"Suffocate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breath of air, through the magic of chemical combination, forms nearly half the substance of the solid rocks. Deprive it of its affinity for carbon, or substitute nitrogen or hydrogen in its place, and the air would quickly suffocate us. That changing of the dark venous blood in our lungs into the bright, red, arterial blood would instantly cease. Fancy the sensation of inhaling an odorless, non-poisonous atmosphere that would ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... endure it any longer, she managed without disturbing the sleeping Adele, who occupied the same curtained recess with her, to slip out from the awning. Wrapped in a thick shawl, she made her way through the encompassing trees and bushes of the garden that had seemed to imprison and suffocate her, to the edge of the grain-field, where she could breathe the fresh air beneath an open, starlit sky. There was no moon and the darkness favored her; she had no fears that weighed against the horror of seclusion with her own fancies. Besides, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... horrible nightmare. She seemed to be lying on a bed of banknotes, whilst the Cochin-China, sitting heavily on her chest, reproached her bitterly for having handed her over to a stranger in exchange for a little filthy lucre. Mother Etienne, bathed in perspiration, seemed to suffocate under her sheets. ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... "You have taken our breath away, Wingate. Your amazing assurance has made it difficult for us to answer you coherently. I am only now beginning to realise that you are in earnest in this idiotic piece of melodrama, but if you are—so are we.—You can starve us or shoot us or suffocate us, but we shall not ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the dry-goods merchant. "A man that'll pay double fare to have the whole earth to himself when other folks has to be packed into a berth and suffocate! The conductor said he paid double to Chicago to get that compartment, and he's only goin' out in the desert a little ways. ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the odious vision came back again. First he seemed to hear a kind of roaring sound, such as is made by a threshing machine or the distant passage of a train over a bridge. Then he commenced to gasp, to suffocate, and he had to unbutton his collar and his belt. He moved about to make his blood circulate, he tried to read, he attempted to sing. It was in vain. His thoughts, in spite of himself, went back to the day of the murder and made him begin it all over again in all its most ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a haze was forming over his eyes. His heart was pounding until he believed that he must suffocate. Then he reeled suddenly, lost his ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... help us? Whatever is done, it can only be done quickly; for the moss is rising rapidly in the shaft, and even though some of the men are safe in the upper workings, it is only a question of a very short time till the moss will rise and suffocate them, or until the black damp does so. If you have any idea that can help, out with it and let us make a trial, for ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... 'it would fill in a moment and suffocate you. I see nothing for it, Peterkin, if you really can't keep your breath so long, but to let me knock you down, and carry you out while ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... saviour and king. If you are kind to me, I shall die. Beat me, misuse me, neglect me, be unfaithful—it is your right— and I shall serve you the better for it. But if you love me I cannot bear it. I shall suffocate with joy—my heart will crack. O Francis, Francis, wilt thou never understand thy poor girl?" All this time she was straining me to her with frenzy, kissing me, almost blind with tears. She was frantic, panting and struggling for breath. I had seen ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the desert "made straight the way of the Lord" and purged men of the grossest errors. And thus a method which gives internal equilibrium and disperses the grossest errors which suffocate the spiritual energies, makes ready for the reception of truth and the recognition of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... pretty hard to go!" I fully agreed with him then, but when later he got so bad and suffered so much, he prayed to go, and I again agreed with him, poor fellow. This latter time was when to speak made him cough and suffocate. "Old man, I cannot talk to you," and he would lie back in an exhausted state, and I would go, sorry that I was unable to do anything to relieve him, to slightly repay all his kindness to me in ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... suggests to me, I will pretend to be dead. I will shortly feign sickness, and do you on your side lavish your pains to provide for my tomb. Set your attention and care on this, that both tomb and bier be made in such fashion that I die not there nor suffocate, and let no one perceive you that night when you will be ready to take me away. And you will find me a refuge, such that never any save you may see me; and let no one provide me with anything of which I have ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the Hurricane, 'there are cities everywhere. Over thy head while thou didst sleep they have built them constantly. My four children the Winds suffocate with the fumes of them, the valleys are desolate of flowers, and the lovely forests are cut down since last ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... cried the doctor, when he saw what I had done. "Do you wish to suffocate us? That will let the air out perfectly, but how are you going to close it ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... shell! It makes a little chip with its beak, and then sometimes it can't get any further, and you have gently to crack the hole bigger. Unless you're very careful you may kill it, but on the other hand, if it can't burst its shell when it's ready to hatch, it may suffocate, so it's a choice of evils. We put them in the drying pen first, and then in the 'foster mother.' They're like babies, and have to be fed every two hours. It's a tremendous business when you have hundreds of them, at different stages and on different diets. We seemed to ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... saw by your looks that you wished to drink of that bottle, and I said within me, even though I suffocate, yet will I not leave one drop of the aguardiente of the Christian Cavalier to be wasted on that Jew, on whose head may ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... spiritual, meliorated, supernatural operation, that the Spirit which at the first was infused and given to the Body to live, might be released, that it should operate and penetrate as a Spiritual Essence, and Fire, having its Vent-holes left that it might burn and have no opposition, which might suffocate, suppress, or hinder the burning Life; whereas otherwise, if the separation of the Soul and Spirit from the Body should not first be done, there could not succeed any operation either effectual, profitable, or necessary; ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who shot at the queen. "It's a great pity," he replied, very sensibly, "they couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to combat for existence and prosperity. Nature has so laid its plans that, at or near the equator in the warm climate tropical fruits grow better than they do in Iceland, while the pine trees, true to nature, thrive best in cold regions. The Polar bear enjoys the snows of Alaska, but would suffocate in the tropical heat of Borneo or Sumatra. True to the law of the survival of the fittest, the elephant and ostrich thrive in sunny Africa, but would perish in Norway's winters. These things are true, because all nature is in perfect harmony ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... have air!" exclaimed the prince; "give me air or I suffocate! Where is the child of Annunziata?—I will at least atone to him for the wrong done ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened, as if the judgment-hour were near at hand, and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... pussons to de ball, my missus 'specs dem ar gemmens what is inwited to presarve dar qualifications. If gemmen am gemmen den dey don't cum'd to my missus's ball to suffocate her!" said Bowles, expressing himself, and assuming an ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... like a stab; for the ball pierced the left lung, broke a rib, and did no end of damage here and there; so the poor lad can find neither forgetfulness nor ease, because he must lie on his wounded back or suffocate. It will be a hard struggle, and a long one, for he possesses great vitality; but even his temperate life can't save him; I wish ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the future I can see for us. Apart from yourself, the things you'd want to share with me I despise. If I had to live in an atmosphere of sermons and shams, of ministerial sanctimoniousness and material striving for a bigger church and a bigger salary, I'd suffocate—I'd hate myself—and in the end ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was that. Dust, the dust of indifferent time, of cold-hearted oblivion, was drifting over him, hiding his smile, his eyes, his tears. It seemed to mount, to suffocate her, as she ran, this dust, strewn by her mother's hand. Even in her own heart she had known the parching of its drifting fall, known that crouching doubts—not of him, never of him—but of his greatness, had ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see under the feet of our ponies a mixture of moorland and bog—here, the strip of firm ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off, the strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends. This question of the moment is, What are we to ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... is Bardolphs foe, and frownes on him: for he hath stolne a Pax, and hanged must a be: a damned death: let Gallowes gape for Dogge, let Man goe free, and let not Hempe his Wind-pipe suffocate: but Exeter hath giuen the doome of death, for Pax of little price. Therefore goe speake, the Duke will heare thy voyce; and let not Bardolphs vitall thred bee cut with edge of Penny-Cord, and vile reproach. Speake Captaine for his Life, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... when they rescued ye? I was. I had twae muscles sprung on my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when they laid me on the heather. Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though he wasna touching me I began to suffocate, and yet I was ower weak to cry out and had ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... managed to swerve round without falling. But for an instant she could not, she dared not, raise her eyes. Clear on the frosty air came sounds that made her blood turn cold. She felt as if her heart would suffocate her. A brief blindness ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... to ask him what I've done." Dorothy felt as though she would suffocate. "No one would believe that story of Gordon, whatever they might ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... with indefinite doom on it, Here, in the fumes of a feculent moat, Under an alp with inscrutable gloom on it, Squats the wild witch with a ghoul at her throat! Black execration that cannot be spoken of— Speech of red hell that would suffocate Song, Starts from this terror with never a token of Day and its loveliness all the year long. Sin without name to it—man never heard of it— Crime that would startle a fiend from his lair, Blasted this Glen, and the leaf and ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... patiently upon his hind feet and stepped about so slowly that the organ-man growled at him and struck the organ again. Then the dancer moved faster; but the ears did not fly and every motion was a jerk. Nevertheless, the princess's heart had now begun to suffocate her. She recalled Gabriel's story of washing off the brown color from the dingy fur in the brook, and her eyes swam with tears at the mere possibility that this might be the object of her search. She had just sense enough to keep still and leave everything to Gabriel. Here, too, approached ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... they weep? Ah, Lord God, thou knowest! Their babes have been torn from their bosoms and cast upon the plains to die of hunger, or to be devoured by hyenas or jackals. The little innocents would die on the "Middle Passage," or suffocate between the decks of the floating slave-pen, freighted and packed with unparalleled human woe, and the slavers in mercy have cast them out to perish on their native shores. Such is the beginning, and no less wicked is the end of that system which Scribes and Pharisees in the Church and the State ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... on the other side of the table, was arranging into piles the papers before him. He complained Of the draft, and Miss Maggie shut the window. He said then that he didn't mean he wanted to suffocate, and she opened the one on the other side. The clock had hardly struck three when he accused her of having forgotten his medicine. Yet when she brought it he refused to take it. She had not brought the right ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... a while, at the same table as Penton, and saw him smirk down upon his guests as no one, surely, but W. W. Penton ever smirked. Evan felt that he would suffocate unless he got away from that table. He wished he could stand on a chair and reveal the character of the manager as he knew it—but a smile from Mrs. Penton reached him, and he filled with pity for her. He knew that ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... down disconsolately, and the heavy hours, like leaden waves, seemed to rise and rise, and roll over his head and suffocate him, and weigh him down, down, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... before a fire you should shut doors and windows behind you to prevent the supply of air which feeds the flames? Are you aware that by creeping on your hands and knees, and keeping your head close to the ground, you can manage to breathe in a room where the smoke would suffocate you if you stood up?—also, that a wet sponge or handkerchief held over the mouth and nose will enable you to breathe with less difficulty in the midst of smoke?—Do you know that many persons, especially children, lose their lives by being forgotten by the inmates of a house in cases of fire, ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... hysterical. But he only kissed her, his smiling deepening to a heavy laughter, silent and invisible, but sensible, as he carried her away once more. He intended her to be his slave, she knew. And he seemed to throw her down and suffocate her like a wave. And she could have fought, if only the sense of his dark, rich handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... placing them at a sufficient distance to insure the prolongation of our sufferings, so that we might die slowly, and afford them ample time to fully enjoy our agonies. The fires were lighted, and the smoke rolled up in volumes, and threatened to suffocate us and put a speedy end to our torments. In a few seconds however, as the wood got fairly blazing, the smoke lifted, and as we began to writhe in agony, a yell of delight went up from more than three thousand savage throats. The heat grew more intense; ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... foretell that the sick man is to die, the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put to death him who has thus been condemned by the sorcerers to die. These men come, and lay so many clothes upon the sick man's mouth that they suffocate him. And when he is dead they have him cooked, and gather together all the dead man's kin, and eat him. And I assure you they do suck the very bones till not a particle of marrow remains in them; for they say that ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... my knees helping to extricate him from the position in which he lay, with one arm still bound to his side, and the dark cloth garment from which Tom had shaken the gold bound round and round his head and face, effectually gagging him; and if the intention of his captors had been to suffocate him, they had nearly ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... family; but her surprise to see me now, by this most un expected journey, when she had concluded me inevitably shut up from her sight for the remainder of her life, joined to the natural warmth of her disposition, seemed almost to suffocate her. I was very sorry to leave her, but my time was unavoidably short and hurried. I inquired after Chesington, and heard ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... hissing roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face, but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first he felt that he would suffocate, and he coughed and gasped; but presently, when the thicker sand-clouds had passed, he managed to get air enough to breathe. Then he waited patiently while the steady seeping rustle swept by, and the band of his hat sagged heavier, and the load on his shoulders ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... has but one story, with attics in the mansard roofs, like those of a farmhouse in the country. I fancy Antony fled thither for a few moments, from the visitors who weary him; breathing the freshness of that dewy garden in the very midst of Paris. As for me, I suffocate this summer afternoon in this pretty Watteau chamber of ours, where Jean-Baptiste is ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... countenance which she sometimes wore. She went straight to the group of which her husband formed the centre. "Do not detain those gentlemen here, count," she said; "they would prefer, I should think, to breathe in the garden rather than suffocate here, since they ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... diabolico-angelical Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the World was a 'huge Ragfair,' and the 'rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining-down everywhere, like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What with those 'unhunted Helots' of his; and the uneven sic-vos-non-vobis pressure and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in existing things; what with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and spiders, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in these icy mountains. In a letter to her mother-in-law her heart cried out: "I cannot deny that living here is like living in a well of desolation. Sometimes I feel quite frantic to look out somewhere, and almost as though I should suffocate. But may Davos forgive me! It has done so much for Louis that I am ashamed to say ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the night grew colder and colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in a vain attempt to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage, and my men covered their heads and everything with their blankets; but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to suffocate me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only was it more comfortable, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by Tibetans. My men moaned, groaned, and chattered ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... near and clear that for a moment Stella's heart seemed to stop beating altogether, and she felt as if she would suffocate, and buried her face in her hands, expecting every moment to feel the claws of the terrible animal sink into the flesh of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... time to observe this, when they thrust me into the box, closed the lid, placed it in the wagon, and drove rapidly away. I could not doubt for a moment into whose hands I had fallen, and when they put me into the box, I wished I might suffocate, and thus end my misery at once. But they had taken good care to prevent this by boring holes in the box, which admitted air enough to keep up respiration. And this was the result of all my efforts for freedom! After all I had suffered ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... himself was this: it is a great and wilful conspiracy on the part of the conservatives to suffocate good learning and make the old ignorance triumph. This idea recurs innumerable times in his letters after the middle of 1518. 'I know quite certainly', he writes on 21 March 1519 to one of his German friends, 'that the barbarians on all sides ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... but impenetrably strong. I was pressing toward it, forcing my way, flattened against it, being crushed slowly between this thin, gray membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back. I knew that if the membrane did not give, if I did not break through at last, I would suffocate and die. In fact I was already dead, the idea came to me with a weight of horror, I twisted, lashing out in total panic. Then the thin gray wall split and gave way, and I ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... as if his anger must suffocate him. "It is too disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make neither top nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our nose; we were all afraid we should put our foot in it without knowing it; and now that one wants to go there it is somewhere ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... self-possession for an instant; but when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate me where ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... gap would avail them nothing: it was an impossible task now. The construction of the great shell had been a different matter; there was some natural atmosphere remaining in those days. And, finally, they would suffocate, every last one of them. They'd die miserably, purple of face ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... curious little tubes developed for this purpose, oddly enough from their tail-ends. If some kind of film could be spread over the surface of the water, through which the larvae could not obtain air, they would suffocate. The well-known property of oil in "scumming over" water was recalled, two or three stagnant pools were treated with it, and to the delight of the experimenters, not a single larva was able to develop under the circumstances. Here was insecticide number one. The cheapest of oils, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the lights, her heart beating as though it would suffocate her. At last, her clothes soaked with the storm, her hair dripping, she returned to the house. Her aunt ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... uneasy dream. In the delirious fantasies of fever she again lived over the impressions of the mountain journey, but in darker colours. She saw the subterranean spirits, how in terrible shapes they raged about in the now wilderness, and sought to suffocate her beneath piles of snow and ice, which they flung upon her. Susanna combated with desperate exertions against them, for she knew that if she fell, the defence for those she loved would be taken away, and that the subterranean ones could seize upon it; and therefore any ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... cautiously, seeking for a place to board. The heat from that floating mass of belching flame was terrific, and more than once, as a gust brought down a cloud of fumes over him, the boy thought he would suffocate. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... eyesores to artists in search of the harmonious. It is at this oppressive season of the year that I would relieve my exhausted vision with the grateful greens of the dusky olive, the pale pea, and the lively emerald. I pant for a plantation which shall shelter and not suffocate. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... shook his head. "No," he said, tapping the hives to shake the dead bees from their cells, "if you suffocate 'em this way, they only die once: if you fumigate 'em in the new way, they come to life again, and die o' starvation; so the pangs o' death be twice ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... if the fiend incarnate before him carried out his intention of firing the place it would be all over with him. The horrible smoke would assuredly suffocate him ere he could, even by exerting the most Herculean strength, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... the answer, "and so we are. I've had a sea biscuit and a spoonful of salmon in the last two days. We're on whack. You see, when we discovered the fire, we battened down immediately to suffocate the fire. And then we found how little food there was in the pantry. But it was too late. We didn't dare break out the lazarette. Hungry? I'm just as hungry as ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... a last look at the tenement as Coupeau called out to the concierge. The building seemed to have grown larger under the moonless sky. The drip-drip of water from the faucet sounded loud in the quiet. Gervaise felt that the building was threatening to suffocate her and a chill went through her body. It was a childish fear and she smiled at it ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... more, my beloved," she said, "and then we must part. But why are you so pale?" she asked of Hermann, whose heart was beating fast enough to suffocate him; for he was afraid now of the consequences ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... It will make us ridiculous. They'll think Americans don't know anything. There must be some way of dampening the stove; and if there isn't, I'd rather suffocate than give myself away." Mrs. March ran and opened the window, while her husband carefully examined the stove at every point, and explored the pipe for the damper in vain. "Can't you find it?" The night wind came in raw and damp, and threatened to blow their lamp out, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... everyday strange? We do—because they aren't—us.... Eating. Stuffing into ourselves thin slices of what were queer little hot and eager beasts.... The perpetual need to do such things. And all the mad fury of sex, Stephen!... We don't live, we suffocate in our living bodies. They storm and rage and snatch; it isn't us, Stephen, really. It can't be us. It's all so excessive—if it is anything more than the first furious rush into existence of beings that will go on—go on at last to quite beautiful real things. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... Let them stay down where they are; they won't suffocate yet awhile, and we'll have peace on deck for an hour or ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... simultaneously, "Go away at once, and never come back here again, you girl of infamous taste! Who are you? You are not the princess we left in the castle. You are of villain's blood, and the very air which you exhale does suffocate us. So with no more ado ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... yours—and your guide into mine," he declared. After a moment's hesitation she gravely answered: "It might not hurt you to know something of my world after all. It's rather humanizing for an artist to free himself from a single environment. It is possible to suffocate on incense." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... wriggled and struggled about the bed. He was sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bleached skeletons in the dry ungenial air. Yet inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal palace, with its terrible Glaciere, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber, funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate—so runs tradition—the shrieks of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... leading-strings. Or at least from the time when he begins to be able to put one foot before the other, he shall not be supported, except over paved places; and he shall be hurried over these. Instead of letting him suffocate in the exhausted air indoors, let him be taken every day, far out into the fields. There let him run about, play, fall down a hundred times a day; the oftener the better, as he will the sooner learn to get up again by himself. The boon of freedom is worth many scars. My pupil will ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... bad in the other valley. Certainly this sand is going to try its best to suffocate us. Whew, there she comes!" as a cloud of sand ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... men, can be so barbarous as to invent such grotesque names as these is surprizing, or why Apicius should be remembered for having been the first to teach mankind how to suffocate fish in Carthaginian pickle; or Quin, for having discovered a sauce for John Dories; or Mrs. Glasse, for an eel pie; or M. Soyer, celebrated for depriving barbel of their sight, in order to make them grow fatter, and be more acceptable to the epicure. Into this wilderness of discoveries, I have ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... peered through the twilight dimness and perceived that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost in darkness. What a place that was to be in—especially if that leather belt should break! The compression of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow; he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper. Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could; his friends understood, and dragged him out of those ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prey is large, such as a big stag, the leopard's grip on the throat may not suffocate it completely; then the leopard uses another method. He keeps his grip on the throat of the prey, and pulls downward with his full weight. The prey tries to rear up on its hind legs to throw off the leopard—but then the leopard pulls downward with a sudden jerk. This breaks ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... paint did have a pretty fierce smell, but I didn't put much faith in it. I'd been in opium joints, an' I knew that a Chinaman would FATTEN on a smell 'at would suffocate a goat; an' when it comes to vigorous an' able-bodied odors, a ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... to regain her balance, but the pressure round her throat, tightening, bade fair to suffocate her; and reeling, while her hands tore ineffectually at the folds of the veil, she was drawn back and back, and tripped, falling half on, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... strong breath of the violets and heliotrope there on the mantle, in the same blood-coloured Bohemian vase where they bloomed that day,—that May day,—all these bring back so overpoweringly the time that is for ever dead to me,—that I feel as if I should suffocate." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... felt it grow very warm, and they thought this was because of their good fare; but when the heat became still greater and they wanted to go out, but found the doors and windows fastened, then they knew that the King meant them harm and was trying to suffocate them. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... for the universe," Tiberius is reported to have muttered, as he gazed at his nephew Caius, nicknamed Caligula, who was to suffocate him with a mattress and rule in ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... about him; and had it not been for those very timbers that cut him off from the air he was choking to breathe, he would have been crushed and battered out of all human semblance in a second. As it was, ere he had time to suffocate, MacPherson was ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite suffocate him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt death, the gypsy would have been reduced to powder before ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a wild leap which seemed almost to suffocate her; she looked up into his face with ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... him on the highway, or the stone over which he stumbles. This is precisely the character of those speculative systems which deny the reality of action and substitute the idea for the deed; such a world does more than suffocate the individual soul; it destroys the very meaning of life by robbing it of moral order and meaning. The end of such a conception of the universe is necessarily annihilation, and its ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... hasten your departure. We have had for some days stifling heat; we literally suffocate. You need to spend a fortnight longer amid the shade of the pine-trees, and four thousand feet above the level ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... is a selenium cell. Selenium is a bad conductor of electricity in the dark, and an excellent conductor when exposed to light. I merely moved my coat and hat, and the light from the furnace which was going to suffocate us played through the glass on the cell, the circuit was completed without your suspecting that I could communicate with friends outside, a bell was rung on the street, and here they are. Andrews, there is the murderer of Morowitch, and there in his ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... to take the place of those slain; the advantages of position were too great, and they were obliged at length to desist. But Genghis was not to be balked of his victims, and his devilish cunning suggested the expedient of lighting straw at the mouth of the cave to suffocate those inside, but the size of the place prevented his plan from taking effect; so he at last commanded a large fragment of rock to be rolled to the mouth of the cavern, adding another as a support, and having thus effectually ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... harsh word to me—who have sunk all a father's authority in a father's love,—how can I say all that I feel for you?—the grateful overflowing, (paining, yet—oh, how sweet!) remembrances which crowd around and suffocate me now?—The time will come when Ellinor and Ellinor's children must be all in all to you—when of your poor Madeline nothing will be left but a memory; but they, they will watch on you and tend you, and protect your grey hairs from sorrow, as I might once have ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the rage of Don Silvio at the protracted resistance of the party, and the security of their retreat. To get at them was impossible, so he determined to set fire to the room, and suffocate them, if he could do no otherwise. He gave his directions to his men, who rushed down for straw, but in so doing he carelessly passed under the trap-door, and Mesty, who had carried up with him two or three of the stones, dashed one down on the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the visor and gorget, said, in a tone of impatient grief, "Oh, he would recover instantly could I but give him air—land and living, life and honour, would I give for the power of undoing these cruel iron platings that suffocate him!" He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes. The body lay as that of one whose last draught of vital air had been drawn, and who must never more have concern with the nether sky. But Halbert Glendinning failed not to raise the visor and cast ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... pains, Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to walk Off by myself to hev a privit talk With a queer critter thet can't seem to 'gree Along o' me like most folks,—Mister Me. Ther' 's times when I'm unsoshle ez a stone, An' sort o' suffocate to be alone,— I'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are nigh, An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; Now the wind's full ez shifty in the mind Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west weather, My innard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... are liable to be arrested by the tonsil; which therefore becomes the nest of the future disease, like the inflamed circle round the inoculated puncture of the arm in supposititious small-pox. This swelling is liable to suffocate the patient in small-pox, and to become gangrenous in scarlet fever, and some other contagious fevers, which have been received in this manner. The existence of inflammation of the tonsil previous to the scarlet eruption, as the arm inflames in the inoculated small-pox, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... At length she arose: with a proud and steady air she wiped away the tears which, glistened on her eyelashes, like the amber-gum on the thorns of the larch-tree, and said, "Ammalat! tempt me not! The flame of love will not dazzle, the smoke of love will not suffocate, my conscience. I shall ever know what is good and what is bad; and I well know how shameful it is, how base, to desert a father's house, to afflict loving and beloved parents! I know all this—and now, measure the price of my sacrifice. I fly with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... gave one prolonged shriek that literally roused the house. The brawnier of the two,—a magnificent creature, with her corsets outside of her dress,—after holding her sides with laughter until I thought she would suffocate, sank upon the sea-chest, from which her companion rescued her just as Mme. Flamand and Baeader opened the door. All this time my chin was resting on the jagged rim of the tub, and my ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to see it. There is but one copy, and Time wears even that. To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it were, but one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it. The Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of old sages, but also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress; for there is continual wandering in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... house early in the afternoon. Unable to go to the Hill of the Muses, or up the river-road, she had taken a long, roundabout path around the outskirts of the village and so reached the hills back of the vineyard. The air of the valley seemed to suffocate her; she longed to climb to the silent places, where the four ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... One of them rushed close to Murat and endeavored to kill one of his officers. It was thought sufficient to disarm him; but he again fell upon his victim, threw him to the ground, and attempted to suffocate him; and even after his arms were seized and held, he strove to tear him with his teeth. These were the only Muscovites who had waited our coming! and who seemed to have been left behind as a savage and frightful emblem of the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... ye suffocate in the fumes of their maws and appetites! Better break the windows and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... lose myself like that in your desert. When its vastness overwhelmed me, or its beauty dazzled me, or its loneliness weighed down upon me, I should have to record my impressions. Otherwise, I should suffocate." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of so many feet in successive dense columns, and completely enveloped the whole brigade, almost blinding the men, so that they could hardly see the man before them, and getting into their noses and mouths so as nearly to suffocate them; however, they bore it manfully, and marched straight through it like Britons. Our encampment that night was at a place called Golam Shah, on the Buggaur, one of the branch streams of the Indus. We found that the second brigade had only left it the same morning, having been obliged to halt ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... Suction sucxado. Sudden subita. Sue procesi. Suet graso. Suffer (endure) suferi. Suffer (tolerate) toleri. Suffering sufero. Suffice suficxi. Sufficiency suficxeco. Sufficient suficxa. Suffix sufikso. Suffocate sufoki. Suffrage (vote) vocxdono. Sugar sukero. Sugar basin sukerujo. Suggest proponi, inspiri. Suicide memmortigo. Suicide, to commit sin memmortigi. Suit konveni. Suitable konvena, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... travel without a single light showing. Every light inside of the boat is covered with a heavy black crape, and the port-holes and windows are so scrupulously and carefully chained down that the average open-air fiend from California or elsewhere feels that he will suffocate before morning comes, and even in the bitterest of winter weather I have known some fresh-air fiends to prefer the deck of the ship, with all of its bitter winds and cold, to the inside of a cabin with no windows open. I stood on the deck of an ocean liner "Somewhere ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... from doing them, and from thus manifesting the tendencies of his depraved will. Who cannot see that the Lord cannot flow in out of heaven into man and teach him and lead him until these evils have been removed? For they obstruct, repel, pervert, and suffocate the truths and goods of heaven, which present themselves from above, press down, and strive to flow in. For evils are infernal and goods are heavenly, and everything infernal burns with ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... words not to be followed by violent acts. Here every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events. We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not appear to him demonstrative. We have this anecdote from ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Mortain began to wag his head about and pluck at the morse of his cope. "Air, air!" he gasped; "I strangle! I suffocate!" They carried him out of church to his, lodging, and there ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... to free himself were in vain. For hours he lay there, gasping for breath. Suddenly, when he was about to suffocate, the door was broken open, and he found himself fainting in the arms of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was the unpleasant sensation of brawny savages kneeling on us and trussing us up with palm-fibre ropes. Also they thrust handfuls of dry grass into our mouths to prevent us from calling out, although as air came through the interstices of the grass, we did not suffocate. The thing was so well done that we never struck a blow in self-defence, and although we had our pistols at hand, much less could we fire a shot. Of course, we struggled as well as we were able, but it was quite useless; in three minutes we ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... waste. He used to move her so much by this policy of negation that she found herself panting as she sat among her women; or when from her throned seat at table she saw his pale profile burn like a silver coin in the dusk, the pain of her heart's beating well-nigh made her suffocate. Her troubles came to be day-long; he haunted her by night. When she began to ask the Virgin Mary how long she could endure, it was the signal to herself that she could endure no more. She sent for him then, and implored him brokenly—sobbing, kneeling before him—that ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... his uncle, and to atone in part for his previous neglect, Bog devoted only a half eye to the Minford family, and kept the rest of his optics on the fire. Just after its discovery, the smoke had loomed up dense and black, as if it were trying to suffocate the flames beneath. Then it changed rapidly to a light blue, and was chased faster upward by two tongues of fire. These tongues leaped aloft with a sudden impulse, and shed a revelation of light over acres of houses, and brought out church steeples in vivid relief against the sky, and put ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... has come to our ears that numbers of both sexes do not avoid to have intercourse with demons, Incubi and Succubi; and that by their sorceries, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women, the increase of animals, the corn of the ground, the grapes of the vineyard and the fruit of the trees, as well as men, women, flocks, herds, and other various kinds of animals, vines ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... passed in further welcome, but when Henry sought the blankets the third night he became conscious that the first flush of the return was over. The weather had turned very hot—it was now July—and the walls and ceiling of the room seemed to press upon him and suffocate him. He drew deep and long breaths, but there was not air enough to fill a chest that had long been used to the illimitable outside. It was very still in the room. He longed to hear the boughs of trees waving over him. He felt that only ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stamp out the Polish language and Polish national feelings, the Germans are now sorrowing over the alleged attempts of the Walloons to suffocate the Flemish dialect. German war books breathe hate and contempt for the Walloons, but bestow clumsy bear-like caresses (no doubt unwelcome to their recipients) ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... gorgeous warrior trappings, Carthoris, my son. These three fell upon Dejah Thoris as we entered the apartment, and though the lives and training of royal Martians tend not toward vulgar demonstration, I thought that they would suffocate her with ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unheeding. If he spent the whole night on the ramparts, there was no one to know or care. It was better than tossing sleepless under a roof. He felt as if a roof would suffocate him. But sheer physical weariness began to oppress even his elastic frame at last. He awoke to the fact that ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... was it? What was she going to hear? Had Kenneth turned back half-way out to India for her sake? Had some trouble befallen him, in which he had come to seek her sympathy? What could it be? and her heart beating so as almost to suffocate her, she opened ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... fanned herself vigorously. Her efforts to cool herself were so vigorous that in a very few moments she was wet with perspiration and much warmer than she had been before she started to fan. She felt as if she were about to suffocate in this close room after her glorious little run in the breath of the ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... here because I wrote something on a piece of paper. There has been a whisper that you were once a spy in this city—think of it; the name of spy does not sound well. Rumour has touched you but lightly, yet if I say the word it can envelope and suffocate you." ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... began this letter with a firm, and, as I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my tears suffocate me. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... those who could not get there almost all perished. Before and behind the waves dashed impetuously, and swept away the men in spite of all their resistance. At the centre the pressure was such, that some unfortunates were suffocate by the weight of their comrades, who fell upon them at every instant. The officers kept by the foot of the little mast, and were obliged every moment to call to those around them to go to the one or the other ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... inhabitants were found living on the low ground near the sea, in cabins which seemed calculated rather to suffocate their inhabitants than to protect them from the weather; and yet these wretched people were not without courage. Upon sight of the fleet approaching, they collected in arms on the shore, and drew up in order to attack the strangers on their landing. Their arms were spears, not headed with ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... tying his hands behind him, had hurled him viciously into the room. It had but one entrance, though up high on one wall was a crack some two feet in width that admitted fresh air. A little room, only some twenty feet square; but he would not suffocate—the priests did not intend that he ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... prognosticate king, emperor winding, sinuous hint, insinuate burn, incinerate fire, incendiarism bind, constrict crab, crustacean fowls, poultry lean, incline flat, level flat, vapid sharpness, acerbity sharpness, acrimony shepherd, pastor word, vocable choke, suffocate stifle, suffocate clothes, raiment witness, spectator beat, pulsate mournful, melancholy beginning, incipient drink, imbibe light, illuminate hall, corridor stair, escalator anger, indignation fight, combat sleight-of-hand, prestidigitation build, construct ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... vessel, which evidently had not been laden with anything valuable, and go again on board the Spanish ship and make some sort of a plan for fastening lines to those treasure-boxes so that they might be hauled up on board the brig, I began to feel a sort of trouble with my breath, as if I might suffocate if I did not get out soon. I knew, of course, that something was the matter with my air-supply, and I signalled for them to pump lively. But it was of no use; my supply of fresh air seemed to be cut off. I began to gasp. I was terribly frightened, you may ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... do it? My friend, so short a time thou'rt missing, And hast unlearned thy kissing? Why is my heart so anxious, on thy breast? Where once a heaven thy glances did create me, A heaven thy loving words expressed, And thou didst kiss, as thou wouldst suffocate me— Kiss me! Or ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe |
