"Stifled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not strong enough to live down the opposition in Dexter. It seems that, after all your kindness to me, I might have stayed and made you and Aunt Hester happy for the rest of your days.' Bless that boy! 'But the air stifled me. I could not breathe in it. Now that I am away, I can look back and see it all—my mistakes and my shortcomings; for my horizon is broader and I can see clearer. I have learned to know what pleasure is, and it has been like a stimulant to me. I have been given ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... spirit of the time had admitted of it, that they should have left the men of merit to themselves! The period of the Restoration has the credit of being a liberal one; yet we should certainly not like to live now under a regime which warped such a genius as Cuvier, stifled with paltry compromises the keen mind of M. Cousin, and retarded the growth of criticism by half a century. The concessions which had to be made to the court, to society, and to the clergy, were far worse than the petty annoyances ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Mexican part of the viceroyalty of New Spain the cry of independence raised by Morelos and his bands of Indian followers had been stifled by the capture and execution of the leader. But the cause of independence was not dead even if its achievement was to be entrusted to other hands. Eager to emulate the example of their brethren in South America, small parties of Spaniards and Creoles fought to overturn ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... senselessly credited with essential orthodoxy. "The stone which the builders rejected became the headstone of the corner," the terror of the pulpit its text. Carlyle's decease was marked by a dirge of rhapsodists whose measureless acclamations stifled the voice of sober criticism. In the realm of contemporary English prose he has left no adequate successor; [Footnote: The nearest being the now foremost prose writers of our time, Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude.] the throne that does not pass by primogeniture is ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... instant of victory Harry's injured right foot gave out under him. With a stifled groan he sank down just as he ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... Hence, it was obvious to infer that some incidents of his life were reflected on by him with regret; and that, since these incidents were carefully concealed, and even that regret which flowed from them laboriously stifled, they had not been merely disastrous. The secrecy that was observed appeared not designed to provoke or baffle the inquisitive, but was prompted by the shame or ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Messiah to Come?—Many stifled their inward promptings to a belief in Jesus as the Messiah, by the objection that all prophecies relating to His coming pointed to Bethlehem as His birthplace, and Jesus was of Galilee. Others rejected Him because they had been taught that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... uttered a stifled cry, so sharp and so anguished that an old lady in the next seat, who was drinking a glass of milk, dropped it and had to refund the railway company thirty-five cents for breakages. For the remainder of the journey she sat with one eye warily ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... securely about his ankles by George Warren, and made fast in sailor fashion, rendered him further helpless; while, at the same time, a long strip of cloth, procured by Young Joe for the purpose, and swathed about his head, stifled his roars of rage and fright. Red Bull, the great Indian chief, the terror of the plains, was most assuredly a captive—an astounded and helpless Indian, if ever there ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... above Richard. A door banged, there was a rush of light-running feet along the upper hall, closely followed by the tread of heavier ones. A burst of the gayest laughter was succeeded by certain deep grunts, punctuated by little noises as of panting breath and half-stifled merriment. It was easy to determine that a playful scuffle of some sort was going on overhead, which seemed to end only after considerable inarticulate but easily translatable protest on the part ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... that Unionists complain of its going through! Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule. The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the old lady had already stopped useless bewailing and was praying heartily, like one who knew well where help was to be found. Rose went and knelt down at her knee, laying her face on the clasped hands in her lap, and for a few minutes neither wept nor spoke. Then a stifled sob broke from the girl, and Aunt Plenty gathered the young head in her arms, saying, with the slow tears of age trickling down her own withered cheeks: "Bear up, my lamb, bear up. The good Lord won't take him from us I am sure and that brave ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... was walking his beat about half-past one this morning, he heard a cry for help, which was evidently stifled. He ran towards the spot whence he thought the sound came, and as he neared the bridge he saw three men apparently engaged in a desperate struggle. He sounded his rattle for assistance; two of them, who evidently had been garroting and robbing the third, ran, leaving him lying motionless on ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... made my way to Brantme in the neighbouring valley of the Dronne—a tributary of the Isle, which nobody who has not stifled the love of beauty in his soul can see without feeling the sweet and winning charm of its gracious influence. Between the two valleys are some fifteen miles of chalky hills almost bare of trees, a dreary track to cross at any time, but especially detestable when the dust lies ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... bankrupt; he no longer believed that alms could cure the sufferings of mankind, he awaited naught but a frightful catastrophe, fire and massacre, which would sweep away the guilty, condemned world. His cassock, too, stifled him, a lie alone kept it on his shoulders, the idea, unbelieving priest though he was, that he could honestly and chastely watch over the belief of others. The problem of a new religion, a new hope, such as was needful to ensure the peace of the coming democracies tortured him, but ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... them the truth of what he had said; and they consented. When he had made the necks of the jugs and filled them with pitch, he said, "Now, jump out," but they could not. It was now his turn to deride; so he rolled them about and laughed greatly, while their half-stifled screams rent the air. When he had sported with them in this way until he was tired, he killed them with his magical ball. "Aha," said he, "you are bottled in your own jugs. I am on my way to kill the Sun; in good time I shall learn how. A'-nier ti-tik'-a-nump kaiwk-ai'-gar." ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... into the house; I rushed upstairs into the room that is Eunice's and mine; I locked the door, and then I gave way to my rage, before it stifled me. I stamped on the floor, I clinched my fists, I cast myself on the bed, I reviled that hateful woman by every hard word that I could throw at her. Oh, the luxury of ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... considerable revival. The tale-teller of adventure, like his ancestor the epic poet, requires a certain haziness of atmosphere; he must have elbow room for his inventive faculty; and he is liable to be stifled in the flood of lucid narrative and inflexible facts let loose upon recent events in our day by complete histories, personal memoirs, public documents, war correspondence, and all-pervading journalism. This is probably the main reason why the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, which broke for ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the last remnants of Trent's self-possession. "Haven't you, by God!" he exclaimed, rising with a violent movement and advancing a step towards her. "Then I am going to show you that human passion is not always stifled by the smell of money. I am going to end the business—my business. I am going to tell you what I dare say scores of better men have wanted to tell you, but couldn't summon up what I have summoned up—the infernal cheek to do it. They were ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... where the long-extinguished embers used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter part of the hearth, might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful; but we get a depressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have been the gathering-place of the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retirement, but old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... she was wrapped stifled her, and the weight of her own hair under the wig and sombrero made her head ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... successful men in that line: they don't ask its use; on the contrary, it's all they need; some will keep their tongues wagging twenty years together, and always in one direction.... That's what comes of self-confidence and conceit! I had that too, conceit—indeed, even now it's not altogether stifled.... But what was wrong was that—I say again, I'm not an original person—I stopped midway: nature ought to have given me far more conceit or none at all. But at first I felt the change a very hard one; moreover, my stay abroad too had utterly drained my resources, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the landlord, in a stifled voice. "You infernal rascal. I never set eyes on you till I saw you the other day on the quay at Burnsea, and, just for an innercent little joke like with Ned Clark, asked you to come in ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, and all the stifled intelligence of Great Britain will beat in vain against the national passion for the ordinary. Britain, in the guise of Sir Edward Grey, will come to the congress like a family solicitor among the Gods. What is the good of shamming about ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a strange stifled voice, "never that—never while I wear the shackles of humanity!" She sank suddenly down in a low seat, and buried her face in her hands. "Oh," she cried, faintly, "if I could tell you—if I only dared; but I cannot! My bondage is deeper—my chains are heavier. Sometimes I think ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... showed how much he felt. Springing at once on the broken carriage, and seizing an axe from the hand of a man who appeared exhausted by his efforts, he began to cut through the planking so as to get at the interior. At intervals a half-stifled voice was ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... short, they have more of reflective composition and less of spontaneous effusion about them. This, however, must not be taken too literally. There are exceptions, partial and total. The "native wood-notes wild" make themselves often heard, only they are almost as often stifled in the close air of the study. Strange to say, the last opus (63) of mazurkas published by Chopin has again something of the early freshness and poetry. Schumann spoke truly when he said that some poetical trait, something new, was to be ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... fast. He played and studied, worked and sang, just as before, and few suspected any change; but there was one and Aunt Jo saw it for she watched over the boy with her whole heart, trying to fill John's place in her poor way. He seldom spoke of his loss, but Aunt Jo often heard a stifled sobbing in the little bed at night; and when she went to comfort him, all his cry was, "I want my father! oh, I want my father!" for the tie between the two had been a very tender one, and the child's heart ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... tell them about me! You couldn't be so cruel!" The words came almost fiercely, yet with a sound like a stifled sob. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... this disobedience. You have inspired me with a tender passion, but if you don't share my feelings my love for you shall be stifled at its birth. There are two beds here, as you see; you can choose which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the road, joyously using their heavy quirts on the Major's thoroughbreds. Skytail's horse being hurried top much, blundered his take-off, hit above the knees and rolled over on the Chief, who was sitting tight. There was a stifled grunt and then the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... was my observation about the coupling? Dan Merion would make her Irish all over. And she has a vein of Spanish blood in her; for he had; and she's got the colour.—But you spoke of their coupling—or I did. Oh, a man can hold his own with an English roly-poly mate: he's not stifled! But a woman hasn't his power of resistance to dead weight. She's volatile, she's frivolous, a rattler and gabbler—haven't I heard what they say of Irish girls over there? She marries, and it's the end of her sparkling. She must choose at home ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... When scarce begun to flow.—To make a man Not, as I see, degraded from the mould I came from, nor compared to those about, And then to throw your own flesh to the dogs!— Why not at once, I say, if terrified At the prophetic omens of my birth, Have drown'd or stifled me, as they do whelps Too costly ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... but I instructed them to lie, as the sailors do, diagonally, and swinging the hammock, and told them that brave Swiss boys might sleep as the sailors of all nations were compelled to sleep. After some stifled sighs and groans, all sank to rest except myself, kept awake by anxiety for the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... what a glimpse it gives us of the conditions of His earthly life, and how wonderful it makes that love which, though it was hampered, was never stifled by the presence of scorn and malice and of hatred. He is our Brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; and even when the divinity within was in possession of the power of working the miracle, the humanity in which it dwelt felt the presence of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... through life, self-love unfortunately whispering into my ear that nature had perhaps mapped out a poet's career for me. But what can we do, my friends? Let us pity one another, and be content. So long as love for science is not stifled within us, we may hope on." Surely, his love for learning never diminished. On the contrary, his zeal for philosophic studies grew, and with it his reputation in the learned world of Berlin. The Jewish thinker ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of a sandaled foot approaching reached his ears. He trembled violently, fear stifled him, his sight grew dim. Well, it was over, no doubt. He pressed himself into a niche and, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to approach with wariness, and to heed the smallest token which might bespeak their condition. I crept along the path, bending my ear forward to catch any sound that might arise. I heard nothing but the half-stifled sobs ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... he stifled a smile. But the calling of the hounds by their names broke down his guard. Angioletto shrilled them out in ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... labor and materials—that great industry began to fall away. Initiative on the part of those in charge became chilled, the free flow of investment capital was halted, creative ability was stopped, growth was stifled, ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... A stifled exclamation came from the Dona Lucrezia. I have never seen more sadness nor yet more hatred on a human face than hers displayed. I have said that she was not thoroughbred. She arose now, proud as ever, it is true, but vicious. She declined Helena von Ritz's outstretched hand, and swept us a curtsey. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... propensity for napping even in a morning, I opened the door of the boudoir, and closed it again after me as noiselessly as possible. My precautions, however, did not seem to have been necessary, for at first sight the room appeared untenanted; but as I turned to look for my writing-case a stifled sob met my ear, and a closer inspection enabled me to perceive the form of Clara Saville, with her face buried in the cushions, half-sitting, half-reclining on the sofa, while so silently had I effected my entrance that as yet she was not ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the way to the top, shouted down a stifled command, and a short grappling-ladder, fitted at one end with a pair of spiked iron hooks, was passed to him. Then he toiled upward until his feet rested on the third rung from the top; here he turned, setting ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... advisers of the crown thought no longer of anything but getting speedily rid of the presence of the estates, so as to be free from the trouble of maintaining the discussion with them. The deputies saw through the device; their speeches were stifled, and the necessity of replying was eluded. "My lord chancellor," said they, at an interview on the 2d of March, 1484, "if we are not to have a hearing, why are we here? Why have you summoned us? Let us withdraw. If you behave thus, you do not require our ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... they keep us from rising above the level of grosser things. They hold us down to the dull, tedious monotony of worldly cares, aims, purposes. Like birds withheld from flight into the pure regions of the upper air by cruel, frightening cords, we fluttering go, stifled amid the vapors men have spread, and panting for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over its banks; lane, garden, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... woman, and Dolores wearing a certain crimson ulster, which she had bought in Auckland for her homeward voyage, and which her cousins had chosen to dub as "the Maori." After a good deal of jostling and much scent of beer and bad tobacco they achieved an entrance, and sat upon a hard bench, half stifled with the odours, to which were added those of human and equine nature and of paraffin. As to the performance, Dolores was too much absorbed in looking out for Ludmilla, together with the fear that Miss Hackett might either faint or grow desperate, and come away, to attend much to it; ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cold, they made their way back to the old mansion. Many a slip marked the way, and many a stifled cry escaped from the girls in spite of their determination to ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... a stifled moan, and when Edith dared to steal a look at him she saw that his brown hair was moist with perspiration, which stood also in drops ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... he expressed his preference for the essay over the treatise: "an essay where the writer throws me one or two ideas of genius, almost isolated, rather than a treatise where the precious gems are stifled beneath a mass of iteration.... A man had only one idea; the idea demanded no more than a phrase; this phrase, full of marrow and meaning, would have been seized with relish; washed out in a deluge of words, it wearies and disgusts."[169] Rousseau ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... to the same friend: "My life has been until now marked only by profound griefs and stifled wishes. The blood of Napoleon rebels in my veins, in not being able to flow for the national glory. Until the present time there has been nothing remarkable in my life, excepting my birth. The sun of glory shone upon my cradle. Alas! ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... had been unjust. Remorse, no doubt, would come afterwards. At present the mere knowledge that she had been unjust was too great a happiness to admit of abatement. She opened her hand and looked at the feather. And as she looked, memories sternly repressed for so long, regrets which she had thought stifled quite out of life, longings which had grown strange, filled all her thoughts. The Devonshire meadows were about her, the salt of the sea was in the air, but she was back again in the midst of that one season at Dublin during a spring ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... more interesting and important than the questions that involve the welfare of all humanity or the destiny of a nation,—an atmosphere seldom stirred by the strong, pure breezes of the mountain and the ocean,—the best thought and impulse of which humanity is capable is stifled in its birth, or if it comes forth feels the overshadowing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... sunny South boiled in my veins ... boiled over, when I learnt, on referring to the visitors' list, that Penelope Anne was the relict of the short-breath'd—I mean short-lived but virtuous—Knox, who had left her his entire fortune. All my long-stifled passion returned—the passion which the existence of a Wiggins, her first, had not quenched, which the ephemeral life of a Knox had not extinguished, a passion which I have felt for her before I knew that the blue ink—I mean the blue blood, of the Hidalgos ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... anxiety, and dread, that, to me, seemed insupportable. I durst not cry—I durst not complain; and to inquire of them the fate of my friends (even if I could have mustered resolution) was beyond my ability, as I could not speak their language, nor they understand mine. My only relief was in silent stifled sobs. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... swollen, black surface, with no eyes, nose nor mouth. Some of the wounded lay on beds, others in the middle of the floor or wherever there was space, and each was holding up hands burned to the bone. The room was dimly lighted, a hushed quiet reigned except for an occasional stifled groan of pain or a sigh of concern from the villagers or the swish of the black garments of those ministering angels, the nuns, as they fluttered about among the suffering; their white coifs, like a halo, contrasting them with that other Angel, whose black wings, indeed ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... some three days had passed since the letter had come—as Eugen and I sat alone, it struck me that I heard a weary turning over in the little bed in the next room, and a stifled sob coming distinctly to my ears. I lifted my head. Eugen had heard too; he was looking, with an expression of pain and indecision, toward the door. With a vast effort—the greatest my regard for him had yet ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Walter Towne stifled a yawn. "Perhaps you didn't understand us. The men are agitating for a meeting of the board of directors. We want to be at that meeting. That's the only thing we're ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... and the cavern fill with flames, we must rush out, lads, rather than be stifled; and we may be pretty sure of knocking over four or five Redskins, if they stop to give us the chance," said Samson, who had not for a moment lost his calm manner. "It may be the smoke won't be more than we can bear. See! I am prepared for everything." He pointed to a mass of woodwork, which ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the roots of her hair. She choked with joy, she choked with pain. His belief in her purity stifled her. She could not speak now—she could not reveal herself. There was a moment of silence, and then in ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... was shining upon him through a rift in the wall. The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave an exclamation ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... personal liberty in accord with the awakening consciousness of this new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving principle of the present age, the whole human race's just claim. It is something that cannot be stamped out, or stifled, or gagged, or suppressed by ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... with the joy of children. In these few days I noted a vast change in the girl. Her cheeks, pale as the petals of the wild orchid, seemed to steal the tints of the briar-rose, and her eyes beaconed with the radiance of sun-waked skies. It was as if in the poor child a long stifled capacity for joy was ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... ties to make her look back with regret upon the dwellers of the land in distant places; her youth and maturity had been spent among these very people; so that when I named to her the desire of my parishioners, and she also perceived that my own wishes went with them, she stifled any regretful feeling that might have arisen in her breast, and replied to me ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... to bring the evils of our system before the Public in the story of Mr. Bumpkin. The solicitors, equally with their clients, as a body, would welcome a change which would enable actions to be carried to a legitimate conclusion instead of being stifled by the "Priggs" and "Locusts" who will crawl into an honorable profession. It is impossible to keep them out, but it is not impossible to prevent their using the profession to the injury of their clients. All respectable solicitors ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... awful duel, the duel of invisible, audible shapes; of things that shrieked and raved, mingling thin, feminine cries with low, stifled curses and indistinguishable words. Round and round the room, footsteps chasing footsteps in the ghastly night, now away by Tom's bed, now rushing swiftly down the great room until I felt the flash of swirling drapery on my hard lips. Round and round, turning and twisting till my ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... that teaching could do for a man was done, and to a great extent in vain. For though he worked with great conscientiousness, fancy and feeling were either originally lacking, or they were overlaid and stifled by his excess of culture and severe education. The most successful of his works are portraits, in which masterly treatment makes up to some extent for the absence of originality and subtle sympathy. But in his ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... hours at Lac Bain; and the knowledge that he had surrendered to himself, that in going from Lac Bain he was leaving all that the world held for him in the way of woman and love, drew his breath from him in another broken, stifled cry. ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... we reached the glass door of the first classe. It stood open, like all other doors that night; we passed, and then I was ushered into a small cabinet, dividing the first classe from the grand salle. This cabinet dazzled me, it was so full of light: it deafened me, it was clamorous with voices: it stifled me, it was so ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... impression which I had felt the night before, of there being too many trees at Blackwater. The house is stifled by them. They are, for the most part, young, and planted far too thickly. I suspect there must have been a ruinous cutting down of timber all over the estate before Sir Percival's time, and an angry anxiety on the part of the next possessor to fill up all the gaps as thickly and rapidly ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... feasts everlasting, Around the gold tables Still dwell the immortals. From mountain to mountain They stride; while ascending From fathomless chasms The breath of the Titans, Half-stifled with anguish, Like volumes of incense ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to Abimelech, "She is my sister." For when Abimelech asked Abraham why he said of his wife, She is my sister; he replied, saying, "I thought surely the fear of God is not in this place, and they will slay me for my wife's sake" (Gen 20:11). I thought verily that in this place men had stifled and choked that light of nature that is in them, at least so far forth as not to suffer it to put them in fear, when their lusts were powerful in them to accomplish their ends on the object that was present before them. But this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a stifled laugh at the ridiculous and puritanical figure which presented itself like a starved anatomy to the company, and whispered at the same time into Lord ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... communications from his Master to fill up this blank. I cannot write for weeping; now my face is so swelled I cannot go to church. I called at his house this morning, found the doctors in the parlor, and learned from them the worst. The bell was ringing for church. I stifled as much as possible my grief; would fain have come home to give it vent, but durst not be absent from the house of God. I heard a stranger in Dr. Rodgers' church; our doors are closed; his text was, 'Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends;' he ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Pauline, come back from church, fainted almost with terror as she opened it and saw before her her haggard hussar. He looked as pale as the midnight dragoon who came to disturb Leonora. Pauline would have screamed, but that her cry would have called her masters, and discovered her friend. She stifled her scream, then, and leading her hero into the kitchen, gave him beer, and the choice bits from the dinner, which Jos had not had the heart to taste. The hussar showed he was no ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh and beer ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his hands, in order to master him, and retain, by subduing his attendant, the possession of his faculties, so that he might know whither he was going. It was a vain attempt. The eyes of the mulatto flashed from the darkness. The fellow uttered a cry which his fury stifled in his throat, released himself, threw back De Marsay with a hand like iron, and nailed him, so to speak, to the bottom of the carriage; then with his free hand, he drew a triangular dagger, and whistled. The coachman ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... run no further risk of losing the mysterious liquid the skeptical Don Juan replaced it in the drawer of the little Gothic table. At this solemn moment he heard a tumult in the corridor. There were confused voices, stifled laughter, light footsteps, the rustle of silk, in short, the noise of a merry troop trying to collect itself in some sort of order. The door opened and the prince, the seven women, the friends of Don Juan and the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... desire for it. I could never pass it without a shudder, for though it was not so much a place of execution as a prison, yet so terrible a place was it that many a prisoner has joyfully emerged from its dark walls to the scaffold. It has witnessed the death of many a poor man and woman, stifled with its foul air, its horrid associations, and the future with which it terrified its inmates. Many a noble heart has been broken in its damp and dimly-lighted cells, for it has existed for many centuries. As early as 1400 it was the scene of wholesale ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... find Favour return again more kind, And in restraint who stifled lie Shall taste the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... years longer, and I really think my being there had something to do with maintaining its tottering reputation. I was almost the only lad in the school whose parents were alive and at hand and in a good position, and my father's name stifled scandal. Most of the others were orphans, being cheaply educated by distant relatives or guardians, or else the sons of poor widows who were easily bamboozled by Snuffy's fluent letters, and the religious leaflets which it was his custom ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... obstinate wilfulness of a nature averse from God, and the yet deeper-lying longings of a soul that flames with the consciousness of God, and yearns for rest and peace. To the sense of sin, to the sense of sorrow, to the conscience never wholly stifled, to the desires after good never utterly eradicated and never slaked by aught besides itself, does this mighty word come. Not to this or that sort of man, not to men in this or that phase of progress, age of the world, or stage of civilisation, does it address ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tom's school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full of exercises and problems, in which the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... that I can say to him, he has fixed the day for the twenty-first—in two days more! I have done all I could to put it off; I have insisted on every possible delay. Oh, if you knew——!" Her rising agitation stifled her utterance at the moment. "I mustn't waste the precious minutes; I must get back before Oscar returns," she went on, rallying again. "Oh, my old friend, you are never at a loss; you always know what to do! Find ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... A stifled sob startled him. He turned. On the next pallet a young fellow lay face downward, and muffled his weeping in the coarse blanket. For an hour Zaidos listened. The shaken breathing and occasional sobs continued. Zaidos could stand it no longer. He reached over ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... the true object and aim of the temporary life on earth, that the relief from the too strenuous pressure of affairs must be found. The human soul is so constituted that it cannot live unless it breathes its native air of inspiration and joy and divineness. It is stifled in the "strenuous" lower life, its energies are paralyzed unless it seek renewal at the divine springs. It is this strenuousness of latter-day life, unrelieved by love and by prayer; unrelieved by the spiritual luxury of loving service and outgoing thought; this strenuous attitude, intent on ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... rose up to my nose and stifled me. And I no longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, scared as if in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... became impatient for the test. Since through such strain, maidenly scruples had been stifled, I felt equal to any ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... proconsul pass by with but a careless glance of uninterested scrutiny—for dignitaries were too common to excite much curiosity—pressed tumultuously and with frantic eagerness around the heavy cage, exulting in each half-stifled roar from within as though it were a strain of sweet music—and thus followed the van until it arrived at the amphitheatre and passed out of sight through one of the deep, low arches leading to the tiers of grated ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... naked under summer sun or in winter cold, chained in mines, men and women alike, and when the whim came, massacred in troops, sounded at intervals a voice demanding the liberty denied. It was quickly stifled. The record is there for all to read; stifled again and again, from Drimakos the Chian slave to Spartacus at Rome, yet each protest from this unknown army of martyrs was one step onward toward the emancipation to come. In ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... shells open with the help of its strong tube-feet. The whelk and his cousins know how to bore a hole in the shell, and suck out the helpless Oyster. Then there are certain sponges, with the strange habit of making holes in shells, and living in and on them. Sometimes the Oysters are stifled in their "beds" by other Oysters settling and growing over them. Thick masses of Mussels may cling to them and suffocate them. And grains of sand sometimes get in the hinges of their shells, so that they cannot close up the house when ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... neck and spine; and the Night Hawk's hatchet flew, severing the thread of life far him and hurling him on his face. Instantly the young Oneida leaped upon the dead man's shoulders, pulled back his heavy head, and tore the scalp off with a stifled cry of triumph. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... seminary that each letter must first be written out carefully on a slate, inspected by Deborah Moulson, then copied with care, inspected again, and finally sent out after four or five days of preparation, all spontaneity was stifled and her letters were stilted and overvirtuous. This censorship left its mark, and years later she confessed, "Whenever I take my pen in hand, I always seem ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Time comes! Gone who so swift as he? Add but a year, 'tis half a century Since the slave's stifled moaning broke my sleep, Heard 'gainst my will in that seclusion deep, Haply heard louder for the silence there, And so my fancied safeguard made my snare. After that moan had sharpened to a cry, And a cloud, hand-broad ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and potato-garden, is presented to us in a less fascinating light, owing possibly, in part, to the fact that Mr. B. does not like onions, and was nearly stifled on his return by the odor of that nutritious esculent under battened hatchways. But he sees a great deal to delight sound travellers, and objects mainly in behalf of the sick to the climate, which is only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... hardly help calling out to his dear little Carloman; but he remembered the peril of Osmond's eyes and the Queen's threat, and held his peace, with some vague notion that some day he would make Carloman King of France. In the meantime, half stifled with the straw, he felt himself carried on, down the steps, across the court; and then he knew, from the darkness and the changed sound of Osmond's tread, that they were in the stable. Osmond laid him carefully down, and whispered—"All right ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the obligations of Article VIII under the International Monetary Fund (IMF), providing for full currency convertibility. However, strict currency controls and tightening of borders have lessened the effects of convertibility and have also led to some shortages that have further stifled economic activity. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Castilian cities not only remained unimpaired, but seemed to acquire additional stability with age. This circumstance is chiefly imputable to the constancy of the national legislature, which, until the voice of liberty was stifled by a military despotism, was ever ready to interpose its protecting arm in defence of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... was to encounter? I ran to the open door, and entered. No fire! only those few dull ashes. What did it mean? "Boys," I cried, "boys, where are you?" No reply. "Boys! Langdon! Vidocq! Bar!" and there came from near me a stifled answer, as if the speaker was but half awake. Trembling violently, I struck a match, and beheld John Bar, lying almost at my feet in a bundle of furs, and a pool of blood by him, and four other figures in everyday garments, without any other covering, stretched in different attitudes on the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... less easy there, as we could make some sort of a fight at the head of the stairway, or, if the worst came to the worst, dive from the parapet and break our necks. We kept watch turn and turn about. During my watch about midnight I heard a noise going on in the hut behind us; scuffling and a stifled cry which turned my blood cold. About an hour later a fire was lighted in the centre of the market-place where the sheep had been sacrificed, and by the flare of it I could see people moving. But what they did I could not see, which was perhaps ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... possible development of canals has been neglected and, to a certain extent, stifled by railway building. The Erie Canal, built before the advent of the railway, connects Lake Erie with tide-water at Albany, a distance of 387 miles. For many years it was the chief means of traffic between the Mississippi ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... grown very small toward the end. It trailed off into a stifled but unmistakable sniff. And a moment later, when she ceased fumbling with the reins and glanced with resolute brightness up at him, the film of hot tears in his eyes brought her hands to her throat. But even then in the face of ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... The words were stifled in his throat. A chair overturned with a crash; a great body struck him on the chest; a hot, pestilent breath volleyed in his face, and wolfish teeth were reaching ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... to pray, And teach, the House of Commons Way? Where had they all their gifted phrases, 635 But from our CALAMYS and CASES? Without whose sprinkling and sowing, Who e'er had heard of NYE or OWEN? Their dispensations had been stifled, But for our ADONIRAM BYFIELD; 640 And had they not begun the war, Th' had ne'er been sainted, as they are: For Saints in peace degenerate, And dwindle down to reprobate; Their zeal corrupts, like standing water, 645 In th' intervals of war ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... cried. "I am safe now. Take me away,—out of this horrible place! Take me into the woods,—anywhere. Only do not let me be burnt here,—stifled like a rat. Give me air! Give me water!" And she clung to him so madly, that Hereward, as he held her in his arms, and gazed on her extraordinary beauty, forgot Torfrida for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... stifled exclamation as his wandering foot descended on hers before she could get it out of the way. Mr. Cracknell interpreted the ejaculation as a protest against the sweeping harshness of his last remark, and ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... shirt; but my head grew worse. My eyes too were affected in a strange manner. I continually fancied that I saw ships sailing about at a little distance from me, and I strove to attract their attention by calling to them. My voice was weak, and I could create only a kind of half-stifled cry. Then I thought I beheld land: fair forests and green pastures spread before me—bright flowers and refreshing fruits grew all around—and I called to my companion to make haste, for we were running ashore and should presently be pulling the clustering ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Lady Helena's stifled sobbing filled the room. "Oh, my child! my child!" she cried; "what madness is this, and for ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere—as if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... other hellish deeds; which shows that he had no steady ideas as to wherein the true secret of tragic terror lies: he here strives to reach it by overfilling the senses; whereas its proper method stands in the joint working of the moral and imaginative powers, which are rather stifled than kindled by causing the senses to "sup full of horrors." The piece, however, abounds in quick and caustic wit; in some parts there is a good share of dialogue as distinguished from speech-making; and the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... we are moving! This stifling heat, penetrating through the partitions of the projectile, is produced by its friction on the atmospheric strata. It will soon diminish, because we are already floating in space, and after having nearly stifled, we shall have to suffer ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the Senestro knew just a bit more. It was a whirling mass of legs and bodies in continuous convulsion, silent except for the terrible panting of the men, and the low, stifled ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... came in. I got, with much difficulty, out of my hammock, having first ventured to draw back the slip-board on the roof, already mentioned, contrived on purpose to let in air, for want of which I found myself almost stifled. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... classes of England to popular liberty, and by the secret desire entertained of regaining that sovereignty over the provinces which had been refused ten years before by Elizabeth, was at length set aside. The republic, which might have been stifled at its birth, was now a formidable fact, and could neither be annexed to the English dominions nor deprived of its existence as a new member ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... could get a job in some other woman's home, and work fourteen hours a day for it. But, Joe, 'tis not more drudgery I want, 'tis somethin' fair to look upon—somethin' of my own!" She flung out her arms suddenly like one being stifled. "Oh, I want somethin' ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... maiden! What will become of her now? I fear the impressions that have been made on her will soon be stifled in the poisonous atmosphere into which she is gone. And I cannot bear to think of her as a lost soul, with that face so like ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the whole, a certain cosmopolitan character. All shades of opinion were represented, and social brilliancy was the end sought, not the triumph of special ideas. It is indeed true that earnest convictions were, to some extent, stifled in the salons, where charm and intelligence counted for so much, and the sterling qualities of character for so little. But the etiquette, the urbanity, the measure, which assured the outward harmony of a society that courted distinction of every kind, were quite ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... decorated, basins of marble, and the cellar still intact, with amphorae, inside of which were still a few drops of wine not yet dried up, the place where lay the poor suffocated family—seventeen skeletons surprised there together by death. The fine ashes that stifled them having hardened with time, retain the print of a young girl's bosom. It was this strange mould, which is now kept at the museum, that inspired the Arria Marcella of Theophile Gautier—that author's masterpiece, perhaps, but ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... Mark threw open the door of the clock case. Too late, she turned to fly; he caught her by the arm and, with a stifled oath, dragged her into ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Thomas Atkyns coming towards us, and fearing to be stifled with compliments, I said—"Your servant, ladies and gentlemen;" and giving my hand to Lord Davers, stept into the chariot, instead of the coach; for people that would avoid bustle, sometimes make it. Finding my mistake, I would ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... recognized its special character, that its course during the period in question exhibits no mere series of lawless oscillations, but a process of development, often checked and retarded, often prematurely hastened, but passing from stage to stage without suffering itself to be stifled by factitious aid or crushed by arbitrary repression. What underlies the history of these events, what distinguishes it from the galvanic agitations of the torpid Spanish populations in Europe and America, is the constant presence and activity of ideas, shaping and shaped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... A stifled exclamation escaped Noemi when reminded of that evening full of memories she could not express. Giovanni took this opportunity of offering hospitality to Benedetto, Don Clemente having told him he intended leaving Jenne that night. They could leave together, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... as if a silence fell Where bides the garnered sheaf, And voices murmuring, "It is well," Are stifled by ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... stifled a groan, for, with the shot, the figure sagged suddenly and dropped to the side of his horse, evidently hit. She heard the insane yell of triumph from the prospector and knew that he was dancing up ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter |
