"Deaden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... patience. The wonder of tobacco is that it fits itself to each one of several needs. It is the medium by which the average man maintains normality at an abnormal time. It is a device to soothe jumping nerves, to deaden pain, to chase away brooding. Tobacco connects a man with the human race, and his own past life. It gives him a little thing to do in a big danger, in seeping loneliness, and the grip of sharp pain. It brings back his cafe ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... sixty-four gardens where the eighteenth-century Londoner, his wife and family—the John Gilpins of the day—might take their pleasure either sadly, as indeed best befits our pilgrim state, or uproariously to deaden the ear to the still small voice of conscience—the pangs of slighted love, the law's delay, the sluggish step of Fortune, the stealthy strides of approaching poverty, or any other of the familiar incidents of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... those whom they control, and, as soon 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 price of wheat flour, which is procured chiefly from Marseilles, Corsica itself producing very little. The ease with which the harvest of chestnuts is annually obtained tends to foster indolence and deaden enterprise among the peasantry. The one great danger to which the generous chestnut trees are exposed is a conflagration. Besides olives, pines, beeches and chestnuts, there are also important forests of evergreen oaks, the ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... must be approached away from the wind, and the noise of the surf will deaden the hunter's approach; so beating their way against hurricane gales—winds that throw them from their feet at times—scrambling over rocks slippery as glass with ice, running out on long reefs where the crash of spray confuses earth ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the prince strive in the wild excitement of pleasure to kill thought and deaden his heart. But there would come quiet hours to remind him of the past, and, at times, in the middle of the night, he would start up from his couch, as if he had heard a scream, a single heart-piercing cry, which rang through his ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... lowering, and though the rain had ceased, the air 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 was more notable than care. I was adventuring with only ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... his right hand; holding his breath and trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... town-hall. The doors were open, and numbers of the citizens were still gathered there. Moens did not wait to speak to them, but, running into the belfry, ordered the men there to ring their most joyous peal. The poor fellows had been lying about, trying to deaden their hunger by sleep, but at the order they leapt to their feet, seized the ropes, and Ghent was electrified by hearing the triumphal peal bursting out in the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... ponderous songs issued. Within, tables were spread for drinkers; sailors sat before the smoking fire, the old ones drinking brandy and the young ones flirting with the girls; all more or less intoxicated and singing to deaden thought. Close to them, the great sea, their tomb on the morrow, sang also, filling the vacant night with its immense ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... one of the best applications. It is simply half linseed-oil and half lime-water shaken together. A few tablespoonfuls of carbolic acid solution to one pint may be added to this mixture to help deaden the pain. Soak strips of old linen or absorbent cotton in this time-honored ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... 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. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... how, Hal; we can't shorten sail, for we should be seen; and we can't fire bow-chasers, for we should be heard—and those are all the ways I know on to deaden ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... having 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 ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Pascal. He not only bore suffering—he preferred it; and he boldly justified his preference. “Sickness,” he said, “is the natural state of the Christian; it puts us in the condition in which we always ought to be.” In this spirit he strove to deaden any sensation of pleasure in his food, in the attentions of his relatives and friends, even in his studies. He could not bear to see his sister caressing her children; there seemed to him harm in even saying that a woman was beautiful; the married state ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one to deaden," Verkan Vall said. "As it is, I feel like a murderer of babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn't handle a ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... The innicent little sweet. I do believe him's dead, or just going to deaden. I daren't lift him up. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... sergeant seemed to 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 ...
— A Young Hero • G Manville Fenn
... required for cultivation the first step was to go into the forest in summer and "deaden" or girdle the trees on a given tract. This was cutting through the bark all around the trunk about thirty inches from the ground. The trees so treated soon died and in a year or two were in condition to be removed. ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... 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
... 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 I may meet with her, (yet this I count but accidental ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a divided, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had set, and the darkness was opaque. It was impossible to move against the force of the wind and the deluge of water which descended. Speak we did not, but shut our eyes against the lightning, and held our fingers to our ears to deaden the noise of the thunder, which burst upon us in the most awful manner. My companion groaned at intervals, whether from fear, I know not; I had no fear, for I did not know the danger, or that there was a God to ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... falling abundantly, as though to deaden every sound, and to cover everything; therefore those last words came muffled to their ears, so that it seemed to each of them that they were already calling to each other ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the vivisectionists do their work without anesthetics? Do they not, as a rule, give something to deaden pain? ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... negative. Helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the valley arise other sounds, not all of them loud. The stream, here and there falling in cataracts, does something to deaden them. Only now and then there is the neigh of a horse, and intermittently the bark of one of the bloodhounds, as if these animals had yielded, but yet remain hostile to the intruders. They hear human voices, too, but ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... have described this gentleman in such detail to deaden my heartache. I don't live without you; I am constantly seeing you, hearing you. I look forward to seeing you—only not at our house, as you intended—fancy how wretched and ill at ease we should be!—but you know where I wrote to you—in that wood. Oh, my ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a smell of burning wood and hay and 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 ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... has been acknowledged repeatedly that the sternest type of Puritan theology, as a moral and political force, is full of inspiration; it does not deaden the soul; it stimulates the action of free-will; its moral earnestness has been a great power in molding national destinies. Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to declare that the great charters of human liberty are largely due to its strong conception of a divine ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... him. The temper of the man is not so grudging. His joy in your escape will help deaden his own pain. Besides, what could you do for him if you were with him at the end? 'Twould ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... a practical, not a theoretical, problem. It is not to be solved by thinking it good, for to think it good is to deaden the very nerve of action; but by destroying it ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for a local anesthetic," he remarked. "This is the sort of thing that might be injected into an arm or leg and deaden the pain of a cut, but that is all. It wouldn't affect the consciousness or prevent any one from resisting a murderer to the last. I doubt if that had anything directly to do with his death, or perhaps even that this is Cushing's blood ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the greatest consequence that the chorus-singers placed on the front of the stage shall occupy a plane somewhat lower than that of the violins; otherwise they would considerably deaden ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... stole across the road and down a short, grassy embankment. At Anguish's suggestion Lorry wrapped his handkerchief tightly about the heavy end of his cane, preparing in that way to deaden the sound of the blow that was to fall upon the Vienna man's head. Then they threw aside their hats, buttoned their coats tightly, and sank down to wait, with bounding hearts and tingling nerves, the arrival of the abductors, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Germany and Italy, therefore, should it ever break out, would differ not merely in degree, but also, one may take it, in kind, from the lawless and ruthless savagery which characterizes the warfare of the Teutons against the Entente Powers. A civilizing mute would deaden the resonance of bestial passion; and even private property—in especial that of Germany—would be safe from confiscation and wanton destruction, and when peace is restored the rich mercury mines of Italy will again belong to the Kaiser and his advisers. Last ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... lofty room which I supposed to have been a drawing-room. It was empty, containing not a single item of furniture. From my pocket I took two pairs of thick woolen socks and drew them one over the other on to my boots to deaden my footfalls. The door of this empty and desolate room was open, and, stepping softly, I walked out into a wide corridor, my mind filled with terrifying recollections of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... streets, produce an appalling combination of discords. The streets of New York are not more crowded than those of London, but the noise in London is subdued. It is more regular, less jarring and piercing. The muffled sounds in London are due partly to the wooden and asphalt pavements, which deaden the sounds. London must be soothing to the New Yorker, as the noise of New York is at first disconcerting to ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... placing planks on them. One of these bridges was burst by the strength of the current, but the delay thus caused mattered little as the surprise was complete. When the bridges of rafts had been swung and anchored, blankets and carpets were laid upon them to deaden the fall of marching feet, and during that silent tramp across the rolling bridges many a keen-witted Scot found it difficult to restrain a laugh as he trod on carpets richer by far than any that had lain in his best parlour at home. He could not see the patterns, but rightly guessed that ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And, unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind, which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is the imaginary devil to the horror of this presence? Your own eye, your own voice, always with you, always following you! No darkness so dense that it can hide the sight, no noise so loud that it can deaden the sound!" ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... throughout eternity without our being able to discover either its cause or its end, attracts us to the shore, where this grand spectacle offers itself to our sight; and we experience, as it were, a desire mingled with terror, to approach the waves and to deaden ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... 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, till he was ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently furnished—evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' the counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I had ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... to the smoker; and the reason assigned is, that the salival fluid, which should assist digestion, is in this manner dissipated, and taken from its office. But may not the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its evils also? May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action which is needful to digestion? And may not even the excessive quantity of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to a desiccation of the system, as injurious under general ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • 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
... alone in his room when he heard that he had been expelled. For many days he had drunk to deaden fear, but he was sober now, being newly out of bed. A dreary ray of sunshine came through the window, and fell on a wisp of flame blinking in the grate. As Gourlay sat, his eyes fixed dully on the faded ray, a flash of intuition laid his character bare to ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... 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 of heart. They ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... provisions for that evening and the next morning were also passed in; but the part of my work that went more quickly than usual that night was getting the Primus started, and pumping it up to high-pressure. I was hoping thereby to produce enough noise to deaden the shots that I knew would soon be heard — twenty-four of our brave companions and faithful helpers were marked out for death. It was hard — but it had to be so. We had agreed to shrink from nothing in order to reach our goal. Each man was to kill his own ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... 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 of the foe, but ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... history has always had a decidedly inland character, that its political expansion has been landward, that it has practiced most extensively and successively internal colonization, and that its policy of exclusion has tended to deaden its outlook toward the Pacific, nevertheless China's direct intercourse with the west and its westward-directed influence have never, in point of significance, been comparable with that toward the east and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the good woman blurted out the truth, and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel lived a lifetime ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... 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
... room. Two of you must patrol the alley while Brainerd cuts out a pane or two of that closed-up alley window, to see if anything can be heard through the cracks of those inside boards, though it's probable they are padded to deaden sound. As for the upper rooms, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... meaning of 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 it. My ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... good-nature of our people—at any rate, so far as extravagance in vicarious charity is concerned. Our sensitiveness to suffering has been greatly stimulated by the comparative absence from our towns of those sights of misery and squalor that deaden the feelings by familiarity; and the lavish life we have led since 1870 has made us free-handed to the poor and impatient of the trouble required to find out whether our charity was wisely or ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... ordered Ruth, and she sped away followed by the three chums. They were out of sight not a moment too soon, for as they turned a corner, running across a lawn to deaden their footsteps, they ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... deaden the constant shocks between father and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been committed, and absorbed by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... countenance, "I should like her to be painted simply attired, and 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 ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... been the subjection of the race to priestly authority in the course of human evolution, it was the form of tutelage which, of all others, was most calculated to benumb and deaden the faculties affected by it, and the collapse of ecclesiasticism presently prepared the way for an enthusiasm of interest in the great problems of human nature and destiny which would have been scarcely conceivable by the worthy ecclesiastics of your day who with such painful efforts and small ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... me—making out you were off with the rest. That was all right. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot would have cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me and called it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I just took a little to deaden ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... 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. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... superstitious, you will say. But, in casting aside the shell, have we retained the kernel? The image of the child Jesus is not seen in the open street. Does his heart find other means to express itself there? Protestantism does not mean, we suppose, to deaden the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... for the use of readers. The library chairs, of whatever pattern may be preferred, should always combine the two requisites of strength and lightness. The floor should be covered with linoleum, or some similar floor covering, to deaden sound. Woolen carpets, those perennial breeders of dust, are ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... two-and-thirty had sunk into the Slough of Despond. He hated life. Having too lofty a notion of the responsibilities imposed on him by his position to set the example of a dissipated life, he tried to deaden feeling by hard study, and began a great ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family—I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone—by Ligeia—that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and 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
... Him vinegar to 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 one ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... freshness was gone. It was the same feeling that had come to him on the Angiolina steps, at Abbazia. He even wondered if in the stress of the life they were now following she would lose the last of her good looks, if even her ever-resilient temperament would deaden and harden, and no longer rise supreme to the exacting moment. Or could it be that she was acting a part for him? that all this fine bravado was an attitude, a role, a pretense, taken on for his sake? Could it be—and the sudden ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... strings and tuned them after the fashion of one who is right skilled in the art." Quoth I, "It was I tuned it." "Then, God on thee," answered she, "take it and play on it!" So I took it and playing a rare and difficult measure, that came nigh to deaden the live and raise the dead, sang thereto the ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... of restless animation, intenser in the night, as if the moon were mistress here, and wakened every insect brain and tongue to industry, grew prodigious in the sick girl's ears, and seemed to deaden every word her male companion had to say, and, like enormous pendulums of sound, the roaming crickets and amphibia swung to and fro their contradictions, like viragos doomed to wait for eternity, and each insist upon ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... earthly evil bent, In varied toils and woes thy days were spent; 'Till cold Misfortune, with unceasing lower, Weigh'd down thy soul, and deaden'd every power, Reflection's lamp withdrew her guiding ray, And fail'd to point thee on thy darkling way, And thy wild soul prepared to launch alone From Night's dark bosom into worlds unknown: When, sent by Heaven thy earthly ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... none nearer than a third cousin. Two years ago I inherited my paternal estate. It was too small to support me in the manner of life to which I had been accustomed, and at the same time it was large enough to effectually deaden any inclination towards real work. As an inevitable consequent, I became a speculator. Little by little my fortune has disappeared in the abyss of stock gambling; now it is gone entirely. To add to my misfortunes, my ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... BLUE FEELINGS.—Despondency breathes disease, and those who yield to it can neither work, eat nor sleep; they only suffer. The spell-bound, fascinated, magnetized affections seem to deaden self-control and no doubt many suffering from love-sickness are totally helpless; they are beside themselves, irritational and wild. Men and women of genius, influence and education, all seem to suffer alike, but they do not yield alike to the subduing influence; some pine away and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... side, lie remembrances of what imagination can do for the better amusement of fortunate children who have to do for themselves-much-needed lessons in these days of automatic, ready-made, easy entertainment which deaden rather than stimulate the creative faculty. And there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... can produce a blister without external cause," said Serviss. "You hypnotic sharps have proved that it can also deaden nerves and heal skin ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... feelings. Feelings are far too delicate things to be used for tools. It is like taking the mainspring out of your watch, and notching it for a saw. It may be a wonderful saw, but how fares your watch? Especially avoid doing so in connection with religious things, for so you will assuredly deaden them to all that is finest. Let your feelings, not your efforts on theirs, affect them with a sympathy the more powerful that it is not forced upon them; and, in order to do this, avoid being too English in the hiding ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... company, was presently amazed at the tone beginning to prevail over this one. The screaming laughter had been modified; the unquestionable conversations stilled. But the wine, for these very reasons, was flowing faster, as each member of that company sought to deaden those strangely roused sensations which most of them had believed forever dead for them. Gregoriev perceived how many eyes remained fixed reflectively on the white face of the young Prince, in whose eyes was beginning to dawn ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... would have continued to smoulder and expand in an ever-widening circle. And that thought led to another of much greater significance. The shot had been fired at close range to ensure accuracy of aim or deaden the sound of the report. But, whichever the murderer's intention, the second purpose had been achieved, intentionally or unintentionally. How had it happened, then, that the sound of the report ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... was still under the influence of the despair which had settled on her spirits overnight, and had run like a dark stain through her troubled dreams. Fatigue of body and lassitude of mind, the natural consequences of the passion and excitement of her adventure, combined to deaden her faculties. She rose aching in all her limbs—yet most at heart—and wearily dressed herself; but neither saw nor heeded the objects round her. The room to which poor puzzled Mrs. Olney had hastily consigned ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... makes it hard," says Ray, who is bending over the prostrate form of Captain Wayne. "If it were storming or blowing, or something to deaden the hoof-beats, I could make it easier; but it's the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... in a moment. Our poet's verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit of fear, despondency, and decay: it is not an electric spark to kindle or expand, but acts like the torpedo's touch to deaden or contract. It lends no dazzling tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the heart, it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited, half under ground, muddy, and clogged with all creeping ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... that granny 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 ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... however, was entirely 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
... and it is probable that the pain of suffering is more unbearable in the shrinking expectation than when affliction actually opens her furnace door and commands us to enter. Perhaps there is a compensation of some kind in nature, a provision to deaden feeling when a death stroke falls—some merciful dispensation by which we fail to realize or to understand in its exactness the meaning of the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... chance. They enter buildings by force, and trust to the same method to get into the safes. Their favorite instrument is a "jimmy," or short iron bar with a sharp end. With this they pry open the safe, and then knock it to pieces with a hammer. In order to deaden the sound of the blows, the hammer is wrapped with cloth. They are not as successful as the others in their operations, and are most frequently arrested. Indeed the arrests for burglary reported by the Police Commissioners occur almost exclusively in this class. A really first-class burglar ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... death, that by Achilles' arm thou dy'st." Thus far Pelides; and his massive spear Close follow'd on his words. With truth it fled; Yet did the steely point, unerring hurl'd, Fall harmless: with a deaden'd point his breast Was struck. Then he;—"O goddess-born! (for fame "Thy race to me has long before made known) "Why wonder'st thou that I unwounded stand?" (For wondering stood Pelides.) "Not this helm, "Which thou behold'st, gay ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... double-barreled shotgun; previous to that he had killed fourteen white, and two brown bears with his bow and arrow. The older people laugh as they relate how those standing near the man firing would place their hands over their ears to deaden the sound, while the little girls cried, declaring the big ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... we should expect, composed of troops of the line and light troops. The former wore either short wigs arranged in rows of curls, or a kind of padded cap by way of a helmet, thick enough to deaden blows; the breast and shoulders were undefended, but a short loin-cloth was wrapped round the hips, and the stomach and upper part of the thighs were protected by a sort of triangular apron, sometimes scalloped at the sides, and composed of leather ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sportsman was abroad. He was creeping up the right-hand bank of a stream, his only chance lying in the noise of the waters, which might serve to deaden the sound of broken ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... good in his opponents, did Chesterton's universal charity deaden, as Belloc believes, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... recognised claims to appointment and promotion, thus giving to the poor and meritorious at least an equal chance with the man of wealth and the base hireling of party. In actual service the system of exclusive seniority cannot exist; it would deaden and paralyze all our energies. Taking advantage of this, politicians will drive us to the opposite extreme, unless the executive authority be limited by wholesome laws, based on the just ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... connected with the motive power of steam, has been discovered near Marburg in Electoral Hesse; that the work bears the name of Traite des Operations sans Douleur, and that in it are examined the different means that might be employed to deaden, or altogether nullify, sensibility when surgical operations are being performed on the human body, Papin composed this work in 1681, but his contemporaries treated it with ridicule, and he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... reached the floor on which Rose's bedroom was, I stopped in the dark passage. A narrow streak of light showed me that her door was not quite shut. Then, gathering up my skirts to deaden their sound, I felt along the wall and crept softly, on tip-toe, so as to take her by surprise. With infinite precautions, I slowly pushed the door open. I first caught sight of a corner of the empty bed, with ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... tray, a glass, and a bottle. "I could not find the aspirin," she said, "but I brought you some absinthe. It will deaden the pain, sir." ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... my home in this 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
... neighbours—yes; 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 to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and himself ill-used when they refused to give their approbation to his proceedings, and this idea of ill- usage and unreasonableness he was willing to encourage, as it enabled him to shift the responsibility of their unhappiness from his own shoulders on to theirs, and to deaden the sense of remorse which would make itself felt from time to time. For in the worst of men, they say, there still lingers some touch of kindly human feeling, and M. Linders, though amongst the most worthless, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the tame tiger of the excited and highly respectable Adolphus Casay, shiveringly emerging from beneath the bed-clothes he had diligently wrapped round his aching head, to deaden the incessant clamour of the iron which was entering into the soul of his sleep. A hastily-performed toilet, in which the more established method of encasing the lower man with the front of the garment to the front of the wearer, was curiously reversed, and the capture of the left slipper, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... near as she could to the dear father who had rescued and cared for her when deserted. Gerard, who was with his father when the bones were exhumed at the spot indicated, soon realised the new situation. His passion for justice to his mother did not deaden his feeling for others. He felt that Falkner's story was true, and though nothing could restore his mother's life, her honour was intact. Sir Boyvill would leave no stone unturned to be revenged, rightly or ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... favours, but 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 the bitterness of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and cherish your example! On its cares and duties, its trusts and responsibilities, its employments and enjoyments, inscribe the motto, "The world passeth away!" Beware of every thing in it that would tend to deaden spirituality of heart; unfitting the mind for serious thought, lowering the standard of Christian duty, and inducing a perilous conformity to its false manners, habits, tastes, and principles. As the best antidote to the love of the world, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... that the Surrey cottage stood for in her life, all the things that she had left to come to Imogen. She remembered. And, for a moment, the old vortex of whirling anguish almost engulfed her. Only long years could deaden the pang of that parting. She would not dwell on that. Eddy and Rose; to turn to them was to feel almost gay. Jack and Mary;—yes, on these last names her thoughts lingered and her gaze for them held ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... on the roof; on what face of the hill the 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
... scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... It may help to deaden the merciless stings of memory, which all day long has tortured me by unrolling the past, where my Christmas days stand out like illuminated capitals on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... communicating with a crazy-looking windlass and anchor placed in the centre of the road at the entrance of the Rue Neuve des Capucines, and a long narrow dung heap filled with sand and branches had been spread in the square to deaden the shock of the falling mass. Public excitement was at its height, and the strangest surmises went from mouth to mouth as to how far the statue would be thrown, whether balconies would fall and slates ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... the building—almost maddened by despair—to seek an outlet, he entered the kitchen, where he perceived a vessel full of water. The sight filled him with joy. Perhaps water, taken in large quantities, might deaden the effects of the poison and save Julio's life. At any rate, he had no other remedy, and as it was his only hope, he grasped at it as if it were an ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... dark 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 ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... thin board partition, and hovered, heavy and suffocating, above his head, became even more overpowering. His mouth watered. He shut his eyes and forced himself to think of other things, in order to deaden his hunger. Then a light, well-known step sounded on the stairs and some one knocked on the door—it was Morten. "Are you there, Pelle?" he asked. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... world with a dreadful knowledge, And a heavy heart and a frowning brow; And thinking deeper than a man in college, Your eye will deaden, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... repent, and I will not finish you." This repentance exacted by a criminal from an innocent man, is nothing else than the outward form which his inward remorse assumes. He fancies that he is thus safeguarded against his own criminality. Whatever expedient he may adopt to deaden his feelings, although he may be for ever ringing in his own ears the seven million five hundred thousand little bells of his plebiscite, the man of the coup d'etat reflects at times; he catches vague glimpses ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... a drawback to his peace of 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 ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... return less joyfully than she had gone forth. Her first bright star of anticipation had faded, and she had partaken deeply of the griefs of the two whom she loved so well. Not only had she to leave the one to his gloomy lodgings in the City, and the toil that was to deaden suffering, but the other must be parted with at the station, to return to the lonely house, where not even old Ponto would meet her—his last hour having, to every one's grief, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she crept down in her dressing-gown to Faith's room. Fearing to knock, she had entered the room with no more warning than a gentle rattle of the handle. But her warning was lost on Faith who, hot night though it was, was lying with her head buried under the bed-clothes, to deaden the ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (I.E., even while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... like madmen. After this they again fell into a despairing mood, sitting at the tables of the eating-house, in the black smoke of the lamp and the tobacco; sad and tattered, speaking lazily to each other, listening to the wild howling of the wind, and thinking how they could get enough vodki to deaden their senses. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... corpulent individual had disappeared as if into thin air; only a stir in one of the bunks betrayed his hiding-place. At the first sight of Willie's revolver he had dived for a refuge and was now flattened against the wall, a pillow pressed over his head to deaden the expected report. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... arrows for a time, and turned their attention to the building of two great clumsy wooden structures, we would steal down in a body on dark nights to the little postern that opened on the shore, when the waves were dashing against the rocks, and making enough noise to deaden the sound of the picks, and while we women held a lanthorn or two, the men worked with might and main, hewing at the solid rock which stretched out to seaward for a few yards at the foot of the Castle wall. Then, when some huge block was loosened, ropes would be lowered, and with much ado, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... finished knotting their ropes together. With weighted ends muffled to deaden their fall upon the rock floor, they began casting to get contact with ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... 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
... 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, their ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... 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 ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... libraries and recommend them as proper reading. It has been said with reason, that "what is improper in the nudity of a statue is the fig-leaf and not what is underneath." It is, in fact, these fig-leaves—sculptured, painted, written or spoken—which awaken lewdness rather than deaden it. By drawing attention to what they conceal, they excite sensuality much more than simple nudity. In short, the eroticism which plays at hide and seek is that which acts with greatest intensity. The directors of ballets ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... left, of summer's choir. One glow-worm, flashing life's last fire. One frog with leathern croak Beneath the oak,— And the pool stands leaden Where November twilights deaden Day's ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice |
