"Stifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my betrothed lies in prison, ill, perhaps, or fretting his brave heart away, am I to be dragged forth to make part of a pageant for the entertainment of his jailers? I would sooner have the lowest cell in the dungeon—aye! and starve and stifle for lack of food and air, than be forced to deck myself out in borrowed bravery, and sit mowing and smiling in a gay pavilion, and clap hands in transport over the fine cavalier airs of the man I ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... themselves or others from hearing what was spoken; and often afterward I had occasion to repeat the same counsel. I still advised people to endeavor to moderate and bound their passions, but not so as to resist and stifle their convictions. The number of the awakened increased very fast. Frequently under sermons there were some newly convicted and brought into deep distress of soul about their perishing estate. Our Sabbath assemblies soon became vastly large, many people from almost all parts ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... God and all the powers of grace, you shall not go alone! Off with these lies and make-believes! Off with these prisoner's shackles! They cramp, they stifle me! Freedom! Freedom! This is no priest's work—it calls for a ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... influence to exert in his favor. 'If I was married to Neelie,' he said, 'she could do anything she liked with me; and I am sure, when you choose, you can do anything you like with Midwinter.' If the infatuated fool had actually tried to stifle the last faint struggles of remorse and pity left stirring in my heart, he could have said nothing more fatally to the purpose than this! I gave him a look which effectually silenced him, so far as I was concerned. He went out ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... on anything short of murder to stifle the threatening exposure. Sterner methods were necessary. All at once his eye spied a coil of rope in the corner and he sprang ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... that thou art avenged for the neglect you experienced at my hands, and for the ambition that occasioned it. Cursed ambition! Did the coronet I gained by my neglect of you, beloved object of my first and only affection, console my heart under the cries of conscience, or stifle the grief which returned for you, when that ambition was gratified? Ah, that false and precipitate step! How much misery has it not occasioned me since I awoke from my dream! Your gentle spirit seemed to haunt me through life, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was made for success. What she attempted, she accomplished. That which she strove for, she won. She was too sure, too vital, too electric, for failure. No, Fanny Brandeis' struggle went on inside. And in trying to stifle it she came near making the blackest failure that a woman can make. In grubbing for the pot of gold she almost ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... it pressed upon me as a strong probability that I might never leave those deserts. "Well," thought I to myself, "a prairie makes quick and sharp work. Better to die here, in the saddle to the last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber, and a thousand times better than to drag out life, as many have done, in the helpless inaction of lingering disease." So, drawing the buffalo robe on which I sat over my head, I waited till the storm should come. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... military measures; but, while combining his plans of campaign with the insinuating charm of Italian diplomacy, he also set the Machiavelian springs of the police in movement, Fouche then being at its head. And none of these means were superfluous to stifle the fire of war then ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice. ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... soul is timid and doubting. We have lacked light, freedom, space for action and growth, yet are there pleasant places there. All these are now before us. Dry your tears, O tender souls, suppress your sighs, stifle your groans. Let us press forward in courage and hope. Forty years, it may be, in the wilderness, but deliverance at last. The gentle cloud will be over us by day, the path of duty will shine as a fire ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... June' this evening, that was to have been 'her treat,' was the most miserable she had ever spent. God knows she tried to stifle her pride, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... escaping the penalty of death, bore themselves with firmness, and manifestly believed that they were sufferers in a holy cause. Not even the sight of the destruction they had wrought in Paris could wholly stifle one's feelings of sympathy with them in ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... its pleasure, and back upon my own straight path with something of regret that my self-respect had been strong enough to hold me to it. And now the temptation came to sacrifice all that I had clung to. To abolish the thought and remembrance of my talent, muffle and stifle the powers of the brain, and remember only that I had the pulses and senses and blood of a man. It came over me slowly, this phase of rebellious animalism, like a mantle falling over me. Thought followed thought insidiously, imperceptibly, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... order that nothing should interfere with the carrying out of this intention he refused to allow the boy to attend school, lest his fondness for music should induce some one to teach him his notes. Poor George was therefore compelled to stifle his longing whilst in his father's presence, and content himself with 'making music' in the seclusion of his own chamber. It may seem strange that Handel's mother should not have interposed in order that ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... by the help of the Lord, my boy." And he listened to Evadne's merry laugh as she pelted Hans with cherries while Gretchen dreamed of the Fatherland under the trees by the brook, and wondered whether after all the men who had made it their aim to stifle every natural inclination, had learned the true secret of living as well as these happy souls who laid their cares down at the feet of their Father, and gave their lives into ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... lost spirit, and the crushed hopes and affections of those I love! Oh! when I look at this picture, drawn with the pencil of reality, in all its deep shadows and startling colors, the brain is oppressed and the heart is sick; and while I would stifle the inquiry, it finds an utterance:—In the name of reason, of humanity and heaven, is ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... recollected it. As Coles 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 ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... desire for labor, on the part of many people of leisure, has its counterpart in the increasing desire for general knowledge on the part of many laborers. They point to the fact that the same duality of conscience which seems to stifle the noblest effort in the individual because his intellectual conception and his achievement are so difficult to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we have the separation of the people who think from ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... ministers, who were trying to get Beecher to speak on religion and keep still on slavery, sat passively and serenely on the safety-valve for about five minutes, but finally the engine blew up. Mr. Beecher was not the man to stifle his convictions in the name of peace, for he knew that in an evil world a good man has no right to dwell at peace with the devil and his minions. So he declared his hostility, turned his back on England, and went to the Continent; ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... two in our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish, even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed, that, after all, they ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... why this blind insistence offended me. Until then I had remained calm; but at her words there burst from the depths of my being the voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and training.... Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my heart and my sweet reasonableness! It was as though I saw all my ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... the humiliation she endured by being refused admission in two religious orders, and knew also her virtues, he did not feel justified in advising anything that would stifle the operations of divine grace in her soul. He was, moreover, an eye-witness of her successful efforts in instructing young girls, both secularly and religiously, and thought it might be pleasing to God to associate with her other pious young persons, who could easily ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... as he leant forward and gazed into her eyes, that shone strangely in the gloom. They expressed surprise and expectancy. Yourii longed to embrace her, yet again his courage failed him, and he pretended to stifle a yawn. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the Tiber, and when a people, yet composed only of one sex, sustained the character of a nation. Rome, for many ages, saw, from her walls, on every side, the territory of her enemies, and found as little to check or to stifle the weakness of her infant power, as she did afterwards to restrain the progress of her extended empire. Like a Tartar or a Scythian horde, which had pitched on a settlement, this nascent community was equal, if not superior, to every tribe in its neighbourhood; and the oak ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... believe that any woman whom you had ever loved, could remain blind to your inconstancy, or feel secure indifference? Happy woman! in you to love is not a crime; you may glory in your passion, whilst I must hide mine from every human eye, drop in shameful secrecy the burning tear, stifle the struggling sigh, blush at the conflicts of virtue and sensibility, and carry shame and remorse with me to the grave. Happy Leonora! happy even when most injured, you have a right to complain to him you love;—he is yours—you are his wife—his esteem, his affection are yours. On Olivia ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... that of Macbeth, "is full of scorpions." Through a terrible tightening up, he hardens himself against the inborn, hereditary impulses of humanity; these resist while he becomes exasperated, and, to stifle them, there is no other way but to "gorge himself on horrors,"[31102] by adding murder to murder. For murder, especially as he practices it, that is to say, with a naked sword on defense-less people, introduces into his animal and moral machine two extraordinary and disproportionate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... feels at his ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,—those useless accessories under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never been,—a child! I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he likes it too. Besides, that ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... you are wasting our time, Mr Westray. I am the last person to stifle legitimate inquiry, but no inquiry is really needed here; it is quite certain that this poor man came to his end by falling heavily, and dashing his head against this wooden note ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... anew, his fists would clench, and he would half rise to go to the door and overpower that guard! If only he could get up to where the officers were enjoying themselves! Oh, to bring them down here and bind them in this loathsome atmosphere, feed them with this food, stifle them in the dark with closed port holes! His brain was fertile with thoughts of revenge. Then suddenly across his memory would flash the words: "If with all your heart ye seek Him," and he would reach out in longing: Oh, if he could find God, surely God ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... of gold controul, Tho' the Heart urge a wiser choice, By force of habit lord it o'er the Soul, And stifle e'en Conviction's powerful voice. See, with sighs the Miser yield The promis'd joys of wood, and field; Against experienc'd disappointment, try With Gold to purchase that, which Gold can ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... sunbeams like swords! And I first played the tune all our sheep know as, one after one, So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 40 Into eve and the blue far above us—so ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... jacobins, the first consul might have immediately redoubled his tyranny; public opinion would have seconded him: but as this plot proceeded from the royalist party, he could not derive much advantage from it. He endeavoured rather to stifle, than avail himself of it, as he wished the nation to believe that his enemies were only the enemies of order, and not the friends of another order, that is to say, of the old dynasty. What is very remarkable, is, that on the occasion of a royalist conspiracy, Bonaparte caused, by a senatus ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... humanity, torn by a profound struggle, condemns its own acts, and protests against its degradations. It cries aloud to itself that there are principles above facts, a moral law superior to the acts of the will; and all the petty clamors of a deceitful and deceived philosophy cannot stifle that clear voice. Not only do these doctrines explain nothing, they do not even succeed in expressing themselves; language fails them. "Everything is right and good." What will these words mean, from the time there is no longer any rule of right? ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... methods familiar to the understanding. These forms of reflected knowledge, these processes of analysis really convey secretly all the postulates of practical action. But it is imperative that language should translate, not betray; that the body of formulae should not stifle the soul of intuition. We shall see in what the work of reform and conversion imposed on ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... 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 away, as on the former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, better instructed, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... depended on old Cesar more than on anybody else. He had the key of the gate, and the gate was practically the only thing between me and a miserable death at the hands of the first ruffian I met outside. And with the thought I seemed to stifle in that patio open ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... seems a pity that De Morgan should not have lived to lash those of our time who are demanding only the immediately practical in mathematics. His satire would have been worth the reading against those who seek to stifle the science they ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... shuddered. The actual Quisante had been bad; the idea of a dead Quisante horribly galvanized into movement by a restlessness that the tomb could not stifle was hideous. Jimmy came to her aid with a rather unfeeling ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... for the executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the Rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the Maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the Bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually high. Wherefore ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... it not already made a coward of him? Was it not degrading him in his own eyes? Was it not trying to stifle the voice of conscience in his breast? Would it not make of him a living, walking lie? a thing to be shunned and scorned? Had he a right to place a burden so appalling on himself? Would it not ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... upon the edge of doom. Therefore the stoutest hand must seize the helm. Rome must be cleansed,—cleansed to the very roots; The sluggish we must waken from their slumber,— And crush to earth the power of these wretches Who sow their poison in the mind and stifle The slightest promise of a better life. Look you,—'tis civic freedom I would further,— The civic spirit that in former times Was regnant here. Friends, I shall conjure back The golden age, when Romans gladly gave Their lives to ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the Word will not stifle and gag them up—I speak now for amplification's sake—the view of those who are saved shall. There comes an incestuous person to the bar, and pleads, That the bigness of his sins was a bar to his receiving the promise. But will not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Edward. "Mark, we can do nothing here. Off with you, and muster every man we have. I can't show mercy now. Tell Daniel Rugg to get ready an ample supply of powder and fuses, and I'll blow up the hornets' nest, and let them stifle where they lie. Rayburn, you'll stay with this poor lad; and Heaven help you to ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... same. A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark. Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, 5 Fear that—the spark self-kindled from within, Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare, Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air. Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds, And soon the ventilated spirit finds 10 Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd, Or worse than foe, an alienated friend, A rib of dry rot in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... popular frenzy from the moment when Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, the magistrate before whom Oates had laid his information, was found in a field near London with his sword run through his heart. His death was assumed to be murder, and the murder to be an attempt of the Jesuits to "stifle the plot." A solemn funeral added to the public agitation; and the two Houses named committees to investigate ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... great Sincerity they think inestimable and which consequently no Price can be equal to. The Motive therefore of these Women is no other, than what I have call'd it, their Vanity, the undoubted Offspring of Self-liking, a palpable Excess, an extravagant Degree of the Passion, that is able to stifle the loudest Calls of Nature, and with a high Hand triumphs over all other Appetites and Inclinations. What Sort of Education now do you think the fittest to furnish and fill young Ladies with this high Esteem for themselves and their Reputation, which, whilst it subsists and reigns in them, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... lame for a few steps or rods and then goes sound. A lame shoulder causes dragging of the toe and rolling when in motion. A ring-bone causes an extra long step and lameness increases with exercise. Stifle lameness causes walking on the heels of shoe and consequent wearing of the iron. Hip lameness causes outward rolling of the leg in trotting, and wasting of the muscles of stifle and hip leads to a characteristic drop. See that the horse's tail is sound, has not been joined on ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... was as if a fog should suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness again.... Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the doctor. "We must investigate it, and photograph the peculiar appearance of the sun. Light seems to have more terrors for you than anything else just now. You must get over your rush-and-do tendency; you must stifle your emotions and impulses, and learn to think of things in a ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... yours and mankind's for ever. She is reality, the one reality I have found in this strange disorder of existence. She will not sulk with you nor misunderstand you nor cheat you of your reward upon some petty doubt. You cannot change her by advertisement or clamour, nor stifle her in vulgarities. Things grow under your hands when you serve her, things that are permanent as nothing else is permanent in the whole life of man. That, I think, is the peculiar satisfaction of science and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... adventures of the day and comfortably taking his cheerful glass, when suddenly, without having seen a person, his cap was violently pulled over his eyes, a thick coffee-bag slipped over his head, and a hand applied to his throat to stifle any cries, should he be disposed to make them. But the poor fellow was too much frightened to emit a sound, had he been never so much ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... to work to stifle his son's musical proclivities in every possible way, to separate him from musical society, to banish all music from the house, to prevent him even from going to school, for fear he should learn notes as well as letters there. He had set himself a difficult ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... by which the fraudulent disposition of the priesthood had, in the decay of its power, rendered itself venerable to the most enlightened minds; and the night was devoted to the consideration of the causes which contribute to the developement of genius, or of the events which tend to stifle and overwhelm its powers. Every recreation of the stranger in Rome was an effort of the memory, of abstraction, and of fancy.—Society, in this elevated state of enjoyment, surrounded by the greatest works of human creation, and placed amidst the monuments of ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... that my uncle begged the Duke of Newcastle to stifle this report of the sham Pretender lest the King should hear it and recall the Duke, as too great to fight a counterfeit. It is certain that the army adore the Duke, and are gone in the greatest spirits; and on the parade, as they began their march, the Guards vowed that they would ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... while those selected by the half of the people—by men alone—evoke force to stifle liberty, and forge restrictive laws to establish order by compression, woman, guided by fraternity, foreseeing incessant struggles, and in the hope of putting an end to them, makes an appeal to the laborer to found liberty and equality ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are one of those men who attempt to stifle their own imagination. But in all completed intellect, imagination exists, and will force its way; deny it healthful vents, and it may stray into morbid channels. The death-room of Dr. Lloyd deeply impressed your heart, far more than your pride would own. This is clear from the pains ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to stifle his mirth, in fear that she was going to cry. He couldn't have endured that. He reached for his tobacco and ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... delight. Even his uncle, Pavel Petrovitch—once a famous figure in Russian society, and now, in spite of his dandy habits and dandy dress, living with his brother on the latter's estate in the heart of the country—showed some emotion. And Arkady, too, though he endeavoured to stifle his feelings as became a superior young man who had risen above the prejudices of the older generation, could not conceal the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... face fell. He had not meant to rouse loyalty, but he was quick and clever, so he saw that it had been roused, and that now was not the time to try and stifle it. So his frown turned to a smile as he caught the child to him and rose, holding ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... delighted to find it come so easy. I do not mean that I experience little difficulty in foregoing my hundred petty elegancies and luxuries,—for to these, thank Heaven, I was not so indissolubly wedded that one wholesome shock could not loosen my bonds,—but that I manage more cleverly than I expected to stifle those innumerable tacit allusions which might serve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... The plague strikes blindly but the present regime chooses its victims from the flower of the nation, taking all upon whom depend the fortune and glory of Russia. It is not a political party that they crush, it is a nation of a hundred millions that they stifle. That is what the Czar has done.'[14] Down with such despotism! Down with its ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... of her round head. Her figure is flabby and fat; her breath comes in wheezy gasps; she speaks in a loud, mannish voice, punctuated by explosions of hoarse laughter. But there still twinkles in her blood-shot blue eyes a youthful lust for life which hard usage has failed to stifle, a sense of humor mocking, but good-tempered. She wears a man's cap, double-breasted man's jacket, and a grimy, calico skirt. Her bare feet are encased in a man's brogans several sizes too large for her, which gives her a shuffling, ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... 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 the voice of conscience. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... support to his parents. But the scribes held that if a man vowed to give money to the temple, this obligation, being toward God, superseded the obligation to his parents, which was merely human. To Jesus this seemed a perversion of religion. Ecclesiastical claims were made to stifle fundamental social duty. To Jesus the latter had incomparably higher value. Religion had become a ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... shook! Such a ripping and tearing of shingles as there was! Rose could not stifle her shriek. She and Margy and Laddie came tumbling down the rest of the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... not be able to see the foulness, but if in the majority of railroad cars run in this country, they are not able to feel it in gritty, grimy accumulations on skin and linen, and smell it in suffocating stenches which serve, with sneeze-provoking dust, to stifle anything like comfort, their skin must be thicker, their linen more neglected, and their noses less sensitive than those of the majority of fellow travellers it has been our fortune to be cooped up with for a ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... same lack of scientific insight when he rejects a method because it is not completely successful, and substitutes something else which will always be successful because it will never tell us anything at all and will stifle all investigation. Were Maimonides living in our day, we may suppose he would be more favorably inclined to the mechanical ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... of fate that the next passer was Marengo Todd, whipping his way to the fire behind a horse that had a bit of wire pinched over his nose to stifle his "whistling." ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... quietly breathing her life away, for though every thing that love and skill could devise had been tried to save her, the little knife in that desperate hand had done its work, and this world held no more suffering for her. Harry was down upon his knees beside her, trying to stifle his passionate grief. Augustine prayed audibly above her, and the fervor of his broken words comforted all hearts but one. Bella was clinging, panic-stricken, to the kind old doctor, who was sobbing like a ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... He was less versed in human nature than art, and did not recognize in the forced and obtrusive gayety the effort to stifle the voice of an aroused conscience. Even to her blunted sense of right it seemed a hateful and disgraceful truth that a stranger had helped her father towards manhood, an that she had destroyed the transient and salutary influence. Her complacency ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... "I shall get under the bed." But as the bed was of wood and very low, she only succeeded in getting her own head and the kodak beneath its wooden planks, while I carefully built her in with blankets and eider-downs, and left her to stifle on a dreadfully hot night with a nasty-smelling little ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... priesthood.[1] To the assaults of open opponents the Buddhist displays the calmest indifference, convinced that in its undiminished strength, his faith is firm and inexpugnable; his vigilance is only excited by the alarm of internal dissent, and all his passions are aroused to stifle the symptoms of schism.[2] ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... he had held her in his arms early that evening her reason asserted itself for a moment, and she pressed her hand over his lips to stifle the words. She had thought of poor little Marjory and her white face in the stream, and of a thousand other reasons why they should part. There were sacred promises on both sides to be kept. "But be mine," she ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... did not know. He remembered vaguely, while lying rigid under the grip of the drug, that he had heard Ilse Dumont's voice mention somebody called Karl. And he had an idea that this Karl might easily be the big, ham-fisted German who had tried so earnestly to stifle him and throw him from the vestibule ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... admit that it is possible to stifle liberty of men and to impose on them a yoke, to the point that they dare not even murmur, however feebly, without the consent of the sovereign: never, it is certain, can any one hinder them from thinking according to their own free will. What ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... be here soon," she murmured amiably; "I am rather tired of waiting." She affected to stifle a yawn. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... faltered Candace; and then, to her dismay, she began to cry again. She tried to subdue it; but a little sob, which all her efforts could not stifle, fell upon ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... eyes! How was I shock'd to think the hero's trade Of such materials, fame and triumph made! How guilty these! Yet not less guilty they, Who reach false glory by a smoother way: Who wrap destruction up in gentle words, And bows, and smiles, more fatal than their swords; Who stifle nature, and subsist on art; Who coin the face, and petrify the heart; All real kindness for the show discard, As marble polish'd, and as marble hard; Who do for gold what Christians do thro' grace, "With open arms their enemies embrace:" Who give a nod when broken ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the East Indies by his brother, Barbara's father, split suddenly in twain, and Sir John trembled as with an ague at so sure a premonition of evil as this. There were moments when he could not bear to be shut in a room, when the confinement between four walls seemed to stifle him, and like a half suffocated man he would stagger on to the terrace and gasp ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of the 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
... violinist is one whose technique belongs to him. Every movement should come naturally, it should be as much a part of his personality as his tone of voice or the glance of his eye, and it should be the teacher's aim to develop this personality and not to stifle it as is too often the case. Of course great judgment is required in this development, or the personality will become marked mannerism, than which nothing could be worse. True art always displays a certain reticence; ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... up his attitude appreciably interfere with the reproduction of the reactions of the object of his interest. In an exactly opposite way the artificial conditions of the spectator at a play, which reinforce the vivid reproduction of ideas, and check action, stifle those emotions directed toward the players, the objective emotions of which we have spoken. The spectator is completely cut off from all possibilities of influence on events. Between his world and that across the footlights an inexpressible gulf is fixed. He cannot take an "attitude," he can ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... be a man. You men never realize that enough. You can be absorbed in an intellectual passion or some outside activity. You mutilate yourselves, but you are the happier for it. A healthy woman cannot do that without suffering for it. It is inhuman to stifle a part of yourself. When we women are happy in one way, we regret that we are not happy in another. We have several souls. You men have but one, a more vigorous soul, which is often brutal and even monstrous. I admire you. But do not be too selfish. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Isabel!" said he, "I was in pain Lest I should miss to bid thee a good morrow Ah! what if I should lose thee, when so fain I am to stifle all the heavy sorrow Of a poor three hours' absence? but we'll gain Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow. Goodbye! I'll soon be back."—"Goodbye!" said she:— And as he ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... made. When we stand by the bedside, watching the fitful, final breaths of a well-loved child, or of an old, honored and faithful mother, there creeps into our consciousness feelings with which we are strangers, but they are ours, part of the divinity in us which in the work-a-day-world we stifle and crush. Friendship and no other human quality brings this divine element into our actual life. Those who have never had a friend have never solved the riddle ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... what men should {278} believe, and insisted that they should accept that dictum without question, on the authority of the church. This monopoly of religious belief assumed by the church had a tendency to stifle free inquiry and to retard progress. It more than once led to irregularities of practice on the part of the church in order to maintain its position, and on the part of the members to avoid the harsh treatment ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... ensued between the husband and wife, which would not, perhaps, please many readers to see drawn at too full a length. It is sufficient to say that this excellent woman not only used her utmost endeavours to stifle and conceal her own concern, but said and did everything in her power to ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... The priestly government has itself alone to blame. Our generals have done all in their power, not only to drill the Pope's soldiers, but to inspire them with that military spirit which the Cardinals carefully endeavour to stifle. Is it likely that we shall find the Austrian army seeking to render its presence needless, and ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... nations: these are 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! ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... tried to reassure her. "I'll be keerful of him, marm. I promise ye, marm, the boy shan't be hurt. I'm a-goin' to stifle them bees, marm, and pull out all their stingers." And the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... deck from the great cabin, where he sat at dinner, Lieutenant de la Fond ordered some sails to be dipped in the sea, and the hatches to be covered with them in order to prevent the access of air, and thus stifle the fire. He had even intended, as a more effectual measure, to let in the water between decks to the depth of a foot, but clouds of smoke issued from the crevices of the hatchways, and the flames gained more and more ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... was sorry that she had caused the box to be opened in such good company; for being before such witnesses, she rightly judged it was impossible to stifle this adventure; and, at the same time, there being no possibility of retaining any longer such a maid of honour, Miss Price had her valuables restored to her, with orders to go and finish her lamentations, or to console herself for the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... tendency to sympathize with her girl's sorrow. Such heart-breakings were occurring daily in the world around them. Who were the happy people that were driven neither by ambition, nor poverty, nor greed, nor the cross purposes of unhappy love, to stifle and trample upon their feelings? She had known no one so blessed. She had never been happy after that fashion. She herself had within the last few weeks refused to join her lot with that of a man she really liked, because her wicked ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and ruin of the Marquis de la Roche did not stifle the spirit of commercial enterprise which the success of the fur trade had excited. Private adventurers, unprotected by any especial privilege, began to barter for the rich peltries of the Canadian hunters. (1600.) A ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... ties of kindred. But not so the proud father and the patient mother, the haughty sisters and brothers; they felt all; they attempted to conceal all, that bitterness of soul, the canker that gnaws upon the heart when we will strive to stifle the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Sylvia. When Miss Lavinia went to her room to see if the girl was comfortable and have a little go-to-bed chat by the fire, she found her stretched upon the bed; her head hidden between the pillows, in a vain effort to stifle her passionate sobbing. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Barry Houston was in New York, swirling along Seventh Avenue toward Bellstrand Hospital. There he sought the executive offices and told his story. "Five minutes later he was looking at the books of the institution, searching, searching,—at last to stifle a cry of excitement and bend closer to ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... from intellectual persons the complaint that the effort to follow your meaning is too great, and impairs both the pleasure and profit of listening to you. I myself am conscious that wonder and admiration of your talent is apt to absorb and stifle the properly spiritual influence, and when I read your sermons, I often pause so long on single sentences as to be fully aware that I could have got little good from hearing them. I know that no two men's nature is the same, and habit is a second nature. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... and out of sight of every human creature. It was time indeed; her heart had been almost bursting with passion and pain, and now the pent-up tempest broke forth with a fury that racked her little frame from head to foot; and the more because she strove to stifle every sound of it as much as possible. It was the very bitterness of sorrow, without any softening thought to allay it, and sharpened and made more bitter by mortification and a passionate sense of unkindness and wrong. And through it all, how constantly ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... would never meet another. Why, because of his love, must he bury the will and force of a man? If there were no more coherence in God's scheme than this, let him too be incoherent! Let him hold authority, and live outside authority! Why stifle his powers for the sake of a coherence which did not exist! That would indeed be madness greater than that of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tribunal of justice, for the course of cruelty and outrage they were pursuing, with so high a hand, against accused persons. He was not entirely satisfied that the appeal he made in his discourse to the people to suppress and crush out all vestiges of human feeling, and to stifle compassion and pity in their breasts, would prevail. He foresaw that the friends and families of innocent and murdered victims might one day call for vengeance; and he attempts to provide, beforehand, a defence that is ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... reach posterity, and posterity will play them—I, I, must go! Stay, sir, it cannot be [and striking his right hand on his breast, he went on:] I feel here something that rises and tells me: Never, Rameau, never. There must be a certain dignity attached to human nature that nothing can stifle; it awakes a propos des bottes; you cannot explain it; for there are other days when it would cost me not a pang to be as vile as you like, and for a halfpenny there is nothing too dirty for me ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." But this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one must not use ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... eight thousand men taken or slain by the Christians. Shortly after, the fortress of Gran opened its gates to Kara Mustapha. The Grand Vizier barbarously put to death the officers who had signed the capitulation; he threw upon his generals the responsibility of his reverses, and thought to stifle in blood the murmurs of his accusers. The army marched in disorder as though struck with a panic terror. Kara Mustapha wished that a Jew whom he despatched to Belgrad should be escorted by a troop of horsemen. "I have no need of an escort," replied the Jew: "I have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... and there a family was left in the farmhouses that dotted the little, winding road but none of them were people for whom she cared. And so as the days had come and gone, there had crept into the heart of the girl a loneliness that would not be forced down, a longing that she could not stifle, a dissatisfaction that grew with ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... since the Barbara Freitchie days, and it's closer than I want to come. Besides, it's not just your laughter that I love. It's all of you: heart, mind, body: the whole lovely trinity of yourself. I mean to wage unabated war against all these forces that are trying to stifle your laughter into the pious smirk of the pharisee. There's more of what God wants the world to feel in one peal of your laughter than in all the psalms that this whole people ever whined through their noses. You're one ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck |
