"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment the whole brig was shaken, and the councilors startled from their dignity by a tremendous explosion which drove them from their seats, while the air was rent by yells and shrieks in various tones and degrees, and a stifling smoke and smell of gunpowder ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... pyramids of skulls festooned with human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of Vathek in scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, eccentric, author secluded in Fonthill Abbey, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... The sound of his voice grated on her ears; his commendation made her doubt the wisdom and purity of her own act; his approval irritated her as no rebuke could have done. Without waiting for him to conclude his sentence, she grasped Bertha's hand, whispering, "I cannot stay here; I am stifling; come with me." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... it broken with the pity of it all. A city's tragedies often require search to reveal them, but upon the frontier tragedy stalks unsepulchered in the background of nearly every life, ready to leap out in all its naked horror and settle itself leech-like upon the sympathetic heart, stifling it with ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... stifling, cruel work; with their mouths choked with dust, with their throats caked with thirst, with their eyes blind with smoke; while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew, or the shot plowed through ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... of the storm that was gathering about his head, no longer deigning even to speak to Remedios, or look at her, as with her head bowed like a sulky goat, she went around stifling her tears at the memory of those happy strolls in the orchard under dona ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the reader with my experiences after arriving at New York. I could not have felt worse had I been driven into the Dismal Swamp. My apartments were dusty and stifling, and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... retreat, she spent the rest of her days. Her intense temperament, her absolute faith and submission, her systematic attention to business, her mystical ecstasies, her heroic sacrifice, form a most original combination. Her life seems an alternation of sober processes, stormy raptures, and stifling calms. Her restless sensibility, girdled by fixed principle, gives us the picture of a sea of fire breaking on a shore of frost. Her essay on "Desire and the Agony of Disappointment" is a gush forced from the bottom ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... overlooking the Flats. It was a heavy train, and a train that was helping to make history—a combination of freight, passenger, and "cattle." It had averaged eight miles an hour on its climb toward Yellowhead Pass and the end of steel. The "cattle" had already surged from their stifling and foul-smelling cars in a noisy inundation of curiously mixed humanity. They were of a dozen different nationalities, and as the girl looked at them it was not with revulsion or scorn but with a sudden quickening of heartbeat ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... changeth at all, whether, on the contrary, it has not become a Juggernaut car that crushes all originality and independence out of action, this breathes more and more plainly out of the progressing work of Ibsen. Hedda Gabler condemns the old order, in its dulness, its stifling mediocrity, but she is unable to adapt her energy to any wholesome system of new ideas, and she sinks into deeper moral dissolution. She hates all that has been done, yet can herself do nothing, and she represents, in symbol, that detestable ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... that life is beautiful. Yes, if only it seems so! The life of us three hasn't been beautiful yet; it has been stifling us as if it was weeds... I'm crying. I oughtn't.... [Dries her tears, smiles] We must work, work. That is why we are unhappy and look at the world so sadly; we don't know what work ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... so cold and barren, that the inhabitants have to procure most of their provisions from the coast; this is caused by the exhalations of salts and sulphur from the earth, which destroy the growth of all vegetables. These are so stifling to the Spaniards who dwell about the mines, that they are obliged often to drink the mattea, or tea made of the herb camini, to moisten their mouths. The mules also, that trip it nimbly over the mountains, are forced to walk slowly in the country about the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... forth in the dismal light. They could readily discern strangely shaped buildings of a costly type. The air was stifling, and everything wore a melancholy dress; yet, withal, there was a pleasing charm about the place. Some secret touch in the doleful music, or some bright tinge to the ominous shadows, awakened a curiosity and a hope in the visitors ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... pleasant as had been created by its beautiful walks and buildings, and the civility with which our questions were answered by the inhabitants. We might have seen the country between Montpelier and Nismes to greater advantage, the dust being somewhat less stifling than before; but unluckily there was nothing worth seeing. The district is certainly a garden, but then it is a flat uninteresting kitchen garden, for the supply of the Lunel brandy merchants, and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... first. She beckoned Mazzetti who stood in attendance beside Mrs. Hubbell's chair. She snatched up the wrap that lay at hand and rose. "It's stifling in here. I'm going out on the Promenade for a breath of air. Come on." She plucked at Mazzetti's sleeve and actually propelled him through the crowd and out of the room. She saw ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... behind the house and struck through the woods by a short-cut leading to the Creston road. A lead-coloured sky hung heavily over the fields, and in the forest the motionless air was stifling; but she pushed on, impatient to reach the road which was the shortest way to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... get up when I heard your foot on the stairs. I feel stronger this morning, and I want to get out-of-doors. The house is stifling me. I have been listening so hard for the sound of her foot or her voice that when I try to listen I can't hear for the thumping of my heart in my ears. I want to be with her. I too am only a trouble to people. She and I will not be a ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... curtly enough to "keep her going to the s'uth'ard," and then drew away his partner into the stifling little chart-house. "Now," he said, "you see how it is. Our little admiral up there is standing on his temper, and if he doesn't hear the plan of campaign, he's quite equal ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the door was closed, she rolled upon the floor in agony, stifling her moans lest they should be heard outside, beating her breast and biting her arms like a ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... ghost of itself, and a faint rose was beginning to tinge the pallor of the sky behind the Bakhtiari mountains, when the motor began to miss fire. Gaston, stifling an exclamation, cut it off, unscrewed the cap of the tank, and measured the gasolene. Then he stepped softly forward to the place in the bow where he kept his reserve cans. Magin, roused by the stopping of the boat, sat ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the equatorial summer penetrated the embrasures of the fort, and made stifling even the dim, whitewashed room where Lawrence Teck was sitting. Dusky from the sun, and seeming more aquiline than ever in his gauntness, he remained like an effigy in the suit of white duck that hung round him in loose folds, without so much as a movement of his eyes. His hand rested ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... fateful words Stygian darkness enveloped the crowded room. The shades had been drawn and not the faintest ray from the dim street lights penetrated the place. It was stifling hot, and the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... without hesitation, knowing whither it led. It was damp and stifling. Her candle burned dimmer and dimmer in the impure air of the long shut-up passage. There were, however, no other obstacles in her way. The passage was unincumbered; but the low arch, scarcely over her own height, seemed to press down ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... roadside inn in England and its synonym up in the country of America; a better parallel is a speculative railway tavern verging always on bankruptcy. There is an utter absence of the old-fashioned coziness which enables you easily to dispense with luxuries. You enter at once into a stifling, stove heated bar-room, defiled with all nicotine abominations, where, for the first few minutes, you draw your breath hard, and then settle down into a dull, uneasy stupor, conscious of nothing except a weight tightening around your temples like a band of molten ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... school; and when he was allowed to go home he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... that our leading men, so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry them on, while the very emancipation our Government's busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... serious and energetic part of her character was founded on deep passion, for after her sister's marriage with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister's companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and preserving an outward calm that had no doubt ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... spread of canal irrigation in the western Panjab. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But in the latter half of it cooler nights ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the singing ceased, and one by one the recruits fell asleep in the close, stifling air of the place. Ned dozed an hour or two, but awoke before dawn. He was oppressed by a deep and unaccountable gloom, and it was not lifted when, in the dusk, he looked at the rows of sleeping figures, crowded so close together that no part of the floor ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... out through the opening in the canvas and sat down beside my father on the seat. The air was stifling with the dust that rose from the wagons and the many hoofs of the animals. So thick was the dust that it was like mist or fog in the air, and the low sun shone through it dimly and with ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... vivid as reality. He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a day, warm, and stifling so that one could scarcely breathe even down by the sea-shore, I went from bed to bed in the hospital of the pest-laden city with my soothing draughts and medicines. And there went with me a holy woman, ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... sleep and could not recover it. He found Bernardo Nunez's small, small cabin stifling, and at last he got up, put on garments, and slipped forth and through great cabin to outer air. He might have found the Admiral there before him, for he slept little and was about the ship at all hours, but ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... bleed; I feel the chill of night or of the tomb Creeping upon me slowly, stealthily. But lo, I struggle to shake off the evil That creeps on me so cold; with longing heart, I drag my bleeding knees beyond thy walls, Out of thy columns—forests stifling me— Into the sunlight ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... as much as five degrees north of the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land. By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7 deg. N., and caught the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh water left, they arrived within sight of land. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Chatterton was saying to herself in the other room; "what good could it do? Oh! this vile air is stifling. Will no one come to say she is better?" And so ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... and the air of the room was stifling. Dorothy groped around to see if she might find the candle that she had noticed on the stand, ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... in a certain Iowa town and Thomas R. Marshall, Vice-President of the United States, was to speak. The hall was packed and the air was stifling. For some reason, it was impossible to open the windows, and one had ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... the small green master's- tent Kingozi appeared, demanding water wherewith to wash. At the sound of his voice men stirred sleepily, sat up, poked the remains of their tiny fires. As though through an open tap the freshness of night-time drained away. The hot, searching, stifling African day ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... dodge the missile, while Rollo exercised great forbearance in stifling a bark, "Greek is not quite so severe to some folks ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... simple pages may at all, in His most merciful hands, promote the holy cause of such a hidden life and its fruitful issues, it will indeed be happiness to the writer. In these days of stifling materialism in philosophy, and withering naturalism in theology, but in which also the Holy Spirit, far and wide, is breathing upon us in special mercy from above, there is no duty more pressing on the Christian than to seek, in the world of work, after that life which ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... looked at her. Her breathing was so laboured I thought she was in a fit; and first I tried to put leeches on her temples, but they would not bite, and we resolved to carry her into the fresh breeze in the verandah, for the air of the room seemed laden with something close and stifling. When I threw back the covering of the bed, I perceived that the veins of both arms had been cut, and a few drops of blood stained her night-dress; also there was a small empty bottle in the bed with "Laudanum" on its label. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... to her every evening, sitting in the stifling, ugly house, and poured out his soul as if it were a libation to a goddess. She sometimes answered by telegraph, sometimes by a perfumed note. He schooled himself not to feel hurt. Why should Babette write? Does a goldfinch indict epistles; ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... came out of the stifling heat of the thick jungle, and saw before them a great reedy swamp, the margin fringed by a scanty growth of cocoanut and pandanus palms. Out upon the open patches of water, here and there showing upon the broad expanse of the swamp, they saw large flocks of wild duck feeding and swimming about, betraying ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Ill-temper, ill-treatment even, she might have borne. His clumsy caresses, his foolish, halting words of tenderness became a horror to her. She wondered whether to laugh or to strike at his upturned face. His tactless devotion filled her life as with some sickly perfume, stifling her. If only she could be by herself for a little while to think! But he was with her night and day. There were times when, as he would cross the room towards her, he grew monstrous until he towered above her, a formless thing such as children dream of. And she would sit with ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... was a common jail in the Park, now the Hall of Records, and the other was the old Sugar-House in Liberty Street, next to the Middle Dutch Church. The jail was so crowded with the captured Americans that they had scarcely room to lie on the bare floor. The air was stifling, the rooms pestilential, full of filth ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The smell of oil and death enveloped me, And I could feel The crouching figures straining at a crank, Knees under chins, and heads drawn sharply down, The heave and sag of shoulders, Sting of sweat; An eighth braced figure stooping to a wheel, Body to body in the stifling gloom, The sob and gasp of breath against an air Empty and damp and fetid as a tomb. With them I seemed to reel Beneath the spin and heel When combers took them fair, Bruising their bodies, Lifting black water where Their feet clutched ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... and made him die by poison in order to show his abhorrence of them—this, when we know Hamlet to have died by the poisoned foil in the earlier play. On that view, Cordelia died by hanging in order to show Shakspere's conviction that she was a malefactor; and Desdemona by stifling as a fitting punishment for adultery. The idea is outside of serious discussion. Barely to assume that Shakspere held Hamlet for a pitiable weakling is a sufficiently shallow interpretation of the play; but to assume that he made him die by way of condign ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... wind for days, and no sea, except the agitation caused by the upheavals. The sky was a dull mud color, and the sun looked like nothing but a dark, red ball, rising day by day in the east, to move overhead and set in the west. The air was hot, sultry, and stifling, and I had difficulty in keeping ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... to say what thoughts surged through the boy's brain as he lay there in the stifling hay with the hot blood pounding against his temples. I shall not pretend to say whether he was sane or insane as he walked to the house for the perpetration of the awful crime. I do not even affirm it would not have happened ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... They have kept up a correspondence with some of the most patriotic individuals in every principal town and city in the kingdom; by which means they have frequently exercised the power which they thus acquire, of stifling those sparks of popular fervour, that would have long since kindled into an irrepressible blaze of patriotism, had it not been for the sinister exertions of this foul extinguisher of every particle of generous public liberty, that did not tend to promote their own base and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... told me that it affected her that way too, at first, and it got so that a procession of white-faced, wailing babies began to appear to her in the dead of night and cry for her to help them; to give them a chance to breathe in the stifling midnight, a chance to claim their birthright of clean water and air and sun. And she added, 'When you get to seeing things at ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to clear up the mystery that was fast stifling out my youth, love and hope. I professed to have an extraordinary desire to see the city from the house-top. I had never been any higher up than the third story of any house I had been in, and could not, I told her, go any higher in the house in which I was then living. Might I go up ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... chapter over again; my mind was preoccupied last night and I did not hear it distinctly." This was Aunt Phoebe's excuse for having fallen asleep during the reading. So poor Hinpoha had to sit in that stifling room and read until she thought she would faint. Aunt Phoebe fell asleep presently, however, to her great relief, and she stole out softly, leaving the door open behind her so that some air could get ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... beginning to fuss.... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice—to a roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the stifling ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the time ran on, no one could deny that the child was puny, that his birthright of health was dwindling fast. And, while it dwindled, the heat came on, and then the stifling dog days. It was a season when the lustiest of children wilted with the damp, depressing heat; and the Brenton baby, never lusty, wilted with them. Katharine treated him with conscientious regularity; but dog days and consequent dysentery proved too strenuous a claim for her to fight alone, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... to their own prudent custom, it is with the utmost difficulty they can keep from laughing, when they see several French men or French women together, and always several of them speaking at the same time. I had observed them for two years stifling a laugh on those occasions, and had often asked the reason of it, without receiving any satisfactory answer. At length I pressed one of them so earnestly to satisfy me, that after some excuses, he told me in their language, "Our ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... said, from Westminster, and wearily enough I paced along the busy streets, exhausted by the stifling heat of the Vice-Chancellor's court, in which I had been patiently sitting since ten o'clock, vainly waiting for that 'occasion sudden' of which our old law-writers are so full. Moodily, too, I was revolving in my mind our narrow circumstances, and the poor hopes I had of mending them; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... spirit Lady Bearwarden wandered about in the fever of a sorrow, so keen that her whole soul would sometimes rise in rebellion against the unaccustomed pain. There was something stifling to her senses in the fact of remaining between the four walls of a house. She panted for air, motion, freedom, and betook herself to Kensington Gardens, partly because that beautiful retreat lay within an easy walk of her house, partly ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... bright-coloured, upholstered furniture, that courteous and heartless old man in the open silk wadded jacket, in the white jabot and white cravat, with lace ruffles falling over his fingers, with a soupon of powder (so his valet expressed it) on his combed-back hair, I felt choked by the stifling scent of ambre, and my heart sank. Ivan Matveitch usually sat in a large low chair; on the wall behind his head hung a picture, representing a young woman, with a bright and bold expression of face, dressed in a sumptuous Hebrew ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... younger women, the duenna's lachrymose confidences, the incessant interchange of theatrical jargon and coarse pleasantry—there remained to Odo but a confused image, obscured by the smoke of guttering candles, the fumes of wine and the stifling air of the low-ceilinged tavern. Even the face of the pretty girl who had dragged him from his concealment, and who now sat at his side, plying him with sweets from her own plate, began to fade into the general blur; and his last impression was of Cantapresto's figure dilating ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... go Thither, yon, and too and fro— From the stifling city streets To the country's cool retreats— From the riot to the rest Were hearts beat the placidest: Afterwhile, and we will fall Under breezy trees, and loll In the shade, with thirsty sight Drinking deep the blue ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... odor became stifling, so in order to get as far from the Indians as possible, I went across the room and sat upon a small trunk by the window. I had not been there five minutes, however, before that wily chief, who had apparently not noticed my existence, got up from his chair, gathered his blanket around him, and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... its sanctity and bow down before the commanding influence of some new force. These periods are of rare occurrence and generally of short duration. They remind one of those thunderstorms which burst upon us at the close of a sultry August day, unheralded but by the stifling heat of a burning sky, and in a few moments leaving the atmosphere behind them pure and clear and cool. Sudden and unheralded as they appear, they are yet the direct result of a long series of forces, whose ultimate issue might have been accurately ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the smoke had favoured them. Thick and stifling in the immediate vicinity of the waggons, it enabled them to slip unobserved through the ruck of savages. Many of these, still mounted, had seen them pass outward, but through the blue film had mistaken them for two of their own men. They perhaps knew nothing of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... mere idea was amusing, and I had a flashing glimpse of what it must be to see Florence Lloyd smile! Well it should not be my fault, or due to my lack of exertion, if the day did not come when she should smile again, and I promised myself I should be there to see it. But stifling these thoughts, I brought my mind back to duty. Drawing from my pocket the photograph I had found in Mr. Crawford's desk, I showed it ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... luxurious, but the girl's eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed with humanity that was much less ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without a subvention, then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming. If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the sweater's den, or the stifling factory; if the seamstress could leave her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling, invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done, even if it did cost a ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... by the traveller. Whether he approaches or leaves Mourzuk, he seems still to be traversing a level plain, and only finds his mistake by noticing the change in the nature of the ground, the presence of marshes, of green vegetation, and of a heavy, stifling atmosphere. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the next few hours was jumbled and hazy. He knew that the regiment went forward, and then the white smoke of musket-fire closed down before him. Now and then the summer breeze made rifts in this stifling cloud, and he saw it streaked with spouting fire. He aimed his old musket at that other foggy line beyond the rail fence, whose top was lined with men in coats of red and green ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... established by the act and by the rules which were subsequently made to carry it out. The introduction of proxies was no doubt intended to give absent creditors an opportunity of expressing their opinions upon any question which might arise. But the system was too often used for the purpose of stifling the views of those who took an independent part in the proceedings. The form of proxy prescribed by the rules contained no limitation of the powers of the proxy-holder and no impression of the opinion of the creditor. It simply appointed the person named ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... combined with a fund of information on subjects not usually popular with the young, could not but strike so discerning a judge as the Countess de Circourt as indicating not a common personality. She feared lest so much talent and promise would be suffocated for ever in the stifling air of a small despotism. Cavour himself drew a miserable picture of his country: science and intelligence were reputed "infernal things by those who are obliging enough to govern us"; a triumphant bigotry trembled alike at railways and Rosmini; Cavour's aunt, the Duchess de Clermont Tonnerre, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... kitchen. When they got into the next room they clasped one another and shook with silent laughter. As the door between the rooms did not shut tightly, they adjured one another, by dances and gestures, not to laugh loud. Blue danced round the table on her toes as a means of stifling her laughter. Then they both ran to the foot of the attic stair and gripped each other's arms very tight by way of explaining that the situation was desperate, and that one or other must control her voice sufficiently ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... as of old, but her teeth clenched upon her lower lip immediately, with the pain it caused. "I shall ask ye to ease me presently, good friends. Grim Death has me by the throat already. But carry me outside. I am stifling in here. Let me see the ocean and the sky at least in my passage. And I have something to ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... walked on, looking out for a disengaged hansom. I could hardly breathe: my heart seemed stifling me. What was in her mind? What would the next few minutes ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... his quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things that formerly never affected him. The hard and sometimes cruel discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of ambitions—all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy. He saw a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being "impudent." "Crimes" of this nature were committed, as ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... before remarrying the youthful widow. For a moment, indeed, he did think of bestowing her not upon a senator but upon a knight, that is, a person outside of the political aristocracy, evidently with the intention of stifling her too eager ambitions by taking from her all means and hope of satisfying them. Then he decided upon the opposite expedient, that of quieting those ambitions by entirely satisfying them, and so gave Julia, in 21 B.C., to Agrippa, who had been the cause of the earlier ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... sure before-hand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering, M.P., how are things going on down at the house, and when will you turn out those terrible people for us? And Mrs Veneering, my dear, can it positively be true that you go down to that stifling place night after night, to hear those men prose? Talking of which, Veneering, why don't you prose, for you haven't opened your lips there yet, and we are dying to hear what you have got to say to us! Miss Podsnap, charmed ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... cruel enemy! What have I done to you that you should thus leave me with death in my soul? You do not know that, for months past, I have been following you everywhere like a shadow, that I prowl round your home at night, stifling my sighs lest they should disturb your peaceful slumber. You are afraid, perhaps, to let yourself be touched, at a first meeting, by a poor wretch who adores you. Alas! Juliet was young and beautiful like you, and she did not need ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the year. The strong current at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the coast steadied the cuberta head to stream, and kept us from drifting ashore. We all slept in the open air, as the heat of the cabins was stifling in the early part of the night. Penna, Senhora Katita, and I slung our hammocks in triangle between the mainmast and two stout poles fixed in the raised deck. A sheet was the only covering required, besides our regular clothing, for the decrease of temperature at night on the Amazons is never so ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... railways, and to which we had been drawn, partly by the antiquarian attractions which the place possessed, and partly by the beauty of the scenery. The weather had been rather against us. The day had been dull and murky, the heat stifling, and the sky had threatened mischief since the morning. At sundown, these threats were fulfilled. The thunderstorm, which had been all day coming up—as it seemed to us, against the wind—burst over the place where we were lodged, with ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... threw his whole weight against the door, and it gave way. A cry of surprise escaped him, and as the rest crowded up they saw a hideous sight. Frye was sitting in his chair with head thrown back staring at the ceiling, and with mouth and eyes wide open! The room was stifling with gas, and the officer opened the window. In doing so he noticed the two stop-cocks were opened and he turned them off. Then he returned to the hall. When the room was fit to breathe in again, all four entered, and the officer laid his hand upon ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... novelty in the journey or the voyage. There were the usual incidents of winter travelling—the hot, stifling car—the snowy country stretching out mile after mile from morning till night—the hotels, which seemed strangely comfortless for an invalid—and then the great city with its noise and bustle, and the steamer where they had nothing to ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Met in vortex from afar, Raising high the flaming pennons Of the fiery fiends of war. Flashing by, the blazing grass stems Sped like arrows through the air, Falling on the distant prairie, Kindling fresh fires everywhere. Pressing through the low-flung smoke clouds— Stifling fumes of Hades' breath— Fiercer with each flying moment Drove those scorching blasts of death. Thrice his horse, 'neath quirt and rowel Bravely struggling, almost fell, As he fled in desperation O'er the trail ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... forcibly in a vain effort to clear the stupor that was sweeping over him. It was strange how the vivid rays of that malevolent green moon seemed to sear insidiously into one's brain, stifling thought as a swamp ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... himself, looked out of the window, then decided to go on deck to get the breeze, for the heat was stifling in his ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... teacup and the only chance of exercise lies in climbing up its sides. But it must fairly be owned that these advantages are accompanied by some very serious drawbacks. If Capri is fairly free from the bitter east wind of the Riviera, the Riviera is free from the stifling scirocco of Capri. In the autumn and in the earlier part of the winter this is sometimes almost intolerable. The wind blows straight from Africa, hot, dusty, and oppressive in a strange and almost indescribable way. All the peculiar clearness of the atmosphere disappears; one ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... and regarded it a moment in silence, while my aesthetic nature shook to its foundations. Stifling the moan of horror that had risen to my lips, I faced her with a smile. Balaclava heroes ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... clock jars and strikes, a thin, sudden note like the sob of a child. Clock, buhl clock that ticked out the tortuous hours of my birth, Clock, evil, wizened dwarf of a clock, how many years of agony have you relentlessly measured, Yardstick of my stifling shroud? ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... a peal of laughter bursting from her lips. Instantly, however, her two hands were pressed to her mouth, stifling the outburst. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... and moved her flat back as she played croquet, or after prolonged laughter and running up and down stairs, sank into a low chair, and, half closing her eyes and gasping for breath, pretended that she was stifling and could not breathe. She was married. Her husband, a staid and dignified architect, came once a week to the villa, slept soundly, and returned to town. Volodya's strange feeling had begun with his conceiving an unaccountable hatred for the ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... custom of ringing his scholars to prayers, in the school-room, at a certain hour every day. The boys were one day very attentively at prayers, except one, who was stifling a laugh as well as he could, which arose from seeing a rat descending from the bell-rope into the room. The poor boy could hold out no longer, but burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, which set the others off as soon as he pointed ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... was a very cursory examination that he made; and the upshot of his opinion, triumphantly accepted by Mrs. Merrifield, was that there was nothing seriously amiss with the child, that she only needed care, regularity and bracing, and that the stifling, gasping spasms were simply the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sea-weed, In the grass his teeth entangled, Youkahainen thus beseeches: "O thou ancient Wainamoinen, Wisest of the wisdom-singers, Cease at last thine incantations, Only turn away thy magic, And my former life restore me, Lift me from this stifling torment, Free mine eyes from sand and water, I will give thee sister, Aino, Fairest daughter of my mother, Bride of thine to be forever, Bride of thine to do thy pleasure, Sweep the rooms within thy cottage, Keep thy dwelling-place in order, Rinse ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... dull, and he tried to write some letters. Worse and worse. The place was stifling, and the pen almost melted in ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... one of the marshy swamps of South Africa a herd of buffaloes, some sixteen in number, stood almost knee-deep. The thick fog which arose from the swamp hung round and about like a huge, vapory cloud, making the hot air moist and stifling. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... our fellow-slaves. For myself, I was away from the centre of the galley, I thank God! and near an open port, so I got a little air, which refreshed me; but I presently saw one of the poor fellows near the middle of the vessel, where the air was stifling, begin to relax his exertions. He was fainting with the heat and fatigue of the chase. The chief slave-driver, whose name, I remember, was Alvarez, saw it too, and called out: 'Juan, this heretic is ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... already wept at the fore-knowledge of the miseries which Hazael of Syria should bring upon Israel; and Hazael, murdering his master Benhadad by stifling him with a wet cloth as he lay sick on his bed, became a dreadful enemy to Samaria. So much broken was the force of Jehoahaz, Jehu's son, that at one time he had only one thousand foot, fifty horse, and ten chariots; but after this, prosperity began to return to the Israelites. ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... plethoric, sanguineous man felt as if he were stifling. But he took off his wrappers, and resigned the oxygen ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the ladies whom you know have done for them. We do our own work, for one thing," she continued, with a sudden treacherous misgiving that what she was saying might be silly and not heroic, but bravely stifling her doubt. "My cousin Virginia is housekeeper, and Rachel does the sewing, and I'm a ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... turned away her face, desperately stifling with both hands the sobs that were beginning to burst from her afresh. She whispered, "Oh, go, sir,—pray go! Some of the riders will be in here directly; you'll ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... skilfully made a concealed trap-door, which communicated with the storeroom. He had been doing this while I was waiting in the swamp. The storeroom opened upon a piazza. To this hole I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling; the darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I could sleep quite comfortably on one side; but the slope was so sudden that I could not turn on my other without hitting the roof. The rats and mice ran over my bed; but I was weary, and I slept such sleep ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... whatsoever;[16] by which a man may safely commit upon the last of June, what he would infallibly be hanged for if he committed on the first of July; by which the greatest criminals may escape, provided they continue long enough in power to antiquate their crimes, and by stifling them a while, can deceive the legislature into an amnesty, of which the enactors do not at that time foresee the consequence. A cautious merchant will be apt to suspect, when he finds a man who has the repute of a cunning ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... that first impression one glimpse of the race-soul, with its impersonal lovableness and its impersonal weaknesses—one glimpse of the nature of a life in which the Occidental, dwelling alone, feels a psychic comfort comparable only to the nervous relief of suddenly emerging from some stifling atmospheric pressure into thin, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... whoever he is," Jimmie said, as they discussed the signals in the almost stifling atmosphere of the cabin, "is strictly next to his job! He's showing the way, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... protest against the teaching of this tommy-rot by instructors paid by taxation, they accuse us of stifling conscience and interfering with free speech. Not at all; let the atheist think what he pleases and say what he thinks to those who are willing to listen to him, but he cannot rightly demand pay from the taxpayers for teaching their children what they do not want taught. The hand that writes ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid rejoined him on the staircase. The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said in ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... somewhat to himself he was in a close, stifling room where candle-light from a distance threw weird shadows over the adobe walls. The witch-like voices of a woman and a girl in harsh, cackling laughter, half suppressed, were not far away, and some ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... stood in the empty hall before the closed door for some seconds before he could bring himself to knock, so strong was his feeling of impotence, his dread of intruding into these two, alien lives. At length, stifling his thoughts, he hastily clacked the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the darker evergreen of pine and fir. Oven-like canyons in the long flanks of the mountain seemed still to glow with the heat of yesterday's noon; the breathless air yet trembled and quivered over stifling gorges and passes in the granite rocks, while far at their feet sixty miles of perpetual summer stretched away over the winding American River, now and then lost in a gossamer haze. It was scarcely ripe October where they stood; they could see the plenitude ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... was going to observe," continued Becker, "that blow from the west coast of Africa, carry with them a stifling heat." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... "Egerton," said Harley, stifling with an effort his own wrath against the vile deceiver both of wife and husband, "if, on reading those papers, you find that Leonora had more excuse for her suspicions and flight than you now deem, and discover perfidy in one to whom you trusted ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Studio of the Blaney brother and sister, Patty blinked several times, before she could collect her senses. It was very dimly lighted, and a strange, almost stifling sense of oppression came over her. This was caused by the burning of various incense sticks and pastilles which gave out a sweet, spicy odour, and which made a slight haze of smoke. Becoming a little accustomed to the gloom, Patty discerned ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... but no sooner had the silence of night, like a stagnant pool, enveloped the house, than the engraver got up and climbed the wooden staircase, which creaked under his bare feet. The door of the garret stood ajar. From within came a breath of stifling hot air, mingled with the acrid smell of rotting fruit. On the broken-down bed of sacking lay the girl Tronche, fast asleep ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... windowless cabins, with these roaring fires, were stifling in September; so the negroes sat in the doorways chatting and singing while the bacon was frying and the corn dough roasting in the ashes or the hoecake baking on the griddle. An occasional woman patched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... his transient respite past, His comrades, who before Had heard his voice in every blast, Could catch the sound no more: For then, by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... on a stifling day is proverbial, as is the relief of finding one's handkerchief just before one sneezes; but what are these compared with the flooding joy that comes with release from an embarrassing situation with a young lady? The effect upon Tom was to make him excited; more so, perhaps, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... the better conduct of old industries, and to lay taxes on such imported goods as might compete with home products, but French industry could not be made to thrive like that of England. It is often said that Colbert's careful regulations did much harm by stifling the spirit of free enterprise; but far more destructive were the wars and taxes [Footnote: In order to obtain money for his court, diplomacy, and wars, Louis XIV not only increased taxes but debased the coinage. Particularly ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Mr. Gresley was saying, "to live in a stuffy street away from the beauties of Nature, its birds and flowers, to spend half my days laying traps for invitations, and half my nights grinning like a fool in stifling drawing-rooms, listening to vapid talk. No, thanks! I know better than to care for London society. Hester does, I know, but then Hester does not mind making up to big people, and ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... removal of a stifling pressure. Amid a universal outgoing of the breath, Mary Leavenworth stood aside and Eleanore was called ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... position far above it. The question of working in the laundry did not even occur to Maslova now. She looked with compassion on the life of drudgery led by these pale, emaciated washerwomen, some of whom showed symptoms of consumption, washing and ironing in a stifling, steam-laden atmosphere with the windows open summer and winter, and she was horrified at the thought that she, too, might be driven ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... certain stage or epoch of human life seemed to have run its course and come to a stop. The impulses which had started it were exhausted. In the political field, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous and stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading scientists were magicians ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... bright and pure a blue, so limpid and pellucid, that it even seemed to out-vie the tint of the sky which it reflected, and the myriad sparks of sunshine on it twinkled like a crystal rain. Plodding through the parched and scorching dust of the mountain-foot, through the stifling vapor and the blinding, ochreous glare, the traveler suddenly came upon this cool and calm delight. It was not to be descried afar, for it lay below the level, and the oaks and other trees of shelter scarcely topped the narrow comb. There was no canyon, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... darkness thickened, the electric lamps were switched on and the whole courtyard turned blue-white with black velvet shadows. Then the bell clanged, and we crowded again into the stifling dining hall for the last tasteless meal of the barren day. The same miserable stories were told again and again—Colonel Moller's surrender after Talana Hill, and the white flag at Nicholson's ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... "Close the windows, there's a fire a-head," said the conductor; and after obeying this commonplace direction, many of the passengers returned to the slumbers which had been so unseasonably disturbed. On, on we rushed—the flames encircled us round—we were enveloped in clouds of stifling smoke— crack, crash went the trees—a blazing stem fell across the line—the fender of the engine pushed it aside—the flames hissed like tongues of fire, and then, leaping like serpents, would rush up to the top of the largest tree, and it would blaze like ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... unto" the multitudinous blasphemy of his day; you have made him free of its newspapers, its reviews, its magazines, its novels, its controversial pamphlets, of its Parliamentary debates, its law proceedings, its platform speeches, its songs, its drama, its theatre, of its enveloping, stifling atmosphere of death. You have succeeded but in this,—in making the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... I must have fainted from sheer excitement and terror, for I remember nothing more till I felt myself deposited on a hard floor, propped against the wall, and the stifling piece of sacking taken off ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... was reached, and in fact even before that, the heat again became oppressive, the dust stifling, and the thirst at times almost maddening. In some places we could see the water of the Snake winding through the lava gorges; but we could not reach it, as the river ran in the inaccessible depths of the canyon. Sickness ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... slept. This path ran up a water-cut kloof through a patch of thorns to a flat tableland that was part of the Ceza stronghold. By it, when I had gained sufficient strength, sometimes we used to climb to the plateau, and there take exercise. It was an agreeable change from the stifling atmosphere of the Black Kloof. The days were very dull, for we were as much out of the world as though we had been marooned on a desert island. Still from time to time we heard of the progress of the war through Nombe, for Zikali ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... eye could see. The September sun rose in a haze of warm rays; promising, as Mrs. Randolph said, that the heat would be stifling by and by. Daisy did not care, for her part. They had breakfast earlier than usual; for the plan was to get on the other side of the river before the sun should be too oppressive. They had scarcely risen from the table when the Sandford party ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... horse and then swung himself up into the saddle. Together they raced for the scant shelter before the dark menace overspreading earth and sky. The sun was now hidden; but that brought no relief, for the heat was even more stifling and oppressive than before. The wind seemed like a blast of hot air ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly |
