"Stupefying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His little son Willie sickened and died. Lincoln's relation to his children was very close, very tender. Many anecdotes show this boy frolicking about the White House, a licensed intruder everywhere. Another flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the child's death. Of these latter, the most extreme which portray Lincoln toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public duty, may be dismissed as apocryphal. But ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... dazed brains comprehended that fact. And he could not be missing either. After a minute that stupefying fact became ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... he breathed seemed crisping his lungs. Vaguely, for the stupefying, brain-numbing heat, he wondered at the figure he saw dimly in its grotesque posturing close to the flames. And the hundreds of others—how could they live? How could he himself go on ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... but as before, staring at the flower-bed in profound silence. When Tsvyetkov went up to her, and through the twilight glanced at her pale face, exhausted with grief, her expression was such as he had seen before during her attacks of acute, stupefying, sick headache. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to be seen whether you are not the worst of fools. Perhaps," he continued, leaning back upon his seat, "perhaps you would oblige me with a few particulars. I must suppose you had some object in the stupefying impudence of your proceedings, and I confess I have ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hungry now! Now that he was alone, he fed upon his own bitter thoughts. He sank from a state of frenzy into one of stupefying despair, and vainly did he endeavor to clear his confused mind, and account for the dark cloud gathering about him; no loop-hole for ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... last night of painful and protracted suffering. The miserable woman who pretended to assist me in watching, had taken some stupefying potion, and I watched alone, as David expressed it, longing for the first ray of the morning. At length, the day dawned, and I was relieved by good old Mr. Moore. As he entered, I said to him, "Poor Juda is still ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... attacked him when Sanson opened the door to go out to meeting. But did any one ever know a respectable citizen go out to meeting with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and without his hat? Or would he go out leaving the key of the safe on the open desk table? Then the stupefying effects of chloroform would not certainly last more than an hour, although the sickly smell of the drug would linger about the closed room for ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... absolute silence. The suggestion which the Professor's disclosure had brought to them was stupefying, even Quest's fingers, as a moment or two later he rubbed two knobs of sugar together so that the particles should fall into the tubes of bouillon, shook. The result was magical. The bouillon turned to a strange shade of grey and began slowly ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the graded series of School Geographies, for instance, through some five or six of which the pupil is obliged to wade, one after another, to find in each, only the same matter in sentences of a somewhat greater length. Hence, to go one step farther, the stupefying of so many minds in our schools. Nothing is more deadening to all mental activity than unmeaning repetitions, a fact easily verified by any one who, wakeful through mental disturbance at night, will take the trouble to repeat and re-repeat any meaningless thing. It is the lounging, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... husband to recover his good-humour, and went back to her chair. The extraordinary disclosure which she had extracted from him had produced a stupefying effect on her mind. Her customary sympathy with him, her subtle womanly observation of his character, her intimate knowledge of his merits and his defects, failed to find the rational motive which might have explained his conduct. She looked round at him with mingled ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... from habit than thought, sat close in the saddle. A few of Wildfire's lengthening strides, quickened Slone's blood. Then Creech moved, also awaking from a stupefying surprise, and he snatched up a gun and fired. Slone saw the spurts of red, the puffs of white. But he heard nothing. The torrent of his changed blood, burning and terrible, filled his ears ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... buildings, comprising the entire business portion of Richmond warehouses, manufactories, mills, depots, and stores, all within the brief space of a day, was a visitation so sudden, so unexpected, so stupefying, as to overawe and terrorize even wrong-doers, and made the harvest of plunder so abundant as to serve to scatter the mob and satisfy its ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... prince, deadly hostility and danger, enthusiastic admiration and extravagant scorn, excess and poverty, followed each other in confusion. The humanist needed to know how to carry a great erudition and to endure a succession of various positions and occupations. To these were added on occasion stupefying and disorderly enjoyment, and when the basest demands were made on him he had to be indifferent to all morals. Haughtiness was a certain consequence in character. The humanists needed it to sustain themselves, and the alternation of flattery and hatred strengthened ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... with the fork. You see me here, I have envy of the simple life. I am content of to do it—comme ca—as that, see you," waving in the direction of his unfinished repast. "All that magnificence of your grand hotel, there is not the why of it, the most big of the world, and suchly stupefying, with its 'infernil rackit' as you say. And of more—what droll of idea, enough curious, by example! to dwell with the good Philippe and his femme aimable. Their hotel is of the most littles, but I rest here very volunteerly ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... called in, and also Dr. Mellish who attended Mr. Morton, both said that he seemed dazed by some stupefying drug, and also, of course, terribly weak and faint with ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... doorway in some stupefying fashion represented the "Fight" and the "Puddle" of Northrup's adventure. If Kathryn thought at all, it was to the effect that she had known from start to finish the whole miserable business, and she acted upon this ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... walking in a lake, and now even the instinct of self-preservation must have been flickering, for he waded on, rejoicing merely in getting rid of the dog. Something in the water rose and struck him. Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought him to his senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground slipped beneath his feet many times, but at last he was out of the water. That he was out in a flood he did not realize; ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... ring that gives him power to fly. Beadohild, Nithhad's daughter, accompanied by her brothers, goes to Weland and has him mend rings for her. In this way he recovers his own ring and his power to fly. Before leaving he kills the sons of Nithhad, and, stupefying Beadohild with ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... though, some strength came to him. The fury of his toil forced him to breathe deeply, cleansing his lungs of the stupefying gas which, because it was visible as a vapor, had been carried in the rocket-ship. A visible gas was, of course, more consistent with the early pretense that the rocket-ship bore invaders from another planet. And Thorn became drenched with sweat, which aided ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... met hundreds of families in flight, carrying their few miserable possessions. The spectacle of collapsing carts and fainting women was frequently seen. When one reached the lava stream a stupefying spectacle presented itself. From a point on the mountain between the towns I saw four rivers of molten fire, one of which, 200 feet wide and over 40 deep, was moving slowly and majestically onward, devouring vineyards and olive groves. I witnessed the destruction of a ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... salutation Tom and Charlie, I need hardly say, were speechless. One in utter despair, the other in utter rage and astonishment. In both the revulsion of feeling caused by the interruption was almost stupefying, and they stood for a moment staring at ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... breath away when he announced that he knew all about our predicament in relation to the Russian loan. It really sounded quite—you might say significant. Does—does he imagine that— good heaven, it's almost stupefying!" ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... which, however, he could not rely sufficiently for platform purposes, developed in private intercourse into stupefying energy. It was impossible to stop his flow of language with any objection, and those he could not draw over to his cause he cast aside for ever. In his enthusiasm about the problems which occupied his mind day and night, he sharpened ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... porch like the steady patter of picket-firing; the widow bird's distracted mourning filled the silence; the kitten crept to its food, ate indifferently, then, settling on the Messenger's knees, stared, round-eyed, at the dark. But always at dawn the sun burned off the mist, rising in stupefying splendor; the oily river glided on; not a leaf moved, not a creature. And the kitten slept on the porch, heedless of inviting grass stems whisked for her and the ball of silk rolled ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... pallid face upturned to that high-arched sky of brass, from which light and heat beat down in brutal waves, she slept the sleep of exhaustion, deep and heavy; dark and stupefying sleep possessed her utterly, as overpowering and obliterating as though ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... declared that Madame de Crequy was made conscious in some mysterious way, of her son's death, on the very day and hour when it occurred, and that after that she had no more anxiety, but was only conscious of a kind of stupefying despair." ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... imagination, and leaves a reaction sadly softening to the heart. Successful ambition, gratified vanity, what are these with none to share the triumph? But put the sufferer through a steady course of daily duties, engrossing in their nature, stupefying in the monotony of their routine, and insensibly, while his attention is distracted from self and selfish feelings, he gathers strength, day by day, till at last he is able to look his sorrow in the face, and fight it fairly, as he would any other honourable foe. The ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... wish it had been. Yes, ours is a broadcloth burglar. When he approached Miss Wardour's bedside, he produced from a convenient pocket, his stupefying drug; and then he looked about for something with which to apply it, and at the same time, no doubt, he berates himself for omitting to provide himself with a plain, small napkin, or piece of linen. There ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... at him from time to time as he sat back, obscure in his corner, gazing out with eyes which saw nothing at the blurred gas-lamps, and the red flashes of the more rapid vehicles which outstripped them. And now that the first stupefying effect of his intervention was wearing away—it seemed like a mad scene in a theatre, or some monstrous dream, so surprising and unreal—her primitive consciousness awoke, and set her wondering, inquiring, with bewilderment that was akin to terror, into the motives ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... chronic To try each novel tonic, Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm; And from a homoeopathist Would change to an hydropathist, And back again, with stupefying calm! ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us—we're always behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a constant hideousness crawling into your senses, stupefying you almost with a sort of misery—oh, I ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Munich-Freising is one of those in which the attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has been most steadily carried on. Its archbishops have constantly shown themselves assiduous in securing cardinals' hats by thwarting science and by stupefying education. The twin towers of the old cathedral of Munich have seemed to throw a killing shadow over intellectual development in that region. Naturally, then, these two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit themselves to clearing away any ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... awake from the deep swoon into which the excess of pain had cast him, and open his eyes to new wretchedness, when the morning sun shone clear into the room? He could move no limb; but his thoughts struck against the glass, stupefying him with discordant clang; and instead of the words, which the spirit used to speak from within him, he now heard only the stifled din of madness. Then he exclaimed in his despair "O Serpentina! ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... over, the young men gave what news they could—stupefying news of the advance of the enemy in overwhelming numbers, and of the flight and confusion of what remained of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... rapidly from Tivoli, where it occasioned a stupefying surprise. It was the first time that a fall of the kind had taken place from the sky at Paris. Fireworks were from this time discontinued, the fete came to an end, and a subscription was rapidly organised, producing some thousands ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... any political or literary topic. Our thoughts can dwell on but one thrice melancholy event. Need we name that event? Alas, no! It had occurred but a few hours when the tidings of it struck our city with stunning, stupefying, and deeply saddening blow. It has already thrilled our whole land; and is on its way, through a hundred channels, to the west, to the east, and to the south, carrying with it mourning and lamentation throughout ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... this revolt spreads though the three Presidencies the work of conquering India will have to be begun again, and worse than that, for we should have opposed to us a vast army drilled and armed by ourselves, and led by the native officers we have trained. It seems stupefying that an empire won piecemeal, and after as hard fighting as the world has ever seen, should ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... Ferrari's frescos) neutralized by an incurable defect of the combining and harmonizing faculty so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff enough of thought and vigor and imagination to make a dozen artists. And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded, dazzling, stupefying wilderness of forms and faces ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the most astounding thing in modern history, the secrecy behind which great armies were moving and fighting. To a civilization accustomed to the rapid and detailed accounts of news, there was something stupefying in the veil of silence which enshrouded the operations of the legions which were being hurled against each other along the frontiers. By one swift stroke of the military censorship journalism was throttled. All its lines of communication were ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... for a reply she tilted the little scent bottle carefully against the tree-trunk and departed, while Jim stretched himself out luxuriously in the grateful shade. He was tired, and the still heat of noon had a stupefying effect. Lou seemed long in returning, and his thoughts grew nebulous until he finally drifted ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... ashamed of their length, but I am ashamed, especially when I read yours, of their dullness and of the poverty-stricken attempt at description. How is it that you can make your little German town fascinating, when I can only make this vast, stupefying India sound dull? It wouldn't sound dull if I were telling you about it by word of mouth. I could make you see it then; but what can a poor uninspired one do with a pen, some ink, and a ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... and her own eyes were livid, for by this time she had fairly given up all hope of rescue; and, besides, the air in the tunnel was so foul and stupefying, she could hardly speak; indeed, her tongue clung to her palate. But she poured out the last few drops into the cup for Cyril and held them up imploringly, with a gesture of supplication. These two were no strangers to one another now. They ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... charms, and sentences; a specially prepared cloth was wrapped round each muscle, every drug and every bandage owed its origin to some divinity, and the confusion of sounds, of disguised figures, and of various perfumes, had a stupefying effect on those who visited this chamber. It need not be said that the whole embalming establishment and its neighborhood was enveloped in a cloud of powerful resinous fumes, of sweet attar, of lasting musk, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him; it might have been written by an unintelligent schoolboy. He tore the paper in pieces, and shut and locked his desk, heavy despair sinking like lead into his heart. For the rest of that day he lay motionless on the bed, smoking pipe after pipe in the hope of stupefying himself with tobacco fumes. The air in the room became blue and thick with smoke; it was bitterly cold, and he wrapped himself up in his great-coat and drew the counterpane over him. The night came on and the window darkened, and at last he ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... instead of "myrrh" (Mark xv. 23), and thus represents the soldiers as cruelly giving Him a nauseating draught instead of a draught to dull His pain. The argument will hardly hold good, for the Greek word translated "gall" can also signify a stupefying drug, and thus Matt. and Mark agree. (3) That in xxi. 2-7, where our Lord is represented as making use of both an ass and a colt for His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The other Synoptists mention a colt only, and it is supposed that the evangelist altered his narrative ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... additional force to the thrill of superstitious horror which was excited by that remembrance. He roused himself with a wild effort, and hunted in the grass for his pistol, which now was his only reliance. Finding this, he hurried down toward the road. Every limb now ached, and his brain still felt the stupefying effects of his late swoon. It was only with extreme difficulty that he could drag himself along; yet such was the horror on his mind that he despised the pain, and hurried down the road rapidly, seeking only to escape as soon as possible out from among the shadows of these ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... he, at the end of a rather stupefying half-hour for them, "you've heard what I have to say. You know that I love you all. You will agree that I have been a fond, foolish and over-indulgent father. As I've said before, it is my fault entirely that you are triflers and spendthrifts. I should have done better ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... death of Jennie, and all the horrible scenes she had witnessed; but on the whole she had aroused herself, and was no longer in the deep depression which usually accompanies grief. Perhaps the overwhelming, almost stupefying sorrow that crushed poor June, and left her for nearly twenty-four hours in a state of stupor, assisted Mabel in conquering her own feelings, for she had felt called on to administer consolation to the young Indian woman. This she had done ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... his pantry, where I lashed him fast and locked him in; and then the four of us hastened on deck to ascertain what effect, if any, had been produced by the pistol-shot fired in the cabin upon the small residue of the crew who had not yet utterly succumbed to the stupefying influence of their ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... Greek polytheism! What should [204] we have thought of the vertiginous prophetess at the very centre of Greek religion? The supreme Hellenic culture is a sharp edge of light across this gloom. The fiery, stupefying wine becomes in a happier climate clear and exhilarating. The Dorian worship of Apollo, rational, chastened, debonair, with his unbroken daylight, always opposed to the sad Chthonian divinities, is the aspiring ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near Reichenbach, Bruyeres was killed by a ball; then Kirchener by another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc, the commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was stupefying indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of one who through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost the only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great elevation. Napoleon was stricken ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... anybody who has not experienced it can realise the stupefying, helpless sensation of being roused up from a sound sleep, in the middle of the night, on board ship, by the cry of 'Fire!' and finding oneself enveloped in a smoke so dense as ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... moment all three sat astounded by this quiet statement from their leader. Nothing he might have said could have been more unexpected, more stupefying. The Duchess alone moved; she turned her head and held her sunken ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... narrow passage between the double row of sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt, and a low voice whispered, "Walk past me, and then look back at me." The ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... South Wales, and Central Australia. The leaves are chewed as a narcotic by the natives of many parts, and form a valuable commodity of barter. In some parts of Central Australia the leaf is not chewed, but is only used for the purpose of making a decoction which has the power of stupefying emus, which under its influence are easily captured by the natives. Other spellings are Pitchiri, Pedgery, and Bedgery. Perhaps from betcheri, another form of boodjerrie, good, expressing the excellent qualities of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the very size and suddenness of the disaster served in a measure to lessen its evil effects; for the burning of seven hundred buildings, the entire business portion of Richmond, all in the brief space of a day, was a visitation so sudden, so stupefying and unexpected as to overawe and terrorize even evildoers. Before a new danger could arise help was at hand. Gen. Weitzel, to whom the city surrendered, took up his headquarters in the house lately occupied by Jefferson Davis, and promptly set about the work ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... than the others, remain uninfluenced by the usual processes of blunting, and grinding down, and stupefying, till one grows accustomed to one's function, one's ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... that it was neither very brutal nor very immoral. The head-master was excellent in his Prussian way, and the other instructors were not worse than in other schools; it was their system that struck the systemless American with horror. The arbitrary training given to the memory was stupefying; the strain that the memory endured was a form of torture; and the feats that the boys performed, without complaint, were pitiable. No other faculty than the memory seemed to be recognized. Least of all was any use made of reason, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... our breast, But they course on for ever unexpress'd. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true! And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... this isolation, sat the girl Bakuma, Marufa's useless love charm clutched in her hand, as bewildered as if the earth had suddenly turned inside out under this fact so stupendous and stupefying. She did not weep. She squatted in the door, her eyes staring with the glazed inquiring expression of a dying gazelle, a bronze question to Fate. At the feeding time her mother threw her bananas into the circle. Bakuma looked at them as they flopped near to her as if she did not realize ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... well in Germany, where the whole grown population are educated; but in Ireland, where the adult population are unhappily otherwise, 'tis a matter of consequence to keep the students together, to foster an academic spirit and character, and to preserve them from the stupefying influences of common society. However, this point is but secondary, so we pass from it, and come to the two great ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... company with others, from the topmost branches of some tall tree, which has acted as host to the clinging vine. The handsome but inconsiderate plant is turned from its purpose of lending fictitious and fugitive charms to quite commonplace but passive trees to the office of stupefying uncomplaining fish. But the element which holds such deadly enmity to the sense of the fish is not obtainable by the simple primary means successful with other plants. Indeed, the process is quite elaborate, and goes to prove that the Australian aboriginal has to his ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... infinite nature, his jealousy, his strange preferences, his vindictive Old Testament past" (p. 8)—and, it may fairly be added, his blood-boltered, Kultur-stained present. Is it possible to deodorize a word which comes to us redolent of "good, thick stupefying incense-smoke," mingled with the reek of the auto-da-fe? Can we beat into a ploughshare the sword of St. Bartholomew, and a thousand other deeds of horror? God has been by far the most tragic word in the whole vocabulary of the race—a spell to conjure up all ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... grinding away at their stupefying monotonous tasks as though the miracle of spring were not taking place before their eyes. They were absorbed in their barnyards and kitchen sinks and bad cooking and worse dressmaking. The very children, grimy little utilitarians like their parents, only went abroad in the flood of golden ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... when the sound of the war of the nations broke upon our ears. It would be vain to deny that to all idealists, of every shade of thought, the catastrophe came as a stupefying blow. "It is unbelievable, impossible," said one. "It can't last," added another. Reaction from that extreme of incredulity led many to take refuge in hopeless, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... with curses and screams came back to the attack. It is absolutely stupefying to think how few shots hit the mark in the excitement of a fight. Here were a number of men firing from a distance of hardly more than forty paces, and not ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor. Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like the buzzing ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of his confinement Waverley found himself so well that he began to meditate his escape from this dull and miserable prison-house, thinking any risk which he might incur in the attempt preferable to the stupefying and intolerable uniformity of Janet's retirement. The question indeed occurred, whither he was to direct his course when again at his own disposal. Two schemes seemed practicable, yet both attended with danger and difficulty. One was to go back to Glennaquoich and join Fergus Mac-Ivor, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... talk that Jaffery fell in love with Doria. Of course, what the French call le coup de foudre, the thunderbolt of love had smitten him when he had first beheld Doria alighting from the motor-car. But he did not realise the stupefying effect of this bang on the heart till he had thus sat at her little feet and drunk ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... And it was thus that the daughter of king Kuntibhoja, importuned by Surya, had after soliciting a son from him, fallen down stupefied on that excellent bed, like a broken creeper. And it was thus that deity of fierce rays, stupefying her, entered into her by virtue of Yoga power, and placed his own self within her womb. The deity, however, did not sully her by deflowering her in the flesh. And after Surya had gone away, that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of a doctrinaire, her observations on "Romanism" (which she dubbed "an abyss of superstition and moral pollution") might have fallen from the lips of a hot-gospeller of to-day. "Who," she asked her hearers, "shall compute the stupefying and brutalizing effects of such religion? Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast, unwieldy, and offensive corpse? America does not yet recognise how much she owes to the Protestant principle. It is that principle which has given ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Sheer noise, stupefying, abominable, incredible, unending, greeted the birth of the New Year; they were dancing in circles, singing, cheering amid the crash of glasses. Table-cloths, silken gowns, flowers were crushed and trampled under foot; flushed faces looked ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... catch to ridicule whatever they hear, and with much wit and humour provide a stock of laughter, by furnishing themselves from the pulpit. But, of all misbehaviour, none is comparable to that of those who come here to sleep; opium is not so stupefying to many persons as an afternoon sermon. Perpetual custom hath so brought it about, that the words, of whatever preacher, become only a sort of uniform sound at a distance, than which nothing is more effectual to lull the senses. For, that it is the very sound of the sermon which bindeth ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... there!" he said, half turning to the man at the wheel; he changed the indicator from "Full speed" to "Slow ahead"; in a few seconds the anchor chain would have rattled through the hawse-hole—when something happened that was incomprehensible, stupefying—something utterly remote and strange from ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... preparation would be lost, and young men would go forth into life unfurnished; but many minds uncertain and vacillating soon wearied with the dry elements of one department, would presently attempt another and a third, and disgusted, at length, with all, would resign themselves to a stupefying indolence, or a consuming licentiousness. The examples of other times, when the learning of universities all had respect to the future political and ecclesiastical relations of the student, and these institutions became ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... smoke from the shells which had burst either in the protecting wall or in the ditches. The deleterious gases rendered it impossible to stand in the covered places, and forced the General to assemble the garrison in the interior and in the gallery. Even in these refuges the stupefying effects of the gases allowed themselves to be felt, and weakened the fighting value of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... act upon the consciences of slave owners like opiates upon the body, lulling them into a slumber as profound and fatal as death. It were almost as hopeless a task to attempt to arouse, alarm and animate them, so long as they repose under the stupefying effects of this poison, as to raise the dead. This must not be. Slaveholders are the enemies of God and man; their garments are red with the blood of souls; their guilt is aggravated beyond the power of language to describe; and they must ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... filled the edifice with strains of most seductive, entrancing music, played by Miss Jane Brown, the only real left-handed organist in the civilised world. Then came the wedding party, magnificent, radiant, resplendent with the glittering jewels of the Orient, dazzling with gorgeousness, stupefying and miraculous in its revelation of beauty. There were six handsome ushers—count them—six, ten bridesmaids—ten—a bevy of real, live, flower-bearing fairies, captured at an immense outlay of time and money in far Caucasia. The bride's resplendent ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... eyes "roll horribly in their sockets." When "direst revenge swallows up every other feeling" in the soul of Matilda, her eyes "scintillate with a fiend-like expression." Incidents follow one another with a wild and stupefying rapidity. Every moment is a crisis. The style is startlingly abrupt, and the short, disconnected paragraphs are fired off like so many pistol shots. The sequence of events is mystifying—Zastrozzi's motive for persecuting Verezzi is darkly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... mountain-paths that the shining limestone and the strong green of shrub and herbage made as white as silver. There the miraculous home of St. Benedict awaited us in the form of a builded and pictured-over maze of chapels and shrines, cells and corridors, stupefying rock-chambers and caves, places all at an extraordinary variety of different levels and with labyrinthine intercommunications; there the spirit of the centuries sat like some invisible icy presence that only permits you to stare ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... felt stunned for an instant. He drew his hand tightly against his forehead, that was heavy with its dull, half-stupefying pain which, spite of what he could do, still held on. All ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... We are not of the number of those who condemn the moderate use of tobacco, but, on the contrary, know right well how to appreciate its soothing and cheering effects; but the difference is wide between a limited enjoyment of the habit, and the stupefying, besotting excess to which it is carried by the Germans. The dirty way, too, in which they smoke, renders the custom as annoying to those who live amongst them, as it must be unwholesome and detrimental to themselves. It is possible to smoke much, and yet cleanly: take the Spaniard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... shriveled, was sometimes shocked as in the States. The first field of maguey appeared, planted in long rows, barely a foot high, but due in a year or two to produce pulque, the Mexican scourge, because of its cheapness, stupefying the poorer classes. When fresh, it is said to be beneficial in kidney troubles and other ailments, but soon becomes over-fermented in the pulquerias of the cities and more harmful than a ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Piyadasi inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by two kings—Chandragupta and Dharmasoka—what has "'Ptolemaios' of the Greeks" to do with "Turamaya" or the latter with "Asuramaya," except, indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under the stupefying "Greek influence" of the Upas Tree of Western Philology? Then we learn that, because "Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e., .... Greeks, and explains the formation of the word 'Yavanani,' to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... road between the mountains and the sea, the rising general and diplomat indulged in many rosy dreams, probably feeling already on his shoulders the insignia of a commander-in-chief. But he was returning to disgrace, if not to destruction. A week after his arrival came the stupefying news that the hour-glass had once again been reversed, that on the very day of his own exultant return to Nice, Robespierre's head had fallen, that the Mountain was shattered, and that the land was again staggering to gain its ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... pink flames, and in the midst, borne swiftly away on the crest of the outrush, the professor passed like a bolt shot from a catapult; and his last cry came wafted back to me from the forest as I swayed there, drunk with the stupefying perfume: "Don't ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Basil. It seemed as if he would ask no more questions; he half turned away, and stood musing. Indeed, it was as though he had already heard all the slave had to tell, and so overcome was he by the revelation that speech, even connected thought, was at first impossible. As he recovered from the stupefying blow, the blood began to boil in his veins. He felt as when, in the fight of two days ago, he saw the first of his men pierced by a javelin. Turning again to Sagaris, he plied him with brief and rapid questions, till he had learnt every detail of Marcian's ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... smoke—caught the eye as it closed at the explosion; with some of us it might have been for ever! Twas the affair of but a second. Death came to our sides, as it were, and departed ere the report of the gun had ceased to roll over the waters of the reach. Something whizzed past my ear, deafening and stupefying me for a moment—the next I saw my much-valued friend Gore stretched at his length in the bottom of the boat, and I perceived at a glance the danger we had incurred ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... are included all kinds of porters and ales, produce the worst species of drunkenness. The effects of malt liquors are more stupefying than those of ardent spirits, and less easily removed. In a short time they render dull and sluggish ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... of her shoe; so something had to give. That something was the cord which anchored the trap. It broke under the sudden strain. Trap and weasel together went flying over Mrs. Gammit's prostrate head. They brought up with a stupefying slam against the wall of the pig-pen, making ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... companionship. She realised that the touch of Androvsky's hand on hers altered for her herself, and the whole universe as it was presented to her, as she observed and felt it. Nothing remained as it was when he did not touch her. There was something stupefying in the thought, something almost terrible. The wonder that is alive in the tiny things of love, and that makes tremendously important their presence in, or absence from, a woman's life, took hold on her completely for the first time, and set her forever in a changed world, a world in which ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... spicy comment in the newspapers. The town awoke one morning to learn that the long-sought-for witness, the mysterious woman on whose testimony everything hinged, had not only been found, but proved to be the prisoner's own wife, who had been so active in his defense. This announcement was stupefying enough to over-shadow all other news of the day, and satisfied the most jaded ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... know that far land in her sterner moods can form any conception of the stupefying effect of continuous, unbroken cold. There is a point beyond which the power of reaction ceases: where the human mind and body recoils uncontrollably from exposure, and where the most robust effort results in a spiritless inactivity. It is then that efficiency is ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that, looking at the score, the passages seem almost to leap out from the page, and, played on even a small piano, their effect is still overwhelming. When the opera was produced the effect on the audience was certainly overwhelming, almost stupefying. The Dutchman had been accepted at Berlin on Meyerbeer's recommendation, but that recommendation Wagner probably thought of no great value, and after the success of Rienzi he determined to have it also played at Dresden, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... for a second must have disconcerted the Air Trust mercenaries. Gabriel's speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness, the epervier loomed up ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... includes of gravity, of immense pledges and constructive genius, what it involves in respect for great peoples, whoever they are, and of gratitude to those who are trying to deliver themselves. They will again take up their eternal mission of stupefying the great conscious forces, and turning them aside from their ends. They will appeal for union and peace and patience, to the opportunism of changes, to the danger of going too quickly, or of meddling in your neighbor's affairs, and all the other fallacies ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... like to mend the same!" And so the lady, white to ghastliness, Manages somehow to display the page With left-hand only, while the right retains The other hand, the young man's,—dreaming-drunk He, with this drench of stupefying stuff, Eyes wide, mouth open,—half the idiot's stare And half the prophet's insight,—holding tight, All the same, by his one fact in the world— The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read— Does not, for certain; yet, how ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... work, without a hearing of it, and furthermore, the imagination of the hearer must be in sympathy with the imagination of the composer, if he would know full enjoyment: for this symphonic poem provokes swooning thoughts, such as come to the partakers of leaves and flowers of hemp; there are the stupefying perfumes of charred frankincense and grated sandal-root. The music comes to the listener of western birth and mind, as the Malay who knocked among English mountains at De Quincey's door. You learn ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... that every one receiving the invitation must have responded to it, for on the morning of April 1st a stupefying mass of letters was unloaded on Mark Twain's table. He did not know what to make of it, and Mrs. Clemens stood off to watch the results. The first one he opened was from Dean Sage, a friend whom he valued highly. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... would be a ridiculous monstrosity, were it not so truly gigantic. In that crater of life civilisation bellows, howls, screeches, roars, thunders, rushes, whizzes and whirls. Here is a colony of white ants, whose activity is staggering, bewildering, stupefying. It seemed inconceivable that in that intricate, raging chaos, a single minute could pass without a collision, or a collapse, or a killing. How could one possibly pursue one's own affairs quietly amid that ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... mind has, so to speak, got into the animal's. On the other hand, when we study rabbits and guinea-pigs, we are apt to be too stingy, for these rodents are under the average of mammals, and those that live in domestication illustrate the stupefying effect of a too sheltered life. The same applies to domesticated sheep contrasted with wild sheep, or even with their own lambs. If we are to form a sound judgment on the intelligence of mammals we must not attend ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... realising its cause. He avoided her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, and eat things ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... at once the motion of my hand so as to incline the bows of the dinghy away from the shore; but a sort of stupefying amazement seized upon my soul. We had been seen. It was all over. Was it ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... two, nay, many meanings, as well as of that prolix and ponderous style, le stile empese; and of that no less useless bombastic style, and finally of that mode of concealing the most awful poverty of thought under a babble of inexhaustible chatter that resembles a clacking mill and is just as stupefying: one may read for hours together without getting hold of a single clearly defined and definite idea. The Halleschen, afterwards called the Deutschen Jahrbuecher, furnishes almost throughout excellent examples of this style of writing. The Germans, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... measured drops of this are a sufficient dose for a child one year old, and this ought not to be repeated within twelve hours. The repetition every few hours of small doses of opiates is quite as hazardous as the giving of a single overdose; and if it does not work serious mischief by stupefying the child, it renders it impossible to judge ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... have a bearing on the 'fact' side of the affair. That you did not lose your head as the others did—the effect in such case being in proportion to the amount of time each remained in the room—points to the probability that the stupefying medium was not hypnotic, whatever else it may have been. But again, there is a fact which is contradictory. Miss Trelawny, who was in the room more than any of you—for she was in and out all the time ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... it grew hot. The train, deliberate and determined as a tortoise, moved through a shimmer of light. The drone of insect voices rose in a sleepy chorus and the men drowsed in the wagons. Even the buoyant life of the young girl seemed to feel the stupefying weight of the prairie's deep repose. She rode at a foot pace, her hat hanging by its strings to the pommel, her hair pushed back from her beaded forehead, not bothering about ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... contract, from which he no doubt concluded I was carrying some money. Soon afterward, he went off to hobble his horse, and I suppose he must have crept up behind me and knocked me out with the handle of his quirt, for I fell over with a stupefying pain in my head. This was the last thing I was clearly conscious of until the next morning, when I found myself lying close to the water, but at some distance from where I met the man. My hat had gone and my head was cut; my horse had disappeared, and I afterward ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... and stupefying sight, the abandonment by its inhabitants of a great city, a city in many ways the first in the world, and it gave John a mighty shock. He had been there with his uncle and Mr. Anson in the spring, and he had ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to you that while there is no ground in experience for supposing that a keen interest in those facts which Mr. Harrison describes as "merely curious" has any stupefying effect upon the mind, or has any tendency to render it insensible to the higher things of literature and art, there is positive evidence that many of those who have most deeply felt the charm of these higher things have been consumed by that omnivorous appetite ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... so the capacity increases ever more, and yet more. And, too, we may become much more sensitive to the Spirit's presence. We may grow into better mediums for the transmission of His power. As the hindrances and limitations of centuries of sin's warping and stupefying are gradually lessened there is a freer better channel for the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... be no excuse on account of the cost, for the money now thrown away, and worse than thrown away, upon useless spelling books and mind-stupefying grammars, would purchase a rich supply of the best reading matter the English language affords for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium. The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to turn round, for Daguenet was smiling at them. Now that Nana had had a success he no longer hid himself: indeed, he had just been scoring triumphs in the passages. By his side was the young truant schoolboy, who had not quitted his seat, so stupefying was the state of admiration into which Nana had plunged him. That was it, he thought; that was the woman! And he blushed as he thought so and dragged his gloves on and off mechanically. Then since his neighbor had spoken of Nana, he ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... of the meal. He had spent most of his life in hotels and New York boarding houses, so that if he ever knew the adage, "Grace before meat," he had forgotten it. In the midst of his preparations came the devout words, and they came upon him as a stupefying surprise. Although naturally a resourceful man, he was not quick enough this time to cover his confusion. Miss Bartlett's golden head was bowed, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Yates' look of amazed bewilderment and his sudden halt of surprise. When all heads were raised, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... catching trains. They can catch trains with as miraculous an ease as Cinquevalli catches half-a-dozen billiard-balls. I believe they could catch trains in their sleep. They are never too early and never too late. They leave home or office with a quiet certainty of doing the thing that is simply stupefying. Whether they walk, or take a bus, or call a taxi, it is the same: they do not hurry, they do not worry, and when they find they are in time and that there's plenty of ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... not fifty yards away, was the Dean's inside car, labouring slowly, inevitably, up to meet us. Even in that stupefying moment I was aware that the silver-banded hat was at a most uncanonical angle. Behind me on the car was stowed my sketching umbrella; I tore it from the retaining embrace of the camp-stool, and unfurled its unwieldy tent with a speed ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... There was promise of an extensive conflagration. Nobody appeared in the streets, and, as there were intervening houses, we could not see what became of the inmates. The very slight interest which this threatening conflagration aroused in our minds was doubtless a mark of the already stupefying effect of the cold. Even our voices ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the ceiling of the cupola of the capitol to conceal her unparalleled embarrassment, making him a rough courtesy, and not harrassing him with mystifying, rarefying, and stupefying innuendoes, she gave him a couch, a bouquet of lilies, mignonette, and fuchsias, a treatise on mnemonics, a copy of the Apocrypha in hieroglyphics, daguerreotypes of Mendelssohn and Kosciusko, a kaleidoscope, a dram-phial of ipecacuanha, ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... being under shelter somewhere, and of having a wine-glass containing some cordial drink held to my lips by a man. I managed to swallow—I don't know how little, or how much. The stimulant had a very strange effect on me. Reviving me at first, it ended in stupefying me. I lost my senses ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... have sight of him lying at the feet of Venus, his head pillowed on her lap. There are dances and revels for their delight, but he has fallen asleep,—and in his dream he hears, through the song of stupefying sweetness in which the Sirens hold forth enkindling promises, a fragment of anthem, the long-forgotten music of church-bells. He starts awake. The tender queen draws down-his head again with a caress. "Beloved, where are your thoughts?" But his neglected soul has in dream made ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... true significance. It may be, and this is merely a guess, that they indicate the presence of poison in the rock-hole; for by means of a certain plant which is bruised and thrown into the hole, the water is given a not actually poisonous but stupefying property. Thus birds or beasts coming to drink fall senseless and an easy prey to the ambushed native. This is a common plan in many parts of Australia, and was described to me by a tame boy from the Murchison. Here, too, were more little pyramids, similar to those at Empress Spring. ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... A stupefying, deadening odour of decayed flowers struck them in the face. Involuntarily Daniel turned to go, but the Baron pointed at the walls in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... salvation. Men perish through unbelief. He that doubteth is damned. To illustrate. Men pass through this life doubting and denying God's abhorrence of sin, and His determination to punish it forever and ever. Under the narcotic and stupefying influence of this doubt and denial, they remain in sin, and at death go over into the immediate presence of God, only to discover that all His statements respecting His determination upon this subject are true,—awfully and hopelessly true. They then spend ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... last hopeless. The cruel ropes bit into his flesh and increased his agony, while the acrid fumes from the seething acid were slowly stupefying that keen brain ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... will be so in the sun; nothing more is wanting than a trivial formality, the mere consecration and crowning of his false oath at Notre-Dame. After that we shall have fine doings. Expect an imperial spectacle. Expect caprices, surprises, stupefying, bewildering things, the most unexpected combinations of words, the most fearless cacophony? Expect Prince Troplong, Duc Maupas, Duc Mimerel, Marquis Leboeuf, Baron Baroche. Form in line, courtiers; hats off, senators; the stable-door ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... merciful doubt to found a hope of his innocence upon! It was amazing, stupefying, annihilating, but it was true. Her idol was a fiend, glorious in personal beauty, diabolical in spirit, as the fallen archangel Lucifer, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... after that Ikey could never clearly remember. Bits of the ensuing conversation came back to her, memories of the sickening rage, the stupefying bewilderment that possessed her, and the exhaustion that followed. But order there was none. And she was sure she never got ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... feet with flashing eyes, and the indication of an overmastering passion that to Demorest, absorbed only in the stupefying revelation of his wife's divorce and the horrible doubt it implied, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner-table or afternoon tea. But give your elect lady a pile of books to look over for you, and she will tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you would have wasted in stupefying yourself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it is of the first importance to remember that this was the one and only love business of his life. The effect of those days in Petrograd when Marie Ivanovna had shown him that she liked him, the thundering stupefying effect of that night when she had accepted his love, must have caught his soul and changed it as glass is caught by the worker and blown into shape and colour. There he was, fashioned and purified, ready for her use. What would ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... stupefying, the uniform was not Republican, but Imperialist. There were the green pantaloons with red stripes, the red jacket, the white shoes, the white kepi, of the Batallon del Emperador—a ludicrous martial combination, but pathetic on ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... other gifts, and the Adelantado after offering them some presents took leave of Beuchios Anacauchoa and his sister, their followers and servants of both sexes. The impression left upon the latter by this visit was stupefying. The Spaniards marched overland and returned to Isabella. On arriving there, it was learned that a certain Ximenes Roldan, formerly chief of the miners and camp-followers, whom the Admiral had made his equerry and raised to the grade ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... belongs to ancient history; to a generation bred upon Ouida's romances and the plays of Mr. W. S. Gilbert his morality appears not merely questionable but coarse and improper and repulsive. While he lived he was adored: he moved and spoke and dwelt in an eternal mist of 'good, thick, strong, stupefying incense smoke'; he was the idol of female England, a master of virtue, a king of art, the wisest and best of mankind. Johnson revered him—Johnson and Colley Gibber; Diderot ranked him with Moses and Homer; to Balzac and Musset and George Sand he was the greatest ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley |
