"Drowse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chemists in public are seldom of much value beyond giving a thrill to visitors who would otherwise drowse; it is like humor in an oration: it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... quiet of the afternoon, as Jeff leaned forward towards the customer, and talked to him in a soft confidential monotone, like a portrait painter, the razor would go slower and slower, and pause and stop, move and pause again, till the shave died away into the mere drowse of conversation. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... 'em, all as black and mum as mutes, A-waiting for the blackbirds, with their calls like meller flutes. Just to whistle them awake like. Oh! but now they stir and rouse Like a girl who has bin dreamin' of her lover in a drowse, And wakes up to feel 'is kisses on 'er softly poutin' lips. How they burst, all a-thirst for the April shower that drips Tinkle-tink from leaf to leaf, washing every spraylet clean From the sooty veil of London, which might dim the buddin' green Of the pluckiest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... night slipped along. After a while they began to drowse, until one by one the little groups became quiet and fell asleep. Only the glowing, flickering pine knots stayed awake to ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... explanation of the Teuton superiority. The clue is to be found in the psychological factor. Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually and psychically. And she lives in the present and future. We either drowse or vegetate in and for the past. She has the decisive advantage of possessing organization and organizers. Therein lies the secret of her sustained success. The Allies lack both, and are hardly conscious of the necessity of making good the deficiency. Therein lies their weakness. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... last, "and on an arbor-moss the sun shall drowse you, the flower-scents be your opiates, the birds your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... God of the Noontide, the heather swims in the heat, Our helmets scorch our foreheads; our sandals burn our feet! Now in the ungirt hour; now ere we blink and drowse, Mithras, also a soldier, keep us true ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... across the city's din, Afar its silent Alpine kin; I track thee over carpets deep To Wealth's and Beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors, 'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where drowse the hayfield's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; I dog thee through the market's throngs, To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green fringes of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer Curtsy their farewells to the town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eye out-threaten'd Mars— That blaz'd in the mid-heavens, hot and bright— Nor slept, nor wink'd, but with a steadfast spite Watch'd their wan looks and tremblings in the skies; And that he might not slumber in the night, The curtain-lids were pluck'd from his large eyes, So he might never drowse, but watch ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Arcadian: both stuff for dreams. The one excogitated in spring-time, when Nature was taking her break-of-day drowse, previous to getting up and going about business; the other suggestive of Nature indulging in a half-light reverie in a sort of crimson and scarlet dressing-gown, previous to putting on her night-cap and going ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... orchard boughs, That drop red leaves like coals into the grass. The golden arrows of the sunset fall; And on the vine-hung wall Great purple clusters in delicious drowse, Beakers of chrysolite and amethyst, Yet by the sun unkissed, Lean down to all the wooing lips that pass, Brimful of red, red wine Sweet as brown peasants ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... skirted the Ralph Waldo Emerson country, with its big market town of Bishop's Stortford; and beyond Ely, where we stopped for the Cathedral and a luncheon, not unworthy of it, at the station, he startled me from a pleasant drowse I had fallen into in our railway carriage, with the cry: "There! That is where Captain John Smith was born." "Where? Where?" I implored too late, looking round the compartment everywhere. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement—the shadows having prospered in the twilight—it ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... looked from a window upon the snowy world. Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault—might there not be a chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year, surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might see the old fellow himself, muffled to his chin in furs, going on his yearly errands. It was a jingling of ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... occupy. It was the beginning of the season of green maize; every morning an armful of luscious cobs was deposited at my door. An immense earthen pot of honey and a skin milk sack were placed at my disposal. All day long I would drowse under a tree which stood within a few yards of the hut door, with Indogozan or his companion waving a bough to keep off the flies. I only woke up to eat or to smoke. The prospectors were forgotten; so were MacLean and the Pessimist. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... oranges on blue china, With a jade-and-silver spoon, And drowse on your silken mats beside me In ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... moon-lighted world. Billy Fairfax lay quiet, his wide-open eyes fixed on the luminous sky. The sense of drowse was being brushed out of his brain as though by a mighty whirlwind, and in its place came a vague sensation of confusion, of excitement, of a miraculous abnormality. He heard Honey Smith crawl slowly from man to man, heard him whisper his adjuration ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... sunset flowing calm! O tired lark descending on the wheat! Lies it all peace beyond that western fold Where now the lingering shepherd sees his star Rise upon Malvern? Paints an Age of Gold Yon cloud with prophecies of linked ease— Lulling this Land, with hills drawn up like knees, To drowse beside her implements ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Presently the drowse of utter weariness descended upon her. The dread of thought remained heavily overshadowing, but a certain distortion displayed the reaching of limits beyond which human power could not go, even in suffering. It was a merciful nature asserting itself. Her eyes closed, slowly, gently, with a drowsy ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the baby was a quiet child. Apparently he shared his mother's apathy towards all things, and he lay by the hour in a sluggish drowse, leaving his mother free to allow her thoughts to wander at will. They did wander, too. Lying there, passive, in her luxurious room, Beatrix's mind scaled the heights of heaven, sounded the depths of hell. The one had lain within her reach; ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... the rain would be a capital excuse for lying in bed; for she still liked to cuddle and drowse in her cosey, warm nest. But she was curious to know where the curious place was; so she ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and flees far off; My kindred find protectors; I find none. [Moan as before.] Too sleep-oppressed art thou, nor pitiest me: Orestes, murderer of his mother, 'scapes. [Noises repeated.] Dost snort? Dost drowse? Wilt thou not rise and speed? What have ye ever done but work out ill? [Noises as before.] Yea, sleep and toil, supreme conspirators, Have withered up ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... drowse through thirty years of our threescore and ten, but the ant is awake and working ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Josiah and me got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin' into a drowse, I heered the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that roused Josiah up, and he thought he heered the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... on the Lost Lagoon, And we two dreaming the dusk away, Beneath the drift of a twilight grey— Beneath the drowse of an ending day. And the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... awaked Louis from his drowse in the cave's mouth. He had ridden down from Castle Raincy to see if he could help. The moment had come and Stair had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... me till the watch is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said, quizzically, "Mr. ——, I see you have walked just half a mile in the last four hours." Of course, walking is not imperative, one may watch standing; but movement tends to wakefulness—you can drowse upon your feet—while to sit down, besides being forbidden by unwritten law, is a treacherous snare to ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the three remaining watchers chatted and looked hopefully at the stars. Eventually Chow propped himself against a tree and dropped off to sleep to the accompaniment of low-droning snores. Bud too began to drowse. ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... varied continually by the excitement of a razzia. The women divide their time between the kitchen and the toilette. No amusement is sought, except from drum-beating and the attendant dance. Thus time lapses with these black citizens. As for the foreign merchants and traders, they, too, drowse away the period of their residence in this sleepy city. They sell their goods in a lump, on trust, to the Sarkee, and then compose themselves to slumber whilst he goes forth on a razzia, and brings them slaves ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... and to their two children. She lost him; she lost the care of her children; rapidly she drifted away from them. The powerful narcotic helped to deaden her pain. When her anguish became unbearable a double dose of it would enable her to drowse away the hours. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... his absorption in other people, sometimes grew pettish and unresponsive and offended because he could keep neither eyes nor hands from her. And there were evenings when they seemed to have nothing to talk about, and Billy, too tired to do anything but drowse in his big chair, was confronted with an alert and horrified Susan, sick with apprehension of all the long evenings, throughout all the years. Susan was fretted by the financial barrier to the immediate marriage, too, it was ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary. He did not wish to sleep. No, he ought not to drowse.... And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conducted, following their leaders about and listening to the lectures in several languages, which no more stirred the immense tranquillity than they themselves qualified the spacious vacancy of the temple: you were vaguely sensible of the one and of the other like things heard and seen in a drowse. It was a pleasant vagueness in which all angularities of feeling were lost, and you were disposed to a tolerance of the things that had hurt or offended you before. As a contemporary of the edifice, throughout its growth, you could account for them more and more as of their periods. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... golden dishes and in baskets bright Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand In the retired quiet of the night, Filling the chilly room with perfume light.— "And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake! Thou art mine heaven, and I thine eremite: Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes' sake, Or I shall drowse beside thee, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in the days when she ran "shrill as a cicada and thin as a match" through the chill mists of her native mountains could she ever have felt so cold, so wretched, and so desolate. Her very soul, her grave, indignant, and fantastic soul, seemed to drowse like an exhausted traveller surrendering himself to the sleep of death. But when I asked her again to lie down she managed to answer me, "Not in this room." The dumb spell was broken. She turned her head from side to side, but oh! how cold she was! It seemed to come out of her, numbing me, too; ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... state was remarkable in that she saw possibilities in it. She was no sensualist, longing to drowse sleepily in the lap of luxury. She turned about, troubled by her daring, glad of her release, wondering whether she would get something to do, wondering what Drouet would do. That worthy had his future fixed for him beyond a peradventure. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Ruffiano silent, as it seemed to me, nearly the whole length of the road. After, perhaps, an hour and a half's driving, Brunow woke me by calling impatiently to the cabman, and I came to the full possession of myself in time to see the vehicle swerve suddenly to the right. My prolonged drowse half refreshed me, and the cold, wet air which blew up from the river through the window Brunow had opened fell freshly on my cheek. I could see the river gleaming ahead, with spaces of liquid blackness in it, and a red or green light burning here and there. It was ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... I drowse to-night, Skirting lawns of sleep to chase Shifting dreams in mazy light, Somewhere then I'll see your face Turning back to bid me follow Where I wag my arms and hollo, Over hedges hasting after Crooked smile and baffling laughter, Running ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... of great illuminations Of dreamy doctrine caught from poets of old, Because of delicate imaginations, Because I am proud, or subtle, or merely cold. Natheless my soul's bright passions interchange As the red flames in opal drowse and speak: In beautiful twilight paths the elusive strange Phantoms of personality I seek. If better than the last embraces I Love the lit riddles of the eyes, the faint Appeal of merely courteous fingers,—why, Though 'tis a quest of souls, and I acquaint My heart with spiritual ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... 1886, 1893, or 1912, Ireland dominates British politics, and the English members descend on her with a heavy flop of hatred or sympathy as it may happen. But at all other times the Union Parliament abdicates, or at least it "governs" Ireland as men are said sometimes to drive motor-cars, in a drowse. Three days—or is it two?—are given to Irish Estimates, and on each of these occasions the Chamber is as desolate as a grazing ranch in Meath. Honourable members snatch at the opportunity of cultivating their souls in the theatres, clubs, restaurants, and other ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... that if we were there, we should find no house to play in. This lay us flat in our hopes, and set us again to our vagabond enterprise; and so for six months more we scoured the country in a most miserable plight, the roads being exceedingly foul, and folks more humoured of nights to drowse in their chimnies than to sit in a draughty barn and witness our performances; and then, about the middle of February we, in a kind of desperation, got back again to London, only to find that we must go forth again, the town still lying ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... aching months, which, in Merry England, go to make up the Spring of the year; and the King and his favourite concubines had betaken themselves up-river to snare turtle-doves, and to drowse away the hours in the cool flowering fruit groves, and under the shade of the lilac-coloured bungor trees. Therefore the youths and maidens in the palace were having a good time, and were gaily engaged in sowing the whirlwind, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... now they would say a mass for her, a year from now another, but to-morrow, to-day, yesterday even, she was finished with all of life: with the fussy, excited robins of dawn; with the old dog that wanted to drowse by the fire; with the young husband who was either too much or too little of a man for her; with the clicking beads she would tell in her sharpish voice; with each thing; ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... for further news thereof. Here, in this early autumn dawn, By windows opening on the lawn. Where sunshine seems asleep, though bright, And shadows yet are sharp with night, And, further on, the wealthy wheat Bends in a golden drowse, how sweet To sit and cast my careless looks Around my walls of well-read books, Wherein is all that stands redeem'd From time's huge wreck, all men have dream'd Of truth, and all by poets known ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... booths of street vendors; on cold wet nights, even in the mouths of the filthy drains. Fortunate is he when fine weather sends him to rest on the river banks. To seek rest; not to find it. O'Iwa stands beside him. When eyelids drowse Cho[u]bei is aroused, to find her face close glaring into his. Beg and implore, yet pardon there is none. 'Cho[u]bei has a debt to pay to Iwa. In life Cho[u]bei must repay by suffering; yet not what Iwa ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville |
