"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sergeant; half-a-dozen men, and spades. Do the best you can to smother the flames.—The rest take cover, for this can't last. We shall have the enemy ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... downright knavery in business, but there was another class who satisfied their consciences by being as honest as they could. The thoughtful ones knew the system was wrong but felt themselves utterly unable to replace it by a better one, and feeling no responsibility for it, they were satisfied to smother their sensibilities and drift along. They had their living to make, and, though they were not making it in an ideal way, they did not know that any other kind of work would be more ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... In this way the subject is, as it were, smothered. And it was from this meaning that the name came to be used as a general word. William Burke was an Irish labourer who was executed in 1829, when he was found guilty of having murdered several people. His habit had been to smother them, so that their bodies did not show how they had died, and sell their bodies to a doctor for dissection. From this dreadful origin we have the new use of this fine ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... TO LAY BABY IN ITS BED.—The baby should be accustomed to sleep by itself from the day of its birth. Mothers have been known to smother their babies during sleep. The mother may pull the bed-clothing over the baby's head during the night and thus deprive it fresh air. A mother is much more apt to nurse her baby regularly and to do ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... vile man and me. My wild and heedless runnings are like those Whose ways to ruin do their souls expose. Daylight is not my time, I work in th' night, To show they are like me who hate the light. The maid sweeps one web down, I make another, To show how heedless ones convictions smother; My web is no defence at all to me, Nor will false hopes at judgment ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... man who such doings would smother!— On, Luther of Bavan! On, Saint of Kilgroggy! With whip in one hand and with Bible in t'other, Like Mungo's tormentor, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... informed her, "or possibly it held an ointment for her finger nails." He spilled the matches into his hand. "You see the red stain still on the inside; and—smell," he added, as she took it from him. "Even the odour of the sulphur matches cannot smother the quaint old perfume, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... that, he said he would make up the business, or he would smother it. My Lord, you have a great deal of patience, I am humbly bound to you, here is nothing but the naked truth, step by step, as I trod it. Afterwards[48] Wild came and said, All will be well. Said I, What have you done? Are you ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... so-called, is disloyalty to the grand old army, disloyalty to the seventeen thousand men who fell, disloyalty to every comrade who fought at Chancellorsville. I begrudge no man the desire to blanket facts and smother truth in order to turn a galling defeat into a respectable campaign; I begrudge no man his acceptance of Hooker's theory that Chancellorsville was not a disaster; I begrudge no one his faith in Hooker as a successful battle-field commander of the Army of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good man to smother with silence. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... impatience magnified into an eternity, that the well-known voice of Dr. Danvers reached him from the little hall. It was in vain that Marston strove to curb his violent agitation: his heart swelled as if it would smother him; he felt, as it were, the chill of death pervade his frame, and he could scarcely see the door through which he momentarily expected the ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... 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 ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... thing he hated about Mars—the cold. The everlasting damned cold! And the oxidation pills; take one every three hours or smother in ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett
... relighted the gas and went downstairs to stand at the parlour window to scan more clearly every face that might pass, and—yes, she would be honest with herself now—to spring into his arms the moment he entered, smother him with kisses and beg him to forgive the bitter words she had spoken ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... exclaimed, unable to smother my derision and unbelief. My glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his curling dark hair and the dubious diamond ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... do to smother either. Though to open the ventilator would be to invite another invasion by the black mold, not to mention the amoebae and other fabulous monsters that had up to now been kept at a safe distance by the repeller zone, a simple adaptation of a very old discovery. A zone of mechanical vibrations, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... flesh puffed above the strong bark cords, that he might die very soon, the living was placed by his side, his face to his till the very lips met, and extending along limb to limb and foot to foot, and nestled down into his couch of rottenness, to impede his breathing as far as possible and smother his cries. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... ahead betrayed the prisoner's bowed head and Jeekum's white face turned to it? There 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 ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... there is danger in him: I observed him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion, which he could not smother. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; he remains Yet in our power; I, for my own part, wear ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... was the child in which the crowd was interested, but now it was the man. He must be saved; but could he be? The heat was evidently becoming unbearable and from time to time a smother of smoke hid him from view. Once when it cleared away he was no longer there, it had suffocated him and he had fallen, a mangled heap, into ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... to hope in Him? What, then, becomes of acts of holy fear, and of the virtue of hope? If a mother were to abuse the doctor who had restored her child to life, would it not excite a strong suspicion that it was she herself who had attempted to smother it? Did not she who said to Solomon: Let it be divided,[2] show herself to be the false mother? They who are so much attached to servile fear can have no real desire to attain to that holy, pure, loving, reverent fear which leads to everlasting rest, and which the Saints and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... forget, forget, Put by that glittering edge, put by; Slay the insect with light; Smother that smoky glow, Scatter the silver ash like snow ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... cut in half, dry well on a clean cloth, after having lain in salted water for an hour. Season with fine salt and pepper, fry in very hot goose-fat and add a few cloves. While frying cut up a little onion very fine and add. Then cover closely and smother in this way until you wish to serve. Dredge the liver with flour before frying and turn occasionally. Serve with a slice of lemon on each piece ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... angrily, "were my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... dreary void; But now, returning home, my rage appeas'd, Their kingdom wasted, and my son aveng'd, I find there nothing left to comfort me. The glad obedience I was wont to see Kindling in every eye, is smother'd now In discontent and gloom; each, pondering, weighs The changes which a future day may bring, And serves the childless king, because he must. To-day I come within this sacred fane, Which I have often enter'd to implore And thank the gods for conquest. In my breast I bear an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 'eighties, and saw the Boers (whose primitive artillery could not dislodge a native tribe that was impregnably entrenched inside a cave) closing up the mouth of the cave and sealing up the masonry, then leaving the Natives, men, women and children, to smother to death with their belongings inside the cave. Further, Mr. Stent accompanied Cecil Rhodes to the Mattopo hills, where the late Colossus went unarmed to hold with the Matabele chiefs the pourparler ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... To attempt to smother the passions is vain, to controul them difficult; besides, it is from energy, arising from passions or propensities, that all good, as well as all evil, arise. The business, then, will neither be to curb nor to crush, but to give a proper direction. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... youth—for sorrow maketh old, And disappointment withereth the frame, And harsh neglect will smother up the flame, That else had proudly burned—and the cold Offcasting of affection will repel The warm life-current back upon the heart, And choke it nigh to bursting—yet 't is well, And wise-intended, that the venomed dart Shall bear its sure and speedy remedy. Why should the wretched wish to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be; resist every object of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... memento. He put the key into the lock and half turned it. Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked about him. Was that a sound at the back of the room? It was just as though someone had laughed and then tried to smother the laugh with a cough. A slight shiver ran over him ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... but she could smother the still small voice that checked her, in a multitude of plans, and projects, and criticisms, and airy castles, and, above all, the pleasure of triumph and dominion, and the resolution not to yield, and the delight ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... black woman, who stood and stretched forward, in the carriage as before. She gathered a rich silk and gold handkerchief that was in her fingers up to her lips, and seemed to thrust ever so much of it, fold after fold, into her capacious mouth, as they thought to smother her laughter, with which she seemed convulsed, for she was shaking and quivering, as it seemed, with suppressed merriment; but her eyes, which remained uncovered, looked angrier than they had ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,—this it is to be slave-masters ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... heart a league is took, And each doth good turns now unto the other: When that mine eye is famish'd for a look, Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, With my love's picture then my eye doth feast, And to the painted banquet bids my heart; Another time mine eye is my heart's guest, And in his thoughts of love doth share a part: So, either by thy picture or my love, Thy self away, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... 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
... mamma, or the maids?" while Miss Pert opposite was labouring with all her might to smother the laugh she ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... desert! My wilds do not hold him; Pale thirst doth not rack, Nor the sand-storm enfold him. The death-gale pass'd by And his breath failed to smother, Yet ne'er shall he wake To the voice of his mother Alas! for the white man! o'er deserts a ranger, No more shall ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... outstretch'd necks, And laughter which no threats can smother, And tell the horror-stricken X That ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to kiss him dead, thou'd smother him; Be wise and kill him: Canst thou live and know What noble minds shall make thee see thy self Found out with every finger, made the shame Of all successions, and in this great ruine Thy brother and thy noble ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... remembered that although our troops were not engaged during the first fortnight of the war, and were indeed never likely to be engaged so early, events moved quickly on the Western Front, and that the set-back encountered by the Germans when they tried to smother Liege without bringing up heavy artillery aroused a certain enthusiasm in this country. On taking stock of my duties, it had appeared to me that one of these would be the issue of reasoned communiques ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... 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 ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends with ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the cabin, all fitted with unbreakable glass, it was possible for the partners to see out in all directions. The tentacle fingers had now climbed up to a height sufficient to smother both windows. The fuselage ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... with cruelty. It has been maintained that the notorious cruelty of the lower and war-like races is manifested only toward enemies; but this is an error. Some of the instances cited under "Sentimental Murder" and "Sympathy" show how often superstitious and utilitarian considerations smother all the family feelings. Three or four more illustrations may be added here. Burton says of the East Africans, that "when childhood is past, the father and son become natural enemies, after the manner of wild beasts." The ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKITA down.) It's your doing, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... time. I was turning away after tying the last gasket on the foresail, when the deck up-ended and tipped me headforemost into the starboard scupper. At the same time a smother of salt water blew over the port rail, now far above me, to drench me as thoroughly as though I had fallen overboard. I brushed out my eyes to find the ship smack on her beam ends, and the wind howling by from ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... But it doesn't help them. It won't help you. For that thing in your heart—the thing that is fighting for air—the thing you won't own—the thing that drove you to Grange for protection—will never die. That is why you are miserable. You may do what you will to it, hide it, smother it, trample it. But it will survive for all that. All your life it will be there. You will never forget it though you will try to persuade yourself that it belongs to a dead past. All your life,"—his voice ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... in death are near. For him, for them, a daughter bade it rise, Memorial of domestic charities. Still would you know why o’er the marble spread, In female grace the willow droops her head; Why on her branches, silent and unstrung, The minstrel harp, is emblematic hung; What Poet’s voice is smother’d here in dust, Till waked to join the chorus of the just; Lo! one brief line an answer sad supplies— Honour’d, belov’d, and mourn’d, here Seward lies: Her worth, her warmth of heart, our sorrows say: Go seek her ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... certainly known that Harry had been calling on Le Mire at her hotel; conjectures were sure to be made, leading to the assertions of busy tongues; and it was the part of my friend to counteract and smother the inevitable gossip. This he promised to do; and I knew Billy. As for finding Harry, it was too late to do anything that night, and I ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... be the prince!" Mrs. Orton Beg responded, raising her slender white hand to smother a yawn. "And it must be good-night, too—or rather, good-morning! Just look at the clock. It is ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fifth ball, this time striking him in the face, and passing out, just missing the jugular vein. Falling, he lay unconscious with his face in his cap, into which poured the blood from his wound until it threatened to smother him. It might have done so but for still another ball, which pierced the cap and let ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... one of the oaks—his watch-tower in other periods of stress—he saw the Major mount and continue his gallop eastward on the pike; and a little later the ancient Dabney family carriage came and went in a smother of white dust, wheeling in front of the home gate and pausing only long enough to take up his ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... herself at his side, he must be fearfully alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a knock. At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose as when, instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for dinner, she pushed her—with a push at last incontestably maternal—straight into the room inherited from Sir Claude. She titivated ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... scream I shall smother you with the towel," he said. "This won't hurt you very much. As I was going to say, you will be married here because you are in a delicate state of health and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... tip-toe steps the mazes rove, A laugh, half-smother'd, thy pleas'd ear shall meet, And, sportive in the charming wiles of love, Betray the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... because the great Word of the Lord That was born in the world to begin it, Makes answering word in ourselves to accord, And was put there on purpose to win it. And the fulness would smother us, only for this: We can cry to each other, "How lovely it is! And how blessed it is ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... down. She has a slight headache," Mary answered, giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I yielded to impulse, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... of this, he quickly had a little blaze. The others fed this in a cautious manner, so as not to smother it by too much fuel. As a result the fire was in a short time burning freely, and diffusing a genial warmth around that proved very ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... hard enough to keep the sponge from being covered up, Mr. Murren. Soft sand will wash, mud will ooze up, and rank marine grass or seaweed will smother the young cells. But any hard bottom in warm salt water with a current ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... knew how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his lips, but smother it he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees trembling, his mind in a sudden and ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... received them from her hand; and I have brought them to you, that you may return them to him and tell him that I stand in no need of such gifts from him, because, thanks be to God and my husband, I have purses and girdles enough to smother him in. And if after this he leave me not alone, I pray you as my father to hold me excused if, come what may, I tell it to my husband and brothers; for much liefer had I that he suffer indignity, if so it must be, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... 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 ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... hard to keep down his next question, but it had a sort of fascination for him, and he could not smother it. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... I do, when she is a goddess. Thou melter of strong minds, dar'st thou presume To smother all his triumphs, with thy vanities, And tye him like a slave, to thy proud beauties? To thy imperious looks? that Kings have follow'd Proud of their chains? have waited on? I ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... 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, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... smother noise and light, Is stolen abroad the wildering night, And the blotting shades confuse Path and meadow full of dews; And the high heavens, that all control, Turn in silence round the pole. Catch the ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... children—for where will you find children who are younger than the "Tommies"? Even the wards where there are only "cot cases" are decorated, and the men lie in bed and watch the invaders from other wards who come in and smother the place with evergreens. There is one ward where a man lies dying of cancer—here, too, they come, making clumsy attempts to walk on tip-toe, and smiling encouragement as they hang the mistletoe from the electric ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... a key in the back door of the cottage, and they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. Putney from writing till you think as I do. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... tent—and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep at last, and undressing, waded into ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... more. Nay! I will leave you at another word; For I could listen to a blasphemy, Falling from bestial lips, with lighter chill Than to the mad complainings of a soul Which God has favored as he favors few. I dare not listen when a woman's voice, Which blessings strive to smother, flings them off In mad contempt. I dare not hear the words Whose utterance all the gentle loves dissuade By kisses which are reasons, while a throng Of friendships, comforts, and sweet charities— The almoners of the All-Bountiful— ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... pittance very slowly, two mouthfuls a minute. "I will be an hour eating it," said he, "and then an hour will have passed." He thought he was an hour eating it, but in reality he was scarce twenty minutes. The blackness seemed to smother him. "I will shut it out," said he. He took out his handkerchief and wrapped his head in it. "What a weak fool I am," cried he, "when we are asleep it does not matter to us light or dark; I will go to sleep." He ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... those old stories, which have now and then Been from the Record thoughtfully deleted, Repeat that favorite one about the hen, Repeat the ones that cannot be repeated; But in the midst of such enjoyments, smother The impulse to ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... reckon? Mr. Ransack, I've got better uses for my money. It ain't my line of business buyin' caviare for loafers, and I don't consider it's up to me to buy airships for Great Britain! When you see me start in buyin' airships it's time to smother me! It means I'm too old and silly ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... them, when Miss Bouncer, who was addicted to uncontrollable fits of laughter at improper seasons, was so tickled at some sotto voce remark of Frederick Delaval's, that she burst into a hearty ringing laugh, which, ere she could smother its noise with her handkerchief, had startled the watchful ears of the monarch of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... again to my honorable friend, the Chairman of the Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no more thirst ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was trying 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
... her more than anything on earth—for he loved my mother only a little while. When Mrs. Gay first came to live with him, she was so beautiful and so delicate, that she looked as if a wind would blow her away—so soft that she could smother a person like a mass of feathers. He felt after that that he had entangled himself, and it was only at the last when he was dying that he had any remorse. With all his wickedness there was a terrible kind of religion in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... 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
... painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Katie made no observation, but drew a long breath, and leaned back with the air of a martyr. This was excessively aggravating to Lopez, but he managed to smother his irritation, and proceeded: ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... unremitting storm of bagpipes—silent, but assailing me bodily from all quarters—now small as motes in the sun, and hailing upon me; now large as feather-beds, and ready to bang us about, only they never touched us; now huge as Mount AEtna, and threatening to smother us beneath their ponderous bulk; for all the time I was toiling on with little Davie on my back. Next day I was a little better, but very weak, and it was many days before I was able to get out of bed. My father soon found that it would not ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... clasp her tight, so tight in your arms! The thought is a scorpion's sting in your soul. You would kill her, smother her dead in your arms, before ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... so I got some cats. The cats soon learned to prefer birds to mice so I killed the cats. Then I bought a flock of geese and the geese cropped the grass short and prevented it from growing so powerfully as to smother out the trees. But the geese had hard bills and when the trees were small they clipped off pieces of bark with their bills, so I traded the geese for wild geese. I learned that they are more discriminating in their choice of food and that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... in time to see another huge jet of water rise high in the starlight, another, another, until the entire lake was but a cluster of gigantic geysers exploding a hundred feet in the air, while through them, falling back into the smother of furious foam, great silvery bulks dropped ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... to her wonder, and her wonder apparently in turn to her amusement. "'Give it away,' my dear friend, to a man who only longs to smother ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... of thirty- five thousand people. Upon inquiring what they do in case of a fire, I learn that they don't even think of fighting the devouring element with its natural enemy, but, collecting on the adjoining roofs, they smother the flames by pelting the burning building with the soft, crumbly bricks of which Angora is chiefly built; a house on fire, with a swarm of half- naked natives on the neighboring housetops bombarding the leaping flames with bricks, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... run or play hard, you sometimes become so hot that you want to take off your coat. That is because your fires are burning faster. The muscles are using more food and making more scraps to be burned. You breathe faster and faster till at last you are "out of breath" and feel as if you would smother or choke. The blood has hard work to bring oxygen enough ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... brigs in chase were now under double-reefed topsails, and the way in which they drove along through the mountainous sea, now soaring up to the crest of a wave in a smother of spray, showing the whole of their fore-foot and some twenty feet of keel, and anon diving furiously into a hollow, burying themselves to the windlass bitts, was a sight worth seeing. The brig to windward had ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... avowals of gratitude on the part of Eveley, and equally deep assurances of pleasure and good will on the part of the others. After they had gone, as Eveley inspected her stairway alone, she was comforted by the thought that she could fairly smother it with vines and all sorts of creeping and climbing things, and the casual comer would not notice how funny and wabbly it was. But as she went gingerly down, clinging desperately to the rail on both sides, she determined to take ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... within five minutes the young chief engineer was plainly doomed to be swallowed up in the treacherous sands of the Man-killer. Only a few seconds below the shifting level of the sand would be enough to smother the life out of him. Scores of strong men, powerless to help, watched hopelessly within a few yards of the two whose lives were being slowly but ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... we receive, to shine. We love to see things that bear a good gloss; yea, we choose to buy such kind of matter to work upon, as will, if wrought up to what we intend, cast that lustre that we desire. Candles that burn not bright, we like not; wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat; wherefore great folks care not much, not so much, for such kind of things, as for them that will better answer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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!" she ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... afterwards discovered to be a Bulgarian, had not the remotest notion of our whereabouts and lost his nerve completely. A big Australian actually did take the helm for a time and made a shot for the right direction. We had almost given up hope of reaching the land when, in a smother of foam and spray, there appeared a patrol-boat, the commander of which asked in his breezy naval way who we were and what the blazes we thought we were doing. On being informed he told us we were steering ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... and drunken halloo. Now as I reached the quarter-deck, some one of these hurled after me a belaying pin and this, catching me on the thigh, staggered me so that I should have fallen but for the rail; so there clung I in a smother of sweat and blood while great moon and glittering stars span dizzily; but crouched before me on his hams, almost within arm's reach, was this accursed negro who gaped upon me with grinning teeth and rolled starting eyeballs, his breath coming ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... thoughts were they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I whisper'd something to ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris—she did not care if they were in Paris—if only the baby wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was very considerate of mother's and ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... strange egg was only just 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, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature in which she would seem to discourage the homely ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... all of that," says Luttrell, "and a good deal more. If I were an American I would have no scruples about calling him a 'darned old cuss': as it is, I will smother my feelings, and let you ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... seriousness when I say that nothing like the note of the merely casual pieces quoted or referred to above was to be detected in more than at the outside two or three of these volumes, and that where it seemed to sound faintly some second volume of the same author's almost always came to smother it soon after. There was plenty of quite respectable poetic learning: next to nothing of the poetic spirit. Now in the period dealt with in this volume that spirit is everywhere, and so are its sisters, the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... as I've sat Within mine own loved home, And thought of those, my fellow-men, Who houseless, homeless, roam; That one upon this earth is found Whose heart good promptings smother; And will not share his wealth with him Who is his poorer brother! I've often wondered, as I've walked Amid life's busy throng, And seen my fellows who have been By Fortune helped along, That they who bask in its bright rays No tear of pity shed On him who doth no ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... described became known to the lady's father, she was sent away at once, and Bulwer never saw her again. Very soon after, she was forced into a marriage against which her heart protested. For three years she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and when she sunk under the conflict, and death was about to relieve her, she wrote to Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had undergone, affirming her deathless love, and begging him to ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... fleet remained at its base, and in the end came forth peacefully, as has been described. Had the war gone on, had the German craft not appeared for battle, a plan to smother their base through the medium of clouds of bombing airplanes would unquestionably have been put into effect at a good and proper time. And at the same juncture, no doubt, our Sixth Squadron would have joined with the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... 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 ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... is gone—in tears. Yet it seems she has had her scruples. She said she had tried to smother them. Mermaid Betty ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which she then pressed to her lips to smother her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... at the wheel. The Commander glanced aft through the trail of smoke at the next astern swinging round in the smother of his wake. "Well, we shan't be long now before we tie up to the buoy—curse these fellows! Here come all the drifters with mails and ratings for the Fleet.... ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... aristocracy itself, which at the moment dominates the English people, would rise against the government which had dragged it into this despotic war against a free people. They would overthrow this ministry of stupidity who thought the methods of the ancien regime could smother the genius of Liberty breathing in France. This ministry once overthrown in the interests of commerce the party of Liberty would show itself; for it is not dead! And if you know your duties, if your commissioners leave at ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... with the yardmaster and walked over to the Silver Dollar saloon, where, in order to smother his distress, he played game after game of solitaire. Here, shortly after his arrival, he had learned of Borax O'Rourke's latest move, and when the latter entered the saloon an hour later, Harley P. had delivered ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... which the innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with their cotton, and can't sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face, these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their Jessywhittickle ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... adopt to frustrate them, the better; the less he exposes them and brings them into light, the greater will be his success; for they are like the Lernwan serpent, whose heads multiplied as they were smitten off; and it is far more easy to smother them privately than to smite them in public. This is the view I myself take of the matter; this is the view the King takes of it; and you may have remarked that there has been no attempt made for many years to investigate or punish plots here and there, although we have ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the patient little milliner, who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner, only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my companions should become aware of my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... these boys, whose fathers were for the most part bad men, drunkards, thieves, and who beat their wives, jostled each other to press closer and closer, as though they, the legitimate ones, would smother by their pressure one ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of any class of recollective remarks or inquiries which now and then break forth, and which you invariably smother with a ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the case in pulling,) and the captain, who was steering, was not looking ahead, when, all at once, we heard the spout of a whale directly ahead. "Back water! back water, for your lives!" shouted the captain; and we backed our blades in the water and brought the boat to in a smother of foam. Turning our heads, we saw a great, rough, hump-backed whale, slowly crossing our fore foot, within three or four yards of the boat's stem. Had we not backed water just as we did, we should inevitably have gone smash upon him, striking ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... father lived," murmured Harvey, unable to smother his feelings, "there was one who read my heart, and oh! what a consolation to return from my secret marches of danger, and the insults and wrongs that I suffered, to receive his blessing and his praise; ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... confusing sounds. Syrens whooped, steam whistles shrieked 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 no intimation of ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... face, almost touching the crimson lips. There was so much magnetism in her beauty, such a heaven in the unconquered warmth of her impetuous being, that Selwyn gripped the arms of his chair to help to restrain the mad impulse to grasp her in his arms and smother those lips and the flushed, satin cheeks in a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... ever catches fire, wrap yourself up at once in a blanket or rug to smother the flame. Remember that running will supply more air to the flame and cause it to do more damage. If you have nothing at hand in which to wrap yourself, lie down on the floor, or ground, and roll over and over until ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... journey was defeated by the loss of the provisions I had brought. I despaired of winning the attention of the fugitive to supplications, or arguments tending to smother remorse or revive his fortitude. The scope of my efforts was to consist in vanquishing his aversion to food; but these efforts would now be useless, since I had no ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... his feelings. Thus all one day he was in frightful agony with the toothache, but nobody knew anything about it until next morning when his cheek was swollen to the size of a peewit's egg. He tried, too, to smother every affectionate instinct; but when under strong emotion was not always successful. One day, throwing stones, he cut his sister's forehead. Forgetting all his noble resolutions he flew to her, flung his arms round her, kissed her again and again, and then burst into a fit of crying. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... his arm. In the soft gloom her face glimmered, dimly warm to his vision, upturned to his. The fog covered much that might otherwise have been seen, but failed to smother what might have been (and in fact was, as Judge Enderby and Dr. Alderson, turning the angle of the deck, halted and tactfully melted ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Jeffrey had often spoken, but which, jerked off with the cover, had been left where they fell; while immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of the rugs tossed into a heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor or used it to smother her cries of pain ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... gasp, a groan. I whirled and saw Kyral go down, struggling, drowning in half a dozen or more of the fierce half-humans. I leaped at the smother of bodies, ripped one away with a stranglehold, slashed at ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... 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 ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the hope to find in each The wisdom each denies the other; These mazes of conflicting speech All theories of culture smother. I'll raise and reap, with honest hand, The native harvest of my land; Do thou the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... for which above all other sorts of trains she entertained a species of solemn horror. But the excitement consequent on the unexpected recovery of the diamond ring, and the still more unexpected accession of wealth consequent thereon, had induced her to smother her dislike to railways for a time, and avail herself of their services in order to run down to a town about twenty miles off for the purpose of telling the good news to Netta, who chanced to be on a short ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... first coming into her house, expressed great dislike to my learning. In plain truth, she envied me that advantage. This envy I had long ago discovered, and had taken great pains to smother it, carefully avoiding ever to mention a Latin word in her presence, and always submitting to her authority; for indeed I despised her ignorance too much to dispute with her. By these means I had pretty well succeeded, and we lived tolerably together; but the affront ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... 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 to press ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... had not pinched and saved and economized and all that! And can you look around you and not see that?" She had hard work to smother her indignation. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... thick masses in the trees whose limbs bent under the weight, and the woods rang to the cries of the sawyers when the tottering of a mighty pine sent a small avalanche hurtling through the lower branches, half-burying them in its white smother. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... England's rod, And sword in hand upon Afric's passes Her last Republic cried to God. For the men no lords can buy or sell, They sit not easy when all goes well. They have said to each other what naught can smother, They have seen each other, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... I can't help it—what would you do, Matthew? It blows like thunder: I can't tell how fast she's going,—I don't want to over-shoot the light, and then have to thrash back through such a smother of ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... your bridle, my boy, we'll soon be out of this smother." It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it lightly over my eyes, and patting and coaxing he led me out of the stable. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shouted, "Here somebody! ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell |
