"Deadening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stimulated the composer's pen, and the rapidity of his productions at this time is marvellous. The taste of Vienna, however, was capricious; and cabals among singers and critics succeeded in deadening the effect of his Figaro, when first brought out, and in thoroughly disgusting Mozart with the Viennese opera. How different the reception which it met from the true hearts and well-attuned ears of the Bohemian audiences! It was in February 1787, after parting with the Storaces, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that tenderness and sympathy, without which we are scarcely even human. One remembers Darwin's sorrowful admission, that the deadening of his spiritual instincts left him incapable of enjoying, or even tolerating, the rhythm of the poet's verse. The world has heard the note of weariness with which Mr. Spencer absolved himself from further effort on behalf ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... preference induced in most minds for that to which they are not accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in those which are least open to sensations of positive beauty. But however far this operation may be carried, its utmost effect is but the deadening and approximating the sensations of beauty and ugliness. It never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the slightest connection with nor power over their nature. By tasting two wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavor; nay, we may even ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... wondered what the two poles that stood at each end with a cross-bar between them could be, and why that tall fence ran all around it. He stared at the big chimney of the powerhouse, as tall as the trunk of a poplar in a "deadening" at home, and covered with vines to the top, and he wondered what on earth that could be. He looked over the gate at the president's house. Through the windows of one building he saw hanging rings and all sorts of strange paraphernalia, and he wondered about them, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... walked slowly round the room, as if examining that all was safe; then, hanging his hat on a peg beside the door, he sat down in the elbow-chair, and, leaning his elbow on the table, he fixed his eyes on Dolph with an unmoving and deadening stare. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... strong, and a murderer never puts forth his full strength. They struggled silently in the darkness, the carpet deadening their footfalls. Suddenly a cry sounded from the next room. "Murder!" screamed the voice of Frau Sophie: at the sound ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... soon seizes upon his moral nature. No matter what his origin, what his upbringing, his education, his pursuit of gold seems to have a deadening effect upon all his finer instincts, and reduces him swiftly to little better than the original animal. Civilization is forgotten, buried deep beneath a mire of moral mud, accumulated in long years, and often in months only ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... weakness is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us expect that the first flush of a great pleasure, a newly-attained joy or success, will continue unabated. The poor man, probably, does not overrate the gratification of newly-attained wealth; what he fails to allow for is the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of ease and plenty. The author of "Romola" says of the hero and the heroine, in the early moments of their affection, that they could not look forward to a time when their kisses should be common things. So it is with the attainment of all ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... in the house at last, crossing the dusty floor, with the motes dancing in the lamp-light, deadening their footsteps and muffling the intense silence. Above the stillness rose the song from the drawing-room; from without came the restless murmur of the dogs. Enid entered the drawing-room, and Bell limped in behind her. The ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... grew, men who had used it in moderation taking more and more as circumstances became more adverse, turning sadness into slavery: he had been brought up to hate it. His father, who, as a clergyman doing his endeavour for the welfare of his flock, found himself greatly thwarted by its deadening influences, rendering men callous not only to the special vice itself, but to worse vices as well, had banished it from his table and his house; while the mother had from their very childhood instilled a loathing of the national weakness and its physical means into the minds of her sons. In her ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... me, in spite of myself, with a vague apprehensiveness. Just as one who is groping in profound darkness feels his eyes dilate in the effort to catch the least glimmer of light, I found my senses all on the strain, attentive to their very utmost. Though the atmosphere was heavy and deadening, my eyes were so watchful that not even the uprising of some weeds, trodden down, perhaps, hours before by a passing foot, escaped their notice. My nostrils were keenly conscious of the sick metallic odor from the marshes, of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and immediate source of autogenetic (self-produced) poisons and their auto-infection, is some degree of chronic constipation and the deadening, smothering effects of constipation on digestion; an effect analogous to what takes place when we allow waste material or ashes to bank up against a fire, shutting off its draft. Does the fire then continue to digest the coal? Clog up the receptacle ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... become almost the equals of the American artisans among whom they worked. They had developed ambition, individuality, personal initiative, and a marked degree of excellence in their work. A year after their return to their own country, the deadening, non-progressive atmosphere about them had done its work. The men had lost the desire to improve; they were again plodders, with no goal beyond the day's work. The ambition aroused by stimulating environment ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... deprived us of those advantages which more fortunate brothers and sisters enjoyed in infancy and youth? Do we not to-day swing too far in the direction of sickly sentimentality and incline to wrap ourselves, and those about us, in the deadening cotton-wool of too much care? Were it not better if a bit more of the leaven of sturdy struggle were introduced into the life of the present-day youth? Strength of character and strength of soul will rise to their own, no matter what the struggles ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... entreat you to set yourself firmly against this evil tendency of our day, to which I cannot but believe so much of its agnosticism is due,—that deadening down and stamping out of the spiritual instincts of our nature, those great intuitions of the soul, which lie both above and below all reasoning and logic and form their basis rather than their apex. Once let the springs of reverence be choked up, once let that window of the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... come to the throne of Mexico, and the Aztecs were a subject people; Europe had discovered America and forgotten it, and in America the arrival of Europeans was recalled only in traditions. But, like other nations, the Toltecs became a prey to self-confidence, to luxury, to wastefulness, and to deadening superstitions. Already the fierce tribes of the North were lurking on the confines of their country in a faith of speedy conquest, and at times it seemed as if the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... for dinner. In laying the table for dinner all the linen should be a spotless white throughout, and underneath the linen tablecloth should be spread one of thick cotton-flannel or baize, which gives the linen a heavier and finer appearance, also deadening the sound of moving dishes. Large and neatly folded napkins (ironed without starch), with pieces of bread three or four inches long, placed between the folds, but not to completely conceal it, are laid on each plate. An ornamental centre-piece, or a vase filled with a few rare flowers, is ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... when the messenger came, and sent him first to purchase pen, ink, and paper. The man's next errand dispatched him to make inquiries for a person who could provide for deadening the sound of passing wheels in the street by laying down tan before the house in the usual way. This object accomplished, the messenger received two letters to post. The first was addressed to Kirke's brother-in-law. It told him, in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... have worked in the deadening influence of the Gobelins declare that the factory cannot last much longer. But it is improbable that France—Republican France, that holds with bourgeois tenacity to aristocratic evidences—will abandon this, her expensive toy, her inheritance ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... that our author should have thought it unnecessary to support or explain a division of the mental attributes on which the treatment of his entire subject afterwards depends, and whose terms are repeated in every following page to the very dazzling of eye and deadening of ear (a division, we regret to say, as illogical as it is purposeless), otherwise than by a laconic reference to the assumptions ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... moment, perhaps, but later you wouldn't be able to help it. What people think of you, what they say of you, can make all the difference between heaven and hell." He spoke heavily, as though his words were weighted with some deadening memory. "And do you think I could bear to feel that I—I had given people a handle for gossiping about you? I'd cut their tongues out first!" he ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Not engaged—I was only deadening thoughts by gossiping. My anxiety was too much for me. So ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... anticipate the remarkable achievements which the future held in store for him. He was fitted for no calling. Ever since his aunt had adopted him in far-away Scotland, where he was born of obscure parentage in 1833, he had led a life of complete dependence, not altogether cheerless but deadening to initiative and handicapping him terribly for the task of making his way in the world. His health was broken, his pockets were empty, he was without friends. Cast upon his own resources under such conditions, it seemed but too probable ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... outside. The last spring rain was over; the dry, deadening California summer had begun its advance on the land. Already, the green of the hills had faded into a lighter hue, a forerunner of a yellow June and a brown July. The campus was astir with the movement of a Friday night. Shadowy figures, in ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... accept—political liberty, nor the savages of the forest civilization; which does not prove that either of these things is undesirable for them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening that part of their nature which would resist it. And the case of woman is, in this respect even, a peculiar one, for no other inferior caste that we have heard of has been taught to regard its degradation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... both gentle and simple, as affected by war. "Odette in Pink Taffeta," an episode of bereavement, is in particular exquisitely visualised. "Their Places" and "The Second Hay" treat, with a quiet intensity of conviction, of the absolutely deadening absorption, by overwork and anxiety, of peasant wives and children left to carry on in the absence of their men. The third part is a series of hospital vignettes. They do not attempt to be too cheery, but they have the stamp of realised truth. "Nostalgia," the second part, is in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... rapid progress downward, Max was conscious of something tugging at, and jerking him away whenever he strove to catch hold of the nearest stone, till, what with the scalding, strangling sensation in his nostrils, the deadening feeling of helplessness and weakness coming over him rapidly, all seemed to be darkening into the semblance of a feverish dream, from which he was ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... veritable calamity to fail to put a premium upon individual initiative, individual capacity and effort; upon the energy, character, and foresight which it is so important to encourage in the individual. But as a matter of fact the deadening and degrading effect of pure socialism, and especially of its extreme form communism, and the destruction of individual character which they would bring about, are in part achieved by the wholly unregulated competition ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... having reached the mid-term of appointed human endurance on it, I still regard with unmitigated amazement. I know, indeed, that all around me is wonderful—but I cannot answer it with wonder:—a dark veil, with the foolish words, NATURE OF THINGS, upon it, casts its deadening folds between me and their dazzling strangeness. Flowers open, and stars rise, and it seems to me they could have done no less. The mystery of distant mountain-blue only makes me reflect that the earth is of necessity ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... night, tossing by the side of her placidly unconscious husband as she passed the tragic events of the night in review and vainly sought for some clue to the mystery. The dreadful logic of the circumstances which pointed to suicide, hammered at her consciousness with deadening persistence, but she resolutely refused to give it entry. Why should Robert commit suicide? Why indeed? It was the question which had sprung to her lips when she first heard Austin's belief, and it was to that she ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and shivered as though he had received a deadening blow,—an awful, inexplicable chill horror froze his blood. It was true! ... he understood the language spoken! ... it was perfectly familiar to him,—more so than his own native tongue,—stop! what WAS his ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... should compete with the labours of the mine; and in what concerned the intellectual welfare of its subjects, it limited itself, as in Spain, to ensuring that no infection of heresy or freethought should reach any part of its dominions. All this had a deadening effect; and the surprising thing is, not that the Spanish Empire should have fallen into an early decrepitude, but that it should have shown such comparative vigour, tenacity, and power of expansion as it actually exhibited. Not until the nineteenth century did the vast natural resources ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... men he loved, and the restful, inspiring intimacy with a certain young woman, he felt, for the moment, a pang of homesickness. If the station were a sample of the village itself, then life in such a place must be deadening to every finer sensibility and ambition; it must throw a man back on himself and make ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... the east or north from remote distance, breathed an infinitely low, continuously long sound—deep, weird, detonating, thundering, deadening—dying. ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... through a door leading into a narrow corridor, closed another door at the end of the passage, broke the key in the lock and returned on tiptoe as noiselessly as he left the room. Then picking up the lamp he placed it under the table, thus deadening its glow. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... cause. The result was, that notwithstanding the great amount of labor thus expended, the effort had to be repeated each time the problem was confronted. Aside from the obviously uncertain results secured in this manner, it meant deadening of the imagination and cramping of interpretative possibilities. It is only possible to reduce to a minimum the element of chance by scrupulously carrying out the dictates of the laws governing vital ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... powers too far. He, who could have buffeted an ordinary sea for hours, was now completely exhausted by the unwonted exertions, the deadening influence of the tempest, and the log-like weight of his burthen He would not desert the father of Adelheid, and yet each fainting and useless stroke told him to despair. The dog had already disappeared in the darkness, and he was even uncertain again of the true position of the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... as to the explosibility of dust from various typical coals; as to the chemical composition and physical characteristics of this dust; the degree of fineness necessary to the most explosive conditions; and the methods of dampening the dust by water, by humidifying, by steam, or of deadening its explosibility by the addition of calcium chloride, stone dust, etc. A bulletin outlining the results thus far obtained in the study of the coal-dust problem is now in ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... keeping track of the cost and quality of cotton or wool or iron and calculating how much a mill requires, it is hard to see. It is the same kind of a problem. Moreover, it has the added interest of being always an independent personal problem. Most men work under the deadening effect of impersonal routine. They do that which others have planned and for results in which they have no ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... trial, or even to its issue. And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies, 'the hectic of a moment,' came back upon her, and prevailed over the deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry light—sweet and woful to remember. Then——but why linger? I hurry to the close: she was pronounced guilty; whether by a jury or a ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... very certain, on the other hand, that if we are altogether without any such feelings there is a risk, which even amounts to a probability, that the hardening or deadening influences of custom and tradition will sooner or later degrade our life. And if it should be asked,—How comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness of spirit and of general habit?—we have ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... the quality of the radiant mists, their purpose certainly had to do with concentration of the magnetic flux. The deadening of the noise must be accidental, could have nothing to do with their actual use; for sound is an air vibration solely. No—it must be a secondary effect. The Metal Monster was as heedless of clamor as it ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," insofar as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is STUPIDITY in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is always a sensible woman—might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... State, men whose minds had been trained and whose characters had been tempered in that school of action and experience which was open to all during the heroic period of our history, had not yet suffered such distortion of the intellect through passion and such deadening of the conscience through interest, as would have prevented their discussing either the moral or the political aspects of Slavery, and precluded them from uniting in any effort to make the relation between ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and putting out its fires.—Such was the aspect of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... as wrinkles or corrugations of the flesh, ran to nails whose polish proved daily care. Her hair, chestnut in the beginning, foamed with white threads. Below was a face which hardly needed, as yet, the morning dab of powder, so craftily had middle age faded the skin without deadening it. Except for a pair of large, gray, long-lashed eyes—too crafty in their corner glances, too far looking in their direct vision—that skin bounded and enclosed nothing which was not attractive and engaging. Her chin was piquantly pointed. Beside ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... gave him a desperate kind of courage. As the gloom hid the two men, he started forward again; he must know the meaning of that sound—that splash, if it was a splash. He reached the end of the cornfield, climbed the fence, and entered a deadening of slashed and mutilated timber. In the long wet grass he found where the men had dragged their burden. He reached down and swept his hand to and fro—once—twice—the third time his little palm came ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... down the area. It's little time we get for dreaming, these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the world's work and our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, Barry; it's dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please.... Why, what's got into you? And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow? You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein's to-night. Is there anything ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to refer to, and some one to guide them is a necessity, some one who will say at the right moment "look" and "listen," and who has looked and listened for years. Perhaps the requirement of knowledge at firsthand for children has sometimes been pushed a little too far, with a deadening effect, for the progress of such knowledge is very slow and laborious. How little we should know if we only admitted first-hand knowledge, but the stories of wonder from those who have seen urge us on to see for ourselves; and so we swing backwards and forwards, from the world outside ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... blameworthy for acts which hitherto we have blamed ourselves for—that our impulses are God-given—that "the sinner is merely a learner in a lower grade in the school," [8] and so forth; one can understand how grateful is such a morphia injection for deadening the pangs of an accusing conscience. The art of making excuses, as old as the Garden of Eden, will never lack ardent professors or eager disciples. Says Cassius ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the only kind of wealth that is not common, that is not given freely; and for that reason it has a deadening and demoralizing effect upon the minds of those who cultivate and increase it for its own sake, or fail to put it to its larger and more human uses. Wise distribution is the only way in which money can be made valuable in the world: it is ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... season of life grief brings its own peculiar antidote along with it. The buoyancy of youth soon repels its deadening weight, the firmness of manhood resists its weakening influence, the torpor of old age is insensible to its most ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Judge Temple pointed out to his daughter the approach of a tempest. Flurries of snow already obscured the mountain that formed the northern boundary of the lake, and the genial sensation which had quickened the blood through their veins was already succeeded by the deadening influence of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... American news than of his own feelings, and seemed to look little beyond the petty encouragements devised to suit the animal natures of ordinary prisoners, and his visitors sometimes feared lest his character were not resisting the deadening, hardening influence of the unvaried round of manual labour among such associates. He had been soon advanced from the quarry to the carpenter's shop, and was in favour there from his activity and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... youngest child, was beside the table, turning the cover of something or other. In the parlor I heard a slow arpeggio, and his voice, deadened, and a denial from her. She said: 'No, no! There is something else!' And it seemed to me that some one was purposely deadening the words by the aid of ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the responsibility which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him; responsibility for choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes of study, which involve ultimately the development, or deadening, of every power he possesses. I have tried to hold that choice clearly out to him, and to unveil for him to its farthest the issue of his turning to the right hand or the left. Guides he may find many, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... her around the neck to shut off further alarm. As those muscular fingers closed in upon her throat, it seemed suddenly as if her head were about to burst. Then as the thumping in her ears almost completed the deadening of her auditory nerves, she indistinctly heard these words uttered in ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... extreme form of the feeling that comes over us all sometimes, when we wake in a morning and look before us along the stretch of dead level, which is a great deal more wearisome when it lasts long than are the cheerful vicissitudes of up hill and down dale. We all know the deadening influence of a habit. We all know the sense of disgust that comes over us at times, and of utter weariness, just because we have been doing the same things day after day for so long. I know only one infallible way of preventing the common from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... your elders laying their heads together and saying what a bad thing it is for young men to come into a little money—that those always do best who have no expectancy, and the like. They will then quote some drivel from one of the Kingsleys about the deadening effect an income of 300 pounds a year will have upon a man. Avoid any one whom you may hear talk in this way. The fault lies not with the legacy (which would certainly be better if there were more of it) but with those who have so mismanaged our education that we go in even greater danger of losing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and she was going to tear away that atmosphere of emptiness and desolation which it had worn so long. She was going to prove to all men that her father never had killed Johnny Croft. She was going to do it! Then life would begin where it had left off three years ago. And when this deadening load of trouble was lifted, then perhaps she could do some of the glorious, great things she had all of her life dreamed of doing. Or, if she never did the glorious, great things, she would at least have done something to justify her existence. She would ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... of all the deadening influences, all the horror of her married life, she had remained a child. When the Comte de Verneuil had found her unforgiving in the matter of the false announcement of Paragot's death, he had left her pretty much to herself, and had gone after ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... water, that, when it reaches the sea, it has become a great independent force; so is each of us endowed, as we come into this life, with a spark of the Great Reality, with potential force to draw from the Infinite in proportion to our conscientious endeavours to keep ourselves free from the deadening effects of mundane frivolities and enticements, turning our faces ever towards the light rather than to the shadow, until our personality becomes a permanent entity, commanding an individual existence when the physical clothing of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... time the character of a country gentleman. Bates was getting on in years, of course, which would account for much of his increased graveness and passivity, but not all. Unless Miss Ocky's suspicions were wide of the mark, he, too, had come under the deadening influence of Varr's dominance—ah! but had he entirely? At the very moment she was thinking about it, Simon had uttered a terse comment, as biting as acid, upon some negligible feature of the dinner-service. No faintest flicker of his facial muscles ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of Gwendolen Harleth's motives in "drifting toward the tremendous decision," and finally landing in it. "We became poor, and I was tempted." Marriage came to her as it comes to many, as a temptation, and like the deadening drug or the maddening bowl, to keep off the demon of remorse or the cloud of sorrow, like the forgery or the robbery to save from want. "The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for herself in marriage"—these "had come to her hunger ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow, the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... beauty of line, form, and proportion from the external aspects of daily life in towns has probably a greater effect than we are apt to realize in deadening the imagination, and it certainly seems to produce a certain insensibility to beauty of line and composition, since the perception must necessarily be blunted by being inured to the commonplace and sordid. The instinct for ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... sleep came to her, deadening every sense. Cautiously he took her hand; the slim fingers relaxed; body and limbs were limp, senses clouded, as he lifted her in his arms ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... would seem as if they had been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... that it was more than we could expect to reach the cavern without being discovered, and that we ought to be well content to have gained a haven of safety without loss or injury; but all the same my heart sank, and I had hard work to keep back the feeling of despair that, cold and deadening, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... data of the infant mortality reports, noted the willingness and the eagerness with which these down-trodden mothers told the truth about themselves. So great is their hope of relief from that meaningless and deadening submission to unproductive reproduction, that only a society pruriently devoted to hypocrisy could refuse to listen to the voices of these mothers. Respectfully we lend our ears to dithyrambs about the sacredness of motherhood and the value ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Foreign Ministers who had served their time of intrigue, professors who worshipped law, worthy officials primed with a stock of phrases about "the noble sentiments of justice and humanity," but reared in the deadening circle of uniforms, decorations, and insincere courtesy, having no more knowledge of the people's desires than of the people's bacon, and instructed to maintain the cause of peace chiefly by safeguarding their country's military interests. An atmosphere of ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... fully, and was trying to reassure myself as to my being in a place of comparative safety, for, above all things, I dreaded the betrayal of fainting, and struggled hard for such courage as I might attain by deadening myself to the danger I was in by inflicting intense pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that mark on my hand; it was where, in my agony, I bit out a piece of flesh with my relentless teeth, thankful for the ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... of one who had become deaf, and she felt as if the agitation of her mind actually clamoured within her like a crowd of human voices, deadening sounds from without. Valentine repeated ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... all that lay outside this was reserved for the imperial decision. Whatever was covered by established precedent could be settled by the department at once; but matters falling outside such precedent, however insignificant, had to be referred to the throne.[2] A system so inelastic, and so deadening to all initiative, could have but one result. Gradually the officials, high and low, subjected to an elaborate system of checks, refused to take any responsibility whatever; and the minutest administrative ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Nothing is better for the child than the freedom and initiative used in dramatization, and nothing gives more self-reliance and poise than to act, to do something.—We must remember that in the history of the child's literature it was education that freed his spirit from the deadening weight of didacticism in the days of the New England Primer. And we must now have a care that education never may become guilty of crushing the spirit of his freedom, spontaneity, and imagination, by a dead formalism in its teaching method.—The play develops ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... icy hand, that takes his life, does not torture, but deadens the victim into an everlasting, easy, painless sleep. This I know, for I felt the deadly frost-slumber, and fought against it. Aching hands and feet stopped paining and became utterly feelingless; and the deadening thing began creeping inch by inch up the stiffening limbs the life centres, till a great drowsiness began to overpower body and mind. Realizing what this meant, I sprang from the sleigh and stopped the dogs. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... singing in his ears. The feast seemed to have turned to a sickly debauch. All that pinnacle of success seemed to have fallen away. The faces of his guests, even, as they looked at him, seemed to his conscience to be expressing one thing, and one thing only—that same horrible conviction which was deadening his own senses. He and the others—could it be true?—had they taken up lightly the charge and care of a mighty empire and dared to gamble upon, instead of providing for, its security? He thrust the thought away; and the natural strength of the man began ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whatever, at least that which is fully and completely his own,[5303] the arbitrary use of possessions, the enjoyment of what belongs to him personally, which vow leads him to live like a poor man, to endure privations, to labor, and beyond this, even to fasting, to mortifications, to counteracting and deadening in himself all those instincts by which man rebels against bodily suffering and aims at physical well being. By the vow of obedience he (or she) gives himself up entirely to a double authority: one, in writing, which is discipline, and the other a living being, consisting ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in every family—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time, and in any place—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... her instinctive feeling told her that to refer it to Father Nicholas would be of no service. He was one of the better class of priests,—a man of respectable character, with literary proclivities, which had in his case the effect of keeping him from vice on the one hand, and of deadening his spiritual sensibilities on the other. To him, the religion he taught, and had himself been taught, was sufficient for all necessities, and he could not understand any one wanting more. When a man's mind has never been disturbed by the question, it is no cause for wonder that he has ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... intervals of descending fourths and fifths. Those once transcendent progressions, luxuriant suggestions of Debussy chords of the 9th, 11th, etc., were becoming slimy. An unearned exultation—a sentimentality deadening something within hides around in the music. Wagner seems less and less to measure up to the substance and reality of Cesar Franck, Brahms, d'Indy, or even Elgar (with all his tiresomeness), the wholesomeness, manliness, humility, and deep spiritual, possibly religious feeling of these men ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... past was the only thing which occupied them. They talked of their early loves, they laughed at their youthful escapades, they sang snatches of old songs, while now and again the memory of a common sorrow would circulate around the table, suddenly deadening its uproar into silence, or the remembrance of a mutual joy would flash merrily before their eyes like the glinting bubbles ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... great-coat to a man, whose manner of living required him to defy all weathers, and that the dress would not only give him an appearance of grimness and ferocity, likely to produce an unpleasant emotion in the breast of a foe, but also that the thick fur might prove effectual in deadening the blows ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... who were systematically deadening the force of its arm, the Russian nation stood its ground ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... forth: "Descend, Young mountaineer! descend where alleys bend Into the sparry hollows of the world! Oft hast thou seen bolts of the thunder hurl'd As from thy threshold; day by day hast been A little lower than the chilly sheen Of icy pinnacles, and dipp'dst thine arms Into the deadening ether that still charms 210 Their marble being: now, as deep profound As those are high, descend! He ne'er is crown'd With immortality, who fears to follow Where airy voices lead: so through the hollow, The ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... stared at me, judged, weighed and analyzed me with this heavy and vacant gaze which seemed to leave a quieting and deadening impression on the person towards whom it ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... unburied mother, and Johnson was a man of heart if ever one lived; he could not have written the book if he had had a headache. Saints and ascetics without end and of many persuasions have resorted to bodily pain as a means of deadening the imagination and exalting the will or spirit. Some great thinkers have been invalids, but in every case their food, work has been done when they were temporarily free from pain. Perhaps the truth is on the side of those mystics who say that although the mind ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the sunshine they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting exuberantly from the week of deadening toil. They hung over the railing of the bear-pit, shivering at the huge and lonely denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of laughter at the monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into the little race ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... enemies that we may be children of the heavenly Father who sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust. In the one case the apathy of the ascetic, the extinction of susceptibility, the ignoring of moral distinctions, the crippling and deadening of our noblest powers; in the other the use of these powers in all ways of beneficence toward those who injure us, even as God, though his heart is by no means "even" as between the righteous and the wicked, stills shows kindness ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... teacher should have imagination," I added. "There's no way out of that, really. A teacher who hasn't—kills it in the child; at least, all the pressure of unlit teaching is a deadening weight upon the child's imagination. What is it that makes all our misery—but the lack of imagination? If men could see the pictures around everything, the wonderful connecting lines about life, they couldn't be caught so terribly in the visible and the detached objects; ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... in silence, the noise of one's motor deadening all other sounds. In the green patches behind the brown belt myriads of tiny flashes tell where the guns are hidden; and those flashes, and the smoke of bursting shells, are all we see of the fighting. ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... heart leapt at the sound; Proud Freedom's banner flapp'd the gale, And Britain's chains fell to the ground. Man stood erect in majesty, The proud defender of his rights: For where is he would not be free From stern oppression's deadening blights! Be free—be free then, happy land! Forever beam the light that shone Upon the firm and dauntless band, Who fought ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... An expression of deadening hate flashed for a moment across the red face, and the white eye closed again. Myra had seen the by-play, and sat up with a gasp. What was there ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... sufferer to keep right on repeating the bad habit, deprived of nature's warning of the harm that he is doing to himself. As the penalties of this continued law-breaking pile up, he requires larger and larger doses of the deadening drug, until finally he collapses, poisoned either by his own fatigue-products or by the drugs which he has been taking to deaden him against ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... other's position,—for the Negro to realize more deeply than he does at present the need of uplifting the masses of his people, for the white people to realize more vividly than they have yet done the deadening and disastrous effect of a color-prejudice that classes Phillis Wheatley and Sam Hose in the ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... without deadening the sense of pain," Beth interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He saves himself as much as he can in the matter ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Brain said that the solid walls were no more than ten feet from him; ears said that he was in the precise middle of absolutely nowhere. Feeling said that the floor was under his feet, ears said that upward pressure touched his soles. Deeper grew the deadening of his ears, and orientation was lost. Feeling remained and he felt his heart beating in a hunting rhythm because the sound-feedback through the ear was gone, and the hortator had lost ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... there is no doubt that the powerful stimulus of tobacco must greatly diminish its sensibility. But there are very many other substances, less poisonous, whose occasional application would accomplish the same result, and without deadening, at the same time, the sensibilities of the ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... can't see you weep." So tenderly he spoke her name, with quivering lips, reverently. With all his power he held himself and would dare no more. If only once more he might touch her lips with his—only once in his renunciation—but no. His conscience forbade him. Memory closed upon him like a deadening cloud and drenched his hurt soul with sorrow. He rose from stooping above ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... and stimulate wholesome interests. With an establishment of this kind we should not find so many of our girls on the streets or seeking diversion in cheap theaters and dance halls. When girls are able to live,—not simply exist in the deadening monotony of alternation between work and sleep,—their heightened mental activity, interest, and enthusiasm will prove a valuable asset ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... baby-fashion, unable for the minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour. The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in, covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... instruction; but it should ever be borne in mind that the education of the schools is but a part, and often only the least important part, of the training that the young receive. There is the training of infancy and early childhood, the daily culture of home, with its refining or deadening influences, and then the education of the street, the parlor, the festive gathering, and the clubs, which exert a power over the youth of both sexes that cannot often be controlled entirely ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... the Treasury, the big building seemed to loom up before him like a prison. What, after all, were those thousands who wended their way every morning to the great beehives of Uncle Sam but slaves chained to an occupation which was deadening? ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... been left in their original state, and even those most recently built were fast lapsing into squalor. It was no wonder, therefore, that workers imprisoned within such walls should reflect their long hours of deadening toil in dull eyes and anaemic skins, and in the dreary lassitude with which ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... surface brain and mid-brain constitute together the organ of consciousness and will. Consciousness and will disappear with the deadening or paralysis of ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... went away, thinking to find relief from the grief which was deadening all his faculties in change of air and change of scene, and the household at Les Peuples resumed its ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... interesting—if I may be pardoned the bull—that I found her so. For Jack, all his life, had been surrounded by interesting women: they had fostered his art, it had been reared in the hot-house of their adulation. And it was therefore instructive to note what effect the "deadening atmosphere of mediocrity" (I quote Miss ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... still fairly evident that he hadn't. All that he could hope for, which they both could summon, was luck and the deadening hands of time. He told himself, here, that it was more than probable that he was exaggerating the proportions of the whole situation—Fanny had been angry before; her resentment faded the sooner for its swift explosive character. But this assurance was unconvincing; his ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... would come callousness to pain, and indifference to the rights of others. Then the soul would turn savage, not from passionate human causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down into a kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery—by turning, like ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... that for the past four years, so satisfactory has been the result of this system in the extracting of teeth and deadening extremely sensitive dentine, there was no longer any necessity for chloroform, ether, or nitrous oxide in the dental office. That such teeth as cannot be extracted by its aid can well be preserved and made ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... some distance,—though, perhaps, not so distant as they seemed. The thick fog, which, as every one knows, has the effect of deadening sound, was to be taken into account; and, making allowance for this, the voices heard might not be such a ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... obvious and immediate temporal interests, as well as to his higher and everlasting ones,—in various parts of the world and stages of civilisation, various human passions assume successive prominence, and become developed, to the partial exclusion or deadening of others. In savage existence, and those states of civilisation least removed from it, the animal passions predominate. In highly cultivated modern society, where the complicated machinery of human existence is at once a perpetually renewed cause and effect ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... 'Welt-kind.' This scene was not originally written for Faust, but Goethe inserted it (I imagine) as an allegorical picture of over-indulgence in aestheticism and intellectualism (the 'opiate of the brain,' as Tennyson calls it)—a vice into which one is apt to be seduced by the hope of deadening pain of heart. Although not written for the play, this Intermezzo cannot be said to be superfluous, for the subject of Faust is one that admits of almost any imaginative conception that is descriptive of the experiences of human ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... he found the prelections on philosophy and logic specially tedious and distasteful. Of God and the world he thought he knew as much as his teacher, and the scholastic analysis of the processes of thought seemed to him only the deadening of the faculties which he had received from nature. Of these dreary hours in the lecture-rooms the biting comments of Faust and Mephistopheles on university studies in general are the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... fuse lighting its course as it, too, sped on in its mission of destruction. Along the water fronts, and from all the forts, now a perfect sheet of flame flashed out, a deafening roar, a rumbling deadening sound, and the war was on. The men as a whole were alive to their work; shot after shot was fired. Now a red-hot solid shot, now a shell, goes capering through the air like a shower of meteors on a frolic. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... tobacco, impairs the energy of the muscles somewhat as alcohol does, by its paralyzing effect upon the nervous system. As all muscular action depends on the integrity of the nervous system, whatever lays its deadening hand upon that, saps the vigor and growth of the entire frame, dwarfs the body, and retards mental development. This applies especially to the young, in the growing age between twelve or fourteen and twenty, the very time when the healthy body is ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... exasperating than all, she could now hear the bursts of merriment which rang out from the banqueting room overhead. Therefore, once more putting her hand into the basin, she turned on the flow, and the gentle stream again sprang from the outstretched cup and fell down, deadening all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... And this has its deadening effect upon the preacher's wife's taste, else she must go mad, living in a house where, say, there is a strip of worn church-aisle carpet down the hall—bought at a bargain by the thrifty Aid Society—a cherry-colored folding bed in the parlor along with a "golden oak" table, ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... quilt before testing the squeak, so that no noise should reach the children. I am afraid I "mothered" the squeak of that rabbit if I imagined it could reach anywhere so far; it was in reality such a very small one. But such as it was, it was perfect, in spite of the deadening effect of the quilt, and I pictured Sara's dimples dimpling. How she would love it! The treasure was carefully wrapped up again, and I tried hard to make it look like anything rather than a rabbit, in case Sara should try, by feeling it, to ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... the brazier had died away, and the smoke came only in fitful puffs, heavy with deadening perfume. The Thug had not got away. He lay on the floor—a dreadful sight. He was lying on his back, his hands clenched, his body arched in a convulsion, his head drawn far back. The black lips were parted over the ugly teeth, and the eyes had ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... into touch with ... Oh, there's nothing more deadening than to be boxed into a set in Society! Speak to a woman outside it ... ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... observed a singular deadening of the reflection of our lamps from the side walls. The marble, the schist, the limestone, and the sandstone were giving way to a dark and lustreless lining. At one moment, the tunnel becoming very narrow, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... down, recovering itself in an instant, but only to drop from a furious gallop into a laboured canter which became directly after a painful walk, while Chris felt as if he had received a blow which had stupefied him, deadening his hearing so that he only heard the clatter of horses' hoofs and the yelling of the riders as if from a distance, growing fainter and ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... and brought the Eagle sharply about, heading directly eastward again. As the plane proceeded to retrace the course so recently followed the lad brought the machine to a higher level and cut in the muffler, entirely deadening the clamor of the motors. He had been running with the exhaust partly open in order to obtain every bit of the engine's efficiency in ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down: Silently sifting and ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... cave ended in a dim passage, ten feet down, the passage forked into three dimmer passages. Miss Lambart stopped short and tried to hear from which of them came the sound of the footfalls of the retiring princess. It came from none of the three; the floor of the eaves was covered with sound-deadening sand. Miss Lambart walked back to ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... that neither had seen Jacques leave us, nor had either heard the swift hoof beats of a horse upon the deadening sand, until the rider was full ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... renunciation enjoined by the Cynics. He gratified all his appetites and cravings within the limits of safety. He could sail close upon the island of Calypso without surrendering himself to the sorceress. Instead of deadening the sexual appetite he gave it scope, and yet resisted the dangerous consequences of associating with Hetaerae. In his enjoyments he was free from jealousies; thinking it no derogation to his pleasure that others had the same pleasure. Having thus a fair share of natural indulgences, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... not know, though I have an indistinct memory of reaching for my knife to emulate his sometime method of escape. But with the first flakes of falling snow came a delicious, contentful langour, deadening the pain, soothing the weariness of my muscles, calming the tempest of my thoughts and fears, and lulling me gently to sleep to the music of an old song crooned by the breeze among ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... began rationally enough by dealing with the two departments of place names and trade names, and he said (quite rightly, I dare say) that the loss of all significance in names was an instance of the deadening of civilization. But then he went on calmly to maintain that every man who had a place name ought to go to live in that place, and that every man who had a trade name ought instantly to adopt that ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... excitement throughout the land. The conscience of the anti-slavery portion of the community was shocked, as was also that of the large numbers of people who, though not opposed to slavery in itself, were opposed to its extension. It showed that this institution had a deadening effect upon the moral nature of the people who cherished it. There was no compromise so generous that it would satisfy their greed, there were no promises so solemn that they could be depended on to keep them. They were not content with maintaining slavery in their own territory. It was not enough ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the investigator. Often, indeed, the tediousness of a learned disquisition is intentional: it is considered one of the polite conventions of the academic guild, and by many is identified with scientific thoroughness and profound learning.... If, in general, deadening, hide-bound caste methods, not seldom the cover for poverty of thought and lack of cleverness, are reprehensible, they are doubly reprehensible in history. The history of a people is not a mere mental discipline, like botany or mathematics, but a living ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... flourishes under the protection of what a famous American has called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons." But to allow subordinate officials to masquerade in the Postal Department as familiars of the inquisition, in the supposed interests of public morals, is a dangerous policy.[205] Its deadening influence on national life cannot fail sooner or later to be realized by Americans. To moralize by statute is idle and unsatisfactory enough; but it is worse to attempt to moralize by the arbitrary dicta of minor ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the normal man are few and simple, the reward great; what stands in the way is partly our apathy and indifference, partly our incontinent appetites, partly the unwholesome and deadening social influences in which we find ourselves enmeshed. For those who care enough, almost unlimited vistas open up; as Spinoza has it, "No one has yet found the limits of what the body can do." William James was convinced [Footnote: See his essay, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... for their individual skill, and their contempt of death, were being, not only overwhelmed by German numbers, but swept down by gun-fire which was in extent and in power tremendously superior to that of the British. It was a deadening, horrible thought. All the fighting spirit of Lloyd George rose to meet the emergency. His financial arrangements were in train and going well. He was, it is true, Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was also Lloyd George, ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... the Tech. was luck. Then I found my voice and saw my problem: to cross my father's aspirations, to be other than the Wabash mill owner, would have been cruel. You see his desires were more passionate than mine. I worried through the mechanical, deadening routine of the Tech. somehow, and finally got courage enough to tell him that I could not accept Wabash quite yet. I had the audacity to propose two years abroad. We compromised on one, but I understood that I must not finally disappoint ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... the pleasure he took in the scent of brown Windsor-soap, had made him a present of a small cake. This he had kept in his pocket ever since, wrapt in a piece of rose-coloured paper, his one cherished possession: hunger deadening sorrow, the time was come to bid it farewell. His heart ached to part with it, but Tommy ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... to death long stretches of the land he pays 2 pounds per acre for annually to his landlord. The hedge, however wide-bottomed, is his fence; and fencing he must have. But these trees, arising at narrow intervals from the hedge, and spreading out their deadening shades upon his wheatfields on either side, are not useful nor ornamental to him. They may look prettily, and make a nice picture in the eyes of the sentimental tourist or traveller, but he grudges the ground they cover. He could well ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... theosophy to the scientific investigator is practically identical with the last. It will show him what so many of his confreres are more or less tacitly recognizing, that the hopeless and soul-deadening belief of the Materialist (that all the growth of the race, the struggling towards a higher life, the aspirations towards virtue shall absolutely vanish, and leave no trace), is a crushing mental burden which leads to absolute negation; it will show the spiritual nature of man in perfect ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... she will be a consolation in the future. For me life must be a thing of waking in the morning, and eating and drinking, and taking exercise, and going to bed again, and deadening all emotions, or else I feel sure I shall get a dreadful disease I once read about in an American paper Hephzibah takes in. It is called "spontaneous combustion," and it said in the paper that a man caught it from having got into a compressed state of heat and rage for weeks, and it ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... room linoleum will probably stand the wear and tear, prove more hygienic, and do as much toward deadening noise as anything short of an impossible padding could do. On the porch a crex-fiber rug or two—the sort that stand rain and resist moths—may be desired, but they can wait until we are settled and have found ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... And of all deadening labors, that of the Northland trail is the worst. Happy is the man who can weather a day's travel at the price of silence, and that on a beaten track. And of all heartbreaking labors, that of breaking trail is the worst. At every step the great webbed shoe sinks till the snow is level ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... the perversion that may be made, by one self-palter with the Fiend, of elements the most glorious; the secret effect of conscience in frustrating all for which the crime was done, leaving genius without hope, knowledge without fruit, deadening benevolence into mechanism, tainting love itself with terror and suspicion,—such reflections (leading, with subtler minds, to many more vast and complicated theorems in the consideration of our nature, social and individual) arise out of the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mother-love and the love of the dear Father of us all are compared, the one with the other. Of all human affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant's heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time. "My Mother" is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with uncovered head ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... adventure. Like all women of her kind, Patricia Adair had known men only through a cloud, which sex traditions had firmly held between her and them, and Godfrey Vandeford was the first man she had encountered since she had slipped outside of its deadening density into a world where men and women endeavored together first, and left their sentinel undertakings to a fitting secondary time and place. In all sincerity she accepted him as a co-worker and was as ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all light disappeared, yet as I advanced the slight gloaming still surrounded me, as did the stillness framed in the drip of water, and beneath my feet was the level carpet of the pine needles deadening and making distant every tiny noise. Had not the trees been so much greater and more enduring than my own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me by their regard, I should have felt afraid. As it was ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... kill me if I had to live here. It's deadening. It weighs on you. And the dirt, and the horrible ugliness! And the—way they talk, and the way they think! I felt it first at Knype station. The Square is rather picturesque, but it's such a poor, poor little thing! Fancy having to look ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the deadening depression that had come with Jean's last words, Philip returned to his room. He had made no effort to follow the half-breed who had shamed him to the quick beside the grave of his wife. He felt no pleasure, no sense of exultation, ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... funds that were coming to me only the next week sure, I thought, as possible but the man cheated me, and our embarrassments thickened from that time; that thing has been a weight oh, a weight of deadening power! round my neck ever since. I have died a living death ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... misty shroud, All Nature's charms depress, Flinging a damp, dark, deadening cloud, O'er each heart's joyousness. Our fancies quit their lighter vein, And out from Memory's shrine, We marshal thoughts of grief and pain, Known,—once ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... read on even the white upturned faces a bitter defeat. Firing had ceased an hour ago; only at long intervals on the far left a dull throb was heard, as though the heart of the Night pulsed heavily and feverishly in her sleep: no other sound, save the constant, deadening roll of ambulances going out from this Valley of Death. The field where he stood was below the ridge on which were placed Lee's batteries; for ten hours the grand division of Sumner had charged the heights here, the fog shutting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mind, and he and it matured early. Both were Arnold characteristics. But so was his conscientiously setting himself to enrich his fine mind "by the persistent study of 'the best that is known and thought in the world.'" This was deadening. Gentlemen who teach themselves just how and what to appreciate, take half the vitality out of their appreciation thereafter. They go out and collect all "the best" and bring it carefully home, and faithfully pour it down their throats—and ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... the imitation of a bedroom scene from modern drama. It announced itself as something "West-Endy," yet it was like nothing (I imagine) even in the remote Orient. And constantly the poor play of esprit had to be carried off by the distracting thud of some falling body or covered by the deadening ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... far to atone for its quantity. The proper test of anti-slavery progress was a comparison of the anti-slavery vote of 1844 with that of 1852, and this showed an increase of nearly three-fold in the intervening space of eight years. This steady evolution of anti-slavery opinion from the deadening materialism and moral inertia of the times could not go backward, but in the very nature of things would repeat itself, and gather fresh momentum from every effort put forth to stay ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... for life was going on. In the morning Corydon opened her eyes to a burning torture, the racked and twisted nerves quivering in rebellion. It did not come in twinges of pain, it was a slow, deadening, persistent agony, that pervaded every inch of her body. She wondered how she could bear it, how she could live. And yet, strangely, inexplicably, she wanted to live. She did not know why—she had been outraged, she had been deserted ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... her hand as they walked on. How wise she was, this little Jewish girl! She had lived her short life in the world, and knew her way about in it so well. And he, so much older, felt like a child beside her, after all those long, deadening, numbing years ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... any rate educated to the level of a reader and writer, and responding more and more to literary influences. The great mass of the population is indeed at the present time like clay which has hitherto been a mere deadening influence underneath, but which this educational process, like some drying and heating influence upon that clay, is rendering resonant, capable of, in a dim answering way, ringing to the appeals made upon ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Smith's heart sank; how often had she heard that deadening phrase in the last year!—"that there's no use. That farming is the only thing we ought to try to do, and I reckon she thinks there ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... good broad green marge to the lane about here, and he stepped on to it, the turf deadening his footsteps. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn |
