"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we're roaming, Mid flow'rets may lie, But soon will life's gloaming, Come dark'ning our sky. Then seek not to smother Kind feelings in thee, And scorn not thy brother, Though poor he ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... it is the fool alone who remains stationary. Wise and observing friends will probably tell you—or at least relate anecdotes to you, from which you may gather the conclusion—that when the clothes of a child have caught fire, you may often smother the flame by wrapping him instantly in a thick woollen blanket:—that it is seldom entirely safe to open the doors into an adjoining room—at least without great caution—when the house which we are in is discovered ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... than one half of the better sort of the inhabitants have enter'd into a resolution of injoying free liberty in Love, without being Troubled or disturbed by its consequences. These mix and Cohabit together with the utmost freedom, and the Chilldren who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smother'd at the Moment of their Birth; many of these People contract intimacies and live together as man and wife for years, in the course of which the Children that are born are destroy'd. They are so far from concealing it that they ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the question—Would she hold her way long enough to cant in the proper direction? And, as luck would have it, just then there came hissing and foaming down upon us a particularly heavy sea, into which the frigate dived until she was all a-smother for'ard. Yet, notwithstanding this, her head continued to sweep round—slowly, it is true; still—"Mainsail haul!" bellowed the first luff through his trumpet, and round swung the after yards, the men bracing them well up and rounding in on the main-sheet. ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the great dining-room he saw once more his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, his own failure of all life's things worth having. It seemed to him ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... the rock, and the waters gushed forth; but if Moses had found a spring in the desert and then toiled mightily to smother it with a mountain of arid sand, I doubt me much whether the name of Moses would now live as one of the saviors of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with all the incombustible ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle. Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her punished, deeming it rather too bad that such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... time watching thee, for thy sweet face had been pale as death all the morning, and I feared that the heat would be too much for thee. Thus I saw much of what went on. I saw the traitor advance toward the Caesar, trying to smother him with a cloak. I saw the Caesar—whom may the gods protect—stab the traitor in the breast, and then leave the Amphitheatre hurriedly, followed by a few among his faithful guard. But my thoughts ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... so cwold below the darksome cloud Soon the night-wind roar'd, Wi' rainy storms that zent the zwollen streams Over ev'ry vword. The while the drippen tow'r did tell The hour, wi' storm-be-smother'd bell, An' over ev'ry flower's bud Roll'd on the flood, 'ithin ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to them had the appearance of a sedate and pious turkey-cock. As he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—I mean his bill—the laughter again came over me, and I had to stoop down in the pew and smother my merriment. An old chum of mine, who was a famous sportsman and a great favorite with the ladies, turned out to be a bull-dog, and as he adjusted his neck-tie and pulled up his collar around his thick, hairy neck, I had once more to hide my face in order to preserve ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that we men are to blame for most of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupation whereby she may ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat, both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of boxing, nor could I distinguish ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... but the warning came too late. The young man flung the bag into the torrent, where it disappeared in a smother of foam. He rose to his feet ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... in the dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... said Johnny Stout (Mabel her laugh must smother), As he straightened himself in his roundabout, And said, "I'll sing you another." He sang and whistled with might and main, Till Mabel's ears were a-ringing, And she stopped them up, and exclaimed again "Why, Johnny, what are ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the city, Wide and dazzling shone the sea, When the gods set hand to smother Ys, the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... detecting the truth behind the monstrous accumulation of impieties with which they veil it, is proclaimed by the Church as condemned to perdition. The guiding light of this Church, which they are not ashamed to smother or to procure the smothering of, by which nevertheless they hold their authority, to be plain, the word of God, should at least teach them, if they set any value on the Spirit of Christ, that their Papal Bulls would be better directed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... completely, having jumped at the conclusion that the captain had bought her. It was an expensive blunder, and a practical lesson in the chemistry of colours. A large quantity of white paint had to be bought to smother the black coat, and another lot of black paint for his own ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Sometimes, in a thicker press, an animal wheeled close to the tires and, stemming the current, sounded a protest. But the young horses, less playful now, divided the great herd and came at last safely out of the smother. The road began to lift, as they rounded the first rampart of the range, and Tisdale's glance fell to her hands. "Those gloves are done for, as I expected," he exclaimed. "I'll wager your palms are blistered. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... "Smother him!" laughed D'Arcy; "we shall have the rabble here in a minute. Be quiet, my dear fellow; I warrant D'Artagnan is no ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... care for hearts full of false tenderness, for those women with the laudable and fine talent of knowing how to smother their husbands with caresses in order to make them oblivious of the ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... Briscoe, "that we'd better go ashore and sleep there after making up a good smother on the fire with green stuff that will ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reassuringly, passing his arm unchidden about her slight waist. "Don't be frightened, dear! It wasn't a man cut in half. It was the upper half of a man who was wiggling down into a tunnel hidden by that smother of underbrush .... And here I was just wondering why people should bother to come all the way through this path, instead of skirting the woods! Answers furnished while ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... hits our atmosphere? Don't you realize that today they're going to open that satellite, that other one, in Washington? Suppose this is what happens when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays or whatever is up there. Don't you see what could happen?" Bill was hoarse from fright and shouting. "Smother everything, grow and ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come a-toppling down and smother her—and she didn't care much if they would; but they never did. She was the mother of two children—the boy Robert, born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a daughter came, and this closed the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a message from her Lord: "Manfred cannot support the sight of his own family. He thinks you less disordered than we are, and dreads the shock of my grief. Console him, dear Isabella, and tell him I will smother my own anguish ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... was the reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself in my pocket-handkerchief." ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... saw Captain Shirril start forward to smother the fire, by throwing one of his heavy blankets over it, he lifted the heavy bolt from its place, and leaned it against the wall at the side of the door. Having decided on the step, he was wise in not permitting a ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... the laborers' camp, skirting the railroad at the edge of town, looking for Carson. He found the big Irishman in one of the larger tent-houses, talking with the cook, who was preparing breakfast amid a smother of smoke and the strong mingled odors of frying bacon and coffee. Corrigan went only to the flap of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his word to himself? Who has not said to himself at the very moment of his own delinquency, "Now,—it is now,—at this very instant of time, that I should crush, and quench, and kill the evil spirit within me; it is now that I should abate my greed, or smother my ill-humour, or abandon my hatred. It is now, and here, that I should drive out the fiend, as I have sworn to myself that I would ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... face in her mother's breast and tried to smother her sobs. Charles sat mumbling blasphemous oaths. At the expiration of half an hour, a page announced the Bishop of Cambrai and other gentlemen. The duke signified that they were to be admitted; and when the bishop entered the room, Charles, who ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... 'Tis not so very long Since other voices blended With the carol and the song! If we could but hear them singing, As they are singing now, If we could but see the radiance Of the crown on each dear brow; There would be no sigh to smother, No hidden tear to flow, As we listen in the starlight To the bells ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... and the heat will surround the oven instead of passing up the chimney; also, before too much of the first supply of coal is burned out, add a new supply, but be sure that the coal is sufficiently ignited before the new supply is added so as not to smother the fire. If only a thin layer is added each time, this danger will be removed. Experience has proved that the best results are secured if the fire is built only 4 inches high. When hot coals come near the top of the stove, the lids are likely to warp ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... small number of slave-holders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection, unless we break down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of emancipation, or confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day. Omit to do it, and it ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... It forewarns the traveller of his approach to the habitations, the business, and the comforts of his civilized fellow-creatures. It gives an air of grandeur, and importance, and mystery, to the scenes: it conciliates our respect. We know that there must be some fire where there is so much smother.—While, in those bright, shining, smokeless cities, whenever the sun shines upon them, one's eyes are put out by the glare of their white walls; and when it does not shine!—why, in the winter, there's no resource left for a man but hopeless and shivering resignation, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... bitter life, but not death in fieri, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, more so than if the suicide's own ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... within her tent—and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... canvas-flap a front-door," I said, "but I think it would be better to leave it open; otherwise we should smother. You need not be afraid. I shall keep my gun here by my bedside, and if any one offers to come in, I'll bring him to ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through or around ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... my soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by thee ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... baby from him and throws it into the cellar] Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! [Pushes Nikta down] It's your doing, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... world. Robert will tell you, and all your family, how many women are as scarlet as I am—virtue wears it at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in public: that's the only difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet roses! throw them into the coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them; bury me down deep; in the dark, quiet street—where there's a broad door-step in front of a house, and a white, wild face, something like Basil's, that's always staring on the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... then lean across the table and speak to some of the distinguished guests that surrounded him. The thing which puzzled me was his grave, sedate demeanor, dignified, almost austere at times. A man, I thought, might grow a beard and dye it, but how could he grow a different set of manners, how smother his jollity, how ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Bob reflected, dizzily—quite clearly he remembered marrying her. It was plainly as necessary, therefore, to shield her as to remove Jarvis Hammon and smother this accident. Or was it an accident, after all? Perhaps Lilas had shot the fellow. If that were true, then she ought to be arrested— certainly. But somebody had said, "She'll saddle it onto Lorelei to save herself." After all, it couldn't be murder, for hadn't ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... which was not so encumbered with troops, so that they might remain on the main-deck; but they replied, that the invoices were made out and could not be altered. But now to act. My idea is to keep the hatches on, so as to smother it if possible." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Margery as it passed: sprang to her feet and across the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I followed, almost ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... presentiment he would fall on this very day. First, that sin he committed in Liverpool, when, in an evil hour, yielding to the advice and example of wicked companions, he took to drink in order to smother the thought of it; and drink caused him to rob the widow, and to shun further the thought of these crimes he enlisted in the army; but yet, here, in the very ranks, with drums beating, and music playing, amid the shouts of Indians ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... is the only best thing to do. Whether the bite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put the quilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. To smother them out-and-out you should, before the madness ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... carpet slippers. Rogers got up and, opening the window wider than before, put out his head. The sunshine caught him full in the face. He tasted the fresh morning air. Tinged with the sharp sweetness of the north it had a fragrance as of fields and gardens. Even St. James's Street could not smother its vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his lungs, making such a to-do about it that a passer-by looked up to see what was the matter, and noticing the hanging tassel of a flamboyant dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... off the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... and I went under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first man that draws I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet on the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... by the giant forefinger. There was little consolation in the thought that a mile lay between him and shelter, but it was a relief to know that he would have the wind at his back. Darkness was settling over the land. The lofty hills seemed to be closing in as if to smother the breath out of this insolent adventurer who walked alone among them. He was an outsider. He did not belong there. He came from the lowlands and he ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mrs. Eyrecourt interposed, "I am afraid I fail to follow you. My silent son-in-law looks as if he longed to smother me, and my attention is naturally distracted. You were about ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... it? I have taken care that he who gave it to me should run the same danger as myself, and he knows it. There's nothing to fear from that quarter. I've paid him enough to smother ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... and his associates planted dwarf pine with the spruce. Strangely, it not only grew itself, but proved to be a real nurse for the other. The spruce took a fresh start, and they grew vigorously together—for a while. Then the pine outstripped its nursling, and threatened to smother it. The spruce was the more valuable; the other was at best little more than a shrub. The croaker raised his voice: the black heath had turned green, but it was still heath, of no value to any ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... sick and lay down upon his crooked old bed. Somehow, his crooked old money-box got upon his breast and seemed to smother him. Then his crooked account-books piled themselves upon him, and it seemed impossible for him to breathe. He tried to call out, but his voice died to a whisper, and the only answer he received was a ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... things to be kept in mind about hand-weeding which will reduce this work to the minimum. First, never let the weeds get a start; for even if they do not increase in number, if they once smother the ground or crop, you will wish you had never heard of a garden. Second, do your hand-weeding while the surface soil is soft, when the weeds come out easily. A hard-crusted soil will double and treble the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man who would back any other Appears but a gander to be, For the horse that all comers will smother Is certainly Tanderagee! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... broiler and then place the plank in the oven. Cook the steak until quite rare in the broiler and then lift to a hot plank. Prepare a border of mashed potatoes and put them in a pastry bag, forced out around the edge of the plank. Garnish and smother with onions and minced green peppers. Place in a hot oven for ten minutes. Use the tenderloin for minute steaks. Hamburg the flank ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... Seventy-six, Bradlaugh lectured throughout the United Kingdom to large audiences of highly cultured people, who came and gladly paid admission to hear him speak. Newspapers that had tried either to smother him with silence or else denounce him without reason began to report his speeches. Of course there was a little unkind comment, too, but this became less frequent, and was mostly the work of insignificant journals. One semi-religious paper of very small caliber, in a suburb of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... I know not, Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,— 30 Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 35 The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. 40 But if that I am I, then ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... rejected. Quite naturally he assumed the part of a man on the verge of the grave, which increased the impressiveness of his words. He spoke for three hours. The members of the House listened with feverish attention; the crowds in the balconies could not smother their emotion. One witness reports that Vice-President John Adams sat in the gallery, the tears running down his cheeks, and that he said to the friend beside him, "My God, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... to at last was, that I could not do better than smother my impatience for a whole week; taking, the while, excursions in every other direction so as, if possible, to blind any one who made a study of my movements. Then my journey to the cavern must be made by ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... this announcement a senseless anger swelled the young man's breast. To smother it he laughed. "Well, what of it? I knew she ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... exclaimed Andrew Zane. "As long as that tigress accompanies him he has expiation to make. Voluptuous, jealous, restless, and, like a snake in the tightness of her folds and her noiseless approach, she will smother him with kisses and sell ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... case," the youth said solemnly, and Nancy's old happy laugh rang out as he flung the plaster Psyche in a smother of white ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and surely ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which she then pressed to her lips to smother her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... is as it may be, but if you do, mind what I tell you—do not say any thing to anybody, but—put an end to me! it does not matter how; smother me with bolsters; run your bodkin up to its ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... been lost—for ever so long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clean and rested; of safety and yet freedom; of love that was always there, warm like sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed—a love that didn't irritate and didn't smother. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... came to us in war, once, long ago. Now you want peace. What would you do, clasp us to your bosom, smother us in your idiotic music? Or have you ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... the Irishman who apes the Englishman, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were? 'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at large, Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, And lose himself in his unbounded home? By nature's hand magnificently fed, His meal is on the range of mountains spread; As in pure air aloft he bounds along, He sees in distant smoke the city throng; Conscious of freedom, scorns the smother'd train, The threat'ning driver, and the servile rein. Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest With thunder his robust distended chest? No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays; 'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... combined were altogether too much for him. One sprig of seedling manhood remained to him, and only one—the will to smother emotion that he could not control a second longer. He buried his head in my lap, stuffing his mouth with the end of the abiyi to choke the sobs back. I covered his head completely and, like the fabled ostrich, in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... seen great possessions excite to great alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often overlie and smother them. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... my honorable friend, the Chairman of the Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... such as these, who die without contrition, Must go to—beg your pardon, sir—perdition, The sons of light, you tell me, can't be gay, But count it sin of the sort called omission The groan to smother or the tear to stay Or fail to—what is that they live by?—pray. So down they flop, and the whole serious race is Put by divine compassion ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,—it du always be fresh up there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... balanced there, her hand on his shoulder, ready for a leap, lest the heavy canoe, rolling over in the froth, strike her under the smother of foam and water. . . . How marvellously pretty she was. . . . Her hand on his ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... land in the west, sent out a five-page letter— enough to smother whatever interest might have been attracted by the advertisement. Here is the third paragraph ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... time Tommy Thompson awoke with a little gasp. She had been dreaming that Buster, in the guise of a pirate, was trying to smother her with a sofa pillow. Tommy had been skirting the edge of one of the "pleathant nightmareth" she had prophesied for the girls on retiring. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Suddenly she ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraid to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in the darkness and smother me. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the yoke, Brown as the sweet-smelling loam, Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke The two great ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... origin of the forms of life peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural processes ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... in the storm. A wilder day would be hard to imagine; a hurricane was raging, the rain was whirled ahead of it like charges of shot. The mountains behind Kyak were invisible, and to seaward was nothing but a dimly discernible smother of foam and spray, for the crests of the breakers were snatched up and carried by the wind. The town was sodden; the streets were running mud. Stove-pipes were down, tents lay flattened in the mire, and the board houses were shaking as if they might fly to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... come from the dun of Cruachan to view them. The people in the dun smother one another, so that sixteen men ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... go before a magistrate and tell how you tried to poison your own child—how, when that failed, you tried to smother it. And, Jonas," she added—as she saw his face grow ashen, and a foam bubble form on his lips—"and, Jonas," she stepped forward, and he backed—his glassy eyes on her face, "and, Jonas," she said, "look here, I have this stone. With the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... role jealousy may have played in the remote ages (I doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. It is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. And everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... hope remains? what force, what place Made good? But, sighing, he replies, 'Alas! 310 Trojans we were, and mighty Ilium was; But the last period and the fatal hour Of Troy is come: our glory and our power Incensed Jove transfers to Grecian hands; The foe within the burning town commands; And (like a smother'd fire) an unseen force Breaks from the bowels of the fatal horse: Insulting Sinon flings about the flame, And thousands more than e'er from Argos came Possess the gates, the passes, and the streets, 320 And these ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... to swoop from 3500 feet this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the balloon bumping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously to and fro. The millionaire screamed and bumped about the car, and bumped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine into the teeth of the wind, switched down the planes, and tried to drive her down. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things which ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... when he should have been out howling at the stars. He was not lonely, because one night he prowled about until he found a certain door, and when the girl opened that door in the morning she found him curled up tight against it. She had reached down and hugged him, the thick smother of her long hair falling all over him in a delightful perfume; thereafter she placed a rug before the door for him to sleep on. All through the long nights he knew that she was just beyond the door, and he was content. Each day he thought less and less of the wild places, and ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... found that abuse had no effect upon the stout boatswain, he drew back, and made a desperate plunge at his heavy opponent. Peaks caught him by the shoulders, and lifted him off his feet like a baby. Taking him in his arms, with one hand over his mouth, to smother his cries, he bore him to the waist, where his yells could not be heard by ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... required to supply a population of thirty- five thousand people. Upon inquiring what they do in case of a fire, I learn that they don't even think of fighting the devouring element with its natural enemy, but, collecting on the adjoining roofs, they smother the flames by pelting the burning building with the soft, crumbly bricks of which Angora is chiefly built; a house on fire, with a swarm of half- naked natives on the neighboring housetops bombarding the leaping flames with bricks, would ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. It is by an absolute knowledge of yourself, the proper estimate of your ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... the trees and drew her importunately beneath them for the kiss that had burned on her troubled lips all day! How, girl-like, knowing his caresses were all her own—knowing she could at an instant call forth enough to smother her—she tyrannized his importuning and, like a lovely miser, hoarded her responsiveness under calm eyes and laconic whispers until, when she did give back his eagerness, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... As its care produces labor, activity, abundance, and health, its neglect and its injustice produce indolence, discouragement, famine, contagion, vices, and crimes. It can bring to light, or can smother talents, skill, and virtue. In fact the government, distributing rank, wealth, rewards and punishments; master of the things in which men have learned from childhood to place their happiness, acquires a necessary influence on their conduct, inflames ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... kept on every now and then putting in a word of caution to restrain the rector from admitting too much; for little by little he was yielding to me. I spoke of letting down the nets for a draught, and catching men, not to smother and kill them in some Church system, or by some erroneous teaching, but to keep them alive. "This," I said, "is the meaning of the word in the original;" and we looked it out in the Greek. It was very interesting. We then talked over the difference between the Church system ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... birch bark, or pine-knot slivers. As the tinder begins to burn, add kindling-wood of larger size, always remembering that the air must circulate under and upward through the kindling; no fire can live without air any more than you can live without breathing. Smother a person and he will die, smother a fire and it ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... Deep drifts smother the paths below; The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb, And all the air is dizzy and dim With a whirl ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... said Gethin, bringing his fist down with a thump on the table, "take care what you are doing. I tell you it has taken me three long years to smother the hopes which awoke in my heart when I was last at home. Don't awake them again, lest they should master me; unless you have some gleam ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the way, if that's what you're thinking of. I'm not that kind of man at all, and I am particularly fond of the child. I scarcely ever complain when she keeps me awake at night, though many men I know would want to smother her. She and my wife are stopping with my mother-in-law in Rathmines. I'm going down for a fortnight's yachting with the Major. I might persuade him to give you a day's sailing, perhaps, if he doesn't find out who you are, and we succeed ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Arrow's achievement, a little torpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles an hour. The little craft seemed to disappear in the white smother of her wake, and those who watched the speed trial marvelled at the railroad speed she made. The Turbina—for that was the little record-breaker's name—was propelled by a new kind of engine, and her speed was all the more remarkable on that account. ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Democrats who could only be held by party claims would not respect a mere indorsement. Southern delegates argued that if Democrats hoped to defeat their opponents they must encourage the revolt by giving it prestige and power rather than smother it by compelling Liberals to choose between Grant and a Democrat. The wisdom of this view could not be avoided, and after adopting the Cincinnati platform without change, the convention, by a vote of 686 to 46, stamped the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... death-rate of most fevers fifty to seventy-five per cent already. Plenty of pure, cool water internally, externally, and eternally, rest, fresh air, and careful feeding, are the best febrifuges and antipyretics known to modern medicine. All others are frauds and simply smother a symptom without relieving its cause, with the exception of quinine in malaria, mercury, and the various antitoxins in their appropriate diseases, which act ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... but with faces and hands intensely smarting from their burns, the boys replenished the cans of water—for they still had a two miles' run through the smother of smoke—and lifted the car onto the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,—but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... beautiful; the glow of the roses on her cheeks and throat, the sun in her hair, and the shadows in her eyes. To smother the rush of words which were gathering at his lips, he raised his cup and drank. Ten days! It was something. But the battle was wearing; the ceaseless struggle not to speak from his full heart was weakening him. Yet ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... herself at his side, he must be fearfully alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a knock. At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose as when, instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for dinner, she pushed her—with a push at last incontestably maternal—straight into the room inherited from Sir Claude. She titivated ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... that I had to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to feed your remembers on in days when pleasures are scarce. I can't believe ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men—to smother God in their hearts. Just a play, a pretense, yes, a pretense of power, especially that; they had no thought beyond excitement, and that to me seemed only the first step. I could not believe that ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa. I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to hide and smother it, not being able ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in order to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage. My men covered their heads with their blankets, but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to smother me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only could I breathe more freely, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by the Tibetans. My men moaned and groaned and their teeth chattered during the night. I woke ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... particles changed to dry, powdery snow dust that whirled and eddied about them so thickly that Connie could not see the dogs from the rear of the toboggans. Covering their noses and mouths, the two bored on through the white smother—a slow moving, ghostly procession, with the snow powder matted thick into the hairy coats of the dogs and the clothing of the mushers. Not until darkness added to the impenetrability of the storm did 'Merican Joe halt. In the whirling blizzard, without protection ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... had regret we sought not to smother— Kind Earl, dear Countess were called to depart; But thoughtfully, kindly, the fair Queen our mother, Sends the son of her choice, the child of her heart. There is a stir, a bustle, a humming, The tartans ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... mercy! Just look at it this way! Talk it this way! He's turning on his own, if he does what he threatens! He played the sneak, he, a mill-owner, getting on to that commission! And he proposes to shove in a report that will smother development by outside capital. Play up the reason for his interest in the thing along that line! A hog for himself! It's easy to turn public sentiment by the right kind of talk! If I really start out to go the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... bowl awaits; trouble shall smother in the cup. We shall make this night one for memory. I have a chateau in the Cevennes, and it shall be yours till all ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... happened to Nan!" cried Walter. "She and that other girl are perhaps overcome with the smoke. They'll smother!" ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... station, and the nurse scarcely liked to ask Suzanne for the child, who was holding it against her heaving bosom, and kissing it as if she intended to smother it, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... success, unfortunately so rare in man's life as to seem paradoxical, is its whole achievement. Spirituality ought to have been a matter of course, since conscious existence has inherent value and there is no intrinsic ground why it should smother that value in alien ambitions and servitudes. But spirituality, though so natural and obvious a thing, is subject, like the lilies' beauty, to corruption. I know not what army of microbes evidently invaded from the beginning the soul's physical basis and devoured its ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... battleship. She was riding head to wind, and apparently steaming ahead dead slow, or, at all events, merely at a speed sufficient to give her steerage-way. She was making positively frightful weather of it, diving deeply into every sea, as it met her, and literally burying herself in a perfect smother of whiteness which had no time to flow off her decks ere she plunged into the next sea. And, strangely enough, within the hour they fell in with and passed a small gun-boat, undoubtedly British. She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... deem Came forth from the shade, of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again. And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain "Not mine! not mine! now, Mary mother. Aid me the sinful hope to smother! Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong. But pure the heart of a knight should be,— Sleep on, sleep on, thou art safe for me. Yet shalt thou know, by a certain sign, Whose lips have been so near to thine, Whose eyes have ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... (they indeed are best;) but even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... set off, North laughing uproariously at the thought of being late. Frere observed with some astonishment that the chaplain wrapped himself in a boat cloak that lay in the stern sheets. "Does the fellow want to smother himself in a night like this!" was his remark. The truth was that, though his hands and head were burning, North's teeth chattered with cold. Perhaps this was the reason why, when landed and out of eyeshot of the crew, he produced a pocket-flask of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKTA down.) It's your doing, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to engage men to expose themselves to the awakened fury of a whole people; for, in the present state of general agitation, whoever disbelieves the least tittle of the enormous improbabilities which have been accumulated by these wretched reformers, is instantly hunted down, as one who would smother the discovery of the Plot. It is indeed an awful tempest; and, remote as we lie from its sphere, we must expect soon to feel ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... interest, I should not be afraid to ask concessions in favor of our West India trade. It would produce a great change of opinion as to us and our affairs. In the Assemblee des Notables, hard things were said of us. They were induced, however, in committing us to writing, to smother their ideas a little. In the notes, now gone to be printed, our debt is described in these words. "The twenty-first article of the account, formed of the interest of the claims of his majesty on the United States of America, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... danger in him: I observed him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion, which he could not smother. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; he remains Yet in our power; I, for my own part, wear ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... guide raised the rifle, took quick but careful aim, and fired. There was no puff of smoke, for the new high-powered, smokeless powder was used. Following the shot, there was a commotion in the water. Amid a smother ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... smother of flakes whirled down into the deserted streets and cutting short Grandfather Harling's story, the visitors bundled themselves into ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... Helen, run next door and see if you can borrow a large snow shovel," called Mrs. Brown. "Don't stop to tell them what it's for, or Bunny may smother." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope |
