"Deaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tends to deaden this sense of the open-air is just as certain. It runs not upon Nature, but upon the presentation of Nature. I am almost ready to assert that it injures a critic as surely as it spoils a creative writer. Certainly I remember that the finest appreciation of Carlyle—a man ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... therefore he occupied himself continually. "Totos dies scribo." By doing so, he did contrive not to break his heart. In a subsequent letter he says, "Reading and writing do not soften it, but they deaden it."[157] ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... our calling will turn away from earthly things. If you believe that God has summoned you to His kingdom and glory, surely, surely, that should deaden in your heart the love and the care for the trifles that lie by the wayside. Surely, surely, if that great voice is inviting, and that merciful hand is beckoning you into the light, and showing you what you may possess there, it is not walking according to that summons if you ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... about his big right hand, producing a sort of cushion to deaden the sound of a blow with the fist and to protect his knuckles; for all his strength was to go into that one mighty blow. If both men came into the room, his chance was smaller; but, in either event, the first blow was to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... harsh breath and turned to him. Young Raleigh, who had written a monograph on engineering stresses, had still much to learn about the stresses that contort and warp the souls of men and women. He learned some of it then, when he saw the girl's face deaden to a blanker white and the flame of a hungry hope leap into her eyes. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... trade, and George was glad enough to work at it, both to deaden the stings of conscience and memory, and to procure the means of deadening them still further. But even here was something in the way of improvement, for hitherto he had applied himself to nothing, his being one of those dreamful natures capable of busy exertion for ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... sorr," said Clancy, "I was thinking it would be a good night tonight, seein' there's a strong wind blowing that would deaden the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... has no packing. Its surface of contact has two circumferential grooves, which produce a sort of water packing acting by adhesion. A small air chamber is connected with the inlet pipe, and serves to deaden the shocks. This engine is often made with two cylinders, having their cranks ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... succeeded. These details transported Napoleon with joy. Credulous from hope, perhaps from despair, he was for some moments dazzled by these appearances: eager to escape from the inward feeling which oppressed him, he seemed desirous to deaden it by resigning himself to an expansive joy. He therefore summoned all his generals, and triumphantly announced to them a speedy peace. "They had but to wait another fortnight. None but himself was acquainted with the Russian ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... les dents [Fr.]. collapse, faint, swoon, fall into a swoon, drop; go by the board, go by the wayside; go up in smoke, end in smoke &c (fail) 732. render powerless &c adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable^; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple^, maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten^, silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat [Fr.], spike the guns; take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one who might some day reign over them. The turning away by one man to his farm and by another to his merchandize is in part an evidence of their engrossment in material pursuits to the utter disregard of their sovereign's will; but it signifies further an effort to deaden their troubled consciences by some absorbing occupation; and possibly also a premeditated demonstration of the fact that they placed their personal affairs above the call of their king. The monarch executed a terrible ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... could I endure to have her look at another as she looked at me when our hands touched, but I could not utter a word; and I saw her lip quiver, and the hopeless look deaden her ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... back upon her pillows, those velvet and satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment, the labour of Mary and Fraeulein, pillows which could not bring peace to the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes, and for a few moments there ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... circles, and now all a-stoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death. Higher up among the rocks and cliffs and stones, we see a stripling whose ambition it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the ptarmigan. . . . Never shall eld deaden our sympathies with the pastimes of our fellow-men, any more than with their highest raptures, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... humble laborer; we should both have been more truly noble. I envy the peasants who have the glorious privilege of doing just that which they are best fitted to do; who are not forced to vegetate and call vegetation existence,—not compelled to waste and deaden their energies because it is an aristocratic penalty,—not doomed to glide into and out of their lives without ever living enough to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... inward shudder Anstice recalled those months after Hilda Ryder's death—those horrible, chaotic months when, in a vain endeavour to stifle thought, to deaden remorse, he had invoked the aid of the poppy, and by so doing had almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... subject his stomach to a rigorous discipline, for life on the verge of a bog is an exacting business. Instead of obeying the impulse to eat Denis Donohoe blew warm breaths into his purple hands, beat his arms about his body to deaden the bitter cold, whistled, took some steps of an odd dance along the road, and went on talking to the donkey as if he were making pleasant conversation to a companion. The only sign of life to be seen on earth or air was a thin line of wild duck high up in the sky, one group making wide circles ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... such a way that prying eyes could not see into it. The two friends unstopped the flue which opened into the chimney of the stove in the workroom, where the girls heated their irons. Eve and Basine spread ragged coverlets over the brick floor to deaden any sound that David might make, put in a truckle bed, a stove for his experiments, and a table and a chair. Basine promised to bring food in the night; and as no one had occasion to enter her room, David might defy his enemies one and all, or ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... and cold. He was in a daze, and there was a curious smell about him—an odor that he tried to recall. Then, all at once, it came to him what it was—chloroform. Once his father had undergone an operation, and to deaden his pain chloroform had ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... The innicent little sweet. I do believe him's dead, or just going to deaden. I daren't lift him up. Oh ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... stand by that opposition." Sir Robert Peel defined Conservatism when he said, "My object for some years past has been to lay the foundation of a great party, which, existing in the House of Commons, and deriving its strength from the popular will, should diminish the risk and deaden the shock of collisions between the two ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... hands, loathing herself that she could not deaden down their shiver or the stinging pain in her head. What were these things at a time like this? Her physician was taking a different diagnosis of her disease from his first. He leaned over her, his face flushing, his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... him; later he fretted because he perceived that Carroll was forced, however willingly, to labours beyond her strength, to irksome confinement, and to that intimate and wearing close association with the abnormal which in the long run is bound to deaden the spirit. He lost sight of his own grievance in the matter. With perhaps somewhat of exaggeration he came mightily to desire for her more of the open air, both of body and spirit. Often when tramping back to his hotel he communed savagely with himself, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... This ship now came on, close under our lee, losing a little of her way in passing, an expedient probably thought of to give her a little more time to put her questions, and to receive the desired answers. I observed also, that she let go all her bow-lines, which seemed much to deaden her way, of which there still remained sufficient, notwithstanding, to carry her well clear of us. The following dialogue then passed, the Englishman asking the questions, of course, that being a privilege expressly appropriated ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... they were accorded rarely and by moments. The King always remembered his door; Madame de Maintenon always remembered the hay and barley of Madame de Neuillant, and neither years nor devotion could deaden ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... subject of public prayer began to weigh upon his mind. He suspected the practice by which one man offered up prayer vicariously and collectively for the assembled congregation. Was not that too, like the Communion Service, a form that tended to deaden the spirit? Under the influence of this and other scruples he finally ceased to preach (1838), and told his friends that henceforth he must find his pulpit in the platform of the lecturer. 'I see not,' he said, 'why this is not the most flexible of all organs of opinion, from its ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... clouds of smoke filled the air. Rushing to the door, Mrs. Fischer saw that the barn was wrapped in flames. With a scream for help she ran out into the yard, where she discovered the uncle and several others endeavoring to deaden the flames, but their efforts seemed ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... sassafras root was red; how to know the toughest hickory by hammering on its trunk; when twigs cut from the forest would grow, if thrust in the earth; and that secret day of all the year when an axe, stuck into the bark of a tree, would deaden it to the root. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... only the nearest relatives of the deceased and the most distinguished of the leaders of the clan were permitted to enter. The last yell of woe was so terribly loud, and answered by so many hundred echoes, that the glover instinctively raised his hands to his ears, to shut out, or deaden at least, a sound so piercing. He kept this attitude while the hawks, owls, and other birds, scared by the wild scream, had begun to settle in their retreats, when, as he withdrew his hands, a voice close by ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... business of the enslaver of men to blunt, deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility. Conscience is, to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the basis of all trust and confidence; ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... mind, and the recollection of his recent outbreak of prevarication and deception was always a weight upon his conscience. But, to offset these, there was a changed air about the Phipps' home and its inmates which was so very gratifying that, if it did not deaden that conscience, it, at least, administered to it an effective dose of ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... enemy appeared. The Saracen was just aware of the formidable missile in time to interpose his light buckler betwixt the mace and his head; but the violence of the blow forced the buckler down on his turban, and though that defence also contributed to deaden its violence, the Saracen was beaten from his horse. Ere the Christian could avail himself of this mishap, his nimble foeman sprang from the ground, and, calling on his steed, which instantly returned to his side, he leaped into his seat without touching ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the third I know,[26] if I have great need to restrain my foes, the weapons' edge I deaden: of my adversaries nor ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and human passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting, to kill and be killed. Nor did the moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and teeth shone ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was rewarded by finding a small eyelet hole in the side of the mattress. He took out his knife, opened the pipe cleaner, and pressed the narrow blade into the aperture. There was a click and two doors, ludicrously like the doors which deaden the volume of gramophone music, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... the one to deaden the frequency and force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object to the affections. Commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power of sensation very perfect, it has rather the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and its effects upon theme. "War and civilization," said one of the great English ministers, "are contradictory terms, even as Christ and Mars." Particularly damaging is the effect of war upon citizens. For does it not blunt the sensibilities, harden the heart, inflame the mind with passions, and deaden the consciences of men? Said the same great English preacher, "The sword that smites the enemy abroad, also lays bare the primeval savage within the citizen at home." And again, "War is not so horrible in that it drains the dearest veins ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... away toward the door, crouching like a cat ready to spring, his beady eyes half-frightened, watching the poison deaden the faculties of the other. He leaped through the door, glanced up and down the stable street—deserted at that hour except for a few drowsy attendants lounging in front of their stalls—jerked the door shut, hooked the open padlock ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... improvises the piece, calls it "so difficult and so rare, that it went nigh to deaden the quick and to quicken the dead"; indeed, the native poets consider the metre Madid as the most difficult of all, and it is scarcely ever attempted by later writers. This accounts for its rare occurrence in The Nights, where only two more instances are to be found, Mac. N. ii. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... smoke?" "No, sir," said the lady, astonished at this irrelevant question, and perhaps the more so, as the count's aversion to smoking was so well known, that none of his smoking subjects ventured to approach him without having taken every precaution to deaden any odour of the fragrant weed which might lurk about their clothes or person. "Does he take snuff?" said the viceroy. "Yes, your Excellency," said his visitor, who probably feared that for once his Excellency's ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... not been a citizen of the world for over sixty years without acquiring the grim knowledge that neither intense happiness nor deep grief suffice to deaden for very long the pinpricks of material discomfort. But the worldly-wise old man possessed a broad tolerance for the frailties of human nature, and his smile held nothing of contempt, but only a whimsical humour touched ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... earth. But how came this to be so? Why, every imagination of the thoughts, or of the motions that were in the heart to sin, was evil, only evil, and that continuously. The imagination of the thoughts was evil—that is, such as tended not to deaden or stifle, but such as tended to animate and forward the motions or thoughts of sin into action. Every imagination of the thoughts—that which is here called a thought, by Paul to the Romans, called a motion. Now the imagination should, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the phalangeal articulations are flexed and the heel slightly raised, in order to relieve the pressure of the perforans tendon on the affected area, and so obtain ease, there are others who hold that the heel is pressed firmly to the ground in order to deaden the pain. It may be, and most probably is, that both are right; but, in our opinion, there is no doubt whatever that pointing with the heel elevated is by far ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... desire of the educated classes to support the ideas they prefer, and the order of existence based on them, has attained its furthest limits. They lie, and delude themselves, and one another, with the subtlest forms of deception, simply to obscure, to deaden conscience. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... especially fatal to them; whereas their opponents, through their new regulations as to penance, softened this distinction, and that not to the detriment of morality. For an entirely different treatment of so-called gross and venial transgressions must in every case deaden the conscience towards ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... business partnership failing to be annulled by one partner who brought suit against another; yet we expect the marriage relation to survive this. As a matter of fact, such is its vitality that it often does. But many times the result of court action is only to deaden once and for all the tiny spark from which marital happiness might have been rekindled. As long as it survives, both man and wife feel in their inmost hearts that, no matter what his offense, to "take ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... suddenly rang out, apparently from close at hand, a loud, clear, most appallingly clear, blood-curdling cry, which, beginning in a low key, ended in a shriek so horrid, harsh, and piercing, that I felt my heart shrivel up within me, and in sheer desperation I buried my fingers in my ears to deaden the sound. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... pathway is well marked though somewhat stony and irregular; the valley-bottom is wider here and we are close by the side of the Gave. The hemp sandals prove surprisingly useful. Their half-inch soles of rope utterly deaden the inequalities of the ground, and the pebbly, hummocky path is as a carpet beneath the feet. The bearers tramp steadily onward, the chairs sinking and rising in easy vertical motion, much more grateful than the horizontal "joggle" ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... reason to be satisfied with it. The state of the cutaneous surface, during the vesicular and pustular stages, is such as to prevent its transmitting the usual impressions to the interior. Cold may deaden it, and hasten the disorganization of its tissue, but cannot arrest and suspend morbid capillary action here, as in ordinary fevers, or diseases with great local determination, as to the head, &c. If useful ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... observed that the framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would deaden the sound of the lone workman. Now, then, his hopes were to be crowned. Poor fool! and even thou hast hope still! All that night he toiled and toiled, and sought to work his iron into a file; now he tried the bars, and now the framework. Alas! he had not learned ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... present was proclaiming his views freely on a diversity of subjects, and above all could be heard the clear notes of the musical instruments by which the officials sought to encourage one another in their extremity, and to deaden the cries of ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... strange, new country. With my passion for the sea, and it so near, I could not be utterly desolate. To sit on these cliffs, reddening now in the sunset and watch the outgoing tide, sending imaginary messages on the departing waves to far-off shores, would surely, to some extent, deaden the sense of utter isolation from the world of childhood and youth. Mrs. Blake shook my hand warmly, repeating again the invitation to visit her at Daniel's, while she gathered up her huge basket ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... that no permanent form of approach could be effective in all cases. To habituate ourselves to some narrow automatic line of action and follow it even under varying circumstances, therefore, might prevent the mind from properly weighing these varying conditions, and thus deaden initiative. It is for this reason that experience is so valuable in directing life action. By the use of past experience, the mind is able to analyse each situation calling for reaction and, by noting any unusual circumstances it presents, may adapt even our habitual ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... as that tension is released at the highest point, a perfunctory performance with all its well-known side features, the waste and the idleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks, must set in and deaden the work. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the pan, cover it with a lid or tin plate, and set it back of the stove if the fire is hot—if very slow it may be forward; when well risen and near done, put it in the oven, or if the oven is cold you may turn it gently, not to deaden it. Serve when done (try with a twig), the under side uppermost; it should be of a fine golden brown and look like an omelet. This soufflee bread is equally good baked in a tin in which is rather more butter than enough to grease it; the oven ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... unbroken forests, through whose tangled paths the mysterious winter wind groaned and shrieked and howled with weird noises and unaccountable clamors. Along the iron-bound shore, the stormful Atlantic raved and thundered, and dashed its moaning waters, as if to deaden and deafen any voice that might tell of the settled life of the old civilized world, and shut us forever into the wilderness. A good story-teller, in those days, was always sure of a warm seat at the hearthstone, and the delighted homage of children; and in all Oldtown there ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... late. The Little Doctor waited in the hotel parlor, and Chip waited in the hotel saloon, longing to turn a deluge of whisky down his throat to deaden that unbearable, heavy ache in his heart—but instead he played pool with Bert Rogers, who happened to be in town that day, and took cigars after each game instead of whiskey, varying the monotony occasionally by lemon soda, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... German-silver flute. "Kittiwake Jack," one of the crew, was seated as far as possible for'ard, vainly trying to absorb his tea and stop his ears, at one and the same time, whilst his fellow-sufferer, Bill Brown, having hastily dived below, lay in his bunk, striving to deaden the weird, wailing sounds that filled the ship. And just as Haydn's "Surprise" was half way through, for the seventh time, the Skipper walked ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... crucifying of another Jew or two to them? Before they lift the cross or fasten their prisoner to it, a little touch of pity, or perhaps only the observance of the usual custom, leads them to offer a draught of wine, in which some anodyne had been mixed, to deaden agony. But the cup which He had to drink needed that He should be in full possession of all His sensibilities to pain, and of all His unclouded firmness of resolve; and so His patient lips closed against the offered mercy. He would not drink because He would suffer, and He would ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... did not actually touch it except at certain points where communication with the main part was necessary; the rooms on the outer wing ran parallel for some distance with those in the house, but were separated by an interval of one or two feet. This was a precaution taken, it was said, in order to deaden the noise made by the children when they were in the nurseries situated in this part of the house. It had certainly been an effectual one; it was difficult to hear any sound proceeding from these rooms, even when one stood ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... heal a cut, but they keep out the decaying elements, air and moisture, thus helping to preserve the branch and by protecting it to promote healing in nature's way. A little lamp black will serve to deaden the ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... day of wild oats, and had sown them, but had drawn back ere they sprung into life and choked out all else. He had had riches and lost them; had married a lovely loving girl, only to have her taken from him in one short year; then to deaden his grief he had gone to work, regained his wealth, after which he left his infant daughter in tender hands, and had gone abroad, only to again lose all he had in an unfortunate speculation, which brought him home, where he had ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... They profess to deaden these floors so that you can't hear from one apartment to another. But I know pretty well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in a perambulator at three o'clock in the morning; and I guess our young lady lets the people below understand when she's ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... not outward cold But inward chill thy bosom froze, Made thee deny with falsehood bold Thy Lord and Master to his foes. When we find cheer at Satan's fires The world is there to work us harm, To deaden all our pure desires With its ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... glass! Even here, at times, Within these walls, where all should be at peace, I have my trials. Time has laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp to deaden its vibrations, Ashes are on my head, and on my lips Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness And weariness of life, that makes me ready To say to the dead Abbots under us, "Make room for me!" Ony I see the dusk Of evening twilight coming, and have not Completed half my task; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Kappa," will be wasted if you still insist upon model schoolmasters. So long as we require our schoolmasters to be politic, conforming, undisturbing men, setting up Polonius as an ideal for them, so long will their influence deaden the souls of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... when he had finished, 'the wound is beyond the power of man to heal; but though I cannot cure it, I can at least deaden the pain, and enable you to ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... only sounds that were audible. After half an hour of this I arose and sent a hail through the bank of mist, which I thought would reach a vessel within half a mile. There was no sound of an answer, the dank vapor appearing to deaden my hail and swallow up all noise a short distance beyond the boat. It was uncanny to feel how weak that yell appeared. I saw Jim looking at me with a strange light in his eyes as though he felt ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... should never forget its subordinate position in human affairs. It must not be permitted to occupy more than its legitimate place and power in society, nor to have the liberty to desecrate the poetry of life, to deaden our sensitiveness to ideals, bragging of its own coarseness as a sign of virility. The pity is that when in the centre of our activities we acknowledge, by some proud name, the supremacy of wanton destructiveness, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... laid to rest, And blessing them I too am blest. My goodwill, as a springing air, Unclouds a beauty in despair; I stand beneath the sky's pure cope Unburthen'd even by a hope; And peace unspeakable, a joy Which hope would deaden and destroy, Like sunshine fills the airy gulf Left by the vanishing of self. That I have known her; that she moves Somewhere all-graceful; that she loves, And is belov'd, and that she's so Most happy, and to heaven will go, Where ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... on the preservation of the offensive spirit. Its essence is the counter-attack—waiting deliberately for a chance to strike—not cowering in inactivity. Defence is a condition of restrained activity—not a mere condition of rest. Its real weakness is that if unduly prolonged it tends to deaden the spirit of offence. This is a truth so vital that some authorities in their eagerness to enforce it have travestied it into the misleading maxim, "That attack is the best defence." Hence again an amateurish notion that defence is always stupid or pusillanimous, leading always ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... word to himself a thousand times to deaden his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time, but Nan's situation took most of his thought. For the first time he told John Lefever the story of Nan's finding him on Music Mountain, of her aid in ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... on a low level, and making the political test final. To take off the taxes on knowledge was to place a heavy tax on broad and independent opinion. The multiplication of journals 'delivering brawling judgments unashamed on all things all day long,' has done much to deaden the small stock of individuality in public verdicts. It has done much to make vulgar ways of looking at things and vulgar ways of speaking of them stronger and stronger, by formulating and repeating and stereotyping ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... I shall come back here. In my waking moments your name shall never willingly pass my lips again. I will say it for the last time now. Philip, Philip, Philip, whom I chose to love out of all the world, I pray God that He will take me, or deaden the edge of what I suffer, and that He may never let my feet cross your path or my eyes fall ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... to an extent, forgot Peter. He tried to deaden within him the impulses which Yellow Bird's conjuring had roused. He tried to see in them a menace and a danger, and he repeated to himself the folly of placing credence in Yellow Bird's "medicine." But his efforts were futile, and he was honest enough to admit ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... wheels covered with rags, and with cloths about the horse's hoofs to deaden their sound, Ned Cilley and his hamper went quietly away in the direction of the wharfs. In a moment, cart, horse, and driver were swallowed up in ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... becomes spiritual by cleaving to the created light which comes directly from God, and praising the Creator. This is his paradise and his reward and perfection. Hence Plato said that philosophy is the strengthening and the help of death. He meant by this that philosophy helps to deaden all animal desires and pleasures. For by being thus delivered from them, a man will reach excellence and the higher splendor, and will enter the house of truth. But if he indulges his animal pleasures and desires and they become strengthened, he will become subject to agencies which ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... seated among green shadows, like meadows, with a flock or a grove in the distance, so that it could not be seen that she goes to balls or fashionable entertainments. Our balls, I must confess, murder the intellect, deaden all remnants of feeling. Simplicity! would there were more simplicity!" Alas, it was stamped on the faces of mother and daughter that they had so overdanced themselves at balls that they had become almost ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... it would be of infinite Service to this poor Country, which they impoverish by the wasteful Consumption of English Goods, that devour our Money, and deaden our Industry. That we owe many Blessings to England, I never doubted, even when I was alive, and as far as was in her Power, disgraced and maltreated by her, and much less shall I dispute it now. However, I can reckon up a large ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... knew what it is to love without hope for years and years, to wait for ever for something that will never come! I shall not marry for love, but marriage will at least be a change, and will bring new cares to deaden the memories of the past. ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... I spoke of virtue, I referred to that smooth kind which is current, and seems more passive than active,—that soft amiability which appears to deaden enthusiasm, and to shut up the soul in a set of opinions, instead of expanding it widely to everything noble and generous, wherever ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... another affair. He could neither stifle nor deaden that. It was always jabbing him with white-hot barbs, waking or sleeping. But it never said: "Tell someone! Tell someone!" Was he something of a moral pervert, then? Was it what he had lost—the familiar world—rather ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... convulsive spasm, against a seat placed near one of the open windows. At the same instant his ear caught a sort of indistinct sound on the stairs, followed by the measured tread of soldiery, with the clanking of swords and military accoutrements; then came a hum and buzz as of many voices, so as to deaden even the noisy mirth of the bridal party, among whom a vague feeling of curiosity and apprehension quelled every disposition to talk, and almost instantaneously the most deathlike ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disintegrating and scattering, in this way getting ready for use in new forms, that which is hoarded and consequently serving no use. There is also a great law continually operating whose effects are to dwarf and deaden the powers of true enjoyment, as well as all the higher faculties of the one ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a master of his art to make a blot which may so easily be hit. Similitudes (as I have said) are not for tragedy, which is all violent, and where the passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden, where they should animate; they are not of the nature of dialogue unless in comedy. A metaphor is almost all the stage can suffer, which is a kind of similitude comprehended in a word. But this figure has ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... improve, although his physical strength appeared to gain by this change. He got stout and robust, and able to go through a greater amount of physical labour than in former days. What seemed to contribute to sooth and quiet—or, perhaps, deaden—his mental energies, was the habit of smoking, which he acquired from his companions. He would smoke for whole days and weeks, either working in the garden, or sitting on the stump of a tree in Epping Forest, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... platform was increasing. Only a quarter of an hour now remained to the pilgrims. Madame Vetu, whose eyes were open but who saw nothing, sat like an insensible being in the broad sunlight, in the hope possibly that the scorching heat would deaden her pains; whilst up and down, in front of her, went Madame Vincent ever with the same sleep-inducing step and ever carrying her little Rose, her poor ailing birdie, whose weight was so trifling that she scarcely felt her in her arms. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to him, and gave it to him strong—being certain that he was past hurting by it, and hoping that it might deaden his pain. And presently, when he asked for another drink, I ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the saddle, their blankets in a roll behind them, their sabres clanking at their sides. This noise and movement and the tramp of many horses' hoofs has a curious effect upon one. The bugles play—presently you hear them afar off, deaden'd, mix'd with other noises. Then just as they had all pass'd, a string of ambulances commenc'd from the other way, moving up Fourteenth street north, slowly wending along, bearing a large lot of wounded to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... extraordinary existence in the endless forests of the Okhotsk Province, with the loose end of the chain wound about his waist. A strip torn off his convict shirt secured the end firmly. Other strips fastened it at intervals up his left leg to deaden the clanking and to prevent the slack links from getting hooked in the bushes. He became very fierce. He developed an unsuspected genius for the arts of a wild and hunted existence. He learned to creep into villages without betraying his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... as yet to break that attenuated thread, the tingling, stinging shock passed. She found strength to read the whole article, almost intelligently, though at times her mind would wander to inconsequent things, and the beat of her own heart seemed to deaden her understanding. She remembered now everything, nearly everything, till she turned from her own door, a desperate, homeless outcast. She recalled a cab going somewhere, and then after what appeared to be an interval of unconsciousness, she was walking, walking, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her, that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine. The danger of the satirist is, that continual use may deaden his sensibility to the force of language. He becomes more and more liable to strike harder than he knows or intends. He may be careful to put on his boxing-gloves, and yet forget, that, the older they grow, the more plainly may the knuckles inside be felt. Moreover, in the heat of contest, the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... no ivory above the ears of the man who bossed this job," Macdonald told the others. "He picks a night when we're all at the club, more than half a mile from here, a stormy night when folks are not wandering the streets. He knows that the wind will deaden the sound of the dynamite and that the snow will wipe out any tracks that might help to identify him and his pal or show which way they ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... but not if they be honest men," answered Aram, in one of those shrewd remarks which he often uttered, and which seemed almost incompatible with the tenor of the quiet and abstruse pursuits that he had adopted, and that generally deaden the mind ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reception-rooms and grand staircase are closed by tapestry of the fifteenth century, representing hunting scenes. Long cords of silk and gold loop back these marvellous hangings in the Italian style. Thick carpets, into which the feet sink, deaden the sound of footsteps. Spacious divans, covered with Oriental materials, are placed ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... drink—or, probably, in a moment of pity the soldiers brought Him the sour wine which they had provided for themselves. He seems to have partaken of it, although He had refused the mixture that had been before offered Him merely to deaden His pain. To bear that pain was the lofty duty set before Him, and so He would not turn aside from it ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... science and poetry are opposed, is a delusion. It is doubtless true that as states of consciousness, cognition and emotion tend to exclude each other. And it is doubtless also true that an extreme activity of the reflective powers tends to deaden the feelings; while an extreme activity of the feelings tends to deaden the reflective powers: in which sense, indeed, all orders of activity are antagonistic to each other. But it is not true that ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with continually ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... upon us at all; lower a sail over the bow to deaden her way. A small topsail will do; I only want to check her ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... necessity of guarding against letting children read too much, or too entirely along one line. There is a habit of reading along lines which deaden, instead of stimulating, thought, and the habit, if carried to excess, becomes a mental dissipation which is utterly reprehensible; but the pathway to this habit is entered upon so innocently and unconsciously ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... from his shoulders the last ragged, trailing remnants of his frockcoat, and hurled them from him. Then, thrusting his fingers into the hair which he had once been so careful to preserve, he pulled it out by handfuls at a time, as though he hoped through physical pain to deaden the mental agony which he ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... its name. The combatants covered their fists with a kind of offensive arms, called Cestus, and their heads with a sort of leather cap, to defend their temples and ears, which were most exposed to blows, and to deaden their violence. The Cestus was a kind of gauntlet, or glove, made of straps of leather, and plated with brass, lead or iron. Their use was to strengthen the hands of the combatants, and to add ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... drowsy way through all the dismal swamps and unimpressive scenery that could be found between the great lakes and the sea- coast. Yet there is variety enough, both on the surface of the canal and along its banks, to amuse the traveller, if an overpowering tedium did not deaden his perceptions. ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... many, so long as men are encouraged in the name of religion to look for a remedy, not in fighting against surrounding evils, but in cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies with our fellow-men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds with indifference to the evils of this; and the last word of half our preachers is, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... laid his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp to deaden its vibrations." ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Margaret's flight, Arthur Burdon had thrown himself again into the work which for so long had been his only solace. It had lost its savour; but he would not take this into account, and he slaved away mechanically, by perpetual toil seeking to deaden his anguish. But as the time passed he was seized on a sudden with a curious feeling of foreboding, which he could in no way resist; it grew in strength till it had all the power of an obsession, and he could not reason himself out of it. He was sure that a great danger threatened ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... possible to the wind, and to let the drift pass over us. The mealy snow sifted into the folds of our clothing and in many places reached the skin. We were glad at first to see the snow packing about us, hoping it would deaden the force of the wind, but it soon froze into a stiff, crusty heap as the temperature fell, rather augmenting ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... sound which puzzled him. It was not the quick patter of a dog-team or the sliding fall of netted shoes. The noise was dull and heavy, and as he knew the snow would deaden it, whoever was coming could ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... during that night. He paced his room, a prey to jealousy and envy and rage, which his calm temperament had kept him from feeling in their intensity up to this miserable hour. He thought of all that a maddened nature can imagine to deaden its own intolerable anguish. Of revenge. If Myrtle rejected his suit, should he take her life on the spot, that she might never be another's,—that neither man nor woman should ever triumph over him,—the proud ambitious man, defeated, humbled, scorned? ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hated tobacco. But he was anxious to be scrupulously polite to Iver, and thus to deaden the pangs of conscience. Resigned though miserable, he went with them to the smoking-room. Colonel Wilmot Edge looked up from the Army and Navy Gazette, and glanced curiously at the party as they passed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... reading-room, where he made a feint of looking over the newspapers. What cared he for news? All his interest in the world had become narrowed down to the ways and means of getting daily enough liquor to stupefy his senses and deaden his nerves. He only wanted to rest now, and let the glass of brandy he had taken do its work on his exhausted system. It was not long before he was asleep. How long he remained in this state he did not know. A waiter, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... benefits of this procedure without its evils. There is doubtless a purism in taste, a rigid fantastical demand of perfection, a horror at approaching the limits of impropriety, which obstructs the free impulse of the faculties, and if excessive, would altogether deaden them. But the excess on the other side is much more frequent, and, for high endowments, infinitely more pernicious. After the strongest efforts, there may be little realised; without strong efforts, there must be little. That too much ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... his hand Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, But as a harper lays his open palm Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... procured the address from Mrs. Langton, he went on that same afternoon to Campden Hill, not knowing, nor indeed greatly caring just then, that this was not the way to deaden the pain at ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... commander-in-chief had observed, for never being out of the way, was not long in closing, though as she luffed up on the admiral's weather-quarter, to pass to windward, she let go all her top-sail bowlines, so as to deaden her way, making a sort of half-board. This simple evolution, as she righted her helm, brought her about fifty yards to windward of the Plantagenet, past which ship she surged slowly but steadily, the weather now permitting a conversation ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him?—Thoroughly Conservative!—So he would leave the mud as it is. They insist on our not venturing anything—those Tories! exactly as though we had gained the best of human conditions, instead of counting crops of rogues, malefactors, egoists, noxious and lumbersome creatures that deaden the country. Your town down there is one of the ugliest and dirtiest in the kingdom: it might ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was still heavy with it, and every bush and branch dripped with moisture. It was a poor day for hunting, for the eye could not see forty yards; but it suited my purpose, since the dull air would deaden the noise of my musket. I was hunting alone in a strange land among imminent perils, and my aim was not to glorify my skill, but to find the means of life. The thought strung me up to a mood where delight ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the cry, and I did not enter the inner room. No, I walked back to my writing table, put my hands over my ears—to deaden the cry—and gave myself again to work. How long I worked I don't know, but presently I heard a loud knocking at the door of my room. I sprang up and opened ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... harmonious development of the mind itself. Passion is the foe of reason, and may easily become strong enough to extinguish its light. He who wishes to educate himself must learn to resist the desires of his lower nature, which if indulged deaden sensibility, weaken the will, take from the imagination its freshness, and from the heart the power of loving. The task he has set himself is arduous, and he cannot have too much energy, too much warmth of soul, too much capacity for labor. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the letter in his pocket, rode on without looking back. In the day of which the present narrative treats, the streets of Xeres were but ill paved, and the dust lay on them to the depth of many inches, serving to deaden the sound of footsteps and facilitate the commission of such deeds of violence as were at this time of daily occurrence in Spain. Riding on at random, Conyngham and his companion soon lost their way in the narrow streets, and were able to satisfy themselves that none had followed them. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... which still hold their places on the shelves of libraries will in the next century take their proper place in the mouldering mass which interests the antiquarian alone,—the mouldering mass which universities still cherish, and which helps to deaden the rising intelligence of the western world. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... Phil as if he had forgotten all about the prisoners, for the time glided slowly on, while weariness began to deaden poor Phil's hunger pains, and he grew drowsy, nodding off twice, but starting up again when the French prisoners spoke more loudly or a sharp challenge was ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... pro-fanity th' way ye wud ordin'ry wurruds. No, sir. Ye've got to save it up an' invist it at th' right time or get nawthin' fr'm it. It's betther thin a doctor f'r a stubbed toe but it niver cured a broken leg. It's a kind iv a first aid to th' injured. It seems to deaden th' pain. Women an' childher cry or faint whin they're hurt. That's because they haven't th' gift iv swearin'. But as I tell ye, they'se no good wastin' it. Th' man that swears at ivrything has nawthin' to say when rale throubles come. I hate to hear annywan ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... to get into an even state of fermentation. During the above time, should it be showery weather, the bed will require some sort of temporary protection, by covering it with litter or such like, as too much wet would soon deaden its fermenting quality. The like caution should be attended to in making the bed, and after finishing it. As soon as it is observed that the fiery heat and rank steam of the dung have passed off, a dry and sheltered spot of ground should be chosen on which to make the bed. This should be marked ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... witnessed The peasant's delight At the tales of the pilgrims Will realise this: Though never so crushing His labours and worries, Though never so pressing 230 The call of the tavern, Their weight will not deaden The soul of the peasant And will not benumb it. The road that's before him Is broad and unending.... When old fields, exhausted, Play false to the reaper, He'll seek near the forest For soil more productive. 240 The work may be hard, But the new plot repays him: It yields a rich harvest ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... formed a fitting twinship. It is a scathing comment on the influence of skepticism upon a people that, in general, the highest feeling of nationality is coexistent with the devoutest piety. It is the very nature of infidelity to deaden the emotions of patriotism, and that country can hardly expect to prove successful if it engage in war while its citizens are imbued with religious doubt. If lands are conquered, it knows not how to govern them; if defeated, skepticism ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver on ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... house. She also heard bangs on the wall, behind her bed and to the side; there was no furniture there to crack, and it was mostly on the outside wall, so she finally became uncomfortable, and buried her head in the clothes to deaden the sound. She "doesn't believe in ghosts," but thinks the house "very queer," and says that far and wide in the country round it is spoken of as "haunted," though no one seems to know of any story, as to the cause, except that, very improbable, about the murder of a priest by the wife of ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... Sarawia and his wife Sarah at Mota, with Charles and Ellen, Benjamin and Marion. They are all Communicants, but the temptations which surround them are very great, and early familiarity with heathen practices and modes of thought may yet deaden the conscience to the quick apprehension of the first approaches of sin. They do indeed need the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paper being accidentally broken from the other side, and that I work quietly while removing the plaster. I shall, of course, cover it with a bit of black felt to prevent our light from showing, and to deaden any sounds from this side. This will enable us to hear all that goes on in the other room, but this may not be enough. We may need a phonographic record ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... eye, the haggard brow, and the deep lines about his mouth spoke of days spent in fierce excitement—nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed—life and limb to be risked ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... understand the meaning of this scene. These men had done their best to pervert his morals, and to deaden the voice of his conscience, and now that he had hoped to earn their praise by an affectation of cynicism they were displeased with him. Before, however, he could ask a question, Tantaine had completely recovered ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... was really nervous, Lucy led the talk to other things, though, in that little place, with nothing to break the force of the wind, or deaden the noise of the waves, it was not easy to get one's mind away from either. "I don't suppose it is very bad, really," said Lucy, comfortingly. "It always sounds a lot here, but the men laugh at me when I talk of 'the gale' blowing. 'You must wait till you hear the real ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... were distant 260 leagues. We had, at the same time, several porpoises playing about us; into one of which Mr Cooper struck a harpoon; but as the ship was running seven knots, it broke its hold, after towing it some minutes, and before we could deaden the ship's way. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... rammed hay, was lashed to her port side to protect her magazine. Twenty-three picked Illinoisian sharpshooters went aboard; while pistols, muskets, cutlasses, boarding-pikes, and hand grenades were placed ready for instant use. The escape-pipe was led aft into the wheel-house, so as to deaden the noise; and hose was attached to the boilers ready to scald any Confederates that tried to board. Then, through the heart of a terrific thunderstorm, and amid a furious cannonade, the Carondelet ran the desperate gauntlet at full speed ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... brilliancy transform evil into an angel of light. Only expel dullness and make evil artistic, and it is condoned; but vice attired in the garb of a queen is as truly vice as when clothed in rags and living in squalor. To become accustomed to evil, to garnish sin, to dim and deaden sensibility to what is right and beautiful, is to extirpate manhood and become a mere lump of flesh. No man has a right to be good friends with iniquity. In a wicked world the only people who are ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Frederick's tomb afforded him an opportunity for giving vent to the most unbecoming expressions of contempt against his unfortunate descendant. He publicly aspersed the fame of the beautiful and noble-hearted Prussian queen, in order to deaden the enthusiasm she sought to raise. But he deceived himself. Calumny but increased the esteem and exalted the enthusiasm with which the people beheld their queen and kindled a feeling of revenge in their bosoms. Napoleon behaved, nevertheless, with generosity to another lady ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... man and shut the door, she sat upon her box in the passage. Jill nestled beside her, whilst Mavis rested with her fingers pressed well against her ears, to deaden the continual crying of babies which came from various ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... time its tendency, excepting in the case of a few sensitive and tender spirits, is to deaden the consciousness of guilt, to still the remonstrances of the self-convicted mind, and to enable men of no religion and of no morals to hear these doctrines proclaimed from the pulpit without any salutary disquietude ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... uneasiness regarding his child. That she should penetrate the inner shrine of reserve he kept closed against those who stood nearest to him in the world gave him a sense of injury; and he turned this feeling to account during the next few hours in trying to deaden the echo of the French voice with the Irish intonation that haunted his inner hearing, as well as to banish the memory of the plaintive smile in which, as he feared, meekness was blended with ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... struck for them by the running water. While the voice sounds resonantly in the bath-room it is not half so fine and inspiring when the song is continued in the dressing-room. The reason is that the furniture of the dressing-room tends to deaden the reverberations."—Prof. W.H. BRAGG on "The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... eyes to Harold's; and there was something in their cold and unimpassioned expression which seemed to repel all enthusiasm, and to deaden all courage. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trouble, both physical and nervous, is bound to follow the giving of soothing syrups. These medicines soothe by knocking the nerves senseless and never by removing the cause. They contain morphin, opium, cocain, heroin, and other drugs which deaden pain, and are most dangerous to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... as it was dark they began the work, relieving each other in turns. The oil prevented much sound being made, but to deaden it still further they wrapped a handkerchief over the file. The bars had been but a short time in position and the iron was new and strong. It was consequently some hours before they completed their work. When they had done, the grating was left in the position it before occupied, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... his drink, barely enough to cover the bottom of his glass, for that was another of Pete's ways; he could never afford to weaken his hand or deaden his eye with alcohol, and even now he stood sideways at the bar, facing Gregg and also facing the others in the room. But the larger man, with sudden scorn for this caution, brimmed his own glass, and poised it swiftly. "Here's ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... would say, "If I were not a genius, I could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... entered they were holding each other's hands, in silence. They had not yet found their tongues, so full and crowded were their hearts. It was pathetic to see them, especially the girl, who had not Brandon's hopelessness to deaden ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... and pitch dark when the column moved out of Molteno and struck across the black gloom of the veld, the wheels of the guns being wrapped in hide to deaden the rattle. It was known that the distance was not more than ten miles, and so when hour followed hour and the guides were still unable to say that they had reached their point it must have become perfectly evident that they had missed their way. The men were dog-tired, a long day's work had been ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mankind," is the characteristic opening of his first Adventurer. And when we have admired the real excellence of his heart, we must wonder at the vigour of a mind, which could so abstract itself from its own sorrows and misfortunes, which too often deaden our feelings of pity, as to sympathize with others in affliction, and even to promote innocent cheerfulness. Bowed down by the loss of a wife[6], on whom he had called from amidst the horrors of a hopeless melancholy, to "hide him from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... large proportion of King's stores consisted of morphia and cocaine. He injected enough cocaine to deaden the man's nerves, and allowed it time to work. Then he drew out three back teeth in quick succession, to make sure he had the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... but which can never replace the familiar one that is gone. There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind, deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but she was not mournful, any more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to let one be ready to leave it. Within a few years the beloved daughter ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller |
