Ryder's death—those horrible, chaotic months when, in a vain endeavour to stifle thought, to deaden remorse, he had invoked the aid of the poppy, and by so doing had almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... grumbled. "I gives ye my hand ter deaden him whensoever ye says ther word. But afore we parts company let's talk ther matter over a leetle more. I wouldn't love ter hev ye censure ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... way in passing, an expedient probably thought of to give her a little more time to put her questions, and to receive the desired answers. I observed also, that she let go all her bow-lines, which seemed much to deaden her way, of which there still remained sufficient, notwithstanding, to carry her well clear of us. The following dialogue then passed, the Englishman asking the questions, of course, that being a privilege expressly appropriated to the public vessel ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... tongue. She wore a Christian dress. Her heart answered to the same emotions that quicken or deaden the beat of other breasts. She had tears to shed, hopes to excite, passions to burn, desires to gratify. Nature had denied her none of the faculties that give beauty, and grace and dignity and sweetness to another. Even as she lay stretched on the floor ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... that in many cases the women that come hither give way to melancholy regrets, and destroy the harmony of their fire- side, and deaden the energies of their husbands and brothers by constant and useless repining. Having once made up their minds to follow their husbands or friends to this country, it would be wiser and better to conform with a good grace, and do ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... spring up near it, or they bloom only to wither in a moment. Our poet's verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit of fear, despondency, and decay: it is not an electric spark to kindle or expand, but acts like the torpedo's touch to deaden or contract. It lends no dazzling tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the heart, it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited, half under ground, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... duties. The dealer said they sometimes are much distressed when separated from their wives, or husband and children, but that it was an exception when this was so. One can hardly credit this, but so far as it is true it is one of the worst features of slavery that it can thus deaden all natural feelings of affection. We have spoken a good deal to the slaves here, and they seem anxious to obtain their freedom. The brother of one of the waiters at our hotel had twice been swindled by his master of the money he had saved to purchase his freedom. I spoke to ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... has exerted its pressure. The piston has no packing. Its surface of contact has two circumferential grooves, which produce a sort of water packing acting by adhesion. A small air chamber is connected with the inlet pipe, and serves to deaden the shocks. This engine is often made with two cylinders, having their ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... the surroundings incline you to good and reasonable thoughts, and for the moment deaden the rasp and jar of that busy wickedness which both working in one's self and received from others is the true source of all human miseries. Thus the time spent at Mass is like a short repose in a deep and well-built library, into which no sounds come and where you feel yourself secure against ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of Milk over it upon the Trivet, and have in a pot by a quart of good Cream ready to put in at the due time; which must be, when you see the Milk begin to boil simpringly. Then pour in the Cream in a little stream and low, upon a place, where you see the milk simper: This will presently deaden the boiling, and then you must pour in no more Cream there, but in a fresh place, where it simpreth and bubbeleth a little. Continue this pouring in, in new places where the milk boileth, till all your Cream is in, watching ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... sermon be prolonged a little beyond the usual hour, doth it not set half the audience asleep? as I question not I have by this time both my children. Well, then, like a good-natured surgeon, who prepares his patient for a painful operation by endeavouring as much as he can to deaden his sensation, I will now communicate to you, in your slumbering condition, the news with which I threatened you. Your good mother, you are to know, is dead at last, and hath left her whole fortune to her elder daughter.—This ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deaden nerve and destroy brain, had still ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... each of them drank a glass or two, after which they were silent as before. This silence, to M'Carthy, began to wear a solemn and a fearful aspect, especially as he knew enough of the habits of the people to be aware, that in drinking whiskey is often resorted to in order to deaden their moral, perceptions, or, in other words, as a ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... air; only a stir in one of the bunks betrayed his hiding-place. At the first sight of Willie's revolver he had dived for a refuge and was now flattened against the wall, a pillow pressed over his head to deaden the expected report. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... 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. ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... my opinion it is a bad service to the national honour to assume that the ill-treatment and degradation that the Prussians suffered from a foreign ruler were not enough to make our blood boil, and to deaden all other feelings but that of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... his letter had ever come, and if his brothers had forgotten him altogether, little knowing that out of mere spite Lazuraque had kept back everything they had written. When these thoughts came into his head he worked away at the stone harder than ever, to deaden the pain which was almost too bad to bear. At last one day his efforts were rewarded, and he was able to take the stone in and out and speak to his fellow-captives, who, with sun and air about them, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Clancy, "I was thinking it would be a good night tonight, seein' there's a strong wind blowing that would deaden ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... shatter it like glass! 