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Surfeit   /sˈərfət/   Listen
Surfeit

noun
1.
The state of being more than full.  Synonyms: excess, overabundance.
2.
The quality of being so overabundant that prices fall.  Synonyms: glut, oversupply.
3.
Eating until excessively full.  Synonym: repletion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Surfeit" Quotes from Famous Books



... subject to more frequent vicissitudes of heat and cold, from its exposure to the open air, and is in consequence more liable to sensitive association with the stomach than any other part of the surface of the body, because their actions have been more frequently thus associated. Thus in a surfeit from drinking cold water, when a person is very hot and fatigued, an eruption is liable to appear on the face in consequence of this sympathy. In the same manner the rosy eruption on the faces of drunkards more probably arises from the sympathy of the face with the stomach, rather ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... have no more complaints about shadows. We are in a fair way, through you, to surfeit ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... it from veracious witnesses," Bame snuffled, "that the death of Robert Greene Was caused by a surfeit, sir, of Rhenish wine And pickled herrings. Also, sir, that his shirt Was very foul, and while it was at wash He lay i' the cobbler's old blue smock, sir!" "Gods," The voice of Raleigh muttered nigh mine ear, "I had a dirty cloak once on my arm; But a Queen's feet had trodden it! Drawer, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... that those should enjoy it by whose blood and labour it had been won. The patricians rejected the proposal with scorn: some even complained that the once vigorous spirit of Caeso was running riot, and decaying through a surfeit of glory. There were afterward no party struggles in the city. The Latins, however, were harassed by the incursions of the Aequans. Caeso being sent thither with an army, crossed into the territory of the Aequans themselves to lay it waste. The Aequans retired into the towns, and kept ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... afternoon, a few days after the escape of the Dolphin just related, Dumps and Poker lay side by side in the lee-scuppers, calmly sleeping off the effects of a surfeit produced by the eating of a large piece of pork, for which the cook had searched in vain for three-quarters of an hour, and of which he at last found the bare bone sticking in the hole of the ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... are, it will not be the fault of the old agencies, in which Kingsley always believed. Church and State are adrift; organised Christianity has abdicated; the aristocracy no longer governs even itself; Parliament has died of a surfeit of its own rules. If fundamental reform is to come, it will be forced upon us by the working class, and (at the pinch) opposed tooth and nail by the privileged. But is it to come? Is the working class deploying for action? In all the miscellaneous ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... them that be maidens, and eke to them that be corrupt; and this sin men clepe pollution, that cometh in four manners;" these four manners being (1) languishing of body from rank and abundant humors, (2) infirmity, (3) surfeit of meat and drink, and (4) villainous thoughts. Four hundred years later, Madame Roland, in her Memoires Particulieres, presented a vivid picture of the anguish produced in an innocent girl's mind by the notion of the sinfulness of erotic dreams. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the regent, "heretic or not heretic makes but small figure. 'Twill take France a century to overcome her late surfeit of religion. For us, 'tis most a question of how to keep the king in the saddle ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... mutual love passion, where two hearts, tenderly and truly united, club to exalt the joy, and give it a spirit and soul that bids defiance to that end which mere momentary desires generally terminate in, when they die of a surfeit of satisfaction! ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... tell you, that though the Eel, thus drest, be not only excellent good, but more harmless than any other way, yet it is certain that physicians account the Eel dangerous meat; I will advise you therefore, as Solomon says of honey, " Hast thou found it, eat no more than is sufficient, lest thou surfeit, for it is not good to eat much honey ". And let me add this, that the uncharitable Italian bids us " give Eels and no wine to our ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... only heard, for they have no such things among them. But they have asked us, what sort of pleasure is it that men can find in throwing the dice? For if there were any pleasure in it, they think the doing of it so often should give one a surfeit of it: and what pleasure can one find in hearing the barking and howling of dogs, which seem rather odious than pleasant sounds? Nor can they comprehend the pleasure of seeing dogs run after a hare, more than of seeing ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... room the privileged passenger by the Ceres, or Juno, or Pallas, stunned and as it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated information imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a tired child to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar and surprising in its pompousness, tell him, as if from another world, how there ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... the most common and one of the greatest errors is to suppose that happiness is to be obtained by the pursuit of pleasure and excitement. The temporary enjoyment created by such is inevitably followed by reaction—lassitude and weariness—and human nature is palled by the surfeit of amusement as much as it is by the luxuries of the table. There cannot be a more humiliating spectacle than that of the man of the world, as he is called, or the woman of fashion or pleasure. Blase is too considerate an expression. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... from the sky,—which to both appeared the sweetest they had ever tasted in their lives. So engrossed were they in its enjoyment, that neither spoke a word until several minutes had elapsed, and both had drunk to a surfeit. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Kyd, Lyly, Lodge, and others, who came up to town and led a Bohemian life as actors and playwrights. Most of them were wild and dissipated, and ended in wretchedness. Peele died of a disease brought on by his evil courses; Greene, in extreme destitution, from a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herring; and Marlowe was stabbed in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... day, we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat. Plethora has filled us with indifference; and we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual opulence. Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scarce be a new page: nobody else shall see it till spring. In the first place, the prints will not be finished: in the next, I intend that two or three other things shall appear before it from my press, of other authors; for I will not surfeit people with my writings, nor have them think that I propose to find employment alone for a whole press—so far from it, I intend to employ ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... your place of inspiration, the place where you learn how you are to serve, the place where you find the bread of life. But the bread of life is meant to feed the hungry, and not to surfeit those already filled, to feed the hungry crowds around you starving for knowledge, that life may be made intelligible and thus tolerable to them; and it is yours to feed the flock of the Great Shepherd, and to help those who, without this Wisdom, are helpless. And all ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... bowed and smiled, manifesting his pleased acquiescence. The dinner was substantial, and in all the dishes there was noticeable the excessive abundance of country banquets, realized at the expense of variety. There was enough to surfeit twice as many persons as sat down to table. The conversation turned on ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... domestic broiled bones—though evidently caused by a momentary surfeit—is dwelt upon by the enraptured Lebrun as a triumphant disproof of the accusations of cruelty and violence, brought against him by the Grimods and his charming wife. "She regrets their quiet suppers! And yet we are told by the Dame Lebrun, and some of her witnesses, that these quiet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... at home, struggling desperately to get away for a day in the country, rising at 5 A. M., standing in line at the station, fanning themselves with blasphemy, and weary before they start. We observe them chased home by thunderstorms or colic, dazed and blistered with sunburn, or groaning with a surfeit of ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... Indians made a raid on the settlements, they abandoned even victory if they had once had enough fighting; as when they had a feast they glutted themselves, and then wasted what they had not eaten. They seemed now to have had such a surfeit of cruelty in the torture of Crawford that they took little trouble to secure Knight for a future holiday. They promised themselves that he should be burnt, too, at the town of the Shawnees, but in their satiety they left him unbound in the charge of a young Indian who was to take him there ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... rolled his greedy eyes like a lizard, And, "all is rightly disposed," said he, "Who conquers wins, for a certainty. The church has of old a famous gizzard, She calls it little whole lands to devour, Yet never a surfeit got to this hour; The church alone, dear ladies; sans question, Can ...
— Faust • Goethe

... dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English communication trenches are narrow—so narrow, indeed, that a man with a pack ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... departed on her voyage accordingly; that is to say, about the 16th of October, 1584, she made sail from Portsmouth, and the 18th day then next following she arrived into Newhaven, where our said last master Deimond by a surfeit died. The factors then appointed the said Andrew Dier, being then master's mate, to be their master for that voyage, who did choose to be his mates the two quarter-masters of the same ship, to wit, Peter Austine and Shillabey, and for purser ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... into a basket and send it to the Hummels. Germans like messes. I'm sick of the sight of this, and there's no reason you should all die of a surfeit because I've been a fool," ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... Temple amenities and solemnities did not agree with Swift. He was half-killed with a surfeit of Shene pippins; and in a garden-seat which he devised for himself at Moor Park, and where he devoured greedily the stock of books within his reach, he caught a vertigo and deafness which punished and tormented him through life. He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... you it is easy to deny the world; because when the bread is bitter it is easy not to linger at the meal; because when the oil is low it is easy to rise with dawn; because when the body is without surfeit or temptation it is easy to rise above earth on the wings of the spirit. Poverty is very terrible to you, and kills your soul in you sometimes; but it is like the northern blast that lashes men into ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... passionate desire, and I could see that I should not have much trouble in gaining my suit. I saw I should have to be careful if I did not want to be taken at my word; I could not bear such a surfeit of pleasures. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Mr. Mardale claimed to have invented a wheel of perpetual rotation. Sir Charles, however, had his impulses of kindness. He knew Mr. Mardale to be an old and gentle person, a little touched in the head perhaps, who with money enough to surfeit every instinct of pleasure, had preferred to live a shy secluded life, busily engaged either in the collection of curiosities or the invention of toy-like futile machines. There was a girl too whom Sir Charles ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,—must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections, and invigorations of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... but consider the contemptible thoughts which the very women they are concerned with, in such cases as these, have of them, it would be a surfeit to them. As I said above, they value not the pleasure, they are raised by no inclination to the man, the passive jade thinks of no pleasure but the money; and when he is, as it were, drunk in the ecstasies ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... or blankets when they bore down on us in long canoes demanding vengeance. They voted for blankets and money, but vowed they would far rather have the bananas, because now their own people would be on short commons to make up for the surfeit of ours. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... stuffed the fruit into its cheeks, monkey-fashion, and then seemed to chew it at leisure. When I left the steamer at Suez it remained in the captain's possession, and seemed to be tame and reconciled to its imprisonment, tempered by a surfeit of plantains. In flying over water they frequently dip down to touch the surface. Jerdon was in doubt whether they did this to drink or not, but McMaster feels sure that they do this in order to drink, and that the habit is not peculiar to the Pteropodidae, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... with food and wine than could the beggar. It might be pleasant to take an added hour or two in bed in the morning, but to lie in bed all day would be an infliction. So it ran indefinitely—this thin selvedge of advantage which money could buy—with deprivation on the one side, and surfeit on the other. Candidly, was it not true that more happiness lay in winning the way out of deprivation, than in inventing safeguards against satiety? The poor man succeeding in making himself rich—at numerous stages of the operation there ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... Shuberts can offer few but musical shows. In fact, neither side seems prepared to supply enough attractions. So altogether this matter seems at present almost hopeless of solution as long as the prevailing dearth of plays and actors and surfeit of theaters make it well-nigh impossible for one-night stands to fare well. In practice both sides to the controversy have been tried and ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... Caterina Sforza-Riario had earlier been granted by her children full administration of their patrimony during their minority. To the defence of this she now addressed herself with all the resolution of her stern nature. Her life had been unfortunate, and of horrors she had touched a surfeit. Her father, Galeazzo Sforza, was murdered in Milan Cathedral by a little band of patriots; her brother Giangaleazzo had died, of want or poison, in the Castle of Pavia, the victim of her ambitious uncle, Lodovico; ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... a surfeit of these internecine brawls for some time to come, and, indeed, stories of dissensions among the servants of the company in the East are plentifully sprinkled throughout its history, both in this century and the next. Of hints for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... nothing; and then there may be some danger of the horse growing resty if he be not used often, so you must give him leave to go to Abingdon once every week, to look out of the tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save any farther trouble by dying, and then you will be troubled to send for your horse again. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... exceed the capacity of a lifetime, has been avaricious of the hours—'labuntur anni', 'pereunt et imputantur' ever in his thoughts: and though the world of old moved slower, the man of business has rarely belied his name. A more plausible explanation is that the custom has died of surfeit. As increased facilities of travel made the world smaller, the circle of those that might be visited and saluted by the active grew boundless; so that on both sides limits were desired. Another consideration is that with new facilities ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... of which we came. But, to say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me that I had eaten a score of mountains, and quaffed as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days,—and the natural consequence was a surfeit. There was scarcely a single place in all our tour where I should not have been glad to spend a month; but, by flitting so quickly from one point to another, I lost all the more recondite beauties, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... surfeit: but it is not for readers to complain; the remedy is easy; nothing forces them to read. It is not any the more for authors to complain. Those who make the crowd must not cry that they are being crushed. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! and if one read profitably, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... ceremony, gentlemen," she exclaimed in her musical voice, hastening toward them. "I detest all formalities. I have had a surfeit of them in Vienna, and intend to breathe natural air here in the country, without 'fuss or feathers,' with no incense save that which rises from burning tobacco! This is why I avoided your parade out yonder on the highway. I want nothing ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... fair gifts with calumnious stroke. But might I, fed with silent meditation, Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation— Improbus Labor, which my spirits hath broke— I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit: Fling in more days than went to make the gem That crown'd the white top of Methusalem: Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit, Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls a concert. But most part of the time my wife keeps herself buried ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... now induces me to lay down my Pen. My Thoughts and Desires, I must own, are turn'd to Solitude and rural Pleasures. The Man, who desires to have his Body in Health, should rise from Table with some Remains of Appetite, and not be covetous of gorging to Satiety: So a Writer, who would not wish to surfeit the Town, should submit to give over Writing, before they begin to think he has ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want, of wounds, of cares, of great men's oppressions, of captivity, whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure as kings. Can we therefore surfeit on this delicate ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that, whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard; and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no. Look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept threescore and fifteen ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... Brinsley, who 'was very severe in his life and conversation, and did breed up many scholars for the universities; in religion he was a strict Puritan.' 'In the fourteenth year of my age, about Michaelmas, I got a surfeit, and thereupon a fever, by eating beechnuts.' 'In the sixteenth year of my age I was exceedingly troubled in my dreams concerning my salvation and damnation, and also concerning the safety and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... A wretch for murder doom'd, who e'en when fix'd, Calleth him back, whence death awhile delays. He shouted: "Ha! already standest there? Already standest there, O Boniface! By many a year the writing play'd me false. So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth, For which thou fearedst not in guile to take The lovely lady, and then mangle her?" I felt as those who, piercing not the drift Of answer made them, stand as if expos'd In mockery, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... peculiar calf binding, with its red label, declared at once the contents to be law and by the dry formal cut of the exterior gave little invitation to reading. The very outside of a law library is repulsive; the continuity of that eternal buff leather gives one a surfeit by anticipation, and makes one mentally exclaim in despair, "Heavens! how can any one hope to get all that into his head?" The only plain honest thing about law is the outside of the books where it is laid down—there all is ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... d'Escars suddenly awoke, and found himself alarmingly indisposed. He rang the bells of his apartment, when his servant came in, and his physicians were sent for; but they were of no avail, for he was dying of a surfeit. In his last moments he caused some of his attendants to go and inquire whether his majesty was not suffering in a similar manner with himself, but they found him sleeping soundly and quietly. In the morning, when the king was informed of the sad catastrophe of his faithful friend and servant, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... surfeit, which is the worst of monotonies, eagerly would the prince have joined the revolting troops, detachments of which he could perceive from the walls of the Kutub hastening along the sun-scorched ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... one way whilst the other tugged in the opposite direction; and the observer could almost have supposed that the burden itself might have been parted in twain by the treatment to which it was subjected—the incident affording a new application of the remark that a surfeit of zeal is destructive of the best intentions. The nature of the bodies which the ants seemed so excessively anxious to preserve from injury was readily determined. The oval bodies, resembling grains of corn, were the pupae or chrysalides ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... of us supped full with horrors this last year or so, and I have no thought of adding to the surfeit. But sometimes common accidents appear exceptional, if they befall ourselves, or those with whom we are intimate. If the sufferer has any special identity, we speculate on his peculiar way of bearing his misfortune; and are thus led on to place ourselves ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... to a laudable end:— The general has his star; Shylock his four per cent; The contractor's wife a costly gem To enhance her vulgar charms; The mother a harvest of tears; The wife a broken heart; The unborn babe a prenatal curse; While I have my surfeit ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... it. Men who live lives that are complete in the fullest sense of the term have a natural craving for glowing hues, and may find Velazquez dull if they come to the Prado from the Academy of Venice; but unless their tastes have become wholly vitiated, unless their eyes are suffering from a surfeit of light, they will soon learn to find that their best beloved masters would not bear transplanting. They belong to the soil of the country they worked in, while Velazquez, like Rembrandt, can travel to any climate, and shine with unclouded glory in any ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan

... two or three months very agreeably, till the major and I both betook ourselves to our several nurseries; my wife being brought to bed of a girl, and Miss Bath confined to her chamber by a surfeit, which had like to ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... roost; but this was probably in families where there were three repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in an enervating day of July, one may have longed to dine upon humming-bird, with rose-leaves for dessert. But these are exceptional times; the abiding hope is, that we shall continue to eat, drink, and be merry. For the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... jest, With what he saw was well content. "This shows a pious mind!" Quoth he: "Self-conquest is true victory. The Church hath a good stomach, she, with zest, Whole countries hath swallow'd down, And never yet a surfeit known. The Church alone, be it confessed, Daughters, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... part? Oh dear! That alters the case. And, pray, what occasioned this indisposition? Not a previous mental surfeit, I hope." ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... spend on a nice book for his library, poor dear; and, with no business worries, he will probably begin to admire his wife once more as well as love her, which he has always done; and when he gets a surfeit of her friends, as I fear he will now and then, he will just take a little holiday and ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... jetty, which swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing vessels, cast off by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... lean leech, its victim found, is pleased To fix itself upon a part diseased Till, its black hide distended with bad blood, It drops to die of surfeit in the mud, So the base sycophant with joy descries His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies, Gorges and prospers like the leech, although, Unlike that reptile, he will not let go. Gelasma, if it paid you to devote Your talent to the service of a goat, Showing by forceful logic that its beard ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... a few are nibbled to death by critics, but they are weakly ones that perish thus, such only as must otherwise soon have come to a natural death. Somewhat more numerous are those which are overfed with praise, and die of the surfeit. Brisk reputations, indeed, are like bottled twopenny, or pop "they sparkle, are exhaled, and fly"—not to heaven, but to the Limbo. To live among books, is in this respect like living among the tombs; you have in them speaking remembrancers of mortality. ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... writes, "a profusion of delicate fioriture." It really contains but one subject, and is a song of the sweet summer of two souls, for there is obvious meaning in the duality of voices. Often heard in the concert room, this nocturne gives us a surfeit of sixths and thirds of elaborate ornamentation and monotone of mood. Yet it is a lovely, imploring melody, and harmonically most interesting. A curious marking, and usually overlooked by pianists, is ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... Here is seen the whole animal kingdom busily laboring for the destruction of its kind. Reptiles prey upon each other; parasitic plants fix themselves upon trees and suck up the sap of their existence; and man, while he enjoys to a surfeit these bounties of nature, must watch narrowly against the venom and the poison that comes to mar his pleasure, and teach him the wholesome lesson that true happiness is only found in Heaven. We are now at our ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... Denry began to suffer from the ravages of a malady which is almost worse than failure—namely, a surfeit of success. The success was that of his Universal Thrift Club. This device, by which members after subscribing one pound in weekly instalments could at once get two pounds' worth of goods at nearly any large shop in the district, appealed with enormous force to the democracy of the Five Towns. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... eating and drinking, he lit a cigar and lay back in his large chair, and closed his eyes in the ecstatic distention of his surfeit. After a grunt or two, he turned suddenly and ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... presence of some other disease located in another portion of the body, as derangement of the stomach, mange, surfeit, &c. The presence of one of these affections will indicate the cause ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... in the room, who were for ever bickering and snarling through the slats of their cages. In fact, Michael's sourness of temper had become too profound even for quarrelling. All he desired was to be let alone, and of this he had a surfeit ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... addressed as "bo," and he was annoyed that Steve should have guessed the truth respecting his overnight movements. Still more was he annoyed that Steve's material mind should attribute to a surfeit of lobster a pallor that was ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... office because he had been a surveyor's lad; nobody had voted for Adams because stately old ladies designated him as "that cobbler's son." But when Jackson came into office the people had just had almost a surfeit of regular training in their chief magistrates. There was a certain zest in the thought of a change, and the nation certainly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... of authorship, and the mysteries of bookselling. ROBERT GREENE, the master-wit, wrote "The Art of Coney-catching," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept; he died of a surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, at a fatal banquet of authors;—and left as his legacy among the "Authors by Profession" "A Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance." One died of another kind ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... young ladies, turned the house out of windows, and played the devil with everything, when he was called upon to put his Sire the Baron of Roche-Corbon some few feet under the turf. Then he was his own master, free to lead a life of wild dissipation, and indeed he worked very hard to get a surfeit of enjoyment. Now by making his crowns sweat and his goods scarce, draining his land, and a bleeding his hogsheads, and regaling frail beauties, he found himself excommunicated from decent society, and had for his friends only the plunderers of towns and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... "haven't I done charity enough for one day? You will surfeit me at the start, and then I'll be just as little fond of it as I was before. When I must let dirty children climb all over me, I ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... to get on to the next thing. This may be due to a gipsy strain in my ancestry—one of my uncles travelled with a circus—or it may be the Artistic Temperament, acquired from a grandfather who, before dying of a surfeit of paste in the property-room of the Bristol Coliseum, which he was visiting in the course of a professional tour, had an established reputation on the music-hall stage as one ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... consequences may not be immediately perceived, yet they are the certain attendants of intemperance; and it has been generally observed in great eaters, that though from custom, a state of youth, and a strong constitution, they suffer no present inconvenience, but have digested their food, and sustained the surfeit; yet if they have not been unexpectedly cut off, they have found the symptoms of old age come on early in life, attended with pains and innumerable disorders. If health is to be regarded, we must ever make it a rule not to ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... furniture, and draperies representing a small fortune, and carpets on which it seemed almost sacrilege to tread covered the floors. But there was scarcely a book in the house. He had expended a fortune for physical pleasures, comforts, luxury, and display. It was pitiful to think of the physical surfeit and mental starvation of the children of such a home as that. When I went out, he told me that he came to the city a poor boy, with all his worldly possessions done up in a little red bandana. "I am a millionaire," he said, "but I want to tell you that I would give half ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... it a relief to have done with this surfeit of soul, and was of opinion that learning, like religion, ought never to be forced into conversation; and that people who only read to talk of their reading might as well let it alone. Next morning she gave so ludicrous an account of her entertainment ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... (lavishing upon one what they got by another,) they were compelled, for subsistence sake, to enter themselves as under-managers at such another house as their own had been. In which service, soon after, Sally died of a fever and surfeit got by a debauch; and the other, about a month after, by a violent cold, occasioned through ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... ground, he fell to thinking of what he should write to Desiree to-morrow from Moscow. The mere date and address of such a letter would make her love him the more, he thought; for, like his leaders, he was dazed by a surfeit of glory. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... not object to consider whether it might not be best to serve up the rich repast in two courses; and on the whole I incline to that partition. 120 pages might cloy even epicures, and would be sure to surfeit the vulgar; and the biography and philosophy are so entirely distinct, and of not very unequal length, that the division would ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... gaping; Torrents deep within them roaring, Lashing up their foamy billows; With the laving of their forces All the pathway shakes and trembles. Brutes, in hungry anger raving, Prowl from dens, and caves, and caverns, Mingle with the ghosts and spectres, Lusting for a bloody surfeit. Reptiles, subtle and obnoxious, Crawl, and welter, and recoil them On the path in slimy matters, Reeking with a poisoned odor, Darting poisons to molest him. Arrows from the towers are flying, Shafts of flame and showers of fire, Sweeping on through ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... said of old, and 'tis said to-day, That wealth to prosperous stature grown Begets a birth of its own: That a surfeit of evil by good is prepared, And sons must bear what allotment of woe Their sires were spared. But this I refuse to believe: I know That impious deeds conspire To beget an offspring of impious deeds Too like their ugly sire. But whoso is just, though his wealth ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... woman, had become only lately conscious of a certain jaded weariness in her outlook upon life. Even the best had begun to pall, the sameness of it had commenced its fatal work. More than once lately a touch of that heart languor, which is the fruit of surfeit, had startled her by its numbing and depressing effect. Here at last was a new type—a man with clean pages before him—young, emotional, without a doubt intellectual. But for his awful clothes he was ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... so awed were they by the thing which had come to them that they felt no surprise when a wolf-dog crawled over the lizard on the threshold, and stole along the wall with shining, bloody eyes to an inner room, and stayed there munching meat to surfeit and drowsiness, and at last crept out and lay beside the forge in a thick sleep. These two had lived so much with the untamed things of nature, the bellows and the fire had been so long there, and the clang of the anvil was so familiar, that there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that they will last me my life—nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on which I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose relish of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his select authors or particular friends after a lapse of ten years. As for myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... of BOOKSTALLING. To the man with small means, and to the man with no means at all, the pastime is a very fascinating one. East, west, north, and south, there is, at all times and in all seasons, plenty of good hunting-ground for the sportsman, although the inveterate hunter will encounter a surfeit of Barmecides' feasts. Nearly every book-hunter has been more or less of a bookstaller, and the custom is more than tinctured with the odour of respectability by the fact that Roxburghe's famous Duke, Lord Macaulay the historian, and Mr. Gladstone the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... alone, O Nomades, Although Maecenas' marble frieze Stand not between you and the sky Nor Persian luxury supply Its rosy surfeit, find ye ease. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... diamond, and massy gold, Fruit of delicious vines, the growth of Heaven. On flowers reposed, and with fresh flowerets crowned, They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy, secure Of surfeit, where full measure only bounds Excess, before the all-bounteous King, who showered With copious hand, rejoicing in their joy. Now when ambrosial night with clouds exhaled From that high mount of God, whence light and shade Spring both, the face of brightest Heaven had changed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... cutting; their own cows gives the milk—such milk and butter as this poor place, Deerham, never saw—but the rich flavour's imparted to 'em from the fine quality of the grass; and fruit you might feed upon till you got a surfeit. Grapes and peaches is all a-hanging in clusters to the hand, only waiting to be plucked! Stars! my mouth's watering now at the thoughts ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... subject, where Disdain, By Virtue fired, may point her sharpest strain, 210 Where, clothed with thunder, Truth may roll along, And Candour justify the rage of song? Such things! such men before thee! such an age! Where Rancour, great as thine, may glut her rage, And sicken e'en to surfeit; where the pride Of Satire, pouring down in fullest tide, May spread wide vengeance round, yet all the while Justice behold the ruin with a smile; Whilst I, thy foe misdeem'd, cannot condemn, Nor disapprove that rage I wish to stem, 220 Wilt thou, degenerate ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... from surfeit and from rapture's cloy, Keep fresh for Beauty service and employ, Grieving the One, that All ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... pantaloons on, and out of which he may be blown by an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have for supper that overgrown and shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and will not let any one else buy tea or toast for a less sum than he pays for his surfeit; it is he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk and the reluctance of the waiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of the saloon, with his womenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where Basil and Isabel sit. Personally, he is not so bad; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... menhaden through the pearly sheen of the more open aerial main. The leaves of the tall domes and kissing branches of the elms, that peeped on either side into open windows of people asleep and told across the street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... saturation; nimiety[obs3], transcendency, exuberance, profuseness; profusion &c. (plenty) 639; repletion, enough in all conscience, satis superque[Lat], lion's share; more than enough &c. 639; plethora, engorgement, congestion, load, surfeit, sickener[obs3]; turgescence &c. (expansion) 194[obs3]; overdose, overmeasure[obs3], oversupply, overflow; inundation &c. (water) 348; avalanche. accumulation &c. (store) 636; heap &c. 72; drug, drug in the market; glut; crowd; burden. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... have I tasted anything that was so delicious as those tomatoes. I surfeited myself with them, and did not taste another one until I was in middle life. I can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them. I suppose we have all experienced a surfeit at one time or another. Once, in stress of circumstances, I ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being nothing else at hand, but since then I have always been able to ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... after the outward semblance of the ideal saint as can well be managed. The original notion was a very good one, and the revolution did not come before it was wanted; but it has been a little overdone of late, and we are threatened with as great a surfeit of small-limbed, yellow-headed criminals as we have had of the man-like black. One gets weary of the most perfect model in time, if too constantly repeated; as now, when we have all begun to feel that the resources ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... whereas you desire to have my opinion, you may imagine that my stomach is rather cloyed than queasy, and therefore mine appetite of less force than my affection, fearing rather a surfeit of sweetness than desiring a satisfying. The repeating of love wrought in me a semblance of liking; but searching the very veins of my heart I could find nothing but a broad scar where I left a deep wound: and loose strings where I tied hard knots: and a table of steel where ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... proud to go with his big brother. He was ill next day owing to a surfeit of good things consumed at high pressure, but not too ill to discuss what he would purchase with the half-crown that seemed to have stuck to his hot ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... are all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various



Words linked to "Surfeit" :   feeding, eating, luxuriate, provide, indulge, superabundance, overmuchness, fullness, overmuch, supply, render, furnish



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