"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!" he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere, stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!" The intellectual isolation of his sect preyed upon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... even in the pain of the night that followed, when she lay awake in the bed she shared with Maudie Hollis, stifling her sobs lest she should waken Maudie, clutching the edge of the mattress where she had writhed out of Maudie's reach. For at the first sound of crying the proud beauty had turned to her friend and put her arms about her, and held her in ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the shade of a toadstool. It was a stifling, sultry day. And having come up into the garden on some errand or other, Grandfather Mole had found the sunshine upon his back altogether too hot for ...
— The Tale of Grandfather Mole • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of the slums of Boston, till it must have looked to our neighbors as if we meant to go on forever exploring the underworld. But we found a short-cut—we found a short-cut! And the route we took from the tenements of the stifling alleys to a darling cottage of our own, where the sun shines in at every window, and the green grass runs up to our very doorstep, was surveyed by the Pilgrim Fathers, who trans-scribed their field notes on a very fine parchment and called ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... A sensation of stifling, as if her throat were closing together, oppressed her suddenly, and picking up her hand-bag, she ran downstairs and out of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Any services of a similar kind that I can honestly and conscientiously render you—and none other would you accept—I shall be on my part delighted to offer. In the meantime, let me have your excellent advice as to the most efficient means of stifling the unreasonable murmurs that are rising among the people—and as touching M'Loughlin's and Harman's properties, I should be glad to see you, in order to consult upon what may or can be done for them, always compatibly with ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by her side, and pressed her cold hands in both her own. Mrs. Winstanley was very cold, although the log had blazed up fiercely, and the room seemed stifling to the traveller who had come out of ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the Quarries were the worst I saw in France. They were reasonably dry and roomy, but they had no ventilation except the tunnel entrance, and going back so far the air inside became simply stifling in ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... other, the interview was arranged. 'Little James' found his desire fulfilled at last. When he passed into the stifling, crowded prison den, where human beings were herded together like beasts, he never heeded the horrible stench or the crawling vermin that abounded everywhere. Rather, he felt as if he were entering the palace of a king. He paid no attention to the crowd ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... killed by a contact poison: that is, by spraying or washing the affected parts of the tree with a solution which acts externally on the bodies of the insects, smothering or stifling them. The standard solutions for this purpose are kerosene emulsion, soap and water, tobacco extract, ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... and there, Within the dark and stifling walls, dissent From every sound, and shoulder empty hods: 'The god's great altar should stand in the crypt Among our earth's foundations'—'The god's great altar Must be the last far coping of our work'— It should inaugurate the broad main stair'— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... having a fire at each end, the smoke of which, unable to find its way through the imperfect chimneys in the roof, rolled in cloudy billows above the heads of the revellers, who sat on low seats, purposely to avoid its stifling fumes. [Footnote: The Welsh houses, like those of the cognate tribes in Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, were very imperfectly supplied with chimneys. Hence, in the History of the Gwydir Family, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... bright red blaze which lighted up the horizon to the southward and cast a crimson glow far over the sea. This appearance was accompanied by a low growling sound, as of distant thunder, and at the same time the sky above us became black, while a hot, stifling wind blew around us ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... ably served and assisted by Mrs. Purcel and her daughters, continued to deal death and destruction on the parties outside, without being yet either fatigued or disabled. At length the terrible light of the roof that was burning over them, and the stifling heat which began to oppress them, startled the proctor into a state of feeling so awful, that it obliterated from his awakened conscience all external impressions of the dreadful havoc of human life which ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... shortcomings in his fiancee, but he did allow himself to wonder tentatively if he had spoken too soon: if she were not, perhaps, a trifle young to understand the meaning of the new claim. The daily interviews which he had been vouchsafed had been full of interest and charm, but they had not succeeded in stifling the doubt which had marred the first minutes of acceptance, for alas! it was when Pixie was the most affectionate that her lover was most acutely conscious of the subtle want. And then, as if there was not already enough worry ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... of a night without a moon, and the bugles waked them long ere dawn. A mist hung over all the levels, presaging heat. Column Forward! To-day was a repetition of yesterday, only accented. The sun girded himself with greater strength, the dust grew more stifling, the water was bad, gnats and mosquitoes made a painful cloud, the feet in the ragged shoes were more stiff, more swollen, more abraded. The moisture in the atmosphere weakened like a vapour bath. The entire army, "foot cavalry" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... them. It was a religion for the most part of fear, of multitudinous scruples, of a year-long burden of forms; yet rarely (on clear summer mornings, for instance) the thought of those heavenly powers afforded a welcome channel for the almost stifling sense of health and delight in him, and relieved it as ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... off at a trot; Gerfaut followed his example, stifling a sigh as he darted a last glance toward the chateau. They soon rejoined the cart which carried several of the hunters, and which Monsieur de Camier drove with the assurance of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been hired by St. Victor, at once spread her sails; Mrs. Labadie conversed with the captain while the countess took the Queen below into the stifling crowded little cabin. It was altogether a wretched voyage; the wind was high, and the pitching and tossing more or less disabled everybody in the suite. The Queen was exceedingly ill, so were the countess and Mrs. Labadie. Nobody could be the least effective but Signora Turini, who ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... They see an army of three hundred thousand tramps eating bread by the sweat of other men's brows; the slums of great cities, cradles of infamy where children are trained to sin; the "fire-damp of combination trusts" stifling the working world; gambling brokers cornering the markets in the necessaries of life; the wages of working girls being such as to lead many from life's Eden of purity; a great battle on between labor and capital and in this combination ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... an afternoon of one of the last days of July. The sun has nearly finished his daily course, and is declining rapidly toward the horizon; still, his rays, though less ardent than at noontide, are hot enough to make the air close and stifling. At Grinselhof the last beams of the setting luminary play gayly over the foliage, gilding the tree-tops with sparkling light, while, on the eastern side of the dense foliage, the long, broad shadows begin ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... they had ploughed over some quarter of a mile of the hillside, fighting their way among the carriages that stood six deep along the rails and through a seething mass of ruffianism, in a stifling atmosphere polluted by the smell of ale and the reeking breath of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... these spoilers of my dinner; but if you come, never go! The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often; but every time it comes by surprise, that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening company I should always like, had I any mornings; but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company; but I assure you that is a ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... was hot and stifling," said Francis. "There are moments when my brain seems to whirl, and things go round. Did ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... where he had so often walked with Miss Hitchcock on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressed groups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rows of deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part of them in all practical ways—a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day to day, not knowing when ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... smoke had favoured them. Thick and stifling in the immediate vicinity of the waggons, it enabled them to slip unobserved through the ruck of savages. Many of these, still mounted, had seen them pass outward, but through the blue film had mistaken them for two of their own men. They perhaps knew nothing of there having been horses inside ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... removal of a stifling pressure. Amid a universal outgoing of the breath, Mary Leavenworth stood aside and Eleanore ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... length, his transient respite past, His comrades, who before Had heard his voice in every blast, Could catch the sound no more: For then by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... cruel enemy! What have I done to you that you should thus leave me with death in my soul? You do not know that, for months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow, that I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they should disturb your peaceful slumber. You are afraid, perhaps, to let yourself be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who adores you. Alas! Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she did not need many entreaties ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Her first act was to strike one hand across the other, as though to obliterate the kiss, then to draw off her glove, and drop it in the deepest of the fern, never to be worn again. Hateful! With that poor neglected wife pining to death in those stifling city streets, to be making sport in those forest glades. Shame! shame! But oh! worst of all was his patronizing pity for Miss Charlecote! Phoebe's own mission to Miss Charlecote was dreadful enough, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what he would infallibly be hanged for if he committed on the first of July; by which the greatest criminals may escape, provided they continue long enough in power to antiquate their crimes, and by stifling them a while, can deceive the legislature into an amnesty, of which the enactors do not at that time foresee the consequence. A cautious merchant will be apt to suspect, when he finds a man who has the repute of a cunning dealer, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... percentage of the value of the fuel employed is utilized. It is dirty, because of the dust and soot which result therefrom. It is unhealthy, because of the cold draughts which in its simplest form are produced, and the stifling atmosphere which pervades the house when the products of imperfect combustion insist, as they often do, in not ascending the flues constructed for the express purpose of carrying them off; and even when they take the desired course, they blacken and poison the external atmosphere with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... onward. And whither, she knew not. A cold numbness had chilled her senses, but still her feet drove her irresistibly onward. A dark current seemed to have seized her, she only felt that she was adrift, and she cared not whither it bore her. In spite of the stifling dullness which oppressed her, her body seemed as light as air. At last,—she knew not where,—she heard the roar of the sea resounding in her ears, a genial warmth thawed the numbness of her senses, and she floated joyfully among the clouds—among golden, sun-bathed ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking; the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the Tinker declares it a principle most mysterious, the undoubted object of religious awe, a perpetual witness of that God, whose image ([Greek: eikon]) it is; a principle utterly incomprehensible by the discursive intellect;—and moreover teaches us, that the surest plan for stifling and paralyzing this divine birth in the soul (a phrase of Plato's as well as of the Tinker's) is by attempting to evoke it by, or to substitute for it, the hopes and fears, the motives and calculations, of prudence; which is an excellent ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the green blinds came the noise of life and health and merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed, and therefore meaningless. Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling. Gregorio, swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow stairway hysterical words ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... as a preparation to these statements, I should like to strike a note of warning against the element of exaggerated and coarse fun being encouraged in our school stories, partly, because of the lack of humor in such presentations (a natural product of stifling imagination) and partly, because the strain of the abnormal has the same effect as the too frequent ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... began to sound as she crossed the hall, jacket dangling over her arm, and pushed open the door of a darkened room. The air within was stifling, she opened a window and thrust back the blinds, and at the same moment the ringing crack of a rifled cannon shattered the silence of dawn. Very, very far away ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... about thirty yards," said Rifle, loading as his father trampled out the burning embers, which were filling the place with a stifling smoke. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... through the gates of the city when the general rode up. There was a struggling and stifling crowd; cheers and shrieks. It was that moment of wild fruition, when the master is neither recognized nor obeyed. It is not easy to take a bone out of a dog's mouth; nevertheless, the presence of ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... there was something irritating in the suspicion that she had laughed as if it were a huge joke—perhaps, even now, she was doubled up in her narrow couch, stifling the giggle ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... by the Indians to imprison antelope, thrust its long, high neck over the railroad embankment and against the open doors of the cattle-cars as they were rolled along the siding. Through the pen and up the jutting neck into the stifling, wheeled boxes, lowing in fright and advancing unwillingly, were driven the Dutchman's fat steers and the beeves belonging to the cattleman. When a long train was filled with them, a wildcat engine backed down from the station, coupled ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Palestine Boundary—we moved on 30th March to Khan Yunis, said to be the home of Delilah. The march was once more in the evening, and was very comfortable, except for the last mile or two when we got in between the high hedges of prickly pear, and had to march through about a foot of dust in the most stifling atmosphere. When we arrived we found that we were once more on the fringes of civilisation: we could buy oranges in unlimited numbers, and also fresh eggs—not the Egyptian variety, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but real pukka hen's eggs. Water also was less scarce ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... parlour pungent at all times with the odour of liquor,—but used only on rare occasions, most of The Palmetto's patrons preferring the even more stifling atmosphere of the bar-room,—the Wells Fargo Agent had been watching and waiting ever since he had left The Polka Saloon. On a table in front of him was a bottle, for it was a part of Ashby's scheme of things to solace thus all ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... mementoes from the distant fatherland, and possibly they served as sacred ornaments for the little cell. There were also several censers, lamps, and little silver plates and salvers. The air was stifling from the fumes of gas, and the heat was like that of a vapor bath. The priest took from the altar some pieces of red and white candied sugar, held them, praying, before his idols, sprinkled them with holy water, and handed them to us on ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this, there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight gain that, in a country which has long been regarded as the very incarnation of truth-stifling despotism, any journal should be found to speak as the Golos recently spoke on the question of Russia's naval forces: "The Crimean war, which tried so severely the qualities of our army, cannot be said to have tested those of our fleet, inasmuch as it never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... and I "did" Tangier conscientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes until we fell off into a state of visionary stupor known as "kiff;" we paid our respects to the Kadi, exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... so. Go about it with the same determination that you would to make money or to learn a trade. There is a divine hunger in every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or enlargement. Beware of stifling this craving of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... incident. Annoyed at finding that her feelings could be consulted only by sacrificing those of another woman, Miss Dacre, quite confident that, as Lady Aphrodite was innocent in the present instance, she must be immaculate, told everything to her father, and, stifling her tears, begged him to make all public; but Mr. Dacre, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... medicine might keep down the agitations of his nervous system, released for a time at least from the tyranny of ailments which by a spell of wretchedness fix the thoughts upon themselves, perpetually throwing them inward as into a stifling gulf." ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... sleet, Poised, or swift moving, or laboriously Lifting his weight. And if he should let go, What would he find down there, down there below The curtain of the mist? What would he find Beyond the dim and stifling now and here, Beneath the unsettled turmoil of his mind? Oh, there were nameless depths: he ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... hesitated, choking with the rancid and stifling odors about them, they saw the figure turn its head with an effort. Then they saw that it was a man of about middle age, who was almost completely paralyzed. He could move neither his legs nor his body, but with the use of his elbows, ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... is Myrtilus. Fame inspires love, and what the world will not grant my master, in spite of his great talent, it conceded to the other long ago. And, besides, we are not starving; but Myrtilus is as rich as King Croesus of Sardis. Not that Daphne, who is stifling in gold herself, would care about that, but whoever knows life knows—where doves are, doves ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into our tent, or enter, if you can bear the stifling smoke and the close atmosphere. There, wedged close together, you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their fashion. We were also infested by little copper-colored naked ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a strange young gentleman, Master Shirley," replied Dan; "but your secret shall remain safe for me, though, if I was in your place, I think I should act differently:" and, stifling a laugh, he tossed ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... the doctor became wholly exhausted with the fatigue he had undergone, with the smoke and the fog, with the stifling, sulphureous air, with the tempestuous blasts, with the alternate extremes of heat and cold, and with the clamours, the lamentations, the agonies, and the howlings of the damned everywhere around him,—when, just in the nick of time, Beelzebub appeared to him again, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... There seemed a long delay at the end—long enough to make him break into a sweat of fear lest something should have gone wrong. Such thoughts come easily enough when you are lying full length in black darkness, in a hole just large enough to hold a man; in air so stifling that the laboured breath can scarcely come; with the dank earth just under mouth and nose, and overhead a roof that may fall in at any moment. The dragging minutes went by. Then, just as despair seized him, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... the ages of seven and fourteen, learnt the five principal modern languages, to the degree necessary for reading, with due appreciation, the chief poetical compositions in each.) But they are to be taught all this, not only without encouraging, but stifling as much as possible, the examining and questioning spirit. The disposition which should be encouraged is that of receiving all on the authority of the teacher. The Positivist faith, even in its scientific part, is la foi demontrable, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail! Queen ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... various stifling dug-outs, in the firing trench or support-trench, overheated company commanders are dictating reports or filling in returns. (Even now the Round Game Department is not entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... of those times cluster around this old place," he said, violently stifling a yawn. He had risen early and run far. Hunger and slumber contended ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... on her horse and then swung himself up into the saddle. Together they raced for the scant shelter before the dark menace overspreading earth and sky. The sun was now hidden; but that brought no relief, for the heat was even more stifling and oppressive than before. The wind seemed like a blast of hot air from an opened ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the freedom of the living spirit, whilst science is turning to problems which used to lie within the domain of unexplored religion. Religion will become scientific and science will become religious. The principles laid down by Darwin and Huxley have lost their power of stifling religious aspiration; the startling pronouncements in defiant materialism of Buechner and Haeckel now startle none but the ignorant. The anxiety to exclude scientific facts disappears with the realization that all truth, all knowledge, all reason, are subservient to the search for God. The struggle ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and business ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... listening, and now heard distinctly above the sounds nearer at hand a distant crackling roar and the thud of heavy branches falling. The interior of the cabin had now grown even dimmer—to a dark redness—and the smoke came billowing in at the window almost stifling her with its acrid fumes. Outside the window, when she struggled for freedom, she caught a glimpse of sparks, flying like meteors past the dim rectangle of her vision, small ones, larger ones, and then flaming brands ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to get away to himself; to hide his face in his arms, and give vent to the tears that were stifling him; to weep for his lost friend, and for this ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... going to get up when I heard your foot on the stairs. I feel stronger this morning, and I want to get out-of-doors. The house is stifling me. I have been listening so hard for the sound of her foot or her voice that when I try to listen I can't hear for the thumping of my heart in my ears. I want to be with her. I too am only a trouble to people. She and I will not be a ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... heat became stifling, the darkness more oppressive, but the cries and shouts were dying down; their volume was less great, their intonation less shrill; stupor and fatigue and exhaustion were having their effect. Trench bent his head again to his companion and now heard ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Eustace, "that were but poor policy. As things now stand with us, the heretics catch hold of each flying report which tends to the scandal of our clergy. We must abate the evil, not only by strengthening discipline, but also by suppressing and stifling the voice of scandal. If my conjectures are true, the miller's daughter will be silent for her own sake; and your reverence's authority may also impose silence on her father, and on the Sacristan. If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the window after his visitor had gone, and leaned out for some few minutes, letting the fresh air into the close, stifling room. Then he went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes, made some pretense at breakfast, went through his letters with methodical exactness. At eleven o'clock he set out upon ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fair as eye could see. The September sun rose in a haze of warm rays; promising, as Mrs. Randolph said, that the heat would be stifling by and by. Daisy did not care, for her part. They had breakfast earlier than usual; for the plan was to get on the other side of the river before the sun should be too oppressive. They had scarcely risen from the table when the Sandford party drove up to the door. These were to go ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... sunk below ground, and Maori builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than one room under a single roof. On the other hand, the dyed patterns on the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore (who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr. Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts Bay for liberty of worship in behalf ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Companies refused to lend the great highways of which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without a subvention, then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming. If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the sweater's den, or the stifling factory; if the seamstress could leave her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling, invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done, even if it did cost a few paltry thousands. Let the men ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... conversing in an undertone on the dangers of the sea, and the disagreeables of a fore-cabin, the mass of unfortunates below were cowering in their berths, rendered almost forgetful of the stifling atmosphere, and the wailing of sick children, by the fear of shipwreck, as they listened with throbbing hearts to the howling wind and rattling cordage overhead, and felt the tremendous shocks when the good ship ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... lips, and a liar who giveth ear to a naughty tongue." Yea, if we thoroughly would be clear from it, we must show an aversion from hearing it, an unwillingness to believe it, an indignation against it; so either stifling it in the birth, or condemning it to death, being uttered. This is the sure way to destroy it, and to prevent its mischief. If we would stop our ears, we should stop the slanderer's mouth; if we would ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... I said, from Westminster, and wearily enough I paced along the busy streets, exhausted by the stifling heat of the Vice-Chancellor's court, in which I had been patiently sitting since ten o'clock, vainly waiting for that 'occasion sudden' of which our old law-writers are so full. Moodily, too, I was revolving in my mind our narrow circumstances, and the poor hopes I had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... not the punishment be far greater than the sin? Would there not rise from every human heart an outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by means of memory, transformed life into an endless torment, destroying all activity or initiative in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word, stifling the present beneath the heavy nightmare ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... change, and the gloom, that brought with it the shadow of death, fell like a pall upon the post, stifling its life, and bringing with it a grief that those who lived there ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... and then desired me to try the chairs at the Chateau, and, if they were favouring repose, to inquire whether the place would be let furnished. Stifling an inclination to assault him, I laughed pleasantly and related my meeting with the engaging ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... silence followed. For some moments no one spoke. Her father, stifling a sigh, turned slowly, pushed a chair to the fire and settled into it, his rubber-encased knees wide apart, so that the warmth of the blaze could reach most of his body. Jack found a seat beside him, his mind on Ruth and her evident suffering, his ears alert for any ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that we did not reach our destination until about mid-day on the Wednesday, the journey having occupied nearly twelve hours. The heat was unbearable, and confinement within the carriages, the windows of which were kept sedulously closed by order of the military, thus rendering the atmosphere within stifling, speedily commenced to affect some of the passengers. Each compartment carried seven prisoners, and the eighth seat, one of the windows beside the door, was occupied by a soldier—the guard of the compartment—complete with loaded rifle and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... have stayed down in the plains through the hot season in stifling cantonments, and I have once or twice been in Indian cholera camps. Besides, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and worn with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that surged about him half-mad with religious fury. There were Hindus and Moslems to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Though I stand in the free clear air of heaven, I could not feel more choked and gasping were I in some close and stifling dungeon, hundreds of feet underground. I think that the brook must have got into my brain, there is such a noise of bubbling and brawling in it. Barbara, Roger, Algy, a hundred confused ideas of pain and dismay jostle each ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... there should be fire within the mountain, though there may be snow on its crest. Many a ship has been lost on the harbour bar; and there is no excuse for the captain leaving the bridge, or the engineer coming up from the engine-room, stormy as the one position and stifling as the other may be, until the anchor is down, and the vessel is moored and quiet in the desired haven. The desert, with its wild beasts and its Bedouin, reaches right up to the city gates, and until we are within these we need to keep our hands on our sword-hilts and be ready for conflict. 'He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... deceived me, he never told me I should be his wife; I never dreamed of it myself. It was only poor papa hoped for it. And even now I am not altogether unhappy; the memory remains to me, and however fearful the results ... I'm stifling here ... it was here I saw him the last time.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Hal? I do,—as well as this gushing sensibility will let me,—rocking in her arms and half stifling with her kisses, or delighting with her lullaby, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the west wing she rushed, stumbling over hose lines, battling against the stifling clouds of smoke which rolled down the corridor. The room was gained, the picture secured, and she turned to make good her escape, all other valuables forgotten. But even in that brief moment the smoke had become overpowering. Her room was dense. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... on the continent. The melancholy squares of water, divided by little paths of white salt crust, along which the salt-makers pass (dressed in white) to rake up and gather the salt into mulons; a space which the saline exhalations prevent all birds from crossing, stifling thus the efforts of botanic nature; those sands where the eye is soothed only by one little hardy persistent plant bearing rosy flowers and the Chartreux pansy; that lake of salt water, the sandy dunes, the view of Croisic, a miniature town afloat like Venice on the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... abroad, was better than the nervous waiting in his darkened room. Dreadful forces, forces of ruin and murder and disgrace, were abroad in the world of men; the menace of the low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... was buried alive. A stifling carcase blotted out the sun. His arms were pinioned, but his ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... woman he had felt beneath his throat a coil of snakes stifling him, but in his brain certain memories were sounding, as it were voices, the echo of something distant. This echo issued from that woman's features, changed and faded, though the same in which on a time he had fixed his eyes with rapture, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the contemplation of her charms. She complied with all; from belly to side, from side to back I turned her; she smiled as if pleased, curious, and astonished; and when I turned to quench my passion in her, she met me with an ardour less demonstrative, but more stifling and satisfying than Charlotte; it was a worry to think that I had twice fucked her, and seemed to have finished each time ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... whatever happens,' I said within myself; and truly I kept this resolution so well, and was so fully occupied in steadying my nerves and stifling the rebellious flutter of my heart, that when I was admitted into the hall and ushered into the presence of Mrs. Bloomfield, I almost forgot to answer her polite salutation; and it afterwards struck me, that the little I did say was ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... she hastily drew back, stealing a last swift kiss. Lawrence walked toward his bed. He heard a low, stifling little laugh, then all was still in the cabin. Claire had laughed for very joy at her love. He smiled tenderly. Dear little woman, she was indeed a wealth untold to him. What a life theirs would be after ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... could scarcely breathe, the wind and spray stifling him till he could turn by an effort a little aside. Then for long periods together, as they seemed, they were under water, as some wave leaped over them. In fact, after a few such experiences he was half insensible, and every struggle towards ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... name, but it died husky and low in her parched throat. She must fly—anywhere to be out in the air, for the atmosphere of that close chamber seemed stifling her. She caught up a shawl which lay on a table, and rushed from the room and from the house. A sudden thought, which seemed instinct rather than reason, had made her start thus madly away to search for old Ben, the honest protector of her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... a battle surely as desperate as ever was fought and which indeed no poor words of mine may justly describe. The enemy lay to windward and little enough could I see by reason of the dense smoke that enveloped us, a stifling, sulphurous cloud that drifted aboard us ever more thick as the fight waxed, a choking mist full of blurred shapes, dim forms that flitted by and vanished spectre-like, a rolling mystery whence came ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... marshal to a little village called Ebersdorf, on the bank of the river, and near the field of battle. At the house of a brewer they found a room over a stable where the heat was stifling, and was rendered still more unendurable from the odor of the corpses by which the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... 'Mademoiselle,' he answered, stifling with difficulty a burst of laughter. And after that he would not say another word, bad, good, or indifferent, though I felt the bed shake more than once, and knew that ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... whiskey-bottles, one empty, one nearly full, that Dr. Potts declared were not there when he left at one. On the mantel a phial of chloroform, which was also not there before. But a towel soaked with the stifling contents lay on the floor by Jim's rude pallet, and a handkerchief half soaked, half consumed, was on the chair which had stood by the bedside, among the fragments of an overturned ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagant blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria was encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was stifling his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancing with glee. Paolo and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave and unmoved, inscrutable, abstract. Then the youth came away to the doorway, with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting its ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Scout, whoever he is," Jimmie said, as they discussed the signals in the almost stifling atmosphere of the cabin, "is strictly next to his job! He's showing the way, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the unmixed monarchy of Philip II. in Spain; it was more absolute than that of Louis XIV., and yet it was far less regular and tranquil. How did Philip II. succeed in establishing absolute power in Spain? By stifling all activity in the country, opposing himself to every species of amelioration, and rendering the state of Spain completely stagnant. The government of Louis XIV., on the contrary, exhibited alacrity for all sorts of innovations, and showed itself favourable to the progress of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the western Panjab. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the Spaniards stand up your accusers— That there's a storm collecting over you Of far more fearful menace than the former one Which whirled you headlong down at Regensburg. And people talk, said he, of——Ah! [Stifling extreme emotion. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... In stifling noons when his back was wrung by its load, and the air seemed dead, And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead, Or in times of flood, when plains were seas, and the scrubs were cold and black, He ploughed in mud to ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... heavy on shore and sea that day, holding the Ethel and May in port. He disappeared into the stifling mist, and the girl sat and stared into that vacancy ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... already tried a way he knew for stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the sieve from ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... fire!" and Boss yelling: "Louis! Louis!" I jumped up, throwing an old coat over me, and ran up stairs, in the direction of Mrs. Farrington's room, I encountered Boss in the hall; and, as it was dark and the smoke stifling, I could hardly make any headway. At this moment Mrs. Farrington threw her door open, and screamed for "Cousin Eddie," meaning McGee. He hurriedly called to me to get a pitcher of water quick. I grasped the pitcher from the stand, and he attempted to throw the water on Celia, ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... he was reckoning up the years he would have still to work before he could retire.—Christophe saw how these good people were weighed down by the atmosphere of family affection, which is so deep-rooted in France—deep-rooted, but stifling and destructive of vitality. And it has become all the more oppressive since families in France have been reduced to the minimum: father, mother, one or two children, and here and there, perhaps, an uncle or an aunt. It is a cowardly, fearful love, turned in upon itself, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... level pavement, but over broken rocks, up banks, through quagmires and brush—in short, across ground that would be difficult walking without any burden, and not in cool, clear weather, but through stifling swamps with no free hand to ease the myriad punctures of his body, face, and limbs whenever unsufficiently protected from the stingers that roam in clouds. It is the hardest work I ever saw performed by human ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nothing was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering action, yes, even the least hopeful, anything that would have been action, would have made the pain supportable; she could have drawn breath then, enough for life's purposes; now she was stifling. There was some mystery; there was something wrong; some mistake, or misapprehension, or malpractice; something, which if she could put her hand on, all would be right. And it was hidden from her; dark; it might be near or far, she could not touch it, for she could not find it. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... but Arthur, stooping forward, carefully examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his nostrils, yet he lingers there ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... both elbows on the rail, and looked out at the misty banks, puffing at his cigar. Then he dropped it hissing into the water, and, stifling a yawn, looked up and down the length of the deserted deck. It ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... lay, stretched out on the ground, While all the company gathered around; When, valiantly stifling his tears and his groans, He sadly ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... you, no; You Don with th'oaker face, I wish to ha thee But on a Breach, stifling with smoke and fire, And for thy 'No' but whiffing Gunpowder Out of an Iron pipe, I woo'd but ask thee If thou wood'st on, and if thou didst cry No Thou shudst read Canon-Law; I'de make thee roare And weare cut-beaten-sattyn: I woo'd pay thee Though thou ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various |
