"Smothering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the study of that most remarkable collection of books among the people. Its teachings are so infinitely superior to those of the sects, who are just as busy now as the Pharisees were eighteen hundred years ago, in smothering them under "the precepts of men"; it is so certain, to my mind, that the Bible contains within itself the refutation of nine-tenths of the mixture of sophistical metaphysics and old-world superstition which has been piled round it ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the other rests idly on the table—very near to one of John's, as she would see were not her eyes so intent upon her work. How the impulse came to him, where he—grave, sober, business-man John—learnt such story-book ways can never be known; but in one instant he is down on both knees, smothering the floury hand with kisses, and the next moment Anne's arms are round his neck and her lips against his, and the barrier between them is swept away, and the deep waters ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... mountain leader's speech; Say ye, who tell the bloody tale, When havoc smote the howling breach, Then did the noble savage quail? No—when through dust, and steel, and flame, Hot streams of blood, and smothering smoke, True as an arrow to its aim, The meteor-flag of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... appetite appeared to become enfeebled, and he drank his wine with apologetic slowness. She went on looking at him with a merciless amusement; his whole manner became expressive of a wish to be elsewhere. I saw Varvilliers smothering a smile; he sacrificed much to good manners. I myself laughed gently. Suddenly, to my surprise, Wetter ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... sleep. Then she called, drowsily: "Alden! Edith!" No one answered, because no one heard. She got up, smothering a yawn behind her hand, wondered that there were no lights, waited a moment, heard nothing, and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... with meats is that they may become tainted, or begin to spoil, or decay, before they are used. Unfortunately, the ingenious cook has invented a great many ways of smothering, or disguising, the well-marked bad taste of decayed, or spoiled, meat by spices, onions, and savory herbs. So, as a general thing, the safest plan, especially when traveling or living away from home, is to avoid as far as possible hashes, stews, and other "made" dishes ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... insist, "you would rectify the matter by smothering the young monster at once—because he has wings, and, young to their use, flutters them about in a way discomposing to your nerves, and destructive to those notions of propriety of which this creature—you stop not to inquire whether angel or pterodactyle—has not yet learned even the existence. ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... horse-rustler," mumbled Gurley, smothering his sullen rage. None the less he rose slowly and shuffled away toward ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain, covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention between the mind and the disaster which would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... revival hymn; the preacher is standing over his audience shouting 'Get busy, sinners,' and two or three boys are scurrying back and forth carrying water to the thirsty ones, while little groups of the faithful are hovering over a penitent, smothering sinner, trying to 'pull her through.' During this kind of a meeting which I attended at one time a woman 'got happy' and went around slapping everyone she could get her hand on, and skipping like ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... young verdure, meadows bright with flowers; the palm, the cypress, the pine, the magnolia; the grazing deer; herons, curlews, bitterns, woodcock, and unknown water-fowl that waded in the ripple of the beach; cedars bearded from crown to root with long gray moss; huge oaks smothering in the serpent folds of enormous grape-vines: such were the objects that greeted them in their roamings, till their new-found land seemed "the fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Heavens! how uncomfortable I am! If I could only get out of my skin, cast off this fleece which is smothering me, fling myself naked as a skinned mouse into a fresher atmosphere! Oh Dog, you cannot see the sparks that make every separate hair on my body crackle, but I feel them. Don't come near! A blue flame is going to shoot ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... home; and we need to take the motes out of our own eyes before we can see clearly how to help our fellows. To keep physically well, pure, and prudent, following worthy purposes and smothering unruly desires, is our first business; and there would be much less to do for one another if every one did his ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Wynkoop is a good man, I truly respect him. I want to please him, and I admire his intellectual attainments; but how can he accept so much on faith, and be content? Do you really suppose he is content? Don't you think he ever questions as I do? or has he actually succeeded in smothering every doubt? He cannot answer what I ask him; he cannot make things clear. He just pulls up a few, cheap, homely weeds,—useless common things,—when I beg for flowers; he hands them to me, and bids me seek greater faith through prayer. I know I am a perfect heathen,—Miss ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... had said nothing more. He was waiting for her to speak; but her voice felt parched; it seemed to her as if hands of steel were gripping her throat, smothering the words she would have longed ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... been the sight of the blood sacrifice that had started Nana Sahib on a line of bitter thought; had stirred the smothering hate that was in his soul until frothing bubbles of it mounted to ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... luckily for me I did not go down head foremost, or there I should have remained till this time, for the hole in the middle of the tree, as I found, was too narrow for me to have turned in, and there I must have stuck. As it was, I went down with the dust and crumbles smothering me almost, till I came right on the top of the bear, who lay at the bottom; and I fell with such force, that I doubled his head down, so that he could not lay hold of me with his teeth, which would ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the baby, Jean, quick—no, never mind his sash, he looks beautiful. My husband has come, and he wants to see him. Yes, my boy! Father has come"—nearly smothering him with kisses, which baby Hugh returned by mischievous ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Fitzgerald's expedition to Aconcagua came to his mind, and he recalled that, although every other member of the party reached the summit, that gentleman himself was unable to do so. In the last stage the difficulty of breathing had increased with fits of smothering, and the medicine chest held no remedy ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... the storm of battle was recommenced on fields of ice, and amidst smothering tempests of snow. For more than a month there was not a day without a conflict. In these incessant engagements the Tartars lost ten thousand men slain and six thousand prisoners. One thousand six ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... lady, smothering a giggle, "will be about all from you. Get up—or I'll call in a sure-enough cop to search your title to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... am hot," answered Anne, smothering her anger at this second provocation in being called impudent. "The priest told us to be obedient to those even who are not amiable nor kind; to serve them for God's sake, as a punishment ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... determined coolness, the conversation lapsed. I buried myself in the Paris "Herald," but found I could not read. Simmering with wrath, I lived again the ill-starred voyage his words recalled to me, breathed the close smothering air of the cabin that had held me prisoner, tasted the knowledge that I was watched like any thief. An armed sailor had stood outside my door by day and by night; and a dozen times I had longed to fling open that frail partition, seize the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... her maids: the other ladies were all found dancing and revelling, or in several disports. Whereupon the noblemen yielded Collatinus the victory, and his wife the fame. At that time Sextus Tarquinius being inflamed with Lucrece's beauty, yet smothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest back to the camp; from whence he shortly after privily withdrew himself, and was (according to his estate) royally entertained and lodged by Lucrece at Collatium. The same night he treacherously ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... parents, and the magistrate joined in effort to invent a sure method of putting him to death. Water, fire and sword all having failed, they finally fixed upon smothering him in a vast cream-cake. The whole country round made contributions of flour for the tough pastry, sugar for the viscid filling, and bricks for a huge oven; and it was made and baked on a plain outside the city walls. Meanwhile the prisoner was ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... masturbation, and felt no small satisfaction with my moral conditions. I became a first-rate Pharisee. Toward the women who had figured in my day dreams I suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them, and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion—Sunday-school Garden-of-Eden pictures with a mediaeval, romantic coloring. These day-dreams were always sexual, involving situations of extreme complexity ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Indians of America are what the Helots were among the Spartans, a vanquished people obliged to toil for their conquerors. Hence on the banks of the Oroonoko we have heard of mothers slaying their daughters out of compassion, and smothering them in the hour of their birth. They consider this ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... poorhouse. Angy, panting for breath, one hand against the smothering pain at her heart, was trying, with the other, to drag "Father" along. "Father" was shaking his head at Ishmael, at the proffered nickels and pennies—shaking his head and choking. At length he found his voice, and was able to smile at his would-be benefactor with even the ghost ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... power, grandeur, eye, and to prate of thrones! Is a prison the fit place? You wish to make me believe in splendor, and we are lying lost in night; you boast of glory, and we are smothering our words in the curtains of this miserable bed; you give me glimpses of power absolute whilst I hear the footsteps of the every-watchful jailer in the corridor—that step which, after all, makes you tremble more ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... round, everything is going round. Let us stop.' 'No, no; don't let's stop. Keep on still. If we stop your mother will separate us, and I have still so many things to say to you—so many things, so many things. Swear to me that you will be my wife.' 'Yes, I swear it; but enough, enough—' I was smothering. He heard nothing. He was going, going like a madman. We had become a hurricane, a whirlwind, a cyclone. We caused surprise and fright. No one danced any more, but looked at us. And he held me so close, and his face was so near ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... good man," sobbed Lev Smith, drawing out his bandanna, and smothering his sharp nose in it. "A good ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... an oil lamp to the wall, and would light its rush-pith-wick, and read by it. Occasionally she made a good peat fire, for she had found a chimney that went sloping into the upper air; and if it did not always draw well, peat-smoke is as pleasant as wholesome, and she could bear a good deal of its smothering. Not unfrequently she carried her book there when no one was likely to want her, and enjoyed to the full the rare and delightful sense of absolute safety from interruption. Sometimes she would make a little song there, with which as she made it its own music would ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... springs of suffering. There are those who warring against desire are still influenced by desire; who whilst possessed of body, act as though they had none; who put away from themselves all sources of true merit—briefly will I recount their sorrowful lot. Like smothering a raging fire, though carefully put out, yet a spark left, so in their abstraction, still the germ of 'I,' the source of great sorrow still surviving, perpetuates the suffering caused by lust, and the evil consequences of every kind of deed survive. These are the sources of further pain, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... for many minutes after she had left him bound and gagged on the snow. That she had made no effort to free him did not at first strike him as significant. He still felt the sweet, warm touch of her lips, the pressure of her arms, the smothering softness of her hair. It was not until he again heard approaching sounds that he returned once more to a full consciousness of the mysterious thing that had happened. He heard first of all the creaking of a toboggan on the hard crust, then the pattering of dogs' feet, and after that the ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... Anaconda Airline was in the war for the House gavel. Under the supervision of Senator Hanway, it brought its whole smothering weight to bear upon the Hawke twenty of those twenty-three whose districts it dominated. The Hawke twenty wriggled and writhed, but in the end gave way—all save a rock-ribbed quartette. They must stay by ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... genial spirits fail, And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... smothered oaths and stamping, scuffling feet became audible on the other side of the theater. The actors waiting for their cues were being scared by quite a serious episode. For some seconds past Mignon had been renewing his jokes and smothering Fauchery with caresses. He had at last invented a little game of a novel kind and had begun flicking the other's nose in order, as he phrased it, to keep the flies off him. This kind of game naturally diverted the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... defiantly at the older officer, who calmly proceeded to translate the speech to the colonel. Carg reported that it was translated verbatim. Then the general sat back and squinted at his companion, who seemed fairly bewildered by the threat. Patsy caught the young officer smothering a smile, but neither of them interrupted the silence ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... wonderful great; and standing amongst them that were near the bed, but not thinking at all of the dead, I was started by the sound of my master's voice from under the great coats that had been thrown all at top, and I went close up, no one noticing. "Thady," says he, "I've had enough of this; I'm smothering, and can't hear a word of all they're saying of the deceased." "God bless you, and lie still and quiet," says I, "a bit longer, for my shister's afraid of ghosts, and would die on the spot with fright, was she to see you come to life all on a sudden this way without ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Grace whimsically, stretching her arms above her head and smothering a yawn, "this is terrible, you know. If we don't look out, we'll be ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... eyes their tears: And, as when funeral dames watch a dead corse, Weeping about it, telling with remorse What pains he felt, how long in pain he lay, How little food he eat, what he would say, And then mix mournful tales of others' deaths, Smothering themselves in clouds of their own breaths; At length, one cheering other, call for wine; The golden bowl drinks tears out of their eyne, As they drink wine from it; and round it goes, Each helping other to relieve their woes; ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... as he abundantly proved—perhaps never more so than on this occasion—when again, with almost the action of a toad, he leaped right upon the smuggler, driving him back just as he was trying to rise, and covering his face with a broad chest and smothering his ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... There seemed very little possibility of anything like assurance for him, and only such peace as might be gained by smothering the cries with which his heart assailed him. The Canon held ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Sometimes the player sits in very un-Malayan manner, with legs stretched out before him, and places the gang'-sa bottom up on his lap. He beats it with the flat of both hands, producing the rhythmic pulse by a deadening or smothering of a beat. Again the gang'-sa is held in the air, usually as high as the face, and one or two soft beats, just a tinkle, of the 4/4 time are struck on the inside of the gang'-sa by a small, light stick. Now and then the player, after having thoroughly acquired ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... to ask for a quilt or rug, there was no time for that. She quickly slipped out of her dress, and catching the little fellow wrapped him tight in the gown, smothering ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... my face to hers between her two hands—laughing, sobbing, and crying from the excess of her feelings. "My boy, my own Percy, how you did fuck me, you dear," smothering me with a profusion of the most loving hot kisses, whilst Mary, also carried away by the scene in which she had participated, took possession of my still stiff machine and sucked it till she had extracted every drop that still oozed ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... and between gusts of wind regained his own house. He stopped on entering, and barred the door behind him; then he groped his way to the kitchen, and taking a lamp from its place, raked together the embers smothering in a brazier habitually kept for retention of fire, and lighted the lamp. He next broke up some stools and small tables, and with the pieces made a pile under the grand stairway to the second floor, muttering as ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... lately; but it will look quite a lot when it's all we've got.... Father'd be glad, Peter, if he knew. He'd say we ought to do it, I know he would. It's partly him I've been hearing all this time, calling and calling to me to come away and live. He did so hate fat and sweetness and all smothering things. They just bored him dreadfully. He wouldn't ever come and stay with us, you know.... Oh, and I've written to Felicity, telling her what I meant to do. I don't quite know what she'll say; nobody ever ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... very respectfully to take the command of him, insisted that he should have a fire always burning on a rock close to his door, and that Piers, if not Hal, should always take care that it never went out, smothering it with peat, as every shepherd boy knew how to do, so as to keep it alight, or, in case of need, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the velvet night, Silent and terrible, an eagle-owl, With wide, soft, deadly, dusky wings, and eyes Flame-coloured, and long claws, and dreadful beak; Like a winged sprite, or great Garood himself; Offspring of Bharata! it lighted there Upon the banian's bough; hooted, but low, The fury smothering in its throat;—then fell With murderous beak and claws upon those crows, Rending the wings from this, the legs from that, From some the heads, of some ripping the crops; Till, tens and scores, the fowl rained down to earth Bloody and plucked, and all ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... regain his feet, hundreds of the disgusting insects had mounted upon him, clinging to his clothes, and almost smothering him ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... my place, you who have never come under the domination of a surly mate on a sailing vessel of seventy years ago. My ears fairly tingled with anger at the harshness of the orders, but I stuck to the work, smothering my rage at being berated while doing my very best. As the day went on I realized that the man was not angry; he had merely fallen into that way of talking. The sailors paid slight heed to what he said. Before night the fellow seemed to let up on me, while ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... over on the side, tumbling its contents upon you two children. Father and uncle, in great alarm, rushed to your rescue. Georgia was soon hauled out safely through the opening in the back of the wagon sheets, but you were nowhere in sight, and father was sure you were smothering because you did not answer his call. They worked breathlessly getting things out, and finally uncle came to your limp form. You could not have lasted much longer, they said. How thankful we all were that our heaviest boxes had been ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... poisoned and shoulders bowed, In the smothering reek of mill and mine; And death stalks in on the struggling crowd— But he shuns the shadow ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... their smallest circumference, contracting close about the trunks. The shade had dwindled to the breadth of a mere line. The sun was everywhere. The heat exhaling from brick and plaster and metal met the heat that steadily descended blanketwise and smothering, from the pale, scorched sky. Only the lizards—they lived in chinks of the crumbling adobe and in interstices of the sidewalk—remained without, motionless, as if stuffed, their eyes closed to mere slits, basking, stupefied with heat. At long intervals the prolonged drone of an ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... shriveling. Think of it—grass with so much sap inside it hisses. It's drying right up in a one-two-three! Now the top part is falling down—toppling forward—coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay.... It put out one of the torches by smothering it. Drowned it in grass. Nothing serious—the boy's got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks—youve got to realize this stuff's about ten feet high. Further in it's anyway sixteen feet. Fighting it's like battling an octopus ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... And you'd best be keepin' away. It's stormin' fearful down here, and I can't rise above it! Keep clear!—I'm warnin' you!" The hum of their helicopters rose to a shrill whine as Chet drove the ship out and down through the smothering clouds. "You must hear her fans on your instruments; you can ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... corruscations of experience sometimes threw his darkness into light; the interest of the few was bottomed on his enthusiasm; their pre-eminence depended on his love of the wonderful; their very existence rested on the solidity of his ignorance they consequently suffered no opportunity to escape, of smothering even the lambent flame. The many were thus first deceived into credulity, then coerced into submission. At length, the whole science of man became a confused mass of darkness, falsehood, and contradictions, with here and there a feeble ray of truth, furnished by that Nature of which he can ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... was a stillness like death, so that one could only hear the wheezing and puffing of the victim whom the little brother was smothering ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... sir," said Blakeney, politely smothering a slight yawn, "and it is vastly unbecoming in the presence ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... carefully observe all the proprieties. Then the case of the State against Martin Druce would be called and Druce would not respond to that summons. And so Mary Randall's sensation would die an unnatural death—death from smothering, death from lack of expression. Afterward the tenderloin would resume its old operations. No wonder the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... said Austin, smothering the yawn in his voice and casting his cigar into the ashes. "You're about ripe for the younger set—one of them, anyhow. If you can't stand the intellectual strain we'll side-step the show later and play a little—what do you ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... element in me sided very strongly with old Banks. I was aware of the pressure that was so insensibly surrounding him as of a subtly entangling web that seemed to offer no resistance, and yet was slowly smothering him in a million intricate intangible folds. And, after all, why should he be torn away from his root-holds, exiled to some forlorn unknown country where his very methods of farming would be inapplicable? Brenda and Arthur were young and capable. Let them wait, at least until she came of age. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... pa?" the elder woman asked, stopping suddenly as she crossed the room, her face drawn in a quick stroke of fear, her hands lifted to ease the smothering in her breast again. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... therefore must be against the interests of the Negro. Again, others opposed it because they feared that it meant the abandonment of all political privileges, and the higher or classical education of the race. They feared that the final outcome would be the materialization of the Negro, and the smothering of his spiritual and aesthetic nature. Others felt that industrial education had for its object the limitation of the Negro's development, and the branding him for all time as a special ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... were, after a few days, most unexpectedly troubled with it. Thus far the wind had been blowing only in one direction; but afterwards it shifted to the opposite quarter, driving the smoke all down into the hut, and smothering us out. Neither of us being a skilful mason, we could not imagine what was the matter; but finally it occurred to us, after much useless labor had been spent in tearing part of it down and building it up again, that it was too low, being just on a ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... so long unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Cecilia, smothering her concern for this last piece of intelligence by pretending to feel it merely for the former, expostulated with Lady Honoria upon so mischievous a frolic, and earnestly entreated her to go back ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... real experience of the joy of helping others, and they hardly knew where to begin or end. They romped and played in the stuff like children in sand or snow—diving, smothering themselves, plunging, choking, turning somersaults, upsetting each other's carefully reared loads, and leaping over little pyramids of gold. Then, in a flash, their laughter turned the destroyed heaps into wonderful new patterns again; and once ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... spent in tears. She felt smothered and cramped; after having had so much room to move about in it seemed to her that she was smothering. It was only at the window she could breathe. The courtyard was not a place calculated to inspire cheerful thoughts. Opposite her was the window which years before had elicited her admiration, where every successive summer scarlet beans had grown to ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... dishes and then discreetly ignored them. Fred fell to studying his reflection in the polished mirror running the length of the room. He had to acknowledge that he looked savage, with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled with care our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,— The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the Long Bridge about twenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one of the very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they had first suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the big car without smothering the occupants of the honeymoon car in ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Babbit a very close inspection of the veiled figure, who, smothering her wrath, felt greatly relieved when the train started and prevented her from hearing anything more. At the next station, however, Mrs. Douglas showed her companion a crochet collar, which she had purchased for two shillings, and which, she said, was almost ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... moment the tramp of their feet and the clang of their arms were heard in the streets of the town. Windows and doors flew open and with cries and tears of joy and thankfulness, wives, children, and aged parents gathered about them almost smothering ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... the barrister, without winking, "you have discovered that the police had plotted in advance the smothering of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by. Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily followed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the top. The apartment is darker than ever. Not once does the sun shine into our rooms. We see the sunlight in the street, but the dark shadow of the building lengthens minute by minute, stretching itself across the street and reaching up over the convent wall like the smothering black hand of a giant, till only the tips of the cypresses and poplars in the gardens are red in the ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... that it is all my fault," cried Mary, with the brine almost smothering her tears, as she flung her arms around his neck; "but I never will do it again, my darling. And I never will run away and let you drown. Oh, if I only had a knife! I can not even cast your bridle off; the tongue has stuck fast, and my hands are cramped. But, Keppel, I will ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the tragedy of my blind child—it's that you have driven me to hate you. You have crushed all the life and joy and youth out of me! You've been to me like a terrible black cloud, constantly pressing down on me, smothering me. You stalk around me like a grim, sepulchral figure, closing me up in the circle of your narrow ideas. But now I can endure it no longer. I was a proud, high-spirited girl, you've made of me a colourless social automaton, a slave of your stupid worldly ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... four remained, and they were just going. She saw the shine on the paint of the door-posts, and the smoke of the torches, as they let themselves out. Then they had all gone, and left her alone in a cave full of smoke. Vainly she struggled to follow them, the doors were fast, the smoke was smothering her, and in the agony of a last effort to escape ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... in giant jars of Gubbio ware upon the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay—the pavement paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets—that pavement where Monsignor Bombo courted 'dear dead women' with Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia, lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... In this sad vigil. Slowly she undrest, Put out the light and crept into her bed. The linen sheets were fragrant, but so cold. And brimming tears she shed, Sobbing and quivering in her barren nest, Her weeping lips into the pillow prest, Her eyes sealed fast within its smothering fold. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... to Barbizon—Barbizon, that tiny village on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. Several artists who had been there in the Summer sketching had told them of it. The city was gradually smothering Jean Francois. He prayed for a sight of the great open stretches of pasture, and green woods and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... off. The next he knew was when a brief, metallic "br-r-r-r?" sounded in the tent. In another instant Dick had the clock and was smothering the noise. Greg Holmes leaped up. It was the morning of ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... us, doggie, and made more than one of 'em, for I've just comed out o' one myself. Hallo! there, I'm into another!" he exclaimed as the treacherous bank gave way, and he slipped in headlong, with a dire crash, almost smothering Cuffy ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... whispered, "You're overdoing it. Hold in." Turner winced like a struck hound, but, smothering his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... confined space, but Racksole was managing it very nicely, and had nearly reached the top, when, by some untoward freak of chance, the ladder broke above his weight, and he slipped ignominiously down to the bottom of the wooden tube. Smothering an excusable curse, Racksole crouched, baffled. Then he saw that the force of his fall had somehow opened a trap-door at his feet. He squeezed through, pushed open another tiny door, and in another second stood in the State ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... I'm writing the lines now," said Telson, dipping his pen in the ink, and scarcely smothering a laugh. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... bags of down, under which they smother a man in the Low Countries; and there he lay, melting between, two feather beds, like an anchovy sandwich between two slices of toast and butter. He was a warm-complexioned man, and this smothering played the very deuce with him. So, sure enough, in a little while it seemed as if a legion of imps were twitching at him and all the blood in his veins was ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and the double-peaked Bandaisan, the abrupt precipices of Itoyasan, and the grand mass of Miyojintake in the south-west, with their vast snow-fields and snow-filled ravines, were all visible at once. These summits of naked rock or dazzling snow, rising above the smothering greenery of the lower ranges into a heaven of delicious blue, gave exactly that individuality and emphasis which, to my thinking, Japanese scenery usually lacks. Riding on first, I arrived alone at the little town of Nozawa, to encounter ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... jingling. Corrigan was after him with a rush. A heavy blow caught Trevison on the right side of the neck just below the ear and sent him, tottering, against the wall of the building, from which he rebounded like a rubber ball, smothering Corrigan with an avalanche of deadening straight-arm punches that brought a glassy stare into Corrigan's eyes. The big man's head wabbled, and Trevison crowded in, intent on ending the fight quickly, but Corrigan covered instinctively, and when Trevison ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain. She turned to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... first cheery word I have heard for the last six weeks—too awful I should think it is. They are smothering me between them, Nora. I shall never get up and breathe the free air again; but when you came in you brought a ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... this State tax one-half if you send the right men.... We began this work last winter. It made great conflict and turmoil, the attempt to remove the fungus-growths which had sprung up all over our State institutions, and which were smothering their vitality.... It is not alone the saving of dollars and cents, for you cannot preserve your present system of government unless you ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for, once the widow and Oonah found their voices, they made good use of them. The noise awoke Andy, who had, be it remembered, a tolerably long sleep by this time: and he having quite forgotten where he had lain down, and finding himself confined by the bed above him, and smothering for want of air, with the fierce shouts of murder ringing in his ear, woke in as great a fright as the women in the bed, and became a party in the terror he himself had produced; every plunge he gave under the bed inflicted ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... have seen it) still get home. But one does not breathe these compliments to their commanders. Other destroyers may be—they will point them out to you—poisonous bags of tricks, but their own command—never! Is she high-bowed? That is the only type which over-rides the seas instead of smothering. Is she low? Low bows glide through the water where those collier-nosed brutes smash it open. Is she mucked up with submarine-catchers? They rather improve her trim. No other ship has them. Have they been denied to her? Thank Heaven, we go to ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... The sprinkler proved to be powerful; the water that penetrated beneath the edge of the slate shivered it into small bits. The flames cracked and leaped angrily under the gushing water; only when the jet was turned directly upon them, and then more by means of its smothering power than its inherent qualities, did it finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... are in our hands, but who is the third? Nikolashka and Psyekov held him. Who was it smothered him? Psyekov is timid, easily embarrassed, altogether a coward. People like Nikolashka are not equal to smothering with a pillow, they set to work with an axe or a mallet. . . . Some third person must have ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... been a lot of human kindness under the smothering, stifling cloud of the "System" and behind the iron clank and swishing "cat" strokes of brutality—a lot of soul light in the darkness of our dark past—a page that has long since been closed down—when ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... man you can be," she exclaimed, smothering her intuitions. She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least, if he would only get well and be the bright flower of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering it altogether. No one is taken for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his unchangeably dingy room he realized slowly, after smothering his head in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching eyeballs, that Dr. Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to wander. He protested, but not for long, for he hated to venture out there among the dreadfully learned ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... imperative duties. But our ministrations of charity and benevolence should by no means be confined exclusively within the pale of the order. This crowded world, with its eager millions, maddened with ambition's unquenchable fires, trampling under foot and well-nigh smothering each other in the great rush of competitive strife, is full of poor unfortunates, daily appealing for generous ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can, bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... passion by this time, and failed to note the effect his last words had on Agnes, who turned livid with rage and terror; but smothering down her wrath, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... but drawn up by Bonaparte himself. "Let England know," said he, "that in undertaking to destroy the government of the negroes at St. Domingo, I have been less guided by commercial and financial considerations than by the necessity of smothering in all parts of the world every kind of inquietude and disturbance—that one of the chief benefits of peace for England at the present moment was that it was concluded at a time when the French Government had not yet recognized the organization ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... and beautiful; the Japanese garden was a symphony of green plush sod and brilliant color—the Bougainvillaea almost smothering the little summerhouse and a mocking-bird who must be a grandson of the one of her betrothal night was singing his giddy heart out. Kada was waiting in the doorway, bowing stiffly, sucking in his breath, beaming; the cook just behind him, following him in sound and gesture, and the ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... He was choking, smothering—smothering with shame, hopelessness, despair. He must get away; get away to breathe, to think; get away out of it ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... asked, mechanically taking the card (it was a quarter-plate) in hand, and smothering a yawn; for the hour was late, the day had been laborious, and I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the creature's life. Forthwith the irritation which that invader produces causes the creature to throw out and over the disturber that which forms a covering round it—hiding, smothering, annihilating the originating evil, and constituting over it and in place of it a gem of the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... instinctive human growth and formation; but it is a picture taken from the life,—caught,—detained with the secret of that palette, whose secret none has yet found, and the detail is all, not Roman, but, Elizabethan. Those 'variable complexions,' that one sees, 'smothering the stalls, bulks, windows, filling the leads,' and roofs, even to the 'ridges,' all agreeing in one expression, are Elizabethan. It is an Elizabethan crowd that we have got into, in some way, and it is worth noting if it ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... learnt on the subject; but although I was told nothing of the manner in which they were killed, I supposed it to be the same which I had seen practised, viz. by smothering. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... the experimentalist was glad to retreat, with damaged dignity, from the escaping steam. So, in Priestley, the wanton hostility of Folkestone touched 80Reaumur; and the billy boiled over, wasting the water, and smothering the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... eliminative function of the skin. Primitive man, living in a state of Nature, was not burdened with clothing. There was nothing to interfere with the healthy activity of his epidermis. There can be no question that the smothering of the skin by our clothing has much to do with defective elimination of wastes, and the more nearly we can avoid clothing, or the less clothing we can wear, the better. When possible, therefore, and especially ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... plentiful at the hotel where we stopped at Berlin. I had rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned German feather bed. I had heard that one scaled the side of a German bed on a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering folds like a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but this hotel happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside the United States. It had been built and it was managed on American lines, plus German ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... face to her, his sobbing breath smothering itself in the soft masses of her hair, while her arms rose weakly and fell around his neck. He heard the quick, gasping struggle for breath within her bosom, and, faintly ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... 35 Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save All that they love from famine: when he hears 40 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek. Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 45 His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... disappears. To the accounts which Mary gave of her journeys with the little band that followed the Master, Martha listened with an attention which nothing could distract. With her she sailed on the lovely lake; with her she visited cities smothering in the scent of cassia and of sugar-cane; with her she passed through glens where panthers prowled, and bandits crueller than they. With her eyes she saw the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of divine forgiveness; and, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... at the "killer" who had been named "Butch," after he had shot two heads of families that had preempted land on the range that Brady claimed as part of his holding. Whatever the justice of that claim, it was generally understood that Butch had killed in cold blood, Brady's political pull smothering prosecution and inquiry. Butch had a hawkish nose and an outcurving chin. He was practically bald. Reddish eyebrows straggled sparsely above pale blue eyes, the color of cheap graniteware. His lips were thin and pallid, making a hard line ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a species of tall thistle of rank and unpleasant scent, is the first plant that appears when the ground has been freed from timbers by fire: if a piece of land lies untilled the first summer after its being chopped, the following spring shows you a smothering crop of this vile weed. The next plant you notice is the sumach, with its downy stalks, and head of deep crimson velvety flowers, forming an upright obtuse bunch at the extremity of the branches: the leaves turn scarlet towards the latter end of the summer. This ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... regretfully, as the poor little gills opened and shut in vain efforts to breathe the smothering air, and the pretty silver colouring deadened as its life went. 'I am very sorry,' she said, folding her hands together; 'I think I ought not to have killed it only to amuse myself.' And she walked away to where her ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... seemed to be dropping golden fruit, in which all the crowd of beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud, smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their feet till the whole ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... slothful man's garden. In country places we sometimes come across a ruined house with what was a garden round it, and here and there still springs up a flower seeking for air and light in the midst of a smothering mass of weeds. They needed no kindly gardener's hand to make them grow luxuriantly; can barely put out a pale petal unless ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... caller had gone Blake gave way to the hearty laughter he had been smothering, dwelling with keen enjoyment upon the probable result of Bernie's interview with the Chief. Dan, he was sure, would not hurt the little man's feelings, so he ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... treated as I am;" for his temper, if so opposed, would make him a maniac. I have dreamed of seeing him looking wretched and crying for fresh air, for he was suffocating. All the time I had those troubled dreams, I was smothering with gas coming in my room through the small grating intended to admit heat to make us comfortable, but it did not. I was obliged to open the window to be able to breathe; my lungs required oxygen to breathe when I was lying in bed, ...
— Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum • Mary Huestis Pengilly
... a panic. Hamilton, half-crazed and unable to believe his own senses, began wondering whether he had nightmare. He thought he might waken up presently and find the dead weight smothering his chest had been the boy snuggling close. He was vaguely conscious it was strange of him to continue sleeping with that noise of shouting men and whining hounds and snapping branches going on in the forest. The child's lightest cry generally broke the spell of a nightmare; but the din of terrified ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the value of a fur, edicts were lightly contravened, and now and then a schooner barely escaped into the smothering fog with skins looted close aboard forbidden beaches. It was a perilous life, and a strenuous one, for they had every white man's hand against them, as well as fog and gale, and the reefs that lay ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... we not owe some duty to our country in this matter? Mr. Jetson is one of our capable students in this brigade, and if he be given a fair chance to graduate, he is likely to become a Naval officer of merit. Do we desire to take upon ourselves the probable smothering of such a Naval career? Mr. President, and you, gentlemen of the second class, I trust sincerely that the motion of Coventry in this case will not prevail. I feel, as I believe many of you now present feel, that ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... by William Godwin, was published in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-three. The work, on its first appearance, created a profound impression among English thinking people, although orthodoxy has almost succeeded in smothering it in silence since John Stuart Mill declared that this book created an epoch and deserved to rank with Milton's "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," Locke's "Essay on Human Understanding" or Jean Jacques' ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... has taken to tell how it came about that Second Lieutenant George Montrose Graham was quite a celebrity in the —th Cavalry before ever he reported for duty with his troop. Several weeks the Silver Shield Mining Company spent in a squabble among themselves that ended in the smothering of "the Breifogle interest," and came near to sending "the Boss of Argenta" to jail. Several days elapsed before Captain Lee and Lieutenants McCrea and Graham felt it entirely prudent to leave, but when they did it was with the assurance that stockholders who had endured ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... yolk and a seasoning of salt and pepper. Beat the whites until they are dry and will not slip from the dish, then turn into them the beaten yolks, folding carefully until thoroughly blended. Have the pan hot and butter melted, turn in the mixture, smothering it over the top, cover and place on asbestos mat on top of stove until well risen, then uncover and set in the oven to dry. Try it with a heated silver knife thrust in the middle. When done, cut across the middle, fold and turn out, dust with ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... instinct. Gorged to repletion, they slept, or wasted their substance with the improvidence of jungle-beasts. And these were the men Chloe Elliston had pictured labouring joyously in the upbuilding of homes! Once more the feeling of hopelessness came over her—seemed smothering, stifling her. And a great wave of longing carried her back to the land of her own people—the land ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the lounge, stained horribly with what I then thought to be blood, but which I afterwards found to be wine. Vengeance spoke in those ropes and in the carefully spread-out cards, and murder in the smothering pillow. The vengeance of one who had watched her corroding influence eat the life out of my honour and whose love for our little Roger was such that any deed which ensured his continued presence in ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... a round-cheeked boy again, smothering his kitten in his pinafore, prattling of Red Riding Hood by his school-mistress's knee, and guddling ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... it caught and absorbed the hostile bombardment. Under me the platform seemed heated. My little Erentz motors ran with ragged pulse. I got too much oxygen; my head roared with it. Spots danced before my closed eyes. Then not enough oxygen. I was dully smothering.... ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... burned itself out in Spain. The peninsula had for its ruler a prince who sought his glory in smothering free thought among his own people, and in wasting his immense resources in vain efforts to repress it also outside of his own dominions through all Europe. From that hour, Spain became benumbed and estranged from all the advances of science ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... saddle gingerly, patronized nature askance; and he saw across the flooded meadow where the river sand had piled its smothering blanket—which phenomenon he was guiltily aware ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in the secret stairway," Alan said, smothering his laughter. "He's too fat to get through!" He crept to the edge and peeped down the hole. There, far below, he could see the top of Angus's head and ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
