"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which I have attempted, in this chapter, to trace the outlines, would require great developments. But perhaps the attentive reader will have perceived in it the fruitful seed which is destined in its future growth to smother Protection, at once with Fourierism, Saint Simonism, Commonism, and the various other schools whose object is to exclude the law of COMPETITION from the government of the world. Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, his own failure of all life's things worth having. It seemed ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... our mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they must ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... explored there were now rolling up great masses of bright, yellow smoke in sharp contrast to the dark vapors that had hitherto poured from it. A mighty rumbling and roaring proceeded from its throat as the smoke poured out, and vivid, blue flames shot through the sulphurous smother from ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... under Valerian, they often called to mind the triumphs of the martyrs, and secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, while their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another. "What," said they, "while the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... whatever is left of your people." "You will not get that," said Finn, "for I will lay your head in its bed of blood the same as I did to every other one." Then those two attacked one another like as if there had risen to smother one another the flooded wave of Cliodna, and the seeking wave of Tuaigh, and the big brave wave of Rudraighe. And though the woman-warrior fought for a long time, a blow from Finn reached to her at last and cut through the royal crown, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... they still hold out? If they should be for spiting you to the last! You'ld best keep on at them: think out a list Of frantic things for them to do, when air Is scorching smother and the sin they did Frightens their hearts. You'll shout them into fear, I undertake, if you find ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Yuruk?" I turned to Drake bruskly to smother the sob of sheer happiness I felt rising in my throat; and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly forebore ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... has chosen for me; whom I expect here to-morrow? And must I, then, be told 'tis criminal to love my poor, deserted Mary, because our hearts are illicitly attach'd? Illicit for the heart? fine phraseology! Nature disowns the restriction; I cannot smother her dictates with the polity of governments, and fall in, or out of love, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... sport, and kept silence awhile, only to break it with gayer laughter, elate with life while half the world was stretched in white repose. At length they paused to rest in the lee of a cottage that seemed more like a hulk drawn up on shore than any house, but matted from ground to chimney in a smother of woodbine. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thoughts were they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I whisper'd ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... spirit you might deem Came forth from the shade, of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again. And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain "Not mine! not mine! now, Mary mother. Aid me the sinful hope to smother! Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong. But pure the heart of a knight should be,— Sleep on, sleep on, thou art safe for me. Yet shalt thou know, by a certain sign, Whose lips have been so near to thine, Whose eyes have looked upon ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... habitations, the business, and the comforts of his civilized fellow-creatures. It gives an air of grandeur, and importance, and mystery, to the scenes: it conciliates our respect. We know that there must be some fire where there is so much smother.—While, in those bright, shining, smokeless cities, whenever the sun shines upon them, one's eyes are put out by the glare of their white walls; and when it does not shine!—why, in the winter, there's no resource left ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... the threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous
... now another, now the bare space of a single inch. And now down the entire length of the line from end to end that wavering, rocking movement in swaying, pregnant unison grew stronger—men knew not what they did—it seemed the very air they breathed must smother them—and, in that dull, weird, lingering note, rose again the sound of moaning that seemed to beat in consonance with the distant mournful rhythm of the endless beat ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... hesitated, then she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. You may take ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... grosser parts remain in the ashes. Fire only preys upon the moisture, which is its natural nourishment. Indeed, water, wine, and other liquors, having abundance of earthy and heavy parts in them, by falling into fire part it, and by their roughness and weight smother and extinguish it. But oil, because purely liquid, by reason of its subtility, is overcome by the fire, and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Big Tom, and the other Indians were discussing. Some suggested cutting down the big tree at once. This was discouraged by some, who said that the blows of the axe on the dead tree would dislodge so much dry, dusty, rotten wood that it would about smother the imprisoned man. So it was quickly decided that he must be pulled out of the top where, it was quite evident, he had fallen in. At once the tail-ropes of the sleds and the packing and tie lines, which are also made of leather, were fastened together, ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... Southern political leaders and capitalists so dread as anti-slavery feeling among themselves. All the force of lynch law is employed to smother discussion and blind conscience on this question. The question is not allowed to be discussed, and he who sells a book or publishes a tract makes himself ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... curious thing that while most organised religions seem to drape about and conceal and smother the statement of the true God, the honest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be interesting here to call a witness or so to the extreme instability ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... of man for gain has smothered and will ever smother the human conscience. The slave trade, under the denunciation of piracy, still exists, and will exist until African slavery ceases throughout the world. So long as there is a demand, at good prices, this wicked traffic will go on, and in the jungles of Africa there will be found stealers ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... afterwards I was playing ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... hand; and Persecution matures them both. A people content with the thoughts made for them by the priests of a church will be content with Royalty by Divine Right,—the Church and the Throne mutually sustaining each other. They will smother schism and reap infidelity and indifference; and while the battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only sink the more apathetically into servitude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them with far-reaching lash, then the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and sullenly dash! But where is the brave one—the swift lightning-flash? Soft star of my soul, my mother, Sleep, the fire let ashes smother; Gaze no more, shine eyes are weary, Sit not by the threshold stone; Gaze not through the night-fog dreary, Eat thine evening meal alone, Seek him not, O mother, weeping, By the cliff and by the ford: On ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... as anxious as you are to see them," came from Mrs. Tom Rover, as both of her sons gave her a warm hug. "There, there! don't smother me!" ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... storm predicted by Black Moran had been raging for hours, and for hours the little wizened man who had left the cabin before dawn had been plodding at the head of his dogs. At intervals of an hour or so he would stop and strain his eyes to pierce the boiling white smother of snow that curtained the back-trail. Then he would plod on, glancing to the right and to ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... roaming, Mid flow'rets may lie, But soon will life's gloaming, Come dark'ning our sky. Then seek not to smother Kind feelings in thee, And scorn not thy brother, Though ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... also anxious with regard to another matter, but that anxiety he managed so effectually to smother that he would not even allow himself to think that it had any part in Ogilvie's ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... death would deprive him of the means of making restitution, for he had a presentiment he would fall on this very day. First, that sin he committed in Liverpool, when, in an evil hour, yielding to the advice and example of wicked companions, he took to drink in order to smother the thought of it; and drink caused him to rob the widow, and to shun further the thought of these crimes he enlisted in the army; but yet, here, in the very ranks, with drums beating, and music playing, amid the shouts of Indians ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... thought of a psalm-singing, tea-drinking, tamely good world is abhorrent to the marrow of us. Stevenson, with his delightfully irresponsible audacity, sighs for an occasional "furlough from the moral law"; and there are times for most of us when it seems as if we should choke and smother under the everlasting "Thou shalt not!" But the daring rebel, the defiant Titan, comes creeping back to the shelter of morality with a headache or something worse, and discovers that his Promethean boldness was but childish petulance; that it is futile and foolish to try to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... went widower Brown, When his grief he could decently smother, He explained it to every acquaintance in town; "My poor children ...
— Why They Married • James Montgomery Flagg
... do the deed—in gloves, however, for I know those books of old, and shall smother myself in sheets before I begin. I don't object to a few days' charing for a change," said Nan briskly. "I love rushing about in an apron, using my muscles instead of my brain, gathering all the ornaments together, and washing them in a nice ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in,—the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... will be able to live two minutes in the cockpit, and I cannot help you, sir, to throw your life away. The ship's on fire somewhere forward, and what we've got to do is to pump the water over it, and try and put it out. If we can't do that, we must shut down the hatches, and see if we can't smother it." ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... whole so full of vivacity, gaiety, and genuine delight in life, you see from one fresco to another the increased attention given to draperies. In the Scalzo series, otherwise masterpieces of tactile values, the draperies do their utmost to smother the figures. Most of these paintings are closed in with ponderous forms which have no other purpose than to serve as a frame, and as clothes-horses for draperies: witness the scene of Zacharias in the temple, wherein none of the bystanders dare move for ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... term of President Diaz commenced. The success of the church party would simply throw Mexico back half a century in her march of improvement towards a higher state of civilization. It would check all educational progress, all commercial advance, and smother both ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity of Babylon, or in the servitude of Rome. How does the passion ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... by side with this exhortation of my text! They are all small matters—bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice, stealing, lying, and the like; very 'homely' transgressions, if I may so say. Yes, and if you pile enough of them upon the spark that is in your hearts you will smother it out. Sin, the wrenching of myself away from the influences, not attending to the whispers and suggestions, being blind to the teaching of the Spirit through the Word and through Providence: these are the things that 'grieve the Holy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the guide raised the rifle, took quick but careful aim, and fired. There was no puff of smoke, for the new high-powered, smokeless powder was used. Following the shot, there was a commotion in the water. Amid a smother of foam, bright ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... was a steady pressure on Nathaniel's arm now, a warning, frightened pressure, and the hand that made it trembled. Jeekum feared the worst—but his fear was not greater than the chill of disappointment that came to smother the excited beating of Nathaniel's heart. What had the jailer meant to say? What did he know about Marion and Winnsome, and why had he given birth to new hope in the same breath that he mentioned ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she bravely tried to smother in ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... aboard the ship; There's feud no force can smother; Their blood is up to fever-heat; They're cutting down each other. Buchanan here, and Douglas there, Are belching forth their thunder, While cunning rogues are sly at work In ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... upon the other, Which played within the tangles of her hair; And to contend with thoughts she could not smother She seemed by the distraction of her air. 'T was surely very wrong in Juan's mother To leave together this imprudent pair,[t] She who for many years had watched her son so— I'm very certain mine ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... one flattering, feverish streak? Am I marble? What! no woman Could so calm before thee stand? Nothing living, sentient, human, Could so coldly take thy hand? Yes—a sister might, a mother: My good-will is sisterly: Dream not, then, I strive to smother Fires that inly burn for thee. Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless, Fury cannot change my mind; I but deem the feeling rootless Which so whirls in passion's wind. Can I love? Oh, deeply—truly— Warmly—fondly—but not thee; And my ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... chimeras, King had come to one and only one determination: he would go slowly, he would hold an iron check upon himself, he would throttle down a temper which more than once in his life, at moments of tempest, had blazed out uncontrollably. He would smother within himself that passion which in forthright men is so prone to burst into violence. Were Gloria to show herself to be this or that, were she to say this word or another, he would speak with her coolly, he would listen to her calmly, and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... hundred tricks and ruses (The sort of thing that Mr. Dog confuses)— Doubling, and seeking one hole, then another— Smoked out of each until he thought he'd smother. At last as he once more came out of cover, Two nimble dogs pounced on ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... Sometimes in small areas they may be killed by crude sulphuric acid or may be starved by covering them with boards or a straw stack or in some other convenient way. A method that is very effective is to smother the weeds by a dense growth of some other plant, for example, cowpeas or buckwheat. Cowpeas are to be preferred, since they also enrich the soil by the nitrogen that ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... address'd His answer thus:—"With like desire I glow Your lineage, name, and character, to know, Since you have learnt my name." With soft reply I said, "A name like mine can nought supply The notice of renown like yours to claim. No smother'd spark like mine emits a flame To catch the public eye, as you can boast— A leading name in Cupid's numerous host! Alike his future victims and the past Shall own the common tie, while time itself shall last. But tell me ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... saying concerning "mort main"—the dead hand. This hand of the past reaches up into the present to smother the rising flame of modern ideals, to reforge our chains when we have broken them, to arrest progress. It is the hand of such as have lived on earth but have not loved humanity. At the call of those who fear progress and freedom, it rises from the gloom ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... their mind to follow the edge of the shore toward Bering Sea and if possible find the revenue cutter Bear, when another storm broke over them. No snow fell this time. There was almost continual thunder and a downpour of rain and hail that was sufficient to smother anybody that ventured out upon the deck of the Orion. The new planet seemed to be in the throes of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... alert little shortstop, managed to touch a whizzing ball, and send up a skyrocketing foul which Mullane amidst great excitement managed to get under, and smother in that ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... duties, loyalty to justice does not smother the accents of human sympathy; and before proceeding any further, I hope your Honor will appoint some counsel to confer with and advise the prisoner. Her isolation appeals to every noble instinct of manhood, and it were indeed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... their post, and after many whispered remarks and tittering, the younger thrust his handkerchief into his mouth to smother a burst of irrepressible laughter, while the other, assuming a modest ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... or allegiance is powerful enough to smother it within his own heart, in spite of the conditions to which he may outwardly conform. Other passions may temporarily hide it even from his own sight, yet in reality it is supreme, from the day of its birth to ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... your seats." The conviction immediately rushed upon our minds, that this must be our new teacher. The first emotion was that of surprise, and the second was that of the ludicrous; though I believe we contrived to smother the laugh, until we got out into the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... as these, who die without contrition, Must go to—beg your pardon, sir—perdition, The sons of light, you tell me, can't be gay, But count it sin of the sort called omission The groan to smother or the tear to stay Or fail to—what is that they live by?—pray. So down they flop, and the whole serious race is Put by divine compassion ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... perceptibly larger than the others, yet, in three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... of toil, heavy and unremitting, upon them, hard-handed, stoop-shouldered, dull-eyed and awkward. These were the daughters of rich farmers. Good girls they were, too, conscientious, careful, unselfish, thinking it a virtue to stifle every ambition, smother ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... mamma, and asking her to forget whatever she had done to displease her, for she had not done it on purpose. She would do the same thing now. Putting aside all pride and obstinacy, she would go to this mamma, who, for some days, had seemed so different. She would smother her in kisses. She might possibly be repelled at first. She would not mind it. She was sure that in the end she would ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... it's full of draughts. Your soul, J. R., flaps like a tent,' I says, 'in the breezes of dawn. The world is round. Time is fleeting. Is man an ox? No. Is he a patent inkstand? No. Was he created to occupy a house and fit his head to a hat? No. Then why delay? Why smother your longings?' I says; 'J. R., this won't do. This ain't your destiny. Rise! Be winged! Chase the ideal! Get on the vastness! Seek and find!' But what? I says, 'Fame, fortune, a vocation that's worthy of you.' Where? I says, 'In the beyond.' ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... displayed evidences of panic unworthy of men, unmeasured, irreflective, and therefore irrational; due largely, it is to be feared, to that false gospel of peace which preaches it for the physical comfort and ease of mind attendant, and in its argument against war strives to smother righteous indignation or noble ideals by appealing to the fear of loss,—casting the pearls of peace before the swine of self-interest. But a popular outcry, whether well or ill founded, cannot be wholly disregarded by a representative ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... to converse, she was soon sensible of some mental change. The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest. She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath. Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lady Russell reverted to their former hopes and fears, and spoke her satisfaction ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Mrs. Starling. "Do you s'pose she would smother in one of the chambers, where many a one before her has laid, sick and well, and got along too? Air, indeed! The house ain't like a corked bottle, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... she could scarcely smother, Yet a glance, in its daring, half-awed and shy, She added,—"While they were about it, mother, I wish they'd just finished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... there assembled, numbering about fifty, rushed forward, as one man, to aid in the effort. The attempt was a wild one. Had Henry considered for a moment, he would have seen that, in the event of their succeeding in pulling down the blazing pile, they would in all probability smother the child in ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... returned the captain; "he's as anxious as you and I to smother things up. This is a tiff; he'd soon talk 'em out of it if he had the chance, and what I propose to do is to give him the chance. Let's allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why, we'll fight the ship. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sweeping around the point like a wild bird, amid a smother of spray, appeared the advance canoe. As it disappeared I could distinguish De Artigny at the stern, his coat off, his hands grasping a paddle. Above the point once more and in smoother water, I was aware that he turned and looked back, shading his eyes from the sun. I could not but wonder ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... resorts in the region have been growing and sanitary facilities have not been keeping pace. Already some arms of the superb natural harbors formed by the tributary creeks are noxious with discharges from boats at big marinas, and gravel dredging is stirring up silt to smother bottom life, including shellfish. As Tidewater agriculture revives and modernizes, pesticides and artificial fertilizers are coming to be as much a part of the scene there as in other farming regions, and may ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... repeated this extraordinary performance, and the week after that, and so on until it became a grim and terrifying fixture. And while Jaffery, in a fog of theory as to the Eternal Feminine, was trying to do his duty, Liosha struggled hard to smother her own tumultuous feelings and to carry out Barbara's prescription for the treatment of overgrown babies; but the deuce of it was that though in her eyes Jaffery was pleasantly overgrown, she could not for the life of her regard him as a baby. So it came to pass that an unnatural pair continued ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... like your mother, and to me she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," and Peggy found herself in an embrace which threatened to smother her. She blushed with pleasure. To be like her mother whom she scarcely remembered, for eight years had passed since that beautiful mother slipped out of her life, was the highest praise that could have ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come a-toppling down and smother her—and she didn't care much if they would; but they never did. She was the mother of two children—the boy Robert, born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a daughter came, and this closed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... present, what do you do? You buy us a sealskin or a diamond-ring. Is that what you think we want? Perhaps some of you have a wife who only wants such things, and who cares for nothing else so much. If so, give them to her. If her higher nature is satisfied with plush, let her have it. Smother her in sealskins, weigh her down to earth with jewels. But the rest of us? What are ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... not detained there more than a couple of minutes, though it may have seemed much longer to the anxious lad, for his heart beat so tumultuously that it really threatened to smother him. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and a scanty fire, in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my own making.... I am not low-spirited, nor fanciful, nor freakish, but look what seem to me realities in the face, and am ready to take whatever may come. If I could but go to England now, I think that ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... dissipation, or self-culture, rarely permit any of Nature's periodical demands to interfere with their morning calls, or evening promenades, or midnight dancing, or sober study. Even the home draws the sacred mantle of modesty so closely over the reproductive function as not only to cover but to smother it. Sisters imitate brothers in persistent work at all times. Female clerks in stores strive to emulate the males by unremitting labor, seeking to develop feminine force by masculine methods. Female operatives of all sorts, in factories and elsewhere, labor ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... mob cap, but she looked so queer and was so uncomfortable that they let her choose her own costume. Nursing was certainly her strong point, and she tended Kavanagh as carefully as if he had been a baby. Only she always thought it cold, and wanted to smother ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... not true. In vain, in vain I smother All the torture that racks me. I love Mimi, she is my only treasure! I love her, ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... came under the general head of Liberalism, when they were likely to be overheard, or when they could not trust the man to whom they were speaking. If no one feared Astrardente, no one trusted him either. Valdarno consequently judged it best to smother his annoyance at the old man's words, and to retaliate by striking him ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... and in one place a chasm cleft the hill. He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with mist, but the height of the rock wall hinted at its depth. A transverse ravine ran into the chasm, and he could hear the roar of a waterfall. Then the mist rolled up in a white smother and blotted ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... what I feel, Mistress." And Janet covered her mouth to smother her laughter; first of all because she felt seasick, and secondly the child's words stirred in her no such youthful enthusiasm. She was ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... power, of so many of its advocates and confessors, at which the adversaries of the Christian view of the world so willingly point, are but a confirmation of its value. For they show us how divine and heavenly the gift must be, if even such errors were not able to smother its fruits. If we do not wish to suppose that mankind has foundations and ends which up to the present it is not yet allowed to know, we certainly must look for these foundations and ends where we find the best which has so ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... is drowned now—quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go—whirls from a black ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... this, over all this lovely land, in lanes and fields, on the lonely hill-side, by the laughing stream, and in the depths of many a silent wood, to distant days shall speak—of blood-sealed destinies; with voices that no tyrant's power can smother, they shall speak.— ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... it has!" cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. "Here, take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. 'How doth the little'—and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... sackcloth about her wound, Unclothed as the primal mother, With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed With a fire she dare not smother. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of communicating the cruel repulse she had received tenfold more painful. Without uttering a word, she threw herself upon the bed beside her sister, and, burying her face in a pillow, endeavoured to smother the sobs that came up convulsively from her bosom. Mary asked no question. She understood the meaning of Ellen's agitation well; it told her that she had been disappointed in the expectation of receiving the money ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... nick of time. Thirsey was almost dying. Her mother was fully convinced that Ann had saved her life, and she never forgot it. She was a woman of strong feelings, who never did things by halves, and she not only treated Ann with kindness, but she seemed to smother her grudge against Grandma for robbing her of ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to think them quite wonderful—for a time. He stood as near the edge as his father would let him, looking up the rapids down which the waters rushed, to fall over the rocky edge, dropping in a smother of foam to the blue lake below. Silently he watched the smooth waters glide down like some ribbon, and then, turning ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds the sharpest of all!) You toil of painful and choked articulations, you meannesses, You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;) You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis! Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth, It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me, It shall yet stand up ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... which intervened seemed to him to be very long. He had absolutely forgotten in his anxiety that the lather was still upon his face. But he could not smother his anxiety. He was fighting with it at every turn, but he could not conquer it. When the knock came at his door, he grasped at his own breast as though to support himself. With a hoarse voice he told the man to come in, and Croll himself appeared, opening the door gently and very slowly. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... distance beyond—of the snow-tipped Sabines and lonely Soracte. As the spring advances the whole Campagna smiles and waves with flowers; but I think they are nowhere more rank and lovely than in the shifting shadow of the aqueducts, where they muffle the feet of the columns and smother the half-dozen brooks which wander in and out like silver meshes between the legs of a file of giants. They make a niche for themselves too in every crevice and tremble on the vault of the empty conduits. The ivy hereabouts in the springtime is peculiarly brilliant ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... a fresh air feend. His name is Angus MacKenzie. Hes Scotch. Hes so close himself that he has to have lots of air or hed smother. Every nite he pulls up the side of the tent by his bed. No one likes fresh air in its place better than me, Mable, but when its as fresh as this air ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... victimize, immolate; massacre; take away life, deprive of life; make away with, put an end to; despatch, dispatch; burke, settle, do for. strangle, garrote, hang, throttle, choke, stifle, suffocate, stop the breath, smother, asphyxiate, drown. saber; cut down, cut to pieces, cut the throat; jugulate^; stab, run through the body, bayonet, eviscerate; put to the sword, put to the edge of the sword. shoot dead; blow one's brains out; brain, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mused, and then he bethought him to consult the countenance of his companion. The marble of the pilaster, against which he leaned, was not more cold and unmoved than the face of the inquisitor. The man had learned to smother every natural impulse in the assumed and factitious ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... back, and paused nervously in the doorway to look on. Daisy, dressed as a water-nymph, waved her a gay greeting over her husband's shoulder. Olga smiled and waved back, striving to smother away out of sight the sick fear ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... what mournful grace, For a lost parent, sits on Chudleigh's face Fair virgin, weep no more, your anguish smother! You in this town can never want ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... roared, wiping his face with a grimy handkerchief. 'Ain't this dust awful? There ain't no doing anything with it. If you put the winders down you'll smother with the heat, and if you leave 'em up, you'll choke to death. Hobson's choice, eh? Ha, ha! And all that prayin' for rain on Sunday, too. Providence's ways is certainly beyond us—ain't they? Well, I rather guess this ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... yet satisfied, but would insist upon his knocking his head on the ground, and Chia Jui, whose sole aim was to temporarily smother the affair, quietly again urged Chin Jung, adding that the proverb has it: "That if you keep down the anger of a minute, you will for a whole life-time ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... boldness, a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne outflanked Montecuculi, and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration. ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... speak in a low, hurried tone: "It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it; I used to repeat things to myself all day—poems, stupid rhymes—anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath—but I—hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Duffel had managed to smother his wrath during the brief moments he was giving his orders; but no sooner had the seemingly pliant tools of his will left, than he again foamed over, and pacing back and forth, continued his cursing, as though he would spend his ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... fate pull'd me back to the brink; I sprang from the rock, from its pinnacle height, But fell on the grass with a grasshopper's flight; I ran at my fears—they were fears and no more, For the bear would not mangle my limbs, nor the boar, But moan'd—all their brutalized flesh could not smother The horrible truth,—we were kin ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... ignorance on the part of those with whom she associates. The influence is noticeable. It is fashionable to attend the Papal Church, fashionable to contribute to its prosperity, fashionable for men to smother their opinions, fashionable for the politician to seek the favor of that power that furnishes, in its subtlety and in its power to work in darkness, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... enabled the machine forces to smother in committee any measure the machine wished to defeat. A two-thirds vote would have been necessary to suspend the rules to have a bill recalled from committee, that is to say, the votes of fifty-four Assemblymen. Twenty-seven Assemblymen could ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... but he would have required to have been strong enough to go to sleep, for, directly after, Harry and Philip charged into the room nearly dressed; and seeing what Fred had been doing, they seized the clothes, whisked them off, and then pretended to smother the poor ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... it," said the widow; "I tell you I don't like it. You neither of you know Barry Lynch, as well as I do; he'd smother her av it come into ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... of these rumours calls for a report from the minister, on the state of the kingdom." M. d'Argenson was not only defeated in his object, and interrupted in his speech, but he was expressly called to order for having alluded to facts unfortunately too certain, but which the Government wished to smother up by silencing all ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... life of sapience! 'Of their doings in this world,' said he, 'you may form some idea from their injunctions with reference to the next. These are they who will pay a long price for an entree; whose floors are sprinkled with wine and saffron and spices; who in midwinter smother themselves in roses, ay, for roses are scarce, and out of season, and altogether desirable; but let a thing come in its due course, and oh, 'tis vile, 'tis contemptible. These are they whose drink is of costly essences.' He had no mercy on them here. 'Very bunglers ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... can't tell—" Her voice broke in a half-sob she tried to smother. "No one can ever know what it meant to me, but I knew she understood, and suddenly the something that had been tight and cruel snapped, and for the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... vengeance occupied my heart, I did not feel my dwelling's dreary void; But now, returning home, my rage appeas'd, My foes defeated, and my son aveng'd, I find there nothing left to comfort me. The glad obedience, which I used to see Kindling in every eye, is smother'd now In discontent and gloom; each, pond'ring, weighs The changes which a future day may bring, And serves the childless king, because compell'd. To-day I come within this sacred fane, Which I have often enter'd to implore And thank the gods for conquest. ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
