"Stifled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bewailing and was praying heartily, like one who knew well where help was to be found. Rose went and knelt down at her knee, laying her face on the clasped hands in her lap, and for a few minutes neither wept nor spoke. Then a stifled sob broke from the girl, and Aunt Plenty gathered the young head in her arms, saying, with the slow tears of age trickling down her own withered cheeks: "Bear up, my lamb, bear up. The good Lord won't take him from us I am sure and that brave child will be allowed to pay her debt to him. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... jacket, which he had taken off to use as a pillow. In the far room Maddalena and her father were asleep. Maurice could hear their breathing, Maddalena's light and faint, Salvatore's heavy and whistling, and degenerating now and then into a sort of stifled snore. But sleep did not come to Maurice. His eyes were open, and his clasped hands supported his head. He was ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... with the reproof he had administered, he picked up the newspaper, and seated himself beside the fire, placing the candle near him so as to read with ease. A minute had scarcely elapsed when he in his turn bounded in his chair, and stifled a cry of instinctive terror and surprise. These were the first ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Spotlessly white it was, and once upon a time she was so attractive to him because she was so exquisitely scrupulous! He bent his lips over it, kissed it—she stirred, but did not wake; a great cry almost broke from him, but he stifled it and rose. There was a knock at the door, and he started. It ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... and persistently as that of the North-American Indians.... Who can withhold sympathy as whole families have turned to take a last look at the heavens red with their burning homes? The poor people shed no tears, for there was in their hearts that which stifled such signs of emotion: they were absorbed in despair. They were forced away from that which was dear to their hearts, and their patriotism was treated with contemptuous mockery.... There are various ways in which the crime of murder is perpetrated. There are killings which are effected by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... yet those men held the highest situations under the Government. Cambaceres filled the second place in the Empire, although at a great distance from the first; Merlin de Douai was also in power; and it is known how much liberty was stifled and hidden beneath the dazzling illusion of what is termed glory. A commission was named to examine the discourse of Chateaubriand. MM. Suard, de Segur, de Fontanes, and two or three other members of the same class of the Institute ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and decided on the basis of their assertions, which had often become wholly inadequate and were often warped into grotesquely impossible interpretations and applications. Scientific investigation was almost entirely stifled, and progress was impossible. The whole field of religion and knowledge had become largely ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... While I gazed in speechless astonishment and admiration, a dark shadow, descending from above like the curtain of a stage, gradually hid her entirely from my view. I felt with a shudder that this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for days. I awoke with a stifled cry. ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... tug and, if the boy had seized him by the hand, he would have freed it at once, but it was not so easy with the sleeve; so he began to tug, and splutter with a voice stifled with fury. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a convenient plea when he restored the dignity of the Roman Senate, but destroyed its independence. It gave countenance to and justified all the atrocities of the Inquisition in Spain. It forced out the stifled groans that issued from the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was written in tears upon the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, and pointed to those dark recesses upon whose gloomy thresholds there was never ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... throughout the ranks of his company, with the single exception always of Climene. She had ceased to sneer at Scaramouche, having realized at last that her sneers left him untouched and recoiled upon herself. Thus her almost indefinable resentment of him was increased by being stifled, until, at all costs, an outlet for ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... flood sweeps away the Petit Pont, and its tower, with twelve defenders, is isolated. With shouts of triumph the Northmen cross the river and surround it. The twelve refuse to yield, and fire is brought. The warriors (a touching detail) fearing lest their falcons be stifled, cut them loose. There is but one vessel wherewith to quench the flames and that soon drops from their hands; the little band rush forth; they set their backs against the ruins of the bridge, their faces to their ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... "Amie." She thought she recognized the voice, and the sound of her own name uttered in such ardent tones made her heart beat and her color rise, for it seemed to signify that the serenade was for them. As the last melodious murmur ceased, there came a stifled laugh from below, and something fell into the balcony. Neither dared stir till the sound of departing feet reassured them; then creeping forward Amy drew in a lovely bouquet of myrtle, roses, and great German forget-me-nots, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... brow and exhausted himself in vain efforts to release his arm from an iron grasp; Madame de Meilhan and those who accompanied her represented the corps d'armee; I formed the rear guard; balls whistled by, battalions struggled, we heard the cries of the wounded and were stifled by the smell of powder; wishing to avoid the harrowing sight of such dreadful carnage, I slackened my pace and was agreeably surprised to find, at a turn in the path, that I had deserted my colors; I listened and heard only the song of the bulfinch; I took a long breath and breathed ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... said something, in the act of waking, I felt sure: the hoarse stifled cry was still ringing in my ears, even if the startled look of my fellow-traveler had not been evidence enough: but what could I possibly say ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... a lurch, a ham leaped to the floor, some plates crashed, and then the row of ports alongside us were darkened by the run of a wave. The Boy made an exclamation partly stifled, and looked at me quickly. I did not look at him, but went on with the food. He stopped eating, and remained with his gaze fixed on the ports, gripping his chair whenever they went dark. He said nothing ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... glimmered on his face as he stepped toward the mantle, still clutching the paper in his hand, but crouching as he came, and leering, as if to leap upon an enemy unawares. Suddenly he started as if struck—a stifled shriek of horror burst from his lips—he staggered back—his hand opened—the paper fell fluttering to the floor. Abel Newt had unexpectedly seen the reflection of his own face in the mirror that covered the chimney ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... appeared to be the dishevelled and blood-bespattered head of a man. He suddenly gave vent to a wild shout—"Come on, thou tyrant! Down with ye, dog—huzza!" At the last shout a pair of arms were swung wildly in the air, and the next moment the man's voice was stifled in the water as he sank, while another head ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... own accord. But the strength and merit of the militia resembles a hot, ardent, raging fire, that must be suffered to blaze until it dies out of itself: it is a flash, an explosion, that often works prodigies, and which, when stifled, there is no possibility of preventing the immediate disorder that must ensue, nor any means of bringing it back a second time ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... regular intervals with small squares of wood, for glass is both rare and expensive in Persia. As, however, the greater part of the colored glass was broken, and the wind came rushing through the holes and crevices, I was half frozen and nearly stifled with smoke, until an end was put to my sufferings by stopping the holes and nailing some felt on the doors. The children of the house came, under the guidance of a sort of servant who filled the office ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... cottage. MAY throws back her shawl as though stifled. She gets up and first stands bending over VASHTI. Seeing that she is still sleeping heavily, she goes to the door, opens it gently and looks out. After a moment she closes it and walks about the kitchen, examining everything with a fierce curiosity. She takes up the shawl DORRY has been wearing, ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... grasping my hand, "Come Harry, come, too late to save poor captain," he said, dragging me after him. I was almost stifled, and gasped for breath. In another moment I should have fallen, indeed I was so overcome with the smoke that I did ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... were a useful and worthy task if he were gifted with a fitness for it. He had been taught that preaching the gospel was a divinely appointed function. He had not questioned that. But he had now a lively sense of difficulties hitherto unreckoned, and an ill-stifled doubt of the good that might accrue. His blank ignorance of the salient points of human contact, of why men work and play, why they love and fight and marry and bend all their energies along certain ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... others on foot—there was an armed guard of mounted men. It took some time to pass. One of two of the camels carried huddled figures, swathed and shapeless with a multitude of coverings, that Diana knew must be women. The contrast between them and herself was almost ridiculous. It made her feel stifled even to look at them. She wondered what their lives were like, if they ever rebelled against the drudgery and restrictions that were imposed upon them, if they ever longed for the freedom that she was revelling in, or if custom and usage were ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... shoulder against the door, closing it with a slam. The negro turned and stood with gaping mouth and staring eyes, dumb with terror. The girl recognised Karl with a little cry, and darted back toward the door. Immediately he caught her in his arms. Her lips opened, but their utterance was stifled by a handkerchief thrust between them with the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... With visage of woe, The chiming of hours That were left him below; And the watcher so pale, In the chamber of Death, Bent over the dying With quick, stifled breath. ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... of grief,—the first rays of morning pierced his windows, and shone upon the pale blue paper on which he had just inscribed his justification of providence. It was just five o'clock in the morning when a slight noise like a stifled sigh reached his ear. He turned his head, looked around him, and saw no one; but the sound was repeated distinctly enough to convince him ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... audiences; and everybody gasped for breath, though everybody fanned—that is, everybody who had a fan, a newspaper, a hat, or a starched handkerchief. Mollie had neither fan, newspaper, hat, nor handkerchief, and yet she of all the audience gasped unawares. She was stifled, but happy. Elbows and bad air might do their worst; her body suffered, but her spirit soared. She was lifted above her neighbors, into an atmosphere where she was conscious of nothing but the eloquence that fell in such soft ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... gun," said I to Carleton. I started as I spoke at the alteration in my own voice. The gun went off, but the report was, as it were, stifled by the compressed atmosphere. It did not even alarm some water-fowl that were plashing and floundering in the creek a few ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... against a gnarled and twisted oak, His soul a listening intensity, And all his strength, seemed leaving him; he drew A quick and stifled breath of sharpest pain, As they rode on, and thought of Agathar, Watching and waiting ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... said Ranny, half stifled with his burrowing. "You fair drive me mad. I could eat you, Mother, and thrive ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... depreciating currency, inflation of 311% and contracting production and foreign trade. Foreign exchange reserves dwindled to extremely low levels ($518 million), while dramatically hiked interest rates added to the domestic debt burden and stifled growth. GDP fell by 10% in 1996, after experiencing 2.6% growth in 1995. Privatization of state-owned industries stagnated, although the first auction of a mass privatization program was undertaken in late 1996. ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... daylight, except on Sundays. When he was thinking of what might happen, he could not help remembering how many men and boys he had known, some his own playmates—or workmates rather—who had been killed in that and the neighbouring pits. Some had been blown to pieces by the fire-damp; others had been stifled by the choke-damp; a still greater number had been killed coming up and down the shaft, either by the rope or chain breaking, or by falling out of the skip or basket, or by the skip itself being rotten and coming to pieces. But even yet more had ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... willingly have sacrificed everything for her beloved child's happiness. This was the true, engrossing love of her life; her affection for Balzac not having remained in its first freshness, as his love for her had done. On the contrary, it was at this time slightly withered, and had been partially stifled by prudential considerations, so that it was difficult to discover among the varied and ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... returned Dick, in stifled tones; "I never did; I never said I did," he added, fiercely defending himself before ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sand, into which, here and there, a bundle of herbs had been carelessly thrust, in order to keep it through the winter. The place had never been aired, as there was nothing but a very small grating right at the top, which was never opened; and it smelt foul. The lamp gave a dim light, as though stifled by the mustiness, and the two figures—the clumsy figure of the maid and the more dainty one of the mistress—were encircled by ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... rendered by the artist, who had taken care to underlay her plaster with a layer of ochre, which gave it almost the weather-beaten and sunburned tone of the model. The Arabs, when they saw it, uttered a stifled exclamation, "Bou-Said!" (the father of good fortune). This was the surname of the Nabob in Tunis, the label, as it were, of his luck. The Bey, for his part, thinking that some one had wished to play a trick on him in thus leading him to inspect the bust of the hated trader, regarded ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... wanct has Jim called me 'Mrs. McCann,'" Maggie said brokenly, but stifled a sob for Billy's sake; "an' niver wanct has he gone to work widout kissin' me an' the childer, sometimes twice round—but he went out yisterday an' niver turned for wan look at wife an' childer; ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... wash," said a stiff and stifled voice. "I'm sorry I couldn't get here at six. I hope ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... generally blamed for not having prevented Althorp from answering O'Connell's question, which he ought to have done, at least ought to have warned the House of the consequences, when undoubtedly the matter would have been stifled. They say Althorp did what he had to do very well, like a gentleman and man of honour, and in excellent style and taste, though many think he need not have said so much. The committee began to sit yesterday; it was not a secret committee, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of, tipping up, as if about to follow the Irishman down the hollow into which it was evident he had fallen. I sprang forward as fast as my snow-shoes would allow me, to catch hold of the sleigh, when what was my dismay to see Pat's feet disappear altogether beneath the snow, his stifled ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... was now lost in his tears. He sat with his face half turned from Harley, as if he would have hid the sorrow which he felt. Harley was in the same attitude himself; he durst not meet his eye with a tear, but gathering his stifled breath, "Let me entreat you, sir," said he, "to hope better things. The world is ever tyrannical; it warps our sorrows to edge them with keener affliction. Let us not be slaves to the names it affixes to motive or to action. I know ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... irresistibly fascinating and persuasive in the jolly philosophy and reckless worldly wisdom of Rabelais. But after all, it will not do. It is anything but attainable by most of the world. It demands good cheer and jovial company. But it dies out in the desert, and is stifled among simple, vulgar associates. Rabelais believed that he sacrificed to freedom, when he only worshipped fortune. He went through the world, familiar with the ways of princes and peers, priests and peasants, travelling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Burned, singed, stifled, blinded, only able to stand on one foot at a time, jumping back across the fissure every two or three minutes to escape an unendurable whiff of heat and sulphurous stench, or when splitting sounds below threatened the disruption of the ledge: lured as often back by the fascination ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... me. It was the only reason for letting you drag me here. I was almost stifled. What a ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed; but in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissention, which, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to the balcony): That is better! But An if you deem that Cupid be so cruel You should have stifled baby-love ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... uttered a stifled cry of alarm at the instant of the unexpected attack, was now thrashing mightily about on the ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a sandaled foot approaching reached his ears. He trembled violently, fear stifled him, his sight grew dim. Well, it was over, no doubt. He pressed himself into a niche and half lifeless ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... of the servants conducted him to a room opening on the hall, from whence he heard stifled exclamations and laughter, and some one saying "Hush." But "Izzy" Schwab did not care. The slave in brass buttons was proffering him ivory-backed hair-brushes, and obsequiously removing the dust from his coat collar. Mr. Schwab explained to him that he was not dressed ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... rode strongly a strong horse; he did not fret over small troubles nor apparently fear great ones; he did not say, "This is my way," and infer that it was better than others; he liked the red camel, the white, and the brown. "Who dances with the sand is not stifled," said Zeyn. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... picture he had formed of Haldgren—what he had expected of him—he could not have told. Certainly it was not this slenderly youthful figure, nor this reaction that was more of fright than startled amazement. And the voice! Surely he had heard an involuntary, half-stifled scream! ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... silence. Wilmore was leaning forward in his place, studying the newcomer earnestly. An impatient invective was somehow stifled ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... loomed in the north-west a cloud of singular density, that seemed to expand in size as it drew nearer, yet to be still more solid, and darken the air. It seemed a dust-storm. Staines took out his handkerchief, prepared to wrap his face in it, not to be stifled. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... that from the moment I took my seat I was conscious in some mysterious way of the coming of great things. There was a thrill of excitement in the air, a sort of stifled electricity which one realizes often amongst a highly cultured audience awaiting the production of a great work. But apart from this sensation of which I was fully conscious, I felt a curious sense of nervousness stealing in upon me for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to history. The interests of our poor human life, which seems to become duller every day, require that the fields of history should be kept for ever unenclosed, and be a free breathing-place for a pallid population well-nigh stifled with the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... faithfulness, that very love, my child, will make thy fate the harder; the scaffold and the axe, if not the cord," he added, in a low, stifled tone, "I fear me, will be his doom, despite his youth, his gallantry—all that would make me save him. Thou turnest pale at the bare mention of such things, how couldst thou bear ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of revenging the all-powerful Creator, these priests have discovered the secret of revenging themselves, and that, too, without drawing down upon themselves the hatred and execration so justly due to their vindictive fury and unfeeling selfishness. In the name of the God of nature, they stifled the voice of nature in the breasts of men; in the name of the God of goodness, they incited men to the fury of wild beasts; in the name of the God of mercies, they prohibited ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... hands.... He would return to those haunts, bronzed, lined, hardened—the man from the edge of the Empire, from the back of Beyond, the man who had Done Things—and talk of camp-fires, the trek, the Old Trail, smells of sea and desert and jungle, and the man-stifled town, ... battle, ... brave deeds ... unrecognized heroism ... a medal ... perhaps the ... and the nodding head of Augustus settled ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... confidential and blood-curdling in the dusk. He said sharply that it was not very likely, as if defending the absent victim of the accident from an unkind aspersion. He felt, in fact, indignant. The other emitted a short stifled laugh of a conciliatory nature. The second bell rang under the poop. He made a movement at the sound, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... been disturbed at his leisurely coffee and roll by a rapid and ceaseless pounding, followed by a violent rattling, and varied by stifled cries apparently from the woodshed. The din seemed to come from the lower part of the house, and after one or two futile appeals to the man who served as valet, cook, and butler in his bachelor establishment, he decided ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... more! I'm sick and dead and gone; Boxed in a coffin, stifled six feet deep; Thorns, fat and fearless, prick my skin and bone, And revel o'er ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... the steam-whistle voice was Julia Featherweight, the sister of Rolleston's inamorata, and Madge stifled a laugh as she went on to the ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... old fairy, sure of her power, or a simple and unconscious woman, playing without knowing it, with a great, devouring fire?—It was all finished; the parting had been accomplished; the farewell accepted; the struggle stifled under white wadding,—and now the two who adored each other are walking side by side, outside, in the tepid night of spring!—in the amorous, enveloping night, under the cover of the new leaves and on the tall grass, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... The low moaning of women sounded in the room. Somebody moved a foot, scraping it in rude dissonance across the floor. A girl's voice broke out in sudden sobbing, which was as quickly stifled, with ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... but a hand about half the size of a shoulder of mutton came down hard over his mouth and nose. Other hands, with grips like vices, picked him off his feet, and out he went, half stifled, along the yard, and up to ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... men, exciting and stirring them up in every avenue of society,—in politics, in religion, in literature, in morals, in all the manifold relations of life? Is this the work of politicians? Is that irresistible power, which for fifty years has shaken the government and agitated the people, to be stifled and subdued by pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to talk about it? If you will get everybody else to stop talking about it, I assure you I will quit before they have half done so. But where is the philosophy or statesmanship which ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... rich. But his ugliness was to be nobly expressive and his poverty delicately proud. She had a fortune of her own which, at the proper time, after fixing on her in eloquent silence those fine eyes that were to soften the feudal severity of his visage, he was to accept with a world of stifled protestations. One condition alone she was to make—that he should have "race" in a state as documented as it was possible to have it. On this she would stake her happiness; and it was so to happen that several accidents ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... rooms of Embury and his wife stood a little ajar, and as his hand fell on it to shut it, he heard a stifled gasp ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... crazed, and we must do everything ourselves;" and, Ella, with trembling hands and stifled sobs, began to aid her father. "Oh, hear those awful cries in the street," she said after a moment. "Don't you think we should try to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... they carried away my darling To a kingdom beyond the sky, I knew what the angels intended, So I stifled the tear and the sigh, But I prayed she might send me a message Of love from the realms of the blest, As to me a whole life of repining Was the cost of her Heaven ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... matter of fact, I bought Peter-its name's Peter-myself down on the East Side. I always believe in animals for Press-agent stunts. I've nearly always had good results. But with Her Nibs I'm handicapped. Shackled, so to speak. You might almost say my genius is stifled. Or strangled, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... child, like temptations. We are told that if a soul is in grace and desires to serve God, then whenever our Lord speaks it is to bring sweetness with Him; and when it is the evil one, he brings disturbance. And that is why I am sure that these questionings are not from God. You feel stifled, is it not so, when you try to pray? and all seems empty of God; the waves and storms are going over you. But lie still and be content; and refuse to be disturbed; and you will soon be at peace again and see ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... would have carried me to any lengths. I had caught up enough of the horrid fanaticism of the time, to think that there was something grand and heroic in contempt for human suffering; that a man rose proudly above all the weakness of his nature, when, in the pursuit of some great object, he stifled within his breast every throb of affection—every sentiment of kindness and mercy. Such were the teachings rife at the time—such the first lessons that boyhood learned; and oh! what a terrible hour had that been for humanity if the generation then born had grown up to manhood, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... necessary, will know how Richard felt, with water under him, pitch-darkness about him, and the rock within an inch or two of his body all round. By and by the slope became steeper and the ascent more difficult. The air grew very close, and he began to fear he should be stifled. Then came a hot breath, and a pair of eyes gleamed a foot or two from his face. Had he then followed into the den of the animal by which poor Marquis had been so frightfully torn? But no: it was ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... cease, And with it too, his Comfort and his Peace. Her Tongue's compounded of all sorts of ill, Given to lie, but seldom lying still. You Rogue (quoth she) where has your Rakeship been? These Thirty days your Honest Wife lay in? Here, Rock the Child, while I go take the Air, I won't be stifled up no longer here. ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... territory by strangers, an unpardonable offence among civilized people, may have created a feeling of hostility that found a partial gratification in stealing their property; and, had not this occasion offered, the stifled feeling of hostility may have broken out in some other form. In general, they were not subsequently unfriendly in their intercourse with the English. The Nausets were, however, the same that sent a shower of arrows upon the Pilgrims in 1620, at the place called by them the "First ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... a pyramid of decanters, and scrambled in. I then proceeded to divest myself of my articles of clothing. I noticed that the snoring of the gentleman in the berth underneath grew softer and somewhat stifled, and as I wound up my watch and placed it, as I thought, under the pillow, he jumped frantically out from behind his curtains and went head over heels amongst my improvised steps. Then I began to realise what had happened. I had not understood the mechanism of the arrangements, and under ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... then!" said Ginevra, with a cry—bitter but feeble with despair and ending in a stifled shriek. "What have I been saying then! I thought I belonged to you! I thought you meant to take me all the time!" She burst into an agony of sobbing. "Oh me! me! I have been alone all the time, and did ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... was quite close, Lisbeth had heard all. She began to struggle, and uttered a stifled scream. The man released her, and, to her surprise, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... go into this war!' cried the man beside her suddenly, in a low, stifled voice. She glanced at him in astonishment. The new excuses, the new tenderness for him in her ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... though she experienced a deep joy in thus proclaiming her constancy. Maurice, with a stifled sigh, turned from her, and pretended to be gazing at the flowers ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... away with a little gasp; a half-stifled exclamation had crept out from between his teeth. His cheeks seemed paler than ever, and his eyes unnaturally bright. Nevertheless, he was completely master of himself. On the table was a large deed box of papers, which Rocke had left ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... created the atmosphere of the dead therein confined. It was as if I inhaled the coarse friction, the low aspiration, the feverishness, the selfishness, the dishonour, that the getting of gain, when it became the purpose of life, involved. I experienced a sense of being stifled, and breathed with difficulty; much as those live men would have done, if the gas-pipes ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... they were impregnable. To some extent he attained his object, but his success was limited; and his teaching affected by what I can only call a modernness of temperament in me, which no force of tradition wholly destroyed or stifled. That many things must be treated as beyond question was the fruit of his maxims; it is a position which I have never been able to adopt; with me the acid of doubt bit into every axiom. I took pleasure in the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... contrasted oddly with the general aspect of their persons. The late purveyor had not the voice of his muscles. We do not mean that his voice was a mere thread, such as we sometimes hear issuing from the mouth of these walruses; on the contrary, it was a strong voice, but stifled, an idea of which can be given only by comparing it with the noise of a saw cutting into soft and moistened wood,—the voice of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... is none for you, nor can be none; For still shall Memory, like a fetid breath, Poison your life-days while the slow hours run, Till it be stifled in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... stone Temple might easily become the sepulchre, rather than the shrine, of true devotion. The movable tent answered to the temporary character of the 'dispensation.' The more fixed and elaborate the externals of worship, the more danger of the spirit being stifled by them. The Old Testament worship was necessarily ceremonial, but here is a caveat against the stiffening of ceremonial into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... embellish his house at Twickenham. He has made a subterranean grotto, which he has furnished with looking-glass, and they tell me it has a very good effect. I here send you some verses addressed to Mr. Gay, who wrote him a congratulatory letter on the finishing his house. I stifled them here, and I beg they may die the same death at Paris, and never ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... advice, sometimes good but very often bad. For example, you are told that the greater the emotion, the stronger should be the voice. Nothing is more false. In violent emotion the heart seems to fill the larynx and the voice is stifled. In all such counsels it behooves us to search out their foundation, the reason that is in them, to ask if there is a type in nature which ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... commodiousness of existence, that did not seem to me to surpass anything of the kind that we have in this country. Notwithstanding which—and I am far, indeed, from having any pretensions to asceticism—I would have been fairly stifled at the idea of having to spend my life there. No American can live in Europe, unless he means to return home, or unless, at any rate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. For an American to accept England, or any other country, as both a mental and physical finality, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... door. He heard it close softly. There was a long silence. He forgot that there had been a knock at the door, and was still staring blankly before him when he heard a woman's sob. It was involuntary, spasmodic, checked, and stifled—he noted that as he turned about. The next instant ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking vacantly, she remembered a time when through that shadow, she believed more in a God than she did now. When, by the help of that very dead hope, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... wealth in the Elia series, so varied are the themes which inspired the essayist: the delicious drollery of the "Dissertation upon Roast Pig"; the immortal characterization of "Mrs. Battle's Opinions upon Whist"; the pleasant personal touches in a score of the essays; the cry of stifled affection in "Dream Children"; the whimsicality of "Popular Fallacies"; each of these, and as many again unspecified might be made the subject of separate comment. Indeed, for variety in unity there are few books to compare with our Elia. In the opening ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... out at last the troubled dream of life. Sighs of unavailing grief ascend to Heaven. Panegyric, fluent in long-stifled praise, performs its office. The army and the navy pay conventional honors, with the pomp of national woe, and then the hearse moves onward. It rests appropriately, on its way, in the hall where independence was proclaimed, and again under the dome where freedom was born. At length the tomb of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... concentrated in a few hands, when there was no all-embracing popular education, all incentives to thrift, to private initiative, and hence to the development of the sturdy moral qualities which thrift and initiative cause and are the product of, were stifled. A nation can reach its maximum power only when, through the harmonious cooperation of all its parts, the initiative and talents of every individual have free scope, untrammeled by special privilege, to reach that sphere for which ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... every one must know Miss Gilder's face from her photographs in newspapers," I broke in, on a stifled sob of Biddy's. "She couldn't be mistaken for another girl, as ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the condemn'd Person's Ear-rings. We supposed her to be his Mother. After he had taken his leave of her and some others, he was put into the Pit, and covered over with Earth He did not struggle, but yielded very quietly to his Punishment; and they cramm'd the Earth close upon him, and stifled him. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... mean by making such a noise,' said he, 'and talking so to me? I will teach you better.' So he put his great paw on the nest, and crowded it down until the poor little birds were almost stifled. Presently he left them, ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... for help. Then the house fell silent. The minutes passed. But for Lloyd's stifled grief there was no sound. Bennett—leaning heavily against the door, his great shoulders stooping and bent, his face ashen, his eyes fixed—did not move. He did not speak to Lloyd. There was no word of comfort he could address to her—that would ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... filling the house when Allie, having long overslept herself, awoke at last and lifted her heavy head from the pillow. There were shrill, boyish voices, laughing, shouting, wrangling, without pause. There was racket on the stairs, and wrestling in the passage, and half-stifled cries of expostulation or triumph everywhere, till a door opened, and closed again, and shut ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... wonderful readiness, 'it is called a stifled sigh because it is checked in its progress, and only ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... she's at the pony's tail, And now she's at the pony's head, On that side now, and now on this; And, almost stifled with her bliss, A few sad tears does Betty shed.... She pats the pony, where or when She knows not ... happy Betty Foy! Oh, Johnny, never mind ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... would secure the highest good, and timid hesitation could bring nothing save death and ruin, they had expected to rush over the Etham line as if it were a pile of faggots. But now since a short chain of difficulties and suffering had stifled the fire of their souls, now that wherever the eye turned, there were two calm and five dissatisfied or anxious individuals to one upheld by joyous anticipation, to storm the Etham line would have cost rivers of blood and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... feeding in general, in no way were meant to refer to the table d'hote at the Hotel Titlis, which, served in a lofty and well-ventilated salon, lighted by electricity, to four hundred people daily, a capitally well-appointed meal, is one of the notable features of the place. The smoke-stifled children of the Fatherland, who shut every window they come across when they get a chance, though they would dearly like to, cannot carry their tricks on here. Sometimes, but not very often, they rally in force, and render the "Grosser Gesellschafts Saal" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... cried. "I am safe now. Take me away,—out of this horrible place! Take me into the woods,—anywhere. Only do not let me be burnt here,—stifled like a rat. Give me air! Give me water!" And she clung to him so madly, that Hereward, as he held her in his arms, and gazed on her extraordinary beauty, forgot Torfrida for the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... morrows and more deaths, but still we lived on, for Guatemoc gave us of his food. Then Cortes sent his heralds demanding our surrender, and now three-fourths of the city was a ruin, and three-fourths of its defenders were dead. The dead were heaped in the houses like bees stifled in a hive, and in the streets they lay so thick that ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... importance. Do not we know that this mysterious poetic intuition is already his, in the form of instinct and vague reverie? Among those peasants who possess some of the comforts of life, and whose moral and intellectual development is not entirely stifled by extreme wretchedness, pure happiness that can be felt and appreciated exists in the elementary stage; and, moreover, since poets have already raised their voices out of the lap of pain and of weariness, why should we say that the labor of the hands excludes the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... around Djama. Not a word was spoken save his startled, angry exclamation, which was soon stifled, and then they brought him along after me, I going first and Tupac following close behind me. Like a string of shadows we moved across the plain past the great carved rock which is still called the Inca's Seat, and over the ridge of the Sliding Stones and down into the valley beyond, ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... it was conducted. Heads were thrust into the passage to be withdrawn amid a paroxysm of giggling. Somebody was pushed into full view to retire precipitately amid an explosion of mirth. Preceded by stifled expressions of encouragement, a pert-looking lady's maid strolled leisurely past the newcomer, opened the back door, closed it, and returned as haughtily as she had gone. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... half-stifled gasp the man shrank back and dropped the lamp, and the Professor heard him say to the woman ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... snows and rains, and wander down and up through the veins of the earth; but the sense of its mystery had not hitherto begun to withdraw. Happily for him, the poetic nature was not merely predominant in him, but dominant, sending itself, a pervading spirit, through the science that else would have stifled him. Accepting fact, he found nothing in its outward relations by which a man can live, any more than by bread; but this poetic nature, illuminating it as with the polarized ray, revealed therein more life and richer hope. All this was as yet however as indefinite ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... And now, with stifled cry, by fears oppressed, The sick man feebly throws his coverings off "Let me, O Greek, a cooling potion quaff! Ice—ice! Vesuvius burns within my breast. Gods! how it flames! Yet in my anguished brain The torturing thoughts burn fiercer far, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... fiancee. As I went I usually bore within me a multitude of hopes, desires, intentions, suggestions, phrases. I always fancied that as soon as the maid opened the door I should, from feeling oppressed and stifled, plunge at once up to my neck into a sea of refreshing happiness. But it always turned out otherwise in fact. Every time I went to see my fiancee I found all her family and other members of the household busy over the silly trousseau. (And by the way, they ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... therefore, who will to understand only what is of the world and nature and not what moral and spiritual good and truth are, cannot be raised from knowledge into intelligence, still less into wisdom, for they have stifled those faculties. They render themselves no longer men except that they can understand if they wish, and can also will, by virtue of the implanted rationality and liberty; from the two capacities it is that one can think and from thought speak. In other respects, they are ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... ashamed to confess, that I saw you cry, when he had the colic last week with lapping sour milk. What more could you do for your lover himself?" "What more!" replied the lady, "there is not a man in England for whom I could lament half so much." Then she stifled the animal with kisses, and called him, Beau, Life, Dear, Monsieur, Pretty Fellow, and what not, in the hurry of her impertinence. Sappho rose up; as she always does at anything she observes done, which discovers in her own sex a ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... in the dingy "salle" of the second-class Max wondered, with stifled repulsion, which among the fat Germans, hook-nosed Algerian Jews, dignified Arab merchants, and common-looking Frenchmen, was to share his ridiculously small cabin. Most of them appeared to be half sick already, in fearful anticipation ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... feet, already wavering downward, will not be strengthened to pause, to turn, to steady themselves, but will rather be lured on by his words. It is no purpose of his to make the crusts of Materialism harden still more hopelessly above the stifled soul. He designs to ridicule only that which is ridiculous. There are evidences of a purpose to relieve the darkness of his coloring in each instance by lines of light, but it is not made palpable enough for running readers. He has seen the weakness that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... wrong, by tempting me with money to rob a bird's nest. The young mocking-bird was procured for him, but at the expense of a violated conscience; for a voice within me spoke loudly against the act of cruelty about to be practised upon the mother-bird and her young. But I stifled that inward monitor, and stilled the voice that urged me to depart not from the path of innocence. I saw that the act was a cruel one, and felt that it was a cruel one—but to be asked to do even a wrong act by a man to whom I looked up, as I then did ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... throne of his ancestors. It may be easily imagined, that this event, a subject in itself highly fit for poetry, and which promised the revival of poetical pursuits, was hailed with universal acclamation by all whose turn for verse had been suppressed and stifled during the long reign of fanaticism. The Restoration led the way to the revival of letters, as well as that of legal government. With diaries, as Dryden ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott |