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!" Ony I see the dusk Of evening twilight coming, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... convulsive 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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... position. How I had succeeded in arriving there without attracting attention was little short of miraculous. I durst not venture on any retrograde movement; I even pressed my mouth against the hard earth, the better to deaden the sound of breathing. I know not how long I remained thus; it was until my strained muscles appeared to cord themselves, and I could scarcely keep back a moan of pain. Yet no other sound came from that mysterious presence. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... deaden himself to the situation, as part of the larger coil of miseries in which he found himself; but all his traditions were against such tolerance, and they were roused to revolt by the receipt of a newspaper clipping, sent by an anonymous ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... himself ill-used when they refused to give their approbation to his proceedings, and this idea of ill- usage and unreasonableness he was willing to encourage, as it enabled him to shift the responsibility of their unhappiness from his own shoulders on to theirs, and to deaden the sense of remorse which would make itself felt from time to time. For in the worst of men, they say, there still lingers some touch of kindly human feeling, and M. Linders, though amongst the most worthless, was not perhaps absolutely ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... them except Scraps and the Sawhorse were fast asleep. Toto snuggled close to his friend the Lion, and the Woozy snored so loudly that the Patchwork Girl covered his square head with her apron to deaden ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a chair, tore from his shoulders the last ragged, trailing remnants of his frockcoat, and hurled them from him. Then, thrusting his fingers into the hair which he had once been so careful to preserve, he pulled it out by handfuls at a time, as though he hoped through physical pain to deaden the mental agony which ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... grand staircase are closed by tapestry of the fifteenth century, representing hunting scenes. Long cords of silk and gold loop back these marvellous hangings in the Italian style. Thick carpets, into which the feet sink, deaden the sound of footsteps. Spacious divans, covered with Oriental materials, are placed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 were,— A virtuous kennel, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... image of supreme anguish and immitigable suffering; but Orestes is less a lamentable figure than Faust—fortified though he is, and because he is, with the awful but malign, treacherous, and now impotent sovereignty of hell. To deaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and bestial riot—denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the Brocken—and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Our men are generally well mounted, 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 of wounded to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... rescued and cared for her when deserted. Gerard, who was with his father when the bones were exhumed at the spot indicated, soon realised the new situation. His passion for justice to his mother did not deaden his feeling for others. He felt that Falkner's story was true, and though nothing could restore his mother's life, her honour was intact. Sir Boyvill would leave no stone unturned to be revenged, rightly or wrongly, on the man who had assailed his domestic peace; but ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... within the law, neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, deaden his happiest instincts, derange moral action, cause hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it were ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... her own dullness, and all the while longing for an excitement that would deaden importunate aches, she was passing through files of admiring beholders in the country-dance with which it was traditional to open the ball, and was being generally regarded by her own sex as an enviable woman. It was remarked that she carried herself with a wonderful ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... retired to a distant part of the kingdom, where the condition of the people rendered the presence of an active minister of God a privilege and a blessing. In the service of his Master, in the securing of the happiness of other men, he strove for years to deaden the pain of his own crushed heart. And he succeeded—living to bless the wisdom which had carried him through temptation; and dying, at last, to meet with the reward conferred upon the man who, by patient continuance in well-doing, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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
... let us have crowds of people about us! Keep open house! Plunge into something that can deaden and dull our thoughts! ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... sentinel on duty in the fort 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 when it's pretty ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... which is wrought in a good housewife by perceiving any disorders in her kitchen; who, on such occasions, commonly spreads the disorder, not only over her whole family, but over the whole neighbourhood. —Now, these great calamities, especially when sudden, tend to stifle and deaden all the faculties, instead of rousing them; and accordingly Herodotus tells us a story of Croesus king of Lydia, who, on beholding his servants and courtiers led captive, wept bitterly, but, when he saw his wife ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... is the necessity of guarding against letting children read too much, or too entirely along one line. There is a habit of reading along lines which deaden, instead of stimulating, thought, and the habit, if carried to excess, becomes a mental dissipation which is utterly reprehensible; but the pathway to this habit is entered upon so innocently and unconsciously by the story-loving child that he (perhaps more often she) must be guided ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... strongly scented the trap may be, with the smoke, or other substances, a mere touch of the bare hand will leave a human scent which the fox perceives as soon as the other, and this is enough to deaden his enthusiasm over ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Christine? or do you only cover them up? If I had your creed nothing could cure my wounds. Time might deaden the pain, and I forget them in other things, but I do not see where any cure could come from. Oh, Christine! you did me good service when in the deepening twilight of Miss Brown's parlor you showed me my useless, unbelieving life. But I do believe now. The cross is radiant to me now—more ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.—"But this is what I am afraid of."—And why? What ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... to Phil as if he had forgotten all about the prisoners, for the time glided slowly on, while weariness began to deaden poor Phil's hunger pains, and he grew drowsy, nodding off twice, but starting up again when the French prisoners spoke more loudly or a sharp ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... up among the rocks and cliffs and stones, we see a stripling whose ambition it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan. . . . Never shall eld deaden our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men, any more than with their highest raptures, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... appeared worthy of the purpose to which it was devoted. It was a long time before we aroused any one to answer our call; at length, I was ushered into a small parlour—how minutely I remember every article in the room; what varieties there are in the extreme passions! sometimes the same feeling will deaden all the senses—sometimes render them a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 guns; take the wind out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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
... see how, Hal; we can't shorten sail, for we should be seen; and we can't fire bow-chasers, for we should be heard—and those are all the ways I know on to deaden a vessel's speed." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... The innicent little sweet. I do believe him's dead, or just going to deaden. I daren't lift him ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the crew, was seated as far as possible for'ard, vainly trying to absorb his tea and stop his ears, at one and the same time, whilst his fellow-sufferer, Bill Brown, having hastily dived below, lay in his bunk, striving to deaden the weird, wailing sounds that filled the ship. And just as Haydn's "Surprise" was half way through, for the seventh time, the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the men finished knotting their ropes together. With weighted ends muffled to deaden their fall upon the rock floor, they began casting to get ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... coloured nurses. If you are half as tired of the sameness and stupidity of the conversation of my southern female neighbours as I am, I pity you; but not as much as I pity them for the stupid sameness of their most vapid existence, which would deaden any amount of intelligence, obliterate any amount of instruction, and render torpid and stagnant any amount of natural energy and vivacity. I would rather die—rather a thousand times—than live the lives of these ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... door before which hung heavy curtains; but these curtains did not deaden the sound entirely. Indeed, as Helen hesitated, with her hand stretched out to seize the portiere, she heard something that ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... placing planks on them. One of these bridges was burst by the strength of the current, but the delay thus caused mattered little as the surprise was complete. When the bridges of rafts had been swung and anchored, blankets and carpets were laid upon them to deaden the fall of marching feet, and during that silent tramp across the rolling bridges many a keen-witted Scot found it difficult to restrain a laugh as he trod on carpets richer by far than any that had lain in his best parlour at home. He could not see the patterns, but rightly guessed ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... sheer fact, with none of the deeper and more interesting meanings brought. All of them may be answered correctly, and the child be little the wiser religiously. Such a method of teaching cannot do other than deaden the child's interest in the Bible, create in him an aversion to the lesson hour of the church school, and fail of the whole purpose of religious education. The teacher must be able to use living questions, and not be dependent on a dead list of ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... without our being able to discover either its cause or its end, attracts us to the shore, where this grand spectacle offers itself to our sight; and we experience, as it were, a desire mingled with terror, to approach the waves and to deaden our ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... dismay arose from the defenders. Again and again the heavy ram struck, in the same place. The wall tottered beneath the blows; and would soon have fallen, had not Josephus ordered a number of sacks to be filled with straw, and let down by ropes from the walls, so as to deaden ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... "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
... amazed at the tone beginning to prevail over this one. The screaming laughter had been modified; the unquestionable conversations stilled. But the wine, for these very reasons, was flowing faster, as each member of that company sought to deaden those strangely roused sensations which most of them had believed forever dead for them. Gregoriev perceived how many eyes remained fixed reflectively on the white face of the young Prince, in whose eyes was beginning to dawn a look of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... her hands, loathing herself that she could not deaden down their shiver or the stinging pain in her head. What were these things at a time like this? Her physician was taking a different diagnosis of her disease from his first. He leaned over her, his face flushing, his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... 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 and ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... to entering Berlin; and when, after a long, incredible struggle, he was finally admitted, he found himself incapable of earning a livelihood. In his childlike naivete he was betrayed by the very persons upon whom he relied most. All this could not deaden his love for knowledge and truth. By chance he obtained Wolff's Metaphysics, and this marked a new epoch in his life. "Not only the sublime science in itself," says he, "but also the order and mathematical method of the celebrated author, the precision of his explanations, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... tediously pompous, and Chifney must see to the stables."—Lady Calmady paused, and her face grew hard. But for her husband's dying request, she would have sold every horse in the stud, razed the great square of buildings to the ground and made the site of it a dunghill. "Work is a drug to deaden thought. So it is a kindness to let me have plenty of it, dear old man. And I fear, even when the labour of each day is done, and Dickie is safe asleep,—poor darling,—I shall still have more than enough of time for thought, for asking those questions to which there ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... 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 for an answer that would ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... 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 in peaceable ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... imprisonment and escape out of the third story window went from mouth to mouth, and her friends eagerly crowded the floor in an effort to speak to her. There were High School yells and class yells until Miss Thompson was obliged to cover her ears to deaden the noise. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... not having." Within the house, on every side, lie remembrances of what imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate children who have to do for themselves-much-needed lessons in these days of automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... perfect, should not have heavy draperies to deaden the sound, and the window and door openings should be treated architecturally to make this possible. In a French music room the walls may be either paneled, or have a dado with a soft tint above it. This space may be treated in several ways: it may have silk panels outlined with moldings, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... "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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... nay! they are already well known to fame—sufficient to say that Bristol's Bull and Ireland's Champion were vanquished by thee, and one mightier still, gold itself, thou didst overcome; for gold itself strove in vain to deaden the power of thy arm; and thus thou didst proceed till men left off challenging thee, the unvanquishable, the incorruptible. 'Tis a treat to see thee, Tom of Bedford, in thy 'public' in Holborn way, whither thou hast retired ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... unfathomably wondrous Solomon. But even Solomon, he says, 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 ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... p. 105.).—If your correspondents (Nos. 66 and 67.) who have inquired for a book called Jartuare, and for a writer named "Drachmarus," would add a little to the length of their questions, so as not by extra-briefness to deaden the dexterity of conjecturers, perhaps they might be nearer to the reception of replies. Many stranger things have happened than that Drachmarus should be renovated by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... morality or faith cannot but impede the harmonious development of the mind itself. Passion is the foe of reason, and may easily become strong enough to extinguish its light. He who wishes to educate himself must learn to resist the desires of his lower nature, which if indulged deaden sensibility, weaken the will, take from the imagination its freshness, and from the heart the power of loving. The task he has set himself is arduous, and he cannot have too much energy, too much warmth ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... tortuous path he had undertaken to tread. Yet the deceit he was forced to practise cost him many a pang. He had succumbed to his passion, and to win the love for which he yearned had voluntarily abandoned truth and honour; but standing thus alone with his sin, he despised and hated himself. To deaden remorse and drown reflection, he had recourse to brandy, and though the fierce excitement of his hopes and fears steeled him against the stupefying action of the liquor, he was rendered by it incapable of calm reflection. In certain nervous ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... trousers and shirt, we took up our quarters in the Custom-house, which, like the other buildings, is a small square floorless hut of mangrove stakes overlaid with reeds. The soldiers complained of hunger, they had nothing to eat but a little mapira, and were making palm wine to deaden their cravings. While waiting for a ship, we had leisure to read the newspapers and periodicals we found in the mail which was waiting our arrival at Tette. Several were a year and a ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... 