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Smother   /smˈəðər/   Listen
Smother

verb
(past & past part. smothered; pres. part. smothering)
1.
Envelop completely.  Synonym: surround.
2.
Deprive of oxygen and prevent from breathing.  Synonyms: asphyxiate, suffocate.  "The child suffocated herself with a plastic bag that the parents had left on the floor"
3.
Conceal or hide.  Synonyms: muffle, repress, stifle, strangle.  "Muffle one's anger" , "Strangle a yawn"
4.
Form an impenetrable cover over.
5.
Deprive of the oxygen necessary for combustion.  Synonym: put out.



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"Smother" Quotes from Famous Books



... edgeways between them. As for the smell; well, sir, I think you'd prefer that of a gas main just opened, or the foulest scent you could think of, to what we all smelt in the hold of that there dhow; for it seemed to smother us and make the strongest men aboard turn faint just like a girl does when she cuts her finger ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... her wool-soft paps I seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds my heart and me in durance, Hath life, death, love and all in ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... my amorous kinsman much longer staid, The perfume would have seal'd his obit; For he had a nicer nose than the wench, Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, In the arms of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... my honorable friend, the Chairman of the Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no more thirst for vengeance than he, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... bombed us daily but with little success. Their bombs were of small size and the sand seemed somehow to smother them, so that they were more noisy than dangerous. The men who had fallen out rejoined us as best they could, the worst of them being removed to hospitals, and by the 14th we were well rested and ready ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... the shrunken baseless sky, Sullen vapours crawl Climbing to masses, tumbled heavily Grim in giant sprawl, That smother up domed heaven's scud-fleckered height And form like mortal ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... in the morning, and sleep in the afternoon. Sounds elderly, doesn't it? But I do enjoy that sleep. The hour after lunch is the most trying of the school day. It's all I can do sometimes to smother my yawns, and not upset the whole class. It's part of the Sunday rest to be able to let go, lie down hugging a hot bottle, and sleep steadily till ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... with a darkness so enveloping that it seems to possess palpability. As we reel westward in a smother of water the miracle of how any human being equipped with but five senses can find and keep his course in the chartless void that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it. One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, And Pity from thee more dear Than ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Discovery or mistrusting. But to come again to the point. The Irregularities of it are caused by three or four coadjutors, one of which is, the uneven surface of the paper, which at best appears no smother then a very course piece of shag'd cloth, next the irregularity of the Type or Ingraving, and a third is the rough Daubing of the Printing-Ink that lies upon the instrument that makes the impression, to all which, add the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might so easily conceal itself ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... innabitants are shopkeepers, gorged with roast beef and treason. I will go and see the murderers of the Hirish, the pisoners of the Chynese, the villians who put the Hemperor to death in Saintyleany, the artful dodges who wish to smother Europe with their cotton, and can't sleep or rest heasy for henvy and hatred of the great inwinsable French nation. I will igsammin, face to face, these hotty insularies; I will pennytrate into the secrets of their Jessywhittickle cabinet, and beard Palmerston in his denn." When ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... large nut trees is that it is not practicable, from the fact that the lower limbs outgrow the grafted ones and eventually smother them and cause them to die out, leaving the tree in a disfigured condition. The better way is to plant several trees of a good pollenizing variety near one another to get ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various

... only too well. Nevertheless, they were honest men and women, if over-sentimental, and had transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... get them in, so I got some cats. The cats soon learned to prefer birds to mice so I killed the cats. Then I bought a flock of geese and the geese cropped the grass short and prevented it from growing so powerfully as to smother out the trees. But the geese had hard bills and when the trees were small they clipped off pieces of bark with their bills, so I traded the geese for wild geese. I learned that they are more discriminating in their choice of food and that though ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... had just resolved to swoop from 3500 feet this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the balloon bumping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously to and fro. The millionaire screamed and bumped about the car, and bumped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... could not answer, her tongue refused to move, and her dry, hot mouth felt as if she would smother. She looked into his eyes and said nothing, while she ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... softly rose, and taking a Candle with her, only in her Night-Gown and Slippers, she goes to the Bed of the Unfortunate Henault, with a Penknife in her hand; but considering, she knew not how to conceal the Blood, should she cut his Throat, she resolves to Strangle him, or Smother him with a Pillow; that last thought was no sooner borne, but put in Execution; and, as he soundly slept, she smother'd him without any Noise, or so much as his Strugling: But when she had done this dreadful Deed, and saw the dead Corps of her once-lov'd Lord, lye ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, And lose himself in his unbounded home? By nature's hand magnificently fed, His meal is on the range of mountains spread; As in pure air aloft he bounds along, He sees in distant smoke the city throng; Conscious of freedom, scorns the smother'd train, The threat'ning driver, and the servile rein. Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest With thunder his robust distended chest? No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays; 'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils blaze; To paw the vale he ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... it's so nice to think that Mr. Langhope's arrangement with Justine still works so well," Mrs. Dressel hastened on, nervously hoping that her volubility would smother any recollection of what he had ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... reply, did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother a cry ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... at the Court House at that moment, Bill was forced to smother his resentment for the time being. There was nobody in Court except the Judge and the Usher, who were seated on the bench having a quiet game of cards over a bottle ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... stood the city, Wide and dazzling shone the sea, When the gods set hand to smother ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... her on the way, if that's what you're thinking of. I'm not that kind of man at all, and I am particularly fond of the child. I scarcely ever complain when she keeps me awake at night, though many men I know would want to smother her. She and my wife are stopping with my mother-in-law in Rathmines. I'm going down for a fortnight's yachting with the Major. I might persuade him to give you a day's sailing, perhaps, if he doesn't find out who you are, and we succeed in keeping it dark about your going on with your work. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... met the Irishman who apes the Englishman, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were? 'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did you never hear Mrs. Captain ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... kings of France long held their court; ardent, artistic, poetic, voluptuous, yet whose first impulses subside quickly. The softness of the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease of life and joviality of manners, smother before long the sentiment of art, narrow the widest heart, and enervate the strongest will. Transplant the Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and lead to great results, as we may see in many spheres of action: look at Rabelais ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac

... Joan," he added, with a tired little gasp, looking apprehensively up the long stretch of rough ground rising right in front, and the now gloomy hilltop, above which heavy black clouds hung, like the curtain of night about to descend and smother ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... inner office when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... to do him justice, seemed trying to smother his grief; and, in the meanwhile, the two girls had been spreading a pure white cloth on a neighboring rock, cutting fruit plates out of the thick mangoe leaves, cooling the Rockhouse malaga in the brook, and giving to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... ain't no yuther way—killin' him wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river. Oh, I got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey." She gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to smother it with caresses. "Mammy's got to kill you—how kin I do it! But yo' mammy ain't gwine to desert you—no, no, dah, don't cry—she gwine wid you, she gwine to kill herself too. Come along, honey, come along ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... coolness, and yet there was naught to show me that she had passed an anxious night. Ah, love, we demand that you shall not only be happy, but miserable at our wish. We would dim your eye when our own is blurred; we would smother your heart when our own is heavy, and would pierce it with a pain. Upon her children this old world has poured the wisdom of her gathered ages, and could we look from another sphere we might see ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... he bethought him to consult the countenance of his companion. The marble of the pilaster, against which he leaned, was not more cold and unmoved than the face of the inquisitor. The man had learned to smother every natural impulse in the assumed and factitious duties ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... through the smother of hatred, of wrong, of repression and reprisal, another law was struggling toward the light in Lost Valley—the sane, quiet law of right and equality, typified by the smiling, dark-eyed man of the cabin in the ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... pretty she was, balanced there, her hand on his shoulder, ready for a leap, lest the heavy canoe, rolling over in the froth, strike her under the smother of foam and water. . . . How marvellously pretty she was. . . . Her hand on his shoulder. . ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... and not blown about by every wind that may befall. Beware of looking back, but go on steadily, holding in mind the teaching that has been given thee. Be sure to enter every day anew into the garden of thy soul with the light of faith to pull up every thorn that might smother the seed of the teaching given thee, and to turn over the earth; that is, every day do thou divest thy heart. It is necessary to divest it over and over; for many a time I have seen people who seemed to have divested themselves, whom ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... acolytes, its spies. It has assumed the post of guardian to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day a prince de Conde is needed to prevent the house of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... sun sank in a smother of purple and red behind the hills, they saw the church and monastery. The bells were chanting their call to ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... something—if I had it—to know how they use that child, and where they keep her. My mother must have been a very inquisitive woman; I have no doubt I'm marked with a note of interrogation somewhere. My feelings I smother, but thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my—upon my word,' said Mr Swiveller, checking himself and falling thoughtfully into the client's chair, 'I should like to know how ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... above all other sorts of trains she entertained a species of solemn horror. But the excitement consequent on the unexpected recovery of the diamond ring, and the still more unexpected accession of wealth consequent thereon, had induced her to smother her dislike to railways for a time, and avail herself of their services in order to run down to a town about twenty miles off for the purpose of telling the good news to Netta, who chanced to be on a short visit to a friend there at the time. When Mrs Tipps reached ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... coat. That is because your fires are burning faster. The muscles are using more food and making more scraps to be burned. You breathe faster and faster till at last you are "out of breath" and feel as if you would smother or choke. The blood has hard work to bring oxygen enough to keep ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... do, when she is a goddess. Thou melter of strong minds, dar'st thou presume To smother all his triumphs, with thy vanities, And tye him like a slave, to thy proud beauties? To thy imperious looks? that Kings have follow'd Proud of their chains? have waited on? ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... and despair by shouting at this poor kid. God knew what she'd been through with his irresponsible other self—Forth had admitted that that damned "Jason" personality was a blend of all the undesirable traits he'd fought to smother all his life. By an effort of will he kept himself from pulling away from her ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... rapidly getting fainter, but even in this fearful strait he refrained from an outcry that would certainly alarm the guards just outside the door. Hamilton saw that without speedy relief his comrade must soon smother. He dashed through the long, dark room up the stairway, over the forms of several hundred men, and disregarding consequences and savage curses in the dark and crowded room, he trampled upon arms, legs, faces, and stomachs, leaving riot and blasphemy in his track ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... that that, he said he would make up the business, or he would smother it. My Lord, you have a great deal of patience, I am humbly bound to you, here is nothing but the naked truth, step by step, as I trod it. Afterwards[48] Wild came and said, All will be well. Said I, What have you done? Are you sure, saith he, the jewels nor nothing ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... holy man, Did good Sir Rudolph e'er confess them But soon his spirit you might deem Came forth from the shade, of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again. And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain "Not mine! not mine! now, Mary mother. Aid me the sinful hope to smother! Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong. But pure the heart of a knight should be,— Sleep on, sleep on, thou art safe for me. Yet shalt thou know, by a certain sign, Whose lips have ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... broke at once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Pandour channels, were there no other, easily reach Neipperg; though they do not always. Enough, could Neipperg appear at the Gates of Breslau, in some concerted night-hour, or push out suitable Detachment on forced-march that way,—it is evident to him he would be let in; might smother the few Prussians that are in the Dom Island, and get possession of the Enemy's principal Magazine and the Metropolis of the Province. Might not the Enemy grow more tractable to Robinson's seductions ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the gesture and gait. On the contrary, it is as great an enemy to stiffness, as it is to looseness of carriage, and air. It equally reprobates an ungainly rusticity, and a mincing, tripping, over-soft manner. Its chief aim is to bring forth the natural graces, and not to smother them with ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... interest involved forced him to breathe for a time the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour could not be saved; but disaster ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee. I did it for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the dark In the candleshine against the wet black glass, Like moths about a lanthorn ... I lay and watched, Till the pains were on me ... And they buzzed like bees, The snowflakes in my head—hot, stinging bees ... It snowed again, the night he went.... In the smother I lost him, in a drift down Bloodysyke ... I couldn't follow further: the snow closed in— Dry flakes that stung my face like swarming bees, And blinded me ... and buzzing, till my head Was all ahum; and I was fair betwattled ... I've not set ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... hats. Take off your hats, and go to your seats." The conviction immediately rushed upon our minds, that this must be our new teacher. The first emotion was that of surprise, and the second was that of the ludicrous; though I believe we contrived to smother the laugh, until we got out into ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... appealed to him—his coolness and self-reliance, his manliness and bravery, and a certain kindliness and sympathy in his nature. As it was, he thought it his own natural badness which prevented him from disliking 'Frisco Kid; but, while he felt shame at his own weakness, he could not smother the warm regard which he felt growing up for this particular ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them with far-reaching ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... "Bahadur" rolled from her golden throat like chords of Beethoven's overture to Leonori. "You do our olden customs honor. True chivalry had nearly died since superstition and the ebb and flow of mutual mistrust began to smother it in modern practises. But neither priest nor alien could make it shame for maidenhood to choose which way its utmost honor lies. Ye know your hearts' delight. Goodness, love and soundless fealty are the attributes your manhood hungers for. Of those three elements is womanhood. And so, as Shri—goddess ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... fire, and not far from the crib where Willie lay sleeping. In an instant, however, the thought "What shall I do?" was followed by the remembrance of what her mother had often said, "If in any way your dress should ever take fire, you must try to smother it at once; never run away, but throw yourself down, or wrap yourself in ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... and sullenly dash! But where is the brave one—the swift lightning-flash? Soft star of my soul, my mother, Sleep, the fire let ashes smother; Gaze no more, shine eyes are weary, Sit not by the threshold stone; Gaze not through the night-fog dreary, Eat thine evening meal alone, Seek him not, O mother, weeping, By the cliff and by the ford: On a bed of dust he's sleeping— Broken ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... seized anew by the old horror. I tried to smother the sound of my voice as something sacrilegious. The Swede, of course, heard it too—the strange cry overhead in the darkness—and that sudden drop in the air as though something had ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood

... lions, with horrid laughing jaws; 10 They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous 15 smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... monster of men, to have many good men, wise, men, learned men to attend upon him with all submission, as an appendix to his riches, for that respect alone, because he hath more wealth and money," [336]"to honour him with divine titles, and bombast epithets," to smother him with fumes and eulogies, whom they know to be a dizzard, a fool, a covetous wretch, a beast, &c. "because he is rich?" To see sub exuviis leonis onagrum, a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... these ten volumes? Who cares to know how big was the belly of some court chamberlain, or who were the lovers of some unendurable Frau? What a welter of dull garbage! In what dust-heaps dost thou not smother us, Teufelsdroeckh! O, Thomas, Thomas, what Titania has bewitched thee with the head of Dryasdust on thy noble shoulders? Compare Friedrich with Cromwell. In the Life of the Puritan hero we have a great ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... over all this lovely land, in lanes and fields, on the lonely hill-side, by the laughing stream, and in the depths of many a silent wood, to distant days shall speak—of blood-sealed destinies; with voices that no tyrant's power can smother, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... life says it. By standing far off you pass for it. Smother it with a life that passes for it. But beauty—(getting it from the flower) Beauty is the humility breathed ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... lake. Appalled, I whirled on my heel, just in time to see another huge jet of water rise high in the starlight, another, another, until the entire lake was but a cluster of gigantic geysers exploding a hundred feet in the air, while through them, falling back into the smother of furious foam, great silvery bulks ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... have been back before now, otherwise, eh?" Meighan seemed to be communing with himself, rather than talking to Kenleigh. "Wouldn't make such an awful noise—didn't need much juice on that safe—pretty slick with the smother game—didn't ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... weather and season to this incessant panorama of childhood? The pigmy people trudge through the snow on moor and hill-side; wade down flooded roads; are not to be daunted by wind or rain, frost or the white smother of 'millers and bakers at fisticuffs.' Most beautiful picture of all, he sees them travelling schoolward by the late moonlight which now and again in the winter months precedes the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... "It's the ninth wave," he shouted presently. "Kayak'll take her in on that one. . . . By thunder!" he broke out as the boat rushed toward the shore in a smother of foam, and landed well up on the beach, "if that old cuss could rope a steer as well as he can land a boat in a surf, I wonder that they ever let him ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... In these Northern Islands, the Clouds are so short, and narrow, and by fickle changes are sometimes emptied upon us, sometimes so neer, as may make so little variation in the weight of the whole Atmosphere of Air, as may sometimes deceive us, or smother and hide from us the causes of fixedness, or of changes. I wish I could see a good Calendar or Journal taken in taken in Tangier, and in some of our Northern and most Southern parts of America. I have store of Hygroscopes ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... able to live two minutes in the cockpit, and I cannot help you, sir, to throw your life away. The ship's on fire somewhere forward, and what we've got to do is to pump the water over it, and try and put it out. If we can't do that, we must shut down the hatches, and see if we can't smother it." ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... jostling crowd, to slip, and fall, and see, How many men will scoff at your adversity, And though your heart may ache, you must not shed a tear, But plan, and push, and work, and smother ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... aboard us, Mr Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... cat clinging high in the top boughs of a birch and looking calmly down at us. The tree-top swayed, quivering, as it held the great dun beast. My heart was like to smother me when D'ri raised his rifle and took aim. The dog broke away at the crack of it. The painter reeled and spat; then he came crashing through the branches, striking right and left with his fore paws to save himself. He hit the ground heavily, and the dog was on him. The painter ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... flock of yellow butterflies had settled on her dear old head. When she trotted about the rooms the ruches quivered, the little bows all stood erect, and the streamers waved in the breeze so comically that it was absolutely necessary for Archie to smother the Brats in the curtains till they had had their ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... digest or smother the recollection, the tall military form of his late commander came full in view, for the purpose of reconnoitring. 'I can hit him now,' said Callum, cautiously raising his fusee over the wall under which he lay couched, at scarce ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... for her, but the four girls had to smother their laughter behind the dinner napkins. Then Sary found ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... of vivacity, gaiety, and genuine delight in life, you see from one fresco to another the increased attention given to draperies. In the Scalzo series, otherwise masterpieces of tactile values, the draperies do their utmost to smother the figures. Most of these paintings are closed in with ponderous forms which have no other purpose than to serve as a frame, and as clothes-horses for draperies: witness the scene of Zacharias in the temple, wherein none of ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... my arms and smother you with kisses," he whispered fiercely, "there mustn't be any mistake this time. I've got to know that your love for me is the biggest thing in your life—the only thing in ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... this arduous journey was defeated by the loss of the provisions I had brought. I despaired of winning the attention of the fugitive to supplications, or arguments tending to smother remorse or revive his fortitude. The scope of my efforts was to consist in vanquishing his aversion to food; but these efforts would now be useless, since I had no ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... tear an' hammer that there fine, straight body of hers 'til hit was all broken an' twisted an' crooked a heap worse'n what I be,—that's what hit would do; an' hit would scratch an' cut an' beat up that pretty face an' mess up her pretty hair an' choke her an' smother her 'til she was all blue-black an' muddy, an' her eyes was red an' starin', an' she was nothin' but just an ugly lump of dirt; an' hit wouldn't even leave her her fine clothes neither,—the Elbow Rock water wouldn't,—hit'd just ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... the ship; There's feud no force can smother; Their blood is up to fever-heat; They're cutting down each other. Buchanan here, and Douglas there, Are belching forth their thunder, While cunning rogues are sly at work In ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... expense of bad feeling. He was shrewd, practical—maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the distrust of the conservative, he would appear to retract and try to smother the flames in a cloud of conciliatory smoke. Only the restraining hand of Lincoln prevented him from committing fatal blunders at the outset of the Civil War, yet his handling of the threatening episode of the French in Mexico showed a wisdom, a patient tact, and a subtle ingenuity which ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... perfect face; I thought his bosom free from sin, Nor dreamt a demon lurk'd within. His voice, which ever could controul, Each passion of the hearer's soul, With ease my partial heart beguil'd, Who knew no sorrows when he smil'd. And ah! my friends, your downcast eyes, Your pensive air, and smother'd sighs, All tell me you lament the fate, Of him, whom yet you cannot hate. And shall I bear then to behold, That form inanimate and cold, His smiling lips depriv'd of breath, His eyes for ever clos'd in death! Ah no! my heart with ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... resolve not to go to sleep again. 5 A.M.—Have been to sleep twice, and have fallen off my box bodily into the fire in my wet blankets, and should for sure have put it out like a bucket of cold water had not Xenia and Kefalla been roused up by the smother I occasioned and rescued me—or the fire. It is not raining now, but it is bitter cold and Cook is getting my tea. I give the boys a lot of hot tea with a big handful of sugar in, and they then get ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... is a reply to the contumely that sought to smother Turner under an avalanche of abuse; but since the enemy inspired it, and it made the name and fame of both Ruskin and Turner, why should they not hunt out the rogues ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... that the air was not good, and this soon gave him cause for additional alarm. If he could not get any fresh air, he might smother before anybody came ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... captain, and all hands sprang to the clewlines. The decks were standing nearly at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the ship going like a mad steed through the water, the whole forward part of her in a smother of foam. The halyards were let go and the yard clewed down, and the sheets started, and in a few minutes the sails smothered and kept in by clewlines and buntlines.—"Furl 'em, sir?" asked the mate.—"Let go the topsail halyards, fore and aft!" shouted ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the captivity ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... acquainted with the Donna of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo requested her to smother the King of France with kindness, and demonstrate to him the great advantage of the Castilian imagination over the simple movement of the French. To which the Marchesa of Amaesguy consented for the honour of Spain, and also for the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... either the adult or the child will be miserable. There is nothing whatever unnatural or wrong or shocking in this fact; and there is no harm in it if only it be sensibly faced and provided for. The mischief that it does at present is produced by our efforts to ignore it, or to smother it under a heap of sentimental lies and ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... place, a vast deal of snow had fallen; fallen, indeed, to such a degree, as even to cover the terrace, block up the path that communicated with the wreck, and nearly to smother the house and all around it. The winds were high and piercing, rendering the cold doubly penetrating. The thermometer now varied essentially, sometimes rising considerably above zero, though oftener ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Within the high guarding fence, the long low buildings lay quiet and were [illegible] brushed periodically by the light from the watch-beacon high overhead as it swept its shaft over the jungle smother and then around over the black glassy surface of the Great Briney Lake, bordering the ranch enclosure on the fourth side. And, vigilantly, the eyes of three Venusian guards ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... up mighty proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the tip of my tongue when I wasn't no more'n knee-high to a grasshopper. But when a man has got a fire in him, they ain't no use trying to smother it. You either got to put water on it or else ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... It wouldn't do to smother either. Though to open the ventilator would be to invite another invasion by the black mold, not to mention the amoebae and other fabulous monsters that had up to now been kept at a safe distance by the repeller zone, a simple adaptation of a very old discovery. A zone of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... lonely, nights, when he should have been out howling at the stars. He was not lonely, because one night he prowled about until he found a certain door, and when the girl opened that door in the morning she found him curled up tight against it. She had reached down and hugged him, the thick smother of her long hair falling all over him in a delightful perfume; thereafter she placed a rug before the door for him to sleep on. All through the long nights he knew that she was just beyond the door, and he was content. Each day he thought less and less ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... muzzled, and she will boult them out into the Nets: Or blow on a sudden the Drone of a Bag-Pipe into the Burrows, and they will boult out: Or for want of either of these two, take Powder of Orpiment and Brimstone, and boult them out with the Smother: But pray use this last seldom, unless you would destroy your Warren. But for this sport Hays are to be preferred ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... Queen had often talked to him caressingly in her own strange tongue. He started and turned his head, to see a tongue of flame leaping shoulder-high behind him. The match had fallen on some inflammable drapery and set the place afire. He seized a rug and tried to smother the blaze, but the little house ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... "Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... mother, and to me she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," and Peggy found herself in an embrace which threatened to smother her. She blushed with pleasure. To be like her mother whom she scarcely remembered, for eight years had passed since that beautiful mother slipped out of her life, was the highest praise that could have ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... things in a new city better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when I looked close ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... us that they are "of the order Diptera," "sub-order Nemocera," and chiefly "of the family Culicidae," and he also goes so far as to tell us that they "annoy man." As we bump along in the muskeg and the creatures surround us in a smother, he ventures to assert that "the life of the adult insect is very short" and that it is the female who stings. The Doctor is a born instructor. We learn that "the natural food of the mosquito is a drop or two of the juice of a plant." ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... it was different; it was a part of the petty round of business to have the leading lady burst into tears when things didn't suit her. What fools women are in general! But the girl surprised him by holding up determinedly, and sinking her white teeth into her lips to smother the sob ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... been any doubt as to his identity that would have removed it instantly. On my calling to him, he turned quickly round and, with a slight gesture of the head as if bidding me to follow, he glided forward. My natural impulse was to run after him, pick him up and smother him with kisses; but try as hard as I could, I could not diminish the distance between us, although he never appeared to alter his pace. I was quite out of breath by the time we reached H—— Street, where, to my surprise, he stopped at No. 90 and, turning ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... into an elaborate delivery which he had practiced. Another drop was tried, but this time Dingley hit it. Up into the air popped the ball, and Cooper, yelling "I'll take it!" raced over behind second, to smother it surely when it ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... Jane Riggs' darning basket, the old-young face creased as softly as a rosebud, with none of its beauty, but with a compelling charm. She watched the weak motion of the infinitesimal legs and arms beneath the soft smother of wrappings, and her heart pained her with longing, ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... for example, the practical affairs of life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the light ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the dagger in thy breast, Gaston," said Raymond, who was supporting the head of the dying man; "and failing that, he thought to smother thee in his bear-like clasp, that has crushed the life out of enemies before now, as we have ofttimes heard. When he felt other foes around him unloosing that clasp, and knew himself balked of his purpose, he clutched the weapon thou hadst dashed from his hand and buried ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Swede is all solid maple from the neck up? Nelse's buttermilk blue eyes flickers with almost human intelligence. Some of the men smother a snicker. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... smother any public spirit I may have," said Francis. "She had too much to do with the birth of it, not to cherish it as fondly as any of her other babies; but I fear that, till my friend Mr. Hare's scheme is carried, I could not get a ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... probably be a more economical means of making our land clean, than the liberal use of expensive manures. It depends, doubtless, on the land and on circumstances. It is well to know that manure on grass land, will so increase the growth of the good grasses, as to smother the weeds. Near my house was a piece of land that I wanted to make into a lawn. I sowed it with grass seed, but the weeds smothered it out. I plowed it, and hoed it, and re-seeded it, but still the weeds grew. Mallows came up by the thousand, with other weeds too numerous to mention. ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... yourselves to be. You have no long, weary trail of failures behind you, depressing and seeming to bring an entail of like failure with them for the future. You have not yet acquired habits—those awful things that may be our worst foes or our best friends—you have not yet acquired habits that almost smother the power of reform and change. You have, perhaps, years before you in which you may practise the lessons of wisdom and self- restraint which this question fairly fronted would bring. And so I lay it on your hearts, dear young friends. I have little hope of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... I cried. White-faced, I stared at him, tremblingly, pleadingly. There was a cloud in my brain that seemed to be coming down; it threatened to smother me—but I held fast to my courage. It was life itself for which ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those who came were those I did not want to come, and I saw very few of them. I shook ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... that, surrounded entirely by ice and snow, with millions of tons of ice underfoot, it could be so hot. But we took the loads right through to the head of the glacier that day, rising some four thousand feet in the course of five miles, and cached them there. On other days a smother of mist lay all over the glacier surface, with never a breath of wind, and the air seemed warm and humid as in an Atlantic coast city in July. Yet again, starting early in the morning, sometimes a zero temperature nipped toes and fingers and a keen ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... any exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer. Or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which depends on normal conditions of ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... so well acquainted with his crew and his prisoner, that during the whole voyage he had been in dread of two things: either that the general would prefer death to this sort of imprisonment, and would smother himself by endeavoring to speak, or that his guards would allow themselves to be tempted by the offers of the prisoner, and put him, D'Artagnan, into the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... left her. I could not go indoors. A roof would smother me. Give me the open lawns, the leafy woods, the breath of the summer wind. Away, then, to the silence of the coming night. For an hour leave me to my thoughts. Her unworthiness was now more than suspected. It was admitted. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... declaration of love than the 'Bourgeois gentilhomme' does in this happy form of words, 'Mourir d'amour me font belle Marquise vos beaux yeux'. I defy anybody to say more; and yet I would advise nobody to say that, and I would recommend to you rather to smother and conceal your passion entirely than to reveal it in these words. Seriously, this holds in everything, as well as in that ludicrous instance. The French, to do them justice, attend very minutely to the purity, the correctness, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... high in the heaven, a glowing smother hung in the dark over a snaky brood, darting red tongues hither ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... "since you infer it is I who brought all this." And he rapped immediately on the door. The jailer came to open it with Baisemeaux, who, devoured by fear and uneasiness, was beginning, in spite of himself, to listen at the door. Happily, neither of the speakers had forgotten to smother his voice, even in the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun. (And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip.) She turned and dived in the sea-smother as a rabbit dives in the whins, And the Northern Light sent up her boats to steal the stolen skins. They had not brought a load to side or slid their hatches clear, When they were aware of a sloop-of-war, ghost-white and very near. ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... concerning "mort main"—the dead hand. This hand of the past reaches up into the present to smother the rising flame of modern ideals, to reforge our chains when we have broken them, to arrest progress. It is the hand of such as have lived on earth but have not loved humanity. At the call of those who fear progress and freedom, it rises from the gloom of forgotten ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... toward Connecticut Avenue. He dared not hail a car, and he would not have dared had he possessed the fare. Some one might recognize him. He walked briskly for ten minutes. The humor of the escapade appealed to him greatly, and he had all he could do to smother the frequent bursts of laughter which surged to his lips. He reached absently for his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... the baby from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKITA down.) It's your doing, and ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... We love to see things that bear a good gloss; yea, we choose to buy such kind of matter to work upon, as will, if wrought up to what we intend, cast that lustre that we desire. Candles that burn not bright, we like not; wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat; wherefore great folks care not much, not so much, for such kind of things, as for them that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Lord! what a sulky dawn it was! All gray, an' drivin' like mad. The seas was rollin' in, with a frothy wind-lop atop o' them. They'd lift us, smother us, drop us, toss the schooners ridin' in our lee, an' go t' smash on the big, black rocks ashore. Lord! how they pulled at the old Sink or Swim! 'Twas like as if they wanted her bad for what she done. Seems t' me the Lord God A'mighty ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... under Valerian, they often called to mind the triumphs of the martyrs, and secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, while their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another. "What," said they, "while the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... which they were amenable to an avenging guardian of the everlasting element of good in nature's dualism. Yet, strange enough, each of the two kept his and her own secret. Their hearts burned, even as the fire which consumes the wicked, under the smother of a forced silence—itself a torment and an agony; yea, neither of the two would mention the name of Jenny Dodds for the entire world. And there was more than a mutual fear that one should know what the other thought. Each was under ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... woodpile, as he had been used to call the tumbled heap of precious fragments which grew after every voyage to southern or eastern islands. The room was lighted by candles; Mrs. Tree would have no other light. Kerosene she called nasty, smelly stuff, and gas a stinking smother. She liked strong words, especially when they shocked Miss Phoebe's sense of delicacy. As for electricity, Elmerton knew it not in ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... Now it's up to the guy what examines us. You'll breeze through—not a nick in you. Me—well, they're fussy about teeth, I'm told, and, of course, I had to have a swift poke in the mush that dented my beak. They may try to put the smother on me." ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the breach, when either through accident or the neglect of the train-man, a mine was sprung before the French were clearly off it, and both French and English were suddenly blown into the air and buried together in the ruin. After the smother had fairly cleared away, our troops met with very little difficulty in mounting the breach and scouring the ramparts, the French throwing down their arms and retiring into the town itself, where after a brief contest in the streets, the whole surviving garrison surrendered; but ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... of an hour there was a ring at the door, and in another moment Mysie and Gillian were hugging one smother, Valetta hanging round Mysie's neck, Fergus pulling down her arm. The four creatures seemed all wreathed into one like fabulous snakes for some seconds, and when they unfolded enough for Mysie to recollect and kiss her aunts, there certainly was a taller, better-equipped figure, but just ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... into the arms of her little mamma, and asking her to forget whatever she had done to displease her, for she had not done it on purpose. She would do the same thing now. Putting aside all pride and obstinacy, she would go to this mamma, who, for some days, had seemed so different. She would smother her in kisses. She might possibly be repelled at first. She would not mind it. She was sure that in the end she would ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... my coat, though I'm no turn-coat; once a friend, always a friend. So I followed you, Barnaby Bright, I came to warn you of the shadow,—it grows blacker every day,—back there in the great city, waiting for you, Barnaby Bright, to smother you—to quench hope, and light, and life itself. But I shall be there, —and She. Aha! She shall forget all things then—even her pride. Shadows have their uses, Barnaby, even the blackest. I came a long way—oh, I followed you. But poor Billy is ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... persons related by marriage, found only now a form in which they could be expressed. Contention, discord, silence, and separation ensued. My grandfather, generally a cheerful, quiet man, and fond of ease, became impatient. The women vainly endeavored to smother the flames; and, after some unpleasant scenes, my father was the first to quit the society. At home we now rejoiced undisturbed at the Prussian victories, which were commonly announced with great glee by our vivacious aunt. Every ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... another spring must pass before the ambitious ivy climbs to smother the gray granite walls, before the stripling trees grow stately, before the lawn is sturdy enough to withstand the crab grass and the students. Anecdote and apocrypha have yet to evolve into hallowed tradition. The ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... it? So short an absence, love, as this, And forgot how to kiss? What saddens me so as I hang about thy neck? When once, in thy words, thy looks, such a heaven of blisses Came o'er me, I thought my heart would break, And it seemed as if thou wouldst smother me with kisses. Kiss thou me! Else I kiss thee! [She embraces him.] Woe! woe! thy lips are cold, Stone-dumb. Where's thy love left? Oh! I'm bereft! Who robbed me? ...
— Faust • Goethe

... man on the throne, Be his emblem the leafless, the marrowless tree; May no sapling his root, and his branches no fruit Afford to his hope; and his hearth, let it be As barren and bare—not a partner to share, Not a brother to love, not a babe to embrace; Mute the harp, and the taper be smother'd in vapour, Like Egypt, the darkness and loss of his race! Oh, yet shall the eye see thee swinging on high, And thy head shall be pillow'd where ravens shall prey, And the lieges each one, from the child to the man, The monarch by right shall ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior Nilaus ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous

... rapid and systematic. They lower the windows from the top about an inch. This is usually sufficient to prevent the breaking of the glass by the concussion of the air in the room, and not enough to attract attention from without. The safe is then wrapped in wet blankets, to smother the noise of the explosion. Holes are then drilled in the door of the safe near the lock, these are filled with powder, which is fired by a fuse, and the safe is blown open. The securing of the contents requires but a few minutes, and the false ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... into a child again, since the children came. "And yet all a woman," he said; "all a sweet, wholesome, gentle woman. See her now with her arms around the child; the little creature clings to her as if she were the mother it never knew. Ah! she is telling them. No need to smother her, children. I never really meant to separate you; no, indeed. I only wanted you to find out for yourselves, as I have found out for myself. No more solitude at Fernley, please God; from ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror which is past. Allardyce, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... smoke of lies can smother The truth which lightens through thy lies: I see Whose trust it is that makes a liar of thee, And how thy falsehood, man, has faith for mother. What, is not thine the breast wherein my brother Seals all his heart up? Had ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... agreed upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who was to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou wakedst this morning, and wast thou content even with false accusations, that is, rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not, than to smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spentest that hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment upon Herod, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,—it du always be fresh up there, sir," ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... the Treaty were rejected. Quite naturally he assumed the part of a man on the verge of the grave, which increased the impressiveness of his words. He spoke for three hours. The members of the House listened with feverish attention; the crowds in the balconies could not smother their emotion. One witness reports that Vice-President John Adams sat in the gallery, the tears running down his cheeks, and that he said to the friend beside him, "My ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... had read the report, the Governor-General said: "What is now to be done?" To this I answered that I thought the best thing to do was to seek as quickly as possible to smother the disturbance at its birth, because every minute now lost would lend additional strength to the disturbers of the peace. It was my impression that twenty to thirty armed men should immediately be sent on horseback ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various



Words linked to "Smother" :   inhibit, suppress, extinguish, stamp down, cover, snuff out, subdue, fume, rummage, conquer, spread over, kill, disorderliness, smoke, curb, disorder



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