"Sedative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the nurse came, but with the efficiency of all good nurses since time immemorial, she woke him to give him the sedative to prepare him for surgery. She chattered brightly as she prepared ...
— Am I Still There? • James R. Hall
... especially the gables and roof of which were far from whole. The woman complained of great pain in her right leg, and knowing she would otherwise groan and howl the night through in the hope of attracting the Virgin's attention, I induced her to swallow two sedative pills. The smoke made me weep as I swung my hammock from two soot-blackened rafters, but the fire soon went out and I awoke from the first doze shivering until the hut shook. The temperature was not low compared with our northern winters, but the wind ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... can enjoy Siegfried or Hedda Gabler. Active, constant cerebration on the part of the listener or the reader is essential. This excludes at once a considerable number to whom the effort of real thinking is as strange as it is oppressive. Browning is a stimulus, not a sedative; his poetry is like an electric current which naturally fails to affect those who are non-conductors of poetry. As one of my undergraduate students tersely expressed it, "Tennyson soothes our senses: ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... an interest which might pass very well for sympathy. It was with the very young ones that he was most popular; he took on himself no irritating airs of superiority; he was a good listener; and he never flew off the handle. Such a man has the effect of a refreshing sedative on the febrile nerves ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... have known these feelings (and who is there so happy as not to have known some of them?) will understand why Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needle-work, the most effectual sedative, that grand soother and composer of woman's distress, fails to comfort me to-day. I will go out into the air this cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do. I fancy that exercise or exertion of any kind, is the true specific for nervousness. 'Fling but a stone, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... has sustained me in many and varied afflictions. Not to know it is to dispense with an unfailing source of consolation in trouble. When using it at a patient's bedside, I have found that it invariably acted as a sedative to an excited mind. I sometimes think," he added gently, "that if Tina had not been ignorant of Latin, she would have had a—a less ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... you a copy to-day," he continued, as he gazed out. "They found the formula didn't get down to it. It was more a sedative than a germicide. There wasn't enough ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... very peculiar and subtly ascertained function, in Wordsworth's poetry. With him, metre is but an additional grace, accessory to that deeper music of words and sounds, that moving power, which they exercise in the nobler prose no less than in formal poetry. It is a sedative to that excitement, an excitement sometimes almost painful, under which the language, alike of poetry and prose, attains a rhythmical power, independent of metrical combination, and dependent rather on some subtle adjustment of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... anti-climax. Both had been a little shy, a little furtive. Each, perhaps feeling a mutual strain, wanted the parting over, restlessly desiring the sedative of thought and quiet memory after that stress. The desperate peril from which they had been saved seemed a lesser crisis, leading from a greater and more significant one; leading to—what? For his part Banneker was content to "breathe and wait." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Largely as a sedative to the feverish excitement which consumed me, I forced myself to study the construction of the tunnel; and I became aware of an astonishing circumstance. Partly the walls were natural, a narrow cavern traversing the bed of rock which ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... order. There was, notwithstanding, a benevolence of expression about it that blended (in a manner to excite attention) with a dignity of deportment, as much the result of habitual self command, as of the proud eminence of distinction on which he stood. The sedative character of middle age, added to long acquired military habits, had given a certain rigidity to his fine form, that might have made him appear to a first observer even older than he was, but the placidity of a countenance beaming good will and affability, speedily removed the impression, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... soothing article of diet is excellent for the majority of thin, nervous people; especially for those who have suffered much from emotional disturbances, or have relaxed their stomachs by too much tea or coffee, taken too hot. Milk is, in fact, a nutrient and a sedative at once. Stomachs, however, have their idiosyncrasies, and it sometimes proves an unwelcome and ill-digested article of food. As milk, when good, contains a good deal of respiratory material (fat),—material which must either be burnt off, or derange ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... The following sedative lotion applied to the face will prevent its tanning or freckling to any extent, that is, if one takes proper ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... disease, depending on a state of excessive irritability, sensibility, or spasm of a particular nerve, and from reflecting upon its causes, and observing the effect of topical sedatives, I was led to the conclusion, that the most direct way of quieting this state was by the application of warmth and sedative vapour to the part, so as to soothe the nerves, and calm them into regular action. For this purpose, I devised an apparatus which answers the purpose sufficiently well. It is a kind of fumigating instrument, in which dried herbs are burned, and the heated ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... the night in a creaky old rocking-chair, the nearest approach to a thing of comfort that the hovel contained. The old woman had evidently been so "started" that she needed the sedative of a short clay pipe, highly colored indeed, still a connoisseur in meerschaums would scarcely covet it. This she would remove from her mouth now and then, as she crouched on a low stool in the chimney- corner, to shake her head ominously. Perhaps she knew more about ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... expect to do much sleeping myself, so I proceeded to divest and relax under the sedative pull of my pipe. For about half an hour I creaked the comfortable rocker, and pondered on that old subject of fools and their money, and how it was that wise men like myself had so little of it. The solitudes and soliloquies of life appealed to me—especially with a nice bunch of fake ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... of this sedative reflection the more easily that the last commands of the King had given him something more agreeable to think of than his own condition. The Lady of the Lute was certainly one of those to whom his attention was to be dedicated; and well in his ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "Merely a heavy sedative," Dr. Manschoff murmured. "We came prepared, in expectation of just such an emergency." He nodded at his companions. "Better take him back now," he said. "I'll look in on him this evening, when he comes ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... hour in examining all these works of art, the sight of which had excited me in the most irresistible manner, when I saw my beautiful mistress enter the room, dressed as a nun. Her appearance was not likely to act as a sedative, and therefore, without losing any time in compliments, I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to have me come, and the nurse said she counted the hours between my departure and return. Her eagerness to have me read to her puzzled me at first, especially since she was indifferent as to what I read, but after a while I found that she prized my reading merely because it acted as a sedative. During the night sleep usually forsook her; but when I left she was generally sleeping peacefully. She permitted me to read the Bible as much as I chose. One day she explained the reason for ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... catch her up, though I pursued her down to the lodge, about two hundred yards; she then, passing through the gates, turned to the left, and I lost her in the obscurity of the road, which is there darkened by heavy trees. When I returned to the house I was still in so much pain that I took a sedative draught and went to bed, and to sleep ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... calculated to fix the attention without straining it. There is a composure and gravity in draughts which insensibly tranquillises the mind; and, accordingly, the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoaking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself never smoaked, he had a high opinion[936]. Besides, there is in draughts some exercise of the faculties; and, accordingly, Johnson wishing to dignify the subject in his Dedication with what is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... common hemp plant, which provides hallucinogens with some sedative properties, and includes marijuana (pot, Acapulco gold, grass, reefer), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, Marinol), hashish (hash), and hashish ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... ancestry. Perhaps this melancholy yet consolatory reflection crossed the mind of the unfortunate young nobleman with a breathing of comfort. Favourable to calm reflection, as well as to the Muses, the morning, while it dispelled the shades of night, had a composing and sedative effect upon the stormy passions by which the Master of Ravenswood had been agitated on the preceding day. He now felt himself able to analyse the different feelings by which he was agitated, and much resolved to combat and to subdue them. The morning, which had arisen calm ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... caught and hidden in its soft embraces. A sudden chill breathed over the mountain. He shivered, rose, and plunged again for very warmth into the spice-laden thicket. The heated balsamic air began to affect him like a powerful sedative; his hunger was forgotten in the languor of fatigue: he slumbered. When he awoke it was dark. He groped his way through the thicket. A few stars were shining directly above him, but beyond and below, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... for a check-up, but since he only mumbled incoherently, he was given a sedative. Two men began processing him for the vat. Coffin said he would make sure that the Com officer hadn't damaged any equipment. He went back to ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... feel that grass again. Resolutely Dane willed that thought out of his mind, tried to fix upon something more lulling which would bring with it the sleep he must have before he went on. And in the end he did sleep, deeply, dreamlessly, as if the touch of Terra's soil was in itself the sedative his tautly strung ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... a people living in the environment of modern civilization. There is a possibility, and even probability, that the defective nervous organization which predisposes to alcoholism would seek satisfaction in the use of some other sedative drug. So complex are all the interrelations of the social system that it would be possible to regard alcohol as an agent useful in removing the defective, were it not for its long-enduring action and its effects on the descendants, procreation not ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... would give in, not now. Never now—the Doctor might depend upon that, she assured him, drying her swollen eyes with a cheap lace-edged handkerchief loaded with patchouli. She was shaken and nervous, and in need of a sedative, and Saxham, having the drugs at hand, made her up a simple draught, unluckily omitting to make a memorandum of the prescription in his pocket-book, and gave her the first dose of it before she went away, profuse in thanks, and carrying ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... asked anxiously as he peered through the window of the chamber. The medic had given Bud a sedative and he was already fast asleep. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... chiefly for its warming and comforting qualities. Taken in moderation, it acts partly as a sedative, partly as a stimulant, arresting the destruction of tissue, and seeming to invigorate the whole nervous system. The water in it, even if impure, is made wholesome by boiling, and the milk and sugar give a certain amount of real nourishment. Nervous headaches are often cured by it, and it has, like ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... Even at first indeed the spirit in which my avidity, as I have called it, made me regard this term owed no element of ease to the fact that before coming back from Rapallo George Corvick addressed me in a way I didn't like. His letter had none of the sedative action that I must to-day profess myself sure he had wished to give it, and the march of occurrences was not so ordered as to make up for what it lacked. He had begun on the spot, for one of the quarterlies, a great last word on Vereker's writings, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of treating acute diseases have a sedative effect, our treatment of chronic diseases is calculated to stimulate, that is, to arouse the sluggish organism to greater activity in order to produce the acute ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... soothing anodyne Or sedative I know, Such potency can ever hold As that which lovingly controlled My spirit ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... sister took an early opportunity to urge upon Gwen a glass of wine, in which I had placed a generous sedative. The terrible tension soon began to relax, and in less than half an hour she was sleeping quietly. I dreaded the moment when she should awake and the memory of all that had happened should descend like an avalanche upon her. I told my sister that this would be a critical moment, cautioning her to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of family expense. He was a man of good Virginia stock, not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud of fine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his veins, possibly explains his life of semicontent—for tobacco is a sedative. The mother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful attractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not without pride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she was reserved, pedantic, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... thought, from memories of Bishop Hampden and other ecclesiastical proceedings, that Mr. Gladstone would be his sharpest opponent. Then as the days passed, he found deposition from first place to second more bitter than he had expected. Historic and literary consolation can seldom be a sure sedative against the stings of political ambition. He changed his mind every twelve hours, and made infinite difficulties. When these were with much travail appeased, difficulties were made on behalf of others. The sacred caste and their adherents were up in arms, and a bitter cry arose ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... in short, what and how the Executive-Royal shall DO therein: this, the essential function of a Parliament and Privy-Council, was here, by artless cheap methods, under the bidding of mere Nature, multifariously done; mere taciturnity and sedative smoke making the most of what natural intellect there might be. The substitution of Tobacco-smoke for Parliamentary eloquence is, by some, held to be a great improvement. Here is Smelfungus's opinion, quaintly expressed, with a smile in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was generally present at the same interview. We took the doctor as a sort of sedative. After a season of hard work and nervous excitement, Doctor Heavyasbricks had a quieting influence upon us. There was no lightning in his disposition. He was a great laugher, but never at any recent merriment. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... skilfully as he lay where Agatha had left him. Later he came to Agatha with a few questions, which she answered clearly; but James, left alone, immediately showed such a tendency to wander around, following the hallucinations of his brain, that the doctor decided that he must have a sedative before he could be taken away. The needle, that friend of man in pain, was brought into use; and presently they were able to leave the cove. Doctor Thayer and Mr. Hand carried James to the rowboat, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... a complete sedative, and the Laird relapsed from that day into his former taciturn habits, visiting the cowfeeder's cottage three or four times every week, when the weather permitted, with apparently no other purpose than to stare at Jeanie Deans, while ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... victim of habitual bromidia and chloral, invited by severe headaches. The treatment of this case was as follows: whiskey every hour, milk every other hour; corrosive medication and powerful brain sedative every night, which would have paralyzed digestive energy for many days. There was not an hour during the twenty-four in which there was not dosing either to cure the disease or to sustain the system. The average quantity of whiskey was six ounces ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... discipline were losing strength, this enticing faith, with pleasure as its summum bonum, and with quietism as its ideal of human life,[769] could hardly be a real stimulus to active virtue; the Roman needed bracing, and this was not a tonic, but a sedative. Far more valuable in every way, and far better suited to the best instincts of the Roman character, was the rival creed of Stoicism, and I must devote the rest of this lecture to the consideration of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... that but for an accident I should have had no copy of the Work itself. That such treatment would damp a young man's exertions may be easily conceived: there was no need of after-misrepresentation and calumny, as an additional sedative. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... deplorable state of his flat, he was taken to the house of Dr. Hatton in Upper Baker Street. Here he was subjected to a sedative treatment, and anything that might recall the violent crisis through which he had passed was carefully avoided. But on the second ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... fruit-trees planted by her father five-and-twenty, years ago. Birds were almost silent, the cuckoos had ceased to sing, but wood-pigeons were cooing. The breath and drone and cooing of high summer were not for long a sedative to her excited nerves. Crouched over her knees she began to scheme. Her father must be made to back her up. Why should he mind so long as she was happy? She had not lived for nearly nineteen years without knowing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... consulate. They sent him to Ehrenstein, at a salary not worth mentioning, with the diplomatic halo of dignity as a tail to the kite. He had been in the service some two years by now, and those who knew him well rather wondered at his sedative turn of mind. Two years in any one place was not in reckoning as regarded Carmichael; yet, here he was, caring neither for promotion nor exchange. So, then, all logical deductions simmered down to ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... been some one of themselves to teach that the true outlet and sedative of overstrained feeling is right action! that the performance of an unpleasant duty, say the paying of their debts, was a far more effectual as well as more specially religious mode of working off ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... that in that case I should give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for purposes of blackmail. The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the opportune production of the chair-leg had a sedative effect, and partly owing to wise counsels from one or two ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... chamber. I lay with fevered cheeks and burning eyes among the pillows where my mother had placed me. The terrible excitement under which I labored forbade all blame or any allusion to my act of imprudence. I was soothed and tenderly cared for until, under the influence of a sedative, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... nerve sedative ... Bromide of Potassium and Chloral Hydrate ... organic compound ... heated organic compound ... charcoal ... animal charcoal ... charcoal fumes ... asphyxia ... artificial respiration ... perspiration ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... myself, I lit a pipe and smoked it, for I seemed to require a stimulant, or, rather, a sedative. Before it was finished Hans, who was engaged in doctoring his scratches made by the vultures' beaks with a concoction of leaves which he had been chewing, exclaimed suddenly in his ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... state of future retribution, could it only be steadfastly and invariably maintained, might serve, it has been thought, to relieve the mind of many forebodings and fears which disturb its peace, and, if it could not ensure perfect happiness, might act at least as an opiate or sedative to a restless and uneasy conscience. In the opinion of Epicurus and Lucretius, tranquillity of mind was the grand practical benefit of that unbelief which they sought to inculcate respecting the doctrine of Providence and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... slammed, and a sudden cessation of the tumult showed that some one, in sheer self-defense, had given her morphia, the only sedative that could have any real effect. Then he turned, and became aware of the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... to the body acts as a direct sedative. It diminishes the nervous sensibility, represses the activity of the circulation, detracts from the sum of the animal heat, and thereby diminishes stimulation. In the cessation of excitement and sensibility that ensues, the whole vital actions are moderated, ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... would have been incapable of this searching self-analysis. A weak, irresolute girl like Bel Parton would have taken a sedative, and escaped a miserable day in sleep. But, with all her faults, Lottie abounded in practical common sense; and Hemstead's words and her own experience suggested that she might be doing herself a very great wrong. She felt that it was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... an hour that I send round the town for a brasier of coals. What! smoke by a sun-dial? Smoke on compulsion? Make a trade, a business, a vile recurring calling of smoking? And, perhaps, when those sedative fumes have steeped you in the grandest of reveries, and, circle over circle, solemnly rises some immeasurable dome in your soul—far away, swelling and heaving into the vapour you raise—as if from ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... would rivet J. P.'s attention, and Pollard, who had been a number of years with J. P., was not only, on his own subjects, the conversational peer of Paterson, but was in addition, from his soothing voice and manner and from his long and careful study of J. P., invaluable as a mental and nervous sedative. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... great deal of good by him, in the lucid intervals." To Voltaire himself the position is most agitating; but then its glories, were there nothing more! Besides he is always thinking to quit it shortly; which is a great sedative in troubles. What with intermittencies (safe hidings in one's MARQUISAT, or vacant interlunar cave), with alternations of offence and reconcilement; what with occasional actual flights to Paris (whitherward Voltaire is always busy to keep ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... is another sedative composed of hyoseine, morphine, and cactoid. It is less dangerous than the other remedy, and accomplishes the same result, hence is ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... to calm him down until Napier came and gave him a sedative. The doctor seemed as sick about Hal's inability to remember as I was, though he indicated it was normal enough in concussion cases. "So is the hallucination," he added. "He'll be all ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. The sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. A sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. Meantime a messenger was despatched to Sycamore for Fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. To his anxious inquiries the doctor could give no ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... wanderer Dogmatophagy Ignoramus, Ignorabimus Nevertheless, we call ourselves materialists In defense of religion Arch-European Dionysus or Apollonian Epicuri de grege porcum Evil and Rousseau's Chinaman The root of disinterested evil Music as a sedative Concerning Wagner Universal musicians The folk song On the optimism ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... has a sedative effect upon the nerves, and enables a man to bear the sorrows of this life (of which every one has his share) not only decently, but dignifiedly. Suicide is not a national habit in Germany as it is ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... squires, both in ancient and modern times. His displeasure was expressed in broken sentences, partly muttered to himself, partly addressed to the domestics who stood around; and particularly to his cupbearer, who offered him from time to time, as a sedative, a silver goblet filled with wine—"Why tarries the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... be a steady demand for "bedbooks" in England. There are readers who find in Gibbon a sedative for tired nerves; there are others who enjoy Trollope's quiet humour. Some people find in Henry James's tangled syntax the restful diversion they seek, and others enjoy Mr. Howells's ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nerve sedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a man of considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-town doctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. The specialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more about less and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... frequent visits have given educational opportunity to my children. Foreign travel, and lecturing and preaching excursions in our own country have been to me a stimulus, while East Hampton has been to me a sedative and anodyne. For this beautiful medicament I ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... vegetative apparatus and the vegetative nervous system. These direct the lime exchanges within the cells of the organisms, including the nerve cells. It has been shown that lime is, relatively, a sedative to cells. It raises the threshold or strength of stimulus necessary to evoke a reaction. Removing the parathyroids means removing the lime barrier, for with their deficiency there is a change in, and then ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sedative. It pacifies—that is, it makes one indifferent. And it is essential in this world to be indifferent. Only those who are indifferent are able to see things clearly, to be just and to work. Of course, I am only speaking of intelligent people of fine natures; the empty and selfish are indifferent ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... my dear, after the fatigue of last evening; too much gaiety does not bring a bloom to my Rosamond," said her ladyship, kissing the pale cheek of the lovely girl, adding: "My dear, you must retire to your room, while I prepare a gentle sedative." ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... pass from the Spring Song into some more sonorous and stately thing he mistakes it for the wedding march from "Lohengrin," and is hot for marching upon the altar at once. The best man, an old hand, restrains him gently, and administers another sedative from the bottle. The bridegroom's thoughts turn to gloomy things. He remembers sadly that he will never be able to laugh at benedicts again; that his days of low, rabelaisian wit and care-free scoffing are over; that he is now the very thing he mocked so gaily but yesteryear. Like a drowning ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... made them a speech, promised them forty shillings in Massachusetts new-tenor currency a month, instead of twenty-five, and ended with ordering for each man half a pint of rum to drink the King's health. Though potations so generous might be thought to promise effects not wholly sedative, the mutineers were brought to reason, and some even consented to remain in garrison till the next June. [Footnote: Shirley to Newcastle, 4 ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... done by the critics before him; but he even has something to say about the philandering which characterized the old gentleman in the last years of his life, his apparent anxiety to get married again. {106} The only thing that he all but ignores is Crabbe's opium habit—a habit that came to him as a sedative from a painful complaint and inspired, as was the case with Coleridge, his more melodious utterances. Taken altogether the picture is as pleasant as it is capable and exhaustive. We see his early boyhood at Aldeburgh, his schooldays: his first period of unhappiness at Slaughden Quay, his apprenticeship ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... his pipe from my pouch, but looked up a little surprised, and said, "Of course." He then puffed away with the nervous eagerness of a man long deprived of that sedative. Finally, between the puffs, he asked me ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... perhaps the excellence of Cicely's buffet arrangements was partly responsible. The great drawing-room seemed to grow larger and more oppressive as the human wave receded, and the hostess fled at last with some relief to the narrower limits of her writing-room and the sedative influences of a cigarette. She was inclined to be sorry for herself; the triumph of the afternoon had turned out much as she had predicted at lunch time. Her idol of onyx had not been swept from its pedestal, but the pedestal ...
— When William Came • Saki
... Mr Hippetts," said the doctor, smiling; "but I order it as a sedative medicine. It will do more good than anything I can give. It will ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... about their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an indefinite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth like ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... which he found himself, indeed, was particularly favourable to the growth of these feelings; for, not to mention the lazy influence of a late and lonely breakfast, with the additional sedative of a newspaper, there was an air of repose about his place of residence peculiar to itself, and which hangs about it, even in these times, when it is more bustling and busy than it was in days ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... smoke," complained Terry. He was in the midst of a prolonged quarrel with Alima, and needed a sedative. "There's nothing to drink. These blessed women have no pleasant vices. I wish we could get ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... enjoyment. Dinner, however humble, seldom fails, especially when accompanied by a fair draught of tolerable porter, in some considerable degree to tranquillize the animal spirits; and that soothing effect began soon to be experienced by Mr. Titmouse. The sedative cause he erroneously considered to be the cigar he was smoking; whereas in fact the only tobacco he had imbibed was from the porter. But, however that might be, he certainly returned towards town in a calmer and ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that bay—more Breton than Norman—may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... to which humanity is heir; that it will prolong life, and that it is a wonderful stimulant. Ancient medical works make this statement, laying special emphasis upon its stimulating qualities. The drug does none of these things. Instead of being a stimulant, it comes closer to a sedative. This investigation set the author on the search for other herbs that now are or might be grown as an occupation. Then came the idea of a man who should grow these drugs professionally, and of the sick girl healed by them. "I could have gone to work and started a drug farm myself," ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... very good effect,' said Mrs. Edmonstone; 'for it is apt to act as a summons to the other party, as well as a sedative ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smokers—tobacco appears to have no hurtful effects whatever upon them, but seems rather to serve as a grateful sedative. The first thing offered on meeting a Boer is his tobacco pouch, and if one is a guest at his house, this is followed by one or more cups of coffee. This is drunk by men and women in large quantities, often without sugar, but very weak. The people are justly ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... approached no nearer to the one object within view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance. We are full at home of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted by sedative surroundings. But what is to be said of the Nebraskan settler? His is a wall-paper with a vengeance - one quarter of the universe laid bare ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... formerly the greatest strength that existed—had joined the alliance. This powerful reinforcement will also, I believe, have a quieting effect upon our own countrymen, and lessen in some degree the nervousness of our public opinion, our stock-market, and our press. I hope it will act upon them as a sedative when they clearly comprehend that from the moment at which this law is signed and published the men are there. The armament too may be said to be ready, in the shape of what is absolutely necessary: but we must procure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... in the year 1887, the tendency towards that equilibrium of the Powers, which is the great fact of recent European history, began to exercise a sedative effect on Russian policy in Bulgaria and in Central Asia. That year saw the delimitation of the Russo-Afghan border, and the adjustment in Central Asian affairs of a balance corresponding to the equilibrium soon to be reached in European politics. That, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... intermittent fevers and in cases of snake bites. S. tiente is a Java shrub, the juice of which is used in poisoning arrows. S. toxifera yields a frightful poison called Ourari or Wourari, employed by the natives of Guiana. This is considered to be the most potent sedative in nature. Several species of Strychnos are considered infallible remedies for snake bites; hence are known as snakewood. S. pseudo-quina, a native of Brazil, yields Colpache bark, which is much used in that country in cases of fever, and is considered equal to quinine in value. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... true difficulty in the way of forming anew habits of wholesome endurance. The physician who imagines that his case is well, because he has enabled an opium-taker to eat, sleep, and be comfortable without use of the sedative, can have seen little of the future of such people. The oversensitiveness to pain persists for months, and is a constant temptation. The moral and mental habits formed under opium—the irresolution, the recklessness, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... Before his zeal had half done effervescing, a sergeant brought word that the captain and first officer were at his usual place of transacting business, or bureau d'office, and wished to see him. This piece of information had by no means a sedative effect. Here was a heretic, not only stealing into the bay, like a thief in the night, but carrying his impudence still farther, by insisting upon an interview, and that too out of business hours, with the representative of His Most Catholic Majesty, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... product of Brunswick industry. The Buckeburg industry having a certain reputation in petto in the matter of chocolate, the Princess, who sends her best regards to you and your family, wishes me to send you a sample, which you will receive by tomorrow's post. The chocolate, in its quality of a sedative tonic, will, moreover, not come amiss in the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... oestruation. Antonym: anaphrodisia. Associated Words: aphrodisiac, antaphrodisiac, anaphrodisiac, aphrodisiacal, amative, amativeness, amorous, amorousness, amatory, antiorgastic, philter, oestrual, sedative, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... very happy all the morning; so happy that I forgot my tonics, massage, and sedative tablets; but the doctor called at noon and spoke of the wonderful way in which my system responded to his remedies, so I ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Knight had been, but I did not stay in her charge very long. One night the Le Noirs came in hot haste. The young heiress had been delivered from their charge by a degree of the Orphans' Court, and they had to give up her house. I was drugged and hurried away. Some narcotic sedative must have been insinuated into all my food, for I was in a state of semi-sensibility and mild delirium during the whole course of a long journey by land and sea, which passed to me like a dream, and at the end of ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... did not act on Pratteler's passion either as brake or as sedative. In his queer head it tended to justify his claims and hopes and to give him the right to support them. Something had appeared which had to be recognized and to run its course. Victor expected Hoeflinger to take cognizance of it; when nothing of the kind was forthcoming, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... gave himself up to the unlimited use of this sedative, and would no doubt have become, like many others, a willing slave to the pipe, but for the fortunate circumstance that the supply of tobacco was limited. As the autumn advanced, the diminishing quantity warned him to restrain himself. He eked it out by mixing with it a kind of leaf much used ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Here's a sedative for you. Take it at once. It will quiet you perfectly. We all know you've had very hard luck this past month, but you mustn't worry so about the future." The slightest possible tinge of purely professional manner crept back into the older woman's ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... later, mother and baby were in the ambulance heading north to the hospital. Haverstraw, calmed down with a sedative administered by Kelly, had nearly wrung their hands off in gratitude as he ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... manner to Osborne, resenting the want of the confidence and affection that he thus repelled. So much so that Roger, who desired to avoid being made the receptacle of his father's complaints against Osborne—and Roger's passive listening was the sedative his father always sought—had often to have recourse to the discussion of the drainage works as a counter-irritant. The squire had felt Mr. Preston's speech about the dismissal of his workpeople very keenly; it fell in with the reproaches ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... walked up and down; vainly the fresh wind fanned his fevered brow; vainly the sparkling stars glanced down from holy heights upon him; he found no coolness for his fever in the air, no sedative for his anxiety in the stillness, no comfort for his soul in the heavens; he knew not whether he were indoors or out, whether it were night or day, summer or winter, he knew not, wrapped as he was in the mantle ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of rest, which meant a little quiet "reading, writing, working, and drawing"—a far better sedative for excited nerves than entire idleness—the Queen and the Prince attended a flower-show in the grounds of Downing College, walking round the gardens and entering into all the six tents, "a very formidable undertaking, for the heat was beyond endurance and the crowd fearful." ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... with the virtues of which the Arabian physicians appear to have been acquainted. Chemists formerly entertained opinions extremely discordant in regard to the nature and the properties of camphor; and even at this day they seem to be but imperfectly known. It is considered however as a sedative and powerful diaphoretic: but my province is to mention such particulars of its history as have come within my knowledge, leaving to others to investigate its ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... is the safest and most generally applicable sedative of the nervous system. Whilst very weak, its action is perfectly balanced throughout all nervous tissue, so much so that Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton has suggested its action to be due to its replacement of sodium chloride (common salt) in the fluids of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... felt quite ill with strain and sorrow, went upstairs to bed, the Von Behrens went away, and presently Acton disappeared, to telephone old Doctor Murray that his wife would like a sedative—or a heart stimulant, or some other little attention as a ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... instantly called-in, found the child lying in the cradle, as if asleep, and with its features undisturbed; but all resources were fruitless. It was irrecoverably gone. In this interesting case, the milk must have undergone a change, which gave it a powerful sedative action upon the susceptible ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... which was a problem. Now, King Jarl scorned to admit the slightest degree of under-breeding in the matter of polite feeding. So nothing was a problem to him. At once reminded of the morsel of Arvaroot in his mouth, a substitute for another sort of sedative then unattainable, he was instantly illuminated concerning the purpose of the nut; and very complacently introduced each to the other; in the innocence of his ignorance making no doubt that he had acquitted ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... an aristocratic baby can bear popular treatment. I dare say some hundred unlucky infants have been lugged out to the race-course to-day, and come back squalling their hearts out with fatigue and hunger, and I'll be bound that nine-tenths are lulled with this very sedative, and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... high physical courage is also fairly inferrable from her anti-slavery career, yet only those most with her in life's practical affairs can appreciate her self-poise in danger. Peril was to her a sedative; it calmed and girded her, bringing out every resource, and making self-command absolute. She knew nothing of that flutter which confuses. Great danger instantly brought thought and feeling to a focus, and held them ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... excitement, in the sort of spur it gives to his own constructive faculty. But, if this is repeated in ten or twenty stories, he becomes fluttered and exhausted by the draft upon his energies; whereas a continuous fiction of the same quantity acts as an agreeable sedative. A condition that the short story tacitly makes with the reader, through its limitations, is that he shall subjectively fill in the details and carry out the scheme which in its small dimensions the story can only suggest; and the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... system had acted as a sedative with Master Fred, during the afternoon and evening of May Day, and though every precaution had been used to prevent any serious effects afterwards from the wetting, yet the boy did take cold; and so feverish and restless did he become, that the good ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... fibre. From this exact similarity in so many circumstances, one should be led to suppose that there would be no sensible diversity in their operation on the living body; but the fact is otherwise: green tea is much more sedative and relaxant than bohea; and the finer the species of tea, the more debilitating and pernicious are its effects, as I have frequently observed in others, and experienced in myself. This seems to be a proof that the mischiefs ascribed to this oriental vegetable do not ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... head. The symptoms, he said, indicated a serious shock to the nervous system. He wrote a sedative prescription; and he gave (with a happy choice of language) some sound and safe advice. It amounted briefly to this: "Take her away, and try the sea-side." Lady Janet's customary energy acted on the advice, without a moment's needless delay. She gave the necessary directions for packing the ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... spaceport hospital, after dinner, and talked to Doc Rojansky. Murell was asleep, and in no danger whatever. They'd given him a couple of injections and a sedative, and his system was throwing off the poison satisfactorily. He'd be all right, but they thought he ought to be allowed to rest at the ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... industrious study, and for keeping, if possible, externals and mentals in more order. Order, I believe, would enable me to do much more than I do in this way, without lessening those little "good works" which my natural, unsanctified conscience requires as a sedative; (alas that this is so nearly all!) but I have got such an impression of selfishness in sitting down to read to myself, that this, added to unsettlement from company, etc., almost puts ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... success of our studies, says Pliny—studia hilaritate proveniunt. It was still the habit of Marius, encouraged by his experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of stimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night. "The morning for creation," he would say; "the afternoon for the perfecting ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... The sedative Dr. Winters had given him, plus his own exhaustion, drove Mel to sleep for a few hours during the afternoon, but by evening he was awake again and knew that a night of sleeplessness lay ahead of him. He couldn't stand to spend ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... death. The husband or his friends waited till they caught the offending parties together in criminal correspondence, and then put them both to death; and the death of one pair generally acted, they thought, as a sedative upon the evil passions of a whole district for a year or two. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory than our laws for the punishment of adultery in India, where the Muhammadan criminal code has been followed, though the people subjected to it are not ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... once with the unquestioning readiness of one used to his mistress' whims. For several minutes she remained silent. She had the air of one drinking in with almost passionate eagerness the sedative effect of the stillness, the soft spring air, the musical country sounds, the ripple of the breeze in the trees, the humming of insects, the soft splash of the lake against the stony shore. Philip himself was awakened into a peculiar sense of pleasure by this, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conversation on this point the two women left the library. Daisy had shut herself in her room, and thither went Mrs. Morley. She managed to sooth the girl, and gave her a sedative which calmed her nerves. When Daisy woke from sleep somewhere about five she expressed herself sorry for her foolish chatter, but still entertained a dread and a hatred of Anne. The governess wisely kept out of the way and made her preparations for departure. As ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... a slang word, as you may be thinking, gentle reader. It is a good Anglo-Saxon word (or will be), for it fills a real need, and there is none other to take its place. "Dope" means anything that is calculated to soothe, or hush, or put to sleep. "Sedative" is a synonym, but it lacks the oily ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... dysphagia, apart from that of the disease associated with it, resolves itself into the use of local sedative applications, such as a weak cocain or eucain spray before meals, insufflations of acetate of morphin and boracic acid, and the use of a menthol spray. One of the best anaesthetic applications is orthoform powder, introduced by means of the ordinary laryngeal insufflator. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Let her come on. Let her son, who was a snob, come on. Let Mr. THORNTON come on. Let every body come on. He defied every body. He expectorated upon every body. (Mr. CHANDLER by this time became so earnest that seven Senators were constrained to wait upon him, but it produced no sedative effect.) Mr. CHANDLER kept on in this manner until he had challenged the population of the planet to single combat, and then subsided, and ordered five hundred copies of the morrow's Globe to send to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... necessary curiosity. But this is not the chief, not the most delicate thing I have to say to you. You have firm friends in my father and myself,—more so than perhaps you realize; and as my fortune was the first cause that brought you to me, I wish to say—but without intending to use it as a sedative to calm the grief which gallantry requires you to testify—that my father has thought over the affair of the marshes, his friend Dumay thinks your project feasible, and they have already taken steps to form a company. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... compounded of brimstone and Stygian hatred, offered by Calvin and the Catholics, and after the plethoric gorge of good cheer at Gargantua's table, the mild sedative of Montaigne's conversation comes like a draft of nepenthe or the fruit of the lotus. In him we find no blast and blaze of propaganda, no fulmination of bull and ban; nor any tide of earth-encircling Rabelaisian mirth. His words fall as softly and as thick as ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the traitor continued in New York without sinister consequence to me; and, though my nights were none the pleasanter during that sad week which ended in the execution of the British adjutant-general, no harm came to me. Habit is the great sedative; at times, penning my spy's journal, I smiled to remember how it was with me when first I came to New York in 1777, four years since, a country lad of nineteen, fresh from the frontier, where all my life had been spent among the Oneidas ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... perplexed and distressed her greatly. But she was so sleepy, that the thoughts came into her little head confusedly, and, several times, merged into dreams, and then came out again. The low murmur of the talk outside, like the distant hum of a waterfall or a mill, was sedative. The act of listening to it—as she did for a few moments with ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton |
