"Stifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mortifying disappointments to which Charles Edward was exposed in France, the hopelessness of his cause, and the indifference generally shown to him by the continental courts, which so much preyed on his mind as finally to stifle every spark of his former character, so that he gave himself up to a listless indifference, which terminated in his becoming a sot during the latter years of his life. On turning round to the Prince, who had ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... referring to the happy couple and their progeny in the quaint way of the medieval French in the chamber scenes after marriage, as related in story and drama. The pastors depressed their mouths, the deacons filled theirs with food to stifle their laughter, and the groom was the subject of flattering raillery. The women did not sit down, because mostly occupied in the service; but the hetairae, Miri, Caroline, and Maraa, entertained the bachelors without criticism ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the window, was the first to see him; and what she saw caused her to clutch at her throat to stifle a cry. He was not on horseback, though the roads were quite passable, but in a sleigh; and there was a jingle of sleigh bells on the frosty air. He had come ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Jane endeavored to stifle the risings of dissatisfaction, and had nearly succeeded, when a letter came which needed but one glance to assure her of its birth- place; and she retired for its perusal. Well was it for her that her mother's suspicion was not aroused, or her curiosity startled to inquire who it came ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... the considerations that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you, citizens of Lithuania. ... Poles, now is the moment for the amendment of eternal errors. Now is the time to be worthy of your ancestors, to forget yourselves in order to save the country, to stifle in yourselves the base voice of personal interest in order to serve the public. Now must you draw forth your last strength, your last means, to give freedom to your land. ... Let us know how to die! And what is earthly life? A transitory and passing shadow, subject ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... faults, when the communication, though probably beneficial to him, cannot be made without embarrassment or pain to ourselves, and may probably lessen his regard for our person, or his opinion of our judgment? Can we stifle a repartee which would wound another; though the utterance of it would gratify our vanity, and the suppression of it may disparage our character for wit? If any one advance a mistaken proposition, in an instance wherein the error may be mischievous to him; ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... affections. The chances are many against their existence; and if a woman be born to move in the haunts of the worldly, it were almost cruel to snatch her from that immersion in their follies which may serve to stifle the pangs of disappointed affection. For after all that can be said of the misery of its empty pursuits and corrupted tastes, the disappointments that end its petty passions, and the mortifications that cling to its apparent splendours, sorrows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... has been kindled in Ireland can be extinguished but in one of two ways—either the rebels aided by the power of France will succeed in wresting Ireland from the British connection, or the military force with which the Irish government is entrusted will stifle in blood the discontents of the country. Of the first there is happily no danger. The numbers of the insurgents is much too small to endanger the connection, and that moderate and loyal party, which administration have hitherto treated with contempt, ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... man went his way also; and as he went he said to himself, "How shall I keep my fire safe, that no fierce wind blow it out, and no foul vapor stifle it? I know what I will do; I will hide it in my heart, and so no harm can come to it." And he hid the fire in his heart, and carried it so, and ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... anything to-day. Your father has a very difficult nature. [He takes a bottle out of the sideboard] May I? [He pours himself a glass of vodka] We are alone here, and I can speak frankly. Do you know, I could not stand living in this house for even a month? This atmosphere would stifle me. There is your father, entirely absorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his hypochondria, your ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... with the Earl he could not suspect; but even the discovery of such a passing intrigue with a lady of Mistress Amy Robsart's rank was a secret of the deepest importance to the stability of the favourite's power over Elizabeth. "If Leicester himself should hesitate to stifle such a rumour by very strange means," said he to himself, "he has those about him who would do him that favour without waiting for his consent. If I would meddle in this business, it must be in such guise as my old master uses when he compounds his manna of Satan, and that ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... bounded off his chair. The longing to go home to Lucy for a day or two had well-nigh overcome him since Aunt Hepsy's letter came; but he had tried to stifle it, and had applied himself with double ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... cries with lightless eyes And face eternal night; We stifle cries to sacrifice Our eyes for Human Sight. And many give that men may live, A life, a limb, a brain, That fellow men may understand And be for ever sane. What matter if we lose a hand If others ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... I have put my mite into the treasury. The expectation of displeasing all classes has not been unaccompanied with pain. But it has been strongly impressed upon my mind that it was a duty to fulfil this task; and worldly considerations should never stifle ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... of the desert, has noted this, and begun to stifle it with sand. And the more the little plant pushes upward, the higher rises the stack of sand which is choking it. That tamarind which has wandered into the desert looks like a drowning man raising his arms, in ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... censuerunt, vos iubete. Huius vobis sententiae non consul modo auctor est, sed etiam di immortales; qui mihi sacrificanti ... laeta omnia prosperaque portendere." Thus adjured, the people yielded; and as a reward, and to stifle any religio that might be troubling them, they are treated to a supplicatio of three days, including an "obsecratio circa omnia pulvinaria" for the happy result of the war; and once more, after the levy was over,—a ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... to stifle a yawn, "why can't we all be out in this keen air and sunshine? If there were but snow on ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... while still deprecating something of the author's violence, will recognize the fact that the core of the work is a noble idealism in both politics and religion, and will justify the hot indignation with which the author assails the shams that in modern society stifle the breath of free and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... I do now, Betty," gallantly answered Jim, while Phil was beside himself trying to stifle his amusement one moment, and endeavouring to keep back his feelings of sympathy ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the marvelous is dulled, or one's boys are just entering college and life is agreeably practical. Marriage and family cares are good if only for the reason that they keep a man from getting bored. But they also stifle his yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... liberty—at least in thirteen States of the Union. If we venture, as avowed and unflinching abolitionists, to travel South of Mason and Dixon's line, we do so at the peril of our lives. If we would escape torture and death, on visiting any of the slave States, we must stifle our conscientious convictions, hear no testimony against cruelty and tyranny, suppress the struggling emotions of humanity, divest ourselves of all letters and papers of an antislavery character, and do homage to the slaveholding power—or run the risk of a cruel martyrdom! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the noblest subject of investigation; but few will be at the trouble of undertaking its analysis. With the multitude there is neither leisure nor inclination, and the doctrines that have been dictated concerning our intellectual faculties and their operations, have tended rather to stifle than to promote inquiry. It is therefore unnecessary to enumerate the catalogue of illustrious names whose contradictory systems have created suspicion and distaste in the student. The science that has been improperly termed Metaphysics, ought to be considered a branch of human physiology, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... a professional sonnetteer although he is best known as a dramatist, made late in the second half of the sixteenth century an independent endeavour of like kind to stifle by means of parody the vogue of the vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a collection of three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to 'hate of a woman,' and he appropriately entitled them 'Contr' Amours' in distinction from ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the people as many opportunities as possible to acquaint themselves with political affairs, and do not stifle the aspirations of the people or weaken their strength or damp their interest or crush their self-respect. Then within a few years we shall be rewarded with results. If, instead of doing all these things, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... sobs rising and tried to stifle them in words. "I don't care what you say you told her. All I know is she thinks it's all my fault, and I'm going to lose my job, and I wanted it more'n anyone in the village, because I haven't got anybody belonging to me, the way other folks have. All I wanted was ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... about her cough and shrank from comment upon it. She did her best to stifle it and she herself spoke of it lightly; but to-day, when she came into the warm air of the office after the nightmare of a wait on the corner and the long, cold ride afterward, it set her coughing violently, so violently that it attracted the attention of her neighbor, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... King.—SCHULENBURG: It would be a little soon yet! But I speak of the future. Your Highness, the grand thing I recommend is to fear God! Everybody says, you have the sentiments of an honest man; excellent, that, for a beginning; but without the fear of God, your Highness, the passions stifle the finest sentiments. Must lead a life clear of reproach; and more particularly on the chapter of women! Need not imagine you can do the least thing without the King's knowing it: if your Highness take the bad road, he will wish to correct it; the end will be, he will bring ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... colour to their villainy; and the condemned felon, who will face death without a tremor, shudders at the cry of execration which greets his appearance at the scaffold. So hard it is, even for the most depraved, to stifle the last embers of the moral sense. We cannot suppose, then, that an educated Athenian of the fifth century would publicly have claimed for his state the right of rapine and murder. For this is the line ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise; pouring out his generous blood like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage!—how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name! Our poor work may perish; but thine shall endure! This monument may moulder away; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea; but thy memory shall not fail! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... silence for a few moments. Then Miss Patience, who had bravely tried to stifle her sobs, said with chattering teeth, "Perez, I'm ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... makes those children gay You have brought them day by day, Thankful that you thus could earn Wood to make your hearthstone burn. Not for you such food and light, Clothing warm and candles bright! You are grateful, if you gain Bread to stifle hunger's pain. Ah! it was not always so In ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... matured its disastrous tendencies towards the extinction of the moral sensibilities. This was the circus, and the whole machinery, form and substance, of the Circensian shows. Why had tragedy no existence as a part of the Roman literature? Because—and that was a reason which would have sufficed to stifle all the dramatic genius of Greece and England— there was too much tragedy in the shape of gross reality, almost daily before their eyes. The amphitheatre extinguished the theatre. How was it possible that the fine and intellectual griefs of the drama should win their way to hearts seared and rendered ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... it and causing an incurable wound. Oh, what a poor psychologist! He forgets that beliefs the summing up and the continuation of the belief of a whole series of generations. He does not hear the distant murmur of the prayers of by-gone years. It is in vain to endeavour to stifle those prayers; they will be heard for ever within the crushed ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... perceive that I acted from goodwill, not knowing that no god is the enemy of man—that was not within the range of their ideas; neither am I their enemy in all this, but it would be wrong for me to admit falsehood, or to stifle the truth. Once more, then, Theaetetus, I repeat my old question, 'What is knowledge?'—and do not say that you cannot tell; but quit yourself like a man, and by the help of God you will be ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... candle from her at the threshold, and kissed the hand that had held it. She stood a moment quivering like a colt, then she bounded away; there was the clash of a door somewhere beyond, and Kate was in her own room, kneeling before the bed with her face buried in the counterpane to stifle the sobs that ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... aptnesse to knit together, with such tough matter, it must necessarilie binde and cleaue together, and so likewise the blacke clay, from whence most naturally proceedeth your best limestone, being mixt with white sand, doth also binde together and stifle the seede, if it be not preuented by ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... her lips she started into an erect position. She stood by the bed with her eyes staring wildly into empty space; with her brain in a flame; with her heart beating as if it would stifle her. "If you could be Mercy Merrick, and if I could be Grace Roseberry, now!" In one breathless moment the thought assumed a new development in her mind. In one breathless moment the conviction struck her like an electric shock. She might be Grace Roseberry if she dared! There ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... room seemed to stifle Bernardine. Rising slowly, she made her way through one of the long French windows out into the grounds, and took a path which led in the direction of the brook around which the ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... from his mind, and the thought again occurred to him that there was no use in making such a fuss over a baby that was only three weeks old. Kate, too, seemed to be awakening to the conviction that there was no use in grieving for ever. The state of torpor she had been living in—for to stifle remorse she had been drinking heavily on the quiet—now began to wear off, and her brain to uncloud itself; and Dick, surprised at the transformation, could ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... attract you less than formerly? Does it develop in you the purpose to be something more or stifle in you the regret to be something less? Is it a snare to idleness or ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... it might be, she could not stifle a certain sympathy for this young man. She imagined that his rebellion, whatever shape it had assumed, had been provoked by that weal upon his face; and it seemed to her then that he had been less than a man had he not attempted to exact some ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... woods and town to the railway-station. He was full of distressed concern for her, but hardly dared to show it, for, to all his questions, she only shook her head. Walking at his side, she dug her nails into her palms till she felt the blood come, in her effort to conceal and stifle the waves of almost physical repugnance that passed through her, making it impossible for her to bear even the touch of his hand. In the train, she leaned back in the corner, and, shutting her eyes, pretended to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... whilst Charles and Humphrey Angell told their tale of horror and woe; and, moreover, both Julian Dautray and Fritz Neville had much to tell of the aggressive policy of France, and of her resolute determination to stifle and strangle the growing colonies of England, by giving them no room to expand, whilst she herself claimed boundless untrodden regions which she could never hope to ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... all; we should stifle ourselves at last if we had our own way. Never mind, Leonard, we make them go through quite as much as they ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at her, and seizing her with fearless hands, forced the poor struggling girl by main strength down on to the floor. No one near to help! No water at hand! Not so much as a rug or a shawl to throw over her and stifle the flames! Yes! there was the table-cover, heavy and thick, as if created for this very life-service. Gerald tore it off,—books, boxes, china cups, and glass vases crashing to the ground together,—and flinging it over Phebe, threw herself on top of it, pressing it close in every direction ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... which her navy in the East might at no very remote period be so easily supplied on all occasions of emergency. This prospect cannot fail to prove an additional motive with the government for the abolition of duties, which, if persevered in, will for ever stifle all commercial enterprize, and debar not only the colonists themselves, but the parent country also from the various important advantages, which I should presume it is now evident that an uncontrolled ability to prosecute these fisheries would infallibly ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... step that could effectually prevent the object you had in view, (for this, together with the offensive manner in which it was done, supplied her with a motive which aided essentially to enable her to carry out her determination to stifle all feelings of love towards him, in fact to forget him.) He now saw the folly of the course he had adopted, she would soon forget him altogether, perhaps find another more patient and gentle, who could make her happier than he would have done, such thoughts as these were madness—perhaps she might ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... exclaimed the lad. "Oh! oh! oh!" he half sobbed, and, throwing himself again upon the ground, he buried his face in his hands, and lay gently rolling from side to side, trying to stifle the hysterical fit which had attacked him; for it was mingled with relief from what he had looked upon as certain death, anger with himself for making such a blunder, and delight ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... measure. He wished them to consider the progress which the opinion of the injustice of this trade was making in the nation at large, as manifested by the petitions; which had almost obstructed the proceedings of the House by their perpetual introduction. It was impossible for them to stifle this great question. As for himself, he would renew his profession of last year, that he would never cease, but with life, to promote so glorious ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... will win back his strength again. It is human to be weak. And in his very weakness now, I have my pride, for it is the weakness of love. God knows I have been weak, and I am not ashamed of it. It was the weakness of love. It is hard to stifle one's ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... when a scorching wind seemed to stifle the countryside with its breath, Josephina capitulated. They were in their room, with the windows closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband with such a gloomy face nor listen ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... shame, even now, so many years after; he dreaded that feeling of self-contempt, which he knew for certain would overwhelm him, and like a torrent, flood all other feelings if he did not bid his memory be still. But try as he would to turn away from these memories, he could not stifle them entirely. He remembered the scoundrelly, tearful, lying, pitiful letter he had sent to Gemma, that never received an answer.... See her again, go back to her, after such falsehood, such treachery, no! no! he could not, so much conscience and honesty was ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... with his back to me, his hand still on my throat, so deep in thought that he heard not, as did my sharpened ears, a door shut softly, and foot-falls echoing in the house below. If I could only cry aloud! but he would stifle me ere the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the staggering sum of $147,000,000 in 1816. Not even import duties stemmed the tide, for as Lord Brougham stated in Parliament, "It was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by a glut, to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the war had forced into existence, contrary to ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... relative, and have a right to know. Come out into the grounds, the air of the house would stifle me." ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... had said, the sights and sounds of the ship had been a renewal of the saddest time in his life; he could not at night divest himself of the impression that he was under arrest, and the sins of his life gathered themselves in fearful and oppressive array, as if to stifle him, and the phantom of poor Margaret with her lamp—which had haunted him from the beginning of his illness—seemed to taunt him with having been too fainthearted and tardy to be worthy to espouse her cause. The faith to which he tried ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... provided with servants, so that she need not touch household work. She was playing, therefore, the game of being a lady, and was failing as she played it. She knew that she was failing, and this knowledge made her feel very cross. She tried hard to stifle it, and clung more than ever to her acquaintanceship with the ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... thee? My unsoil'd name, th' austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the State, Will so your accusation overweigh That you will stifle in your own report ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... creed, He just believed in me—and told me so. I love my king, I love him well, but, oh— Once I wore poppies, red upon my brow, (A crown seems very heavy to me, now,) And once I wore, for all the world to see A gown of rags. (Now, velvets stifle me!) And once my hands (how soft they are!) were strong To toil for me. The days seem very long While I must sit in state above the land— I love my king... But does he understand? I was a beggar maid, I used to lie Silent and unafraid ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... to come openly forward—with perfect peacefulness and most careful observance of the peace to express their real sentiments—that the ministry proclaimed down the procession, and now prosecute us in order to stifle public opinion? Gentlemen of the jury, I have said enough to convince any twelve reasonable men that there was nothing in my conduct in the matter of that procession which you can declare on your oaths to be "malicious, seditious, ill-disposed, and intended to disturb the peace and tranquility ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy. Those acquirements crammed by force into the minds of children simply clog and stifle intelligence. In order that knowledge be properly digested, it must have been swallowed with a good appetite. I know Jeanne! If that child were intrusted to my care, I should make of her—not a learned woman, for I would look to her future happiness only—but ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... he was a victim of foul play, for his hands were bound behind his back, and his ankles tied together, while a gag was secured over his mouth as if to stifle ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marquise was beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak, when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal, stronger than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... The boy's faith was genuine, she knew, but, remembering what Ralph Dacre had told her on their last night together, she could not stifle the wonder as to whether Tommy had ever grasped the actual quality of his friend's character. It seemed to her that Tommy's worship was of too humble a species to afford him a very comprehensive view of the object thereof. She was sure that ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... this, and were prepared to stifle in the birth any efforts that their women employes might make towards maintaining permanent organizations, is evident by the allusions in the press of the day to the "ironclad oath" by which the employe had to agree, on entering the factory, to accept whatever wage the employer might ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... swimming in tears, told the servants, in the faltering voice of a woman trying to stifle her sobs, to bring ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Motion or a counter Motion must obstruct and check the Passion: And therefore an Historian and a Writer of Historical Plays, passing from Events of one nature to Events of another nature without a due Preparation, must of necessity stifle and confound one Passion by another. The second Reason why the Fiction of a Fable pleases us more than an Historical Relation can do, is, because in an Historical Relation we seldom are acquainted with the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... functions of the ministry. He must have mortified the deeds of the flesh by compunction, and the habitual practice of self-denial; and the fruits of the spirit must daily more and more perfectly subdue his passions. These fruits of the spirit are charity and humility, which stifle all the motions of anger, envy, and pride: holy joy, which banishes carnal sadness, sloth, and all disrelish in spiritual exercises; peace, which crushes the seeds of discord, and the love and relish of heavenly things, which extinguish the love of earthly goods and sensual ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the bride, Each by some friends attended, near they drew, And spleen beheld them with prophetic view. "Married! nay mad!" Orlando cried in scorn; "Another wretch on this unlucky morn: What are this foolish mirth, these idle joys? Attempts to stifle doubt and fear by noise: To me these robes, expressive of delight, Foreshow distress, and only grief excite; And for these cheerful friends, will they behold Their wailing brood in sickness, want, and cold; And his proud look, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... of assent; all the jealous rage in her flared up afresh to stifle the noble and unselfish instincts under which she had been led during the later moments. A coarse and impudent scoff rose to her tongue, but it remained unuttered; she could not speak it under that glance, which held the evil ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... does what he can to stifle the matter, and said he would see Mrs. Bargrave; but yet it is certain matter of fact that he has been at Captain Watson's since the death of his sister, and yet never went near Mrs. Bargrave; and some of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... triumph of will over body: for his poor crooked legs began to trail and lag sadly. So turning sharp about, we struck for the hedge's shadow, and there pull'd him down in a dry ditch, and lay with a hand on his mouth to stifle his ejaculations, while we ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and all is reversed. Here was a bold attempt to crush under the exactions of a grasping hierarchy, to stifle under the curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people compassed by influences of the wildest freedom,—whose schools were the forest and the sea, whose trade was an armed barter with savages, and whose daily life a lesson of lawless independence. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... grief in the cyclone, and the knitted tidy which the girl herself had made. With the hot tears running down her cheeks the girl-mother threw herself upon the bed and buried her face in the baby's wraps to stifle the cry she was afraid would escape her. In the sanctuary of her girlhood's highest hopes, Elizabeth sobbed out her disappointments and acknowledged to herself that life had tricked her into a sorry network ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... yesterday was much more violent and personal than the first—at least, previous to the Speaker's leaving the chair. I left the House after that, and know not what was done. The evident disposition of the House is to stifle all further proceedings regarding the Queen, but it is equally the intention of the Opposition to pursue it; but the latter must ultimately give way, for the House will not hear them. The saints—Butterworth, Wilberforce, &c. &c.—are favourable for her restoration to the Liturgy, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... so old and so shrunken, in spite of her bulk, as she looked up at him. The look in her eyes was so strained. The way her hand brought her apron-corner up to her mouth, as though to stifle the fear that shook her, was so groping, somehow, so uncertain, that, paradoxically, the pitifulness of it ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... we praise poverty, 'Mid pleasures we hold grief to be (And even death, ere it shall stifle Our breath) ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... room for the expression of individual needs and desires and for reference to the immediate and local circumstances of the believer. A church in which there is no spontaneous and extempore prayer, which only harked backward to the past, might build the tombs of the prophets but it might also stifle new voices for a new age. But extempore prayer should not be impromptu prayer. It should have coherence, dignity, progression. The spirit should have been humbly and painstakingly prepared for it so that sincere and ardent feeling may wing and vitalize its words. The great ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Park as a cemetery, but now, through the trees, stretching as far as eye could see, I beheld a flat plain of writhing graves and heeling tombstones. There seemed to be some trouble: the rising dead appeared to stifle as they struggled upward, they bled in their struggles, the red flesh was torn away from the white bones. "Awake!" cried a voice; but I determined I would not rise to such horrors. "Awake!" They would not let ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... it must mean one of the hardest tasks which life ever sets any of us to keep one's head when under the influence of such an attraction, and perhaps to have to decide not to act at all in consequence of it. To stifle an incipient passion in that way may be a terrific business for some people. But we are queer complex creatures, and we needs must take account of the whole of ourselves if we ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... to feel it, in the stately hall, girt round by gloomy walls, when, seated on my cushioned chair, in the solemn assembly of the princes, questions, which scarcely required deliberation, were overlaid with endless discussions, while the rafters of the ceiling seemed to stifle and oppress me. Then I would hurry forth as soon as possible, fling myself upon my horse with deep-drawn breath, and away to the wide champaign, man's natural element, where, exhaling from the earth, nature's richest treasures are poured forth around ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... by-corners, which any well-clad person could avoid; it was invading the very drawing-rooms, mingling itself with the comfortable fumes of port-wine and brandy, threatening to deaden with its murky breath all the splendour of the ostrich feathers, and to stifle Milby ingenuousness, not pretending to be better than its neighbours, with a cloud of cant and lugubrious hypocrisy. The alarm reached its climax when it was reported that Mr. Tryan was endeavouring to obtain authority from Mr. Prendergast, the non-resident rector, to establish a Sunday ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... there are especially two Things wherein our Union must carry us along together. We are to unite in our Endeavours to deliver our distressed Neighbours, from the horrible Annoyances and Molestations with which a dreadful Witchcraft is now persecuting of them. To have an hand in any thing, that may stifle or obstruct a Regular Detection of that Witchcraft, is what we may well with an holy fear avoid. Their Majesties good Subjects must not every day be torn to pieces by horrid Witches, and those bloody Felons, be left wholly unprosecuted. The Witchcraft is a business that will not be sham'd, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... our own ends, we should probably make a botch of remodelling the universe. How much more then from the point of view of ends we cannot see! Wise men therefore regret as little as they can. But still some regrets are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle,—regrets for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery, for example, whether performed by others or by ourselves. Hardly any one can remain entirely optimistic after reading the confession of the murderer at Brockton the other ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... methods of industry and technique of factory processes as final and determined. As industrial history and technique are taught in the schools, in effect they bind the children to the current industrial practice and to the current conditions. They stifle imagination and discourage the concept that industry is an evolving process. The effect of technical training in the German continuation schools (and the tendency is the same in our own industrial education courses) is to teach the children that the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... time I looked at him with seeing eyes. Then, I could hardly stifle an exclamation. It ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hearing the howl of his comrade, and as he did so Edgar's sword fell on his wrist with such force that hand and dagger both fell to the ground. The remaining ruffian, who was roughly endeavouring to stifle the shrieks of a young girl, seeing himself alone with two adversaries, also darted off and plunged into a narrow ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... light of our open-eyed, daytime responsibility? I, who had declared myself no sophist, knew later that I had deceived my own heart, which spoke out so truthfully in dreams of sleep, and refused to be silenced in the dead hour of night, however I might stifle its suggestions by day. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the South cries aloud. The following bit of merry nonsense, which has the merit of being 'good to sing,' may possibly enliven more than one camp-fire, ere the last fold of the 'big sarpent' has given the final stifle ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sincerely, for your sympathy—and for your confidence; and to show my appreciation of your kindness, I wish I could eat that dainty luncheon; but I think it would strangle me—I have such a ceaseless aching here, in my throat. I feel as if I should stifle." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the importunate intellect kept insisting that feeling was deceptive, that health and youth and the freshness of the morning spoke in her, and not reason or experience. Feeling was left untouched nevertheless. It was impossible to stifle the voices that prophesied golden things. Life was all before her; she was full of vigour and longing and good will; the world stretched forth as a fair territory, with magical pathways leading up to dizzy mountain tops. With visions such as ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... full view of that lovely inclosure to suggest that the straightness of the lines in which the trees are planted on Boston Common, and the rapidly increasing thickness of their foliage, destroy in the summer season the effect of breadth and liberty, hide both the immediate and the distant landscape, stifle the breeze, and diminish the attractiveness of the spot? Fewer trees, scattered in clumps and paying little regard to paths, would vastly improve the effect. The colonnades of the malls furnish all the shade desirable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... love, and takes a popular courtly or scholastic form. The style of Gianni had many of the faults of his predecessors. That of Cavalcanti, the friend and precursor of Dante, showed a tendency to stifle poetic imagery under the dead weight of philosophy. But the love poems of Cino are so mellow, so sweet, so musical, that they are only surpassed by those of Dante, who, as the author of the "Vita Nuova," belongs to this lyric school. In this book he tells the story of his love for Beatrice, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a dim shape emerged from the opposite blackness. It came unheard, growing from nothing into something with ghostly subtlety. Iris, a prey to many emotions, managed to stifle the exclamation of alarm that rose unbidden. But Hozier read her distress in a hardly ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... man-power-carriage coolies, who in the exercise of our nightly avocation are called to distant parts of the town, where the knife that is invisible will speedily sever the head from the body, and the cloth that is impenetrable will stifle the last cry of him that hath none to avenge, and our heads go to make the water run within the pipe, and make firm the foundations of this ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... for a moment, but her eyes at once passed beyond. "No, no, Stumpy! You never understand," she said restlessly. "I must reach the mountain-tops or die. I am tired—I am tired of my prison. And I stifle in the valley—I who have watched the sun rise and set from the very edge of the world. Why did they take me away? If I had only waited a little longer—a little longer—as he told me to wait!" Her voice suddenly vibrated ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... snap at me, when I offer to cure them of the least madness. For they will not be persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that no god bears ill-will to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man; but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle the truth." (Ibid. p. 151 C.) Whether therefore did he style his own nature, which was of a very strong and pregnant wit, by the name of God,—as Menander says, "For our mind is God," and as Heraclitus, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... (speaker) had always loved the very name of Thomas Russell because Tone so loved him. To be Tone's friend! What a privilege! for Tone had for his friends an immense love, an immense charity. He had such love for his wife and children! But such was the destiny of the heroes of their nation; they had to stifle in their hearts all that love and that sweet music and to follow only the faint voice that called them to the battlefield or to the harder death at the foot of the gibbet. Tone heard that voice and obeyed it and from his grave to-day he was calling on them ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... the view of Frances, who was about to rise and approach her guest, when tones of a thrilling melody chained her in breathless silence to the spot. The notes were wild, and the voice not powerful, but the execution exceeded anything that Frances had ever heard; and she stood, endeavoring to stifle the sounds of her own gentle breathing, until the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... sky, the sky, the open sky, For the home of a song-bird's heart! And why, and why, and for ever why, Do they stifle here in the mart: Cages of agony, rows on rows, Torture that only a wild thing knows: Is it nothing to you to see That head thrust out through the hopeless wire, And the tiny life, and the mad desire To be free, to ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Thanksgiving. The next day I peeped under the paper and the bugs were a solid phalanx. I reported at head-quarters, and they asked me if I killed the bugs before I put the paper down. I said no, I supposed it would stifle them,—in fact, I didn't think anything about it, but if I thought anything, that was what I thought. I wasn't pleased to find I had been cultivating the bugs and furnishing them with free lodgings. I went home ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... You cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... nephew, upon your account. Ah, he has a false insinuating tongue. Well, sir, I will stifle my just resentment at my nephew's request. I will endeavour what I can to forget, but on proviso that you resign the contract ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... matter to get a promise from Agnes," he went on; "but when once given it is inviolate. This throws a grisly responsibility upon me. I must risk everything, if I am to do anything. You have expressed a dread which I have been endeavouring to stifle. I ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... however, she rebelled at her fate. There were hours, even yet, when she lay alone in her bed hearing her father's regular stertorous breathing till a great wave of longing to live swept upon her, and she was forced to turn her face to her pillow to stifle her mingled coughing ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... the rank which he gave him in his creation—that God, who, where he gives the form of man, whatever may be the complexion, gives also the feelings and the rights of man. That principle which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish! That principle which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act; which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and indicates ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... fame as a witty and delightful talker grew from week to week, even his marriage did not stifle the undertone of dislike and disgust. Now indignantly, now with contempt, men spoke of him as abandoned, a creature of unnatural viciousness. There were certain houses in the best set of London society the doors of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... doctor, sir, who seeks only to destroy or stifle the symptoms without an effort to examine into the origin of the malady, or, when knowing it, fears to attack it. The Civil Guard has only this purpose: the repression of crime by means of terror and force, a purpose that it does not fulfil or accomplishes only incidentally. You ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Publication Act should apply to cases of this kind, but only to the publication of such matter as all good men would regard as lewd and filthy, to lewd and bawdy novels, pictures and exhibitions, evidently published and given for lucre's sake. It could never have been intended to stifle the expression of thought by the earnest-minded on a subject of transcendent national importance like the present, and I will not strain it for that purpose. As pointed out by Lord Cockburn in the case of the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... estates which had belonged to the directors of the South-Sea company. The trustees for these estates had charged themselves with a great sum of money, and the lords in the opposition thought they had a right to know how it had been disposed. The ministry had reasons to stifle this inquiry, and therefore opposed it with all their vigour. Nevertheless, the motion was carried after a warm dispute, and the directors of the South-Sea company were ordered to lay the accounts before the house. From this it appeared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... noises in the next room in the half-hour just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling, when he turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various |