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 exertion for a time, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that he had ground for uneasiness regarding his child. That she should penetrate the inner shrine of reserve he kept closed against those who stood nearest to him in the world gave him a sense of injury; and he turned this feeling to account during the next few hours in trying to deaden the echo of the French voice with the Irish intonation that haunted his inner hearing, as well as to banish the memory of the plaintive smile in which, as he feared, meekness was blended with amusement ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... suddenly draw a concealed weapon in order to threaten his antagonist. The spectators would stop to ask themselves how he happened to have the weapon by him without their knowing it; and this self-muttered question would deaden the effect of the scene. The denouement of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler requires that the two chief characters, Eilert Loevborg and Hedda Tesman, should die of pistol wounds. The pistols that are to be used in the catastrophe are mentioned and shown repeatedly throughout ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... with difficulty I could keep betwixt them to engage, without firing upon them, and I was once very near on board the Egmont,"—next ahead of the Ocean. The Formidable kept her mizzen topsail aback much of the time, to deaden her way, to make the needed room ahead for the Ocean, and also to allow the rear ships to close. "At a quarter past one," testified Captain Maitland of the Elizabeth, 74, "we were very close behind the Formidable, and a midshipman upon the poop called out that there was a ship coming ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... something like that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one to deaden," Verkan Vall said. "As it is, I feel like a murderer of babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn't handle a pistol at all. I suppose the old fellow, Sirzob, was a fair shot, but dropping ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... it!" cried Lanky Smith, as the faint and intermittent sound of firing was heard; the driving wind was blowing from the town, and this, also, would deaden ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... removal of a safe weighing three hundredweight some burglars last week used cushions and mats to deaden the sound. We are greatly pleased to note a tendency to study residents a little. After all it is most irritating to be awakened by noisy burglars ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... good look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed, is a delusion. It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness, cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to deaden the reflective powers: in which sense, indeed, all orders of activity are antagonistic to each other. But it is not true that the facts of science are unpoetical; or that the cultivation of science is necessarily unfriendly ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... viceroy reflected a moment. "Does your compadre smoke?" "No, sir," said the lady, astonished at this irrelevant question, and perhaps the more so, as the count's aversion to smoking was so well known, that none of his smoking subjects ventured to approach him without having taken every precaution to deaden any odour of the fragrant weed which might lurk about their clothes or person. "Does he take snuff?" said the viceroy. "Yes, your Excellency," said his visitor, who probably feared that for once his Excellency's wits were wool-gathering. "That is sufficient," said the viceroy; "retire into the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the coming sun's rays would dry it. "She says she sat too long at the spring yesterday. I got up and rubbed her arms and chest twice with the new liniment. It smells like it's got laudanum in it; but it didn't deaden ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... unpleasantly, as perfumery, highly scented soaps, and certain flowers. Remove all useless ornaments and articles likely to collect dust, as unnecessary pieces of furniture and heavy draperies. A clean floor, with a few rugs to deaden the footsteps, is much better than a woolen carpet. Rocking-chairs should be banished from the sick-room, as they are almost sure to ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... death. But he, whom some modern sceptics have been base enough to accuse of feminine feebleness and cowardly despair, preferred rather "to look Death in the face"—to meet the king of terrors without striving to deaden the force of one agonizing anticipation, or to still the throbbing of one ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... assistance of a servant, the boy obtained an instrument, which he kept in the garret; and there, when opportunity offered, with the strings of his "clavichord" so covered with pieces of cloth as to deaden the sound, he practised music until he became a proficient in harmony. It was not, however, until his father took him on a visit to see an elder brother, who was in the family of the Prince of Saxe-Weisenfels, that he became acquainted with the progress ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... physical 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, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of a ship's sails when the wind bears against their front surfaces. They are laid aback, when this is purposely effected to deaden her way by rounding in the weather-braces; and taken aback, when brought to by an unexpected change of wind, or by inattention in the helmsman.—All aback forward, the notice given from the forecastle, when the head-sails are pressed aback by ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... torment of the life she was leading, in which she suffered the horrors of death and of unsatisfied passion, Germinie, seeking to deaden her ghastly thoughts, had remembered the glass she had taken from Adele's hand one morning, which gave her a whole day of oblivion. From that day she had taken to drink. She had begun with the little morning draughts to which the maids of kept women are ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the haggard brow, and the deep lines about his 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 a question—who so ready and so reckless ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely more pernicious. After the strongest efforts, there may be little realised; without strong efforts, there must be little. That too ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... whom were provided with little bells, which were fastened to their legs and arms; and here, too, the drum regulated their motions. It was beaten with a crooked stick, which the drummer held in his right hand, occasionally using his left to deaden the sound, and thus vary the music. The drama is likewise applied on these occasions to keep order among the spectators, by imitating the sound of certain Mandingo sentences. For example, when the wrestling-match is about to begin, the drummer strikes what is understood to signify ali bae see (sit ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... Terrorists help them. Such a silly fool, lost in his fantastical imaginings, does not even see that he is only a puppet, whose strings are pulled by a cleverer one in the Terrorist wings; he does not see that the fear and terror he causes only serve to so deaden all the senses of the Philistine crowd, that it shouts approval of every massacre that ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... this feeling of the soul's sensitiveness, the thoughtful man is very often intolerant of things which to others seem of little moment, because he sees how they are tending to dull or deaden the eye of the soul, or to pervert or to kill its finer instincts; and how, in consequence, though tradition may have given them a sort of spurious consecration, or the world in its blindness may have come to honour them, they are in fact laden with ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... ordered Ruth, and she sped away followed by the three chums. They were out of sight not a moment too soon, for as they turned a corner, running across a lawn to deaden their footsteps, they heard ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... I ran below for a shawl that was in my cabin, and, jumping on to the bulwarks, stood flourishing it for some minutes to let them know that there was a man aboard. She luffed to deaden her way, that I might swim close, and as we approached each other I observed a crowd of heads forward looking at me, and several men ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... leagues. We had, at the same time, several porpoises playing about us; into one of which Mr Cooper struck a harpoon; but as the ship was running seven knots, it broke its hold, after towing it some minutes, and before we could deaden the ship's way. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... not sleep 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, defeated, humbled, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there was a 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 so ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... o'clock and pitch dark when the column moved out of Molteno and struck across the black gloom of the veld, the wheels of the guns being wrapped in hide to deaden the rattle. It was known that the distance was not more than ten miles, and so when hour followed hour and the guides were still unable to say that they had reached their point it must have become perfectly evident that they had missed their way. The men were dog-tired, a ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... waiter and imperiously ordered another bottle. Not that she liked the golden, hissing stuff. It made her sick and gave her a bad headache the next morning, but still she must drink it, drink it unceasingly. It was the only way she could deaden that terrible, accusing conscience which persistently demanded an accounting. With her knowledge of her own guilt and her tendency to introspective brooding, it was only natural that her sensitive nature suffered atrociously. All day and all night her conscience tortured her. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... the day of wild oats, and had sown them, but had drawn back ere they sprung into life and choked out all else. He had had riches and lost them; had married a lovely loving girl, only to have her taken from him in one short year; then to deaden his grief he had gone to work, regained his wealth, after which he left his infant daughter in tender hands, and had gone abroad, only to again lose all he had in an unfortunate speculation, which brought him home, where he had again gone to work, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... chestnut. For 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, ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... word to himself a thousand times to deaden his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time, but Nan's situation took most of his thought. For the first time he told John Lefever the story of Nan's finding him on Music Mountain, of her aid in his escape, and the sequel of their friendship. Lefever gave ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... one eye. And lying there, Cadger watched the two yeggs go through the whole operation of getting nitroglycerine planted, and using all sorts of clothes and even the rugs off the floor of the president's room to deaden the sound of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... closed-up hut, beaten about by the inky rains, ponderous songs issued. Within, tables were spread for drinkers; sailors sat before the smoking fire, the old ones drinking brandy and the young ones flirting with the girls; all more or less intoxicated and singing to deaden thought. Close to them, the great sea, their tomb on the morrow, sang also, filling the vacant night with its ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... or wrongly, and comparing the present husband to the former one, even declaring that he had partially been the cause of the former divorce. Meanwhile Monsieur de Baudemont was wandering over the four quarters of the globe trying to overcome his homesickness, and to deaden his longing for love, which had taken possession of his heart and of his body, like a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant |
