"Deafened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before, and never with such good reason; for if the people be poor, according to the proverb, they take good care to hide their poverty. Bombards were fired from the bridge, and the church bells rang loud enough to crack the steeple, and bring it down about the ears of the deafened lieges. The houses were hung with carpets and arras; the streets strewn ankle deep with sand and sawdust; the cross in the market-place was bedecked with garlands of flowers like a May-pole; and the conduit near it ran wine. At noon there was more firing; ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bored, they said, that all day they found themselves looking forward to the caramei man as the town's one excitement. I thought the illuminations on Easter Sunday evening, when the Piazza was "a fairyland in the night," and the music deafened us, and the Bengal lights blinded us, would help to give them a livelier impression; but, though they came with us to Florian's, it was plain they pitied ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... kill us, why did they not cut our throats and have it done with? Still the people came running, till the whining of their voices almost deafened us; and still they hustled us along, until at last we came to a house larger ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... nothing to do with lawyers. Not one of them shall ever have so much as a crooked sixpence of mine, to save him from being hanged, or to save the Lakes from being filled up. But I really hope there may be feeling enough in Parliament to do a right thing without being deafened ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... that whirled me from my feet, and swung me, staggering, to and fro as I strove to get home with my knife at the vast bulk that loomed above me. Once and twice I stabbed vainly, but my third stroke seemed more successful, for the animal-like howl he uttered nigh deafened me; then (whether by my efforts or his own, I know not) down he came upon me headlong, dashing the good knife from my grasp and whirling me half-stunned against the bulkhead, and as I leaned there, sick and faint, a hand clapped-to the scuttle. And now in this dreadful ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... knew," broke in Joyce, "Robby Moore gave an outlandish war-whoop right in my ear, that nearly deafened me, and grabbed me by my hair, yelling he was going to tomahawk me. And I saw Eugenia go sailing up the road as fast as her horse could carry her, with Keith after her, swinging on to those two long black braids of hers. You see Lloyd had the advantage of us with her short hair. They ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... so forth, are applied, it may be, oftener than they are deserved: led-captain is a term of frequent reproach, but it must always be considered that that sort of talent will be chiefly noticed and rewarded which is in demand in certain circles; fashionable people desire neither to be deafened with wit, nor bewildered with philosophy, nor oppressed with learning; their business, to which they have been brought up, is to glide smoothly through life, and their patronage is chiefly extended to those who offer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... straining—neither means to yield. For the war-drums, are they silent? Nay—they're not of parchment now, But, with printers' ink and paper, you can raise a loud tow-row; Be it at a Labour Congress, Masters' Meeting, Club, or Pub, Public tympana are deafened with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... of the thunder-clap followed the flash and seemed a part of it, so that it is hard to say whether Bert was the rather deafened or ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... seating himself in his physiological laboratory by the side of his victim, scientifically picking, and piercing, and pricking the wound, without respite— constantly, without ceasing—until the blinded and deafened and tortured creature is driven into frenzy by torments which it felt continually, which it could not comprehend, and from which, by no exertion, it was able to defend itself! Think of the scientist asking many other learned men to join him from time to time ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... answered them in French, in a voice that thundered in my head, that the explosion had deafened me and I could not hear a word they said. They understood and nodded cheerfully, and went on ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... distance beyond the boats, he stopped and withdrew his hands from his ears: in rushed the sound of the sea, the louder that the caverns of his brain had been so long closed to its entrance. With a moan of dismay he once more pressed his palms against them, and thus deafened, shouted with a voice of agony into the noise of the rising tide: "I dinna ken whaur I come frae!" after which cry, wrung from the grief of human ignorance, he once more took to his heels, though with far less swiftness than before, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... was a heavy blow, heavy but soft and pressing, followed by the stinging on my neck as of hundreds of tiny whips, and then we were rushing along over the white sea, in the midst of a mass—I can call it nothing else—of spray, deafened, stunned, feeling as if each moment I should be torn out of my seat, and as if the boat itself were being swept along like lightning over the sea, riding, not on heavy water, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... deafened by that savage gun! I can't hear a bit, hardly! Oh, what shall I do, Mr. Sneak?" ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... if we were natural: children and women feel this horror you speak of, even animals experience it. But with most of us convention and civilization and education have blinded and deafened and obscured the natural reason. No, sometimes we may recognize evil by its hatred of the good—one doesn't need much penetration to guess at the influence which dictated, quite unconsciously, the "Blackwood" review of Keats—but ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... themselves from head to foot, with some apprehension and an undefined feeling of satisfaction; and all set out together for the suburb, which was half a verst from the Setch. On their arrival, they were deafened by the clang of fifty blacksmiths' hammers beating upon twenty-five anvils sunk in the earth. Stout tanners seated beneath awnings were scraping ox-hides with their strong hands; shop-keepers sat in their booths, with piles of flints, steels, and powder before them; ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... reaching the ocean, spread out into the fish-ponds and duck swamps of Kailua. It would seem as if this must have been the very picture the idyllic poet had in mind. This smiling, yet rock-walled, amphitheater was the vast dance-hall of Lono—Halau loa o Lono (verse 4)—whose walls were deafened, stunned (pa-a-a, verse 6), by the tumult and uproar of the multitude that always followed in the wake of a king, a multitude whose night-long revels banished sleep: Moe pono ole ko'u po (verse 17). The poet seems to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... stage, with the idea that one's chief object at a musical performance is to see the faces of the singers as plainly as possible! Fortunately for our ears, Bellini's lovely melodies are, for the most part, tenderly and delicately accompanied—or the orchestra might have deafened us. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... while we had been fighting out in that field, events were taking place near us, of which we, absorbed in the work before us and deafened by the roar of our guns, had taken little notice at the time. As had been described, there was a body of woods some distance off to our right, and another, to our left. When we went into position we had not seen any of our ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... and he showed me the orders for the next day, issued by the British General. He told me that at seven o'clock it would be "Hell let loose", all down the line. Next morning I woke up before seven, and blocked up my ears so that I should not be deafened by the noise of artillery. But for some reason or other the plans had been changed and I was quite disappointed that the Germans did not get the hammering it was intended to give them. We were on the left of the British line during the battle of Neuve Chapelle, and were not really ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... which Tom never opened now. Through the ceiling of this room descended a ladder white with flour. If you climbed this ladder you found yourself in a room smothered with flour-dust, and your ears were almost deafened by the sound of the machinery overhead which the wind-impelled mill-wheel kept in motion, while the descending stream of ground flour travelled unceasingly down from the grinding-wheel to the bin below. There was a ladder from this room ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... tasteless demonstration that was still continuing. Ultimately the creature lost all tone from his laughter. It went on, soundless but uncannily poignant. Such was the effect that the Wilbur twin wondered if his own ears had been suddenly deafened. This Whipple continued to shake silently. The other, who had not laughed, whose face seemed ill-modelled for laughing, nevertheless turned sparkling eyes from under shelving brows upon Juliana and said in words stressed with emotion: "My dear, you ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... faithful wife in your angel-mother. Thanks be to Heaven, she lives not to see this day!—I have fought and bled for my King. I have endured hardships which would paralyze your pampered niceness to hear described. For eleven months I fed on carrion, reposed on filth, deafened with the sound of battering cannon, the shouts of besieging rebels, and the groans of dying comrades. I have swam across rivers, warding the broken ice from my wounded body. I have, like a hunted wolf, dressed those wounds in mountain-fastnesses, shunning the abode of man, and eluding pursuers ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... "The noise nearly deafened me, and my nerves were so shattered that for a time I was helpless. I felt myself go up and up into the air, until soon I was far above the clouds. Then I recovered my wits, and when I began to come down again I tried to fly. I knew the Valley of Mo must be somewhere to the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... no pretence of giving an accurate description of the combat. To me it was a confused medley of men and horses inextricably mixed; of shining swords, of blinding red flashes; and my ears were deafened with the fierce cries and shouts of men spending their lives ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... kin, Mas' Sam," said Joe, who, to prove his powers straightway gave a shrill kildee whistle, which nearly deafened them all. ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... ventured almost into the surf, and were so intent upon what they were doing, that although the ship passed within a quarter of a mile of them, they scarcely turned their eyes toward her; possibly being deafened by the surf, and their attention wholly fixed upon their business or sport, they neither saw nor heard her go ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... "is the side which has made our blood boil for generations! These women in silk and laces, these idle, pleasure-loving men, this eating and drinking, this luxury in beautiful surroundings, with ears deafened to all the mad, sobbing cries of the world! This is their life day by day. You have been in the wilderness, you have seen the life of those others, you have the feeling for them in your heart. Can you sit at table with these people and wear ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at once; and they began to play a concert on every sort of instrument with so much force that I was almost knocked off my feet. Each child tried to make more noise than the other. But above all, I was nearly deafened by the noise that one boy made, a little fellow who was called Hemalle. He was a dry little boy with a wet little nose, and dirty bare little feet. Hemalle played a curiously made instrument. It was a sort of sack which, when you blew it up, let out a mad screech—a ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... describe the river as hurled into the gulfs of Syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood were deafened by it. Even a colony of Persians, sent thither by Cambyses, could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek a quieter situation. The first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six and a quarter miles in length, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... heroics acted as a spell; The Angels stopped their ears and plied their pinions; The Devils ran howling, deafened, down to Hell; The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own dominions— (For 'tis not yet decided where they dwell, And I leave every man to his opinions); Michael took refuge in his trump—but, lo! His teeth were set on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the manikin, his body, which was now supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made an involuntary effort to support himself by the manikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by his hand, described first a rotary motion, and then swayed majestically ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... round sharply. Willems and Aissa stopped. Another forked flash of lightning split up the clouds overhead, and threw upon their faces a sudden burst of light—a blaze violent, sinister and fleeting; and in the same instant they were deafened by a near, single crash of thunder, which was followed by a rushing noise, like a frightened sigh of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... letters—the proud nobles of the second order—the rising race, wiser than their slothful sires; above all, my Lord, the humbler ministers of religion, priests and monks, whom luxury hath not blinded, pomp hath not deafened, to the monstrous outrage to Christianity daily and nightly perpetrated in the Christian Capital; these,—all these,—are linked with the merchant and the artisan in one indissoluble bond, waiting but the signal to fall or to conquer, to live freemen, or to die ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the vents. About the wreck, thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the grain from between our fingers. The men—their hands bleeding from these assaults—turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the birds, drew them out crimsoned, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsman and a slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and purred at, and pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled, and blinded, and deafened, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... brought down the house. The applause nearly deafened me, and I was quite glad when he drew near the end of his most tedious speech. He concluded by calming down very suddenly, returned to his original tones, and thanking his audience for his exceedingly kind reception, retired to his seat looking, as Mr. Mantalini ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... convenience and luxury of a club. Few people would mind being an hour or so longer going to Paris from London, if the railway travelling was neither rackety, cramped, nor tedious. One could be patient enough if one was neither being jarred, deafened, cut into slices by draughts, and continually more densely caked in a filthy dust of coal; if one could write smoothly and easily at a steady table, read papers, have one's hair cut, and dine in comfort[9]—none ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... here! The New Year has come, and to greet its arrival such a clashing of bells, such an outburst of strange and jangling sounds as fairly deafened the listening ears. Molly, grinning from ear to ear, was running the broom-handle up and down the row of bells outside the servants' hall. Mike was belabouring the gong as if his life depended on his exertions. The stable-boy was blowing shrilly through a tin whistle, and the fat old cook was ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... refers confidently to any Southern female novel of the period for proof, that sentimental Magnolian school-girls always talk, or write, everything educational, except good English, when conferring with their deafened masculine friends.] ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... unable to understand how I could have selected and used with inconceivable exaggeration precisely the most extravagant forms of speech to be found in Lear and Gotz von Berlichingen. Nevertheless, even after everybody had deafened me with their laments over my lost time and perverted talents, I was still conscious of a wonderful secret solace in the face of the calamity that had befallen me. I knew, a fact that no one else could know, namely, that my work could ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a long, clear, greenish slant of water. Deafened and dazed by the infernal pandemonium of noise, he bowed his head on hers, and his ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... I heard him say "That's got him." Instantly a choir of voices began to chant "That's got him," in roaring, tumultuous bursts of music. Then the music became, as it were, present, but inaudible; there were waves of sound all round me, but my ears were deafened to them. I had been put out of action by some very powerful drug, I remember no more of that evening's entertainment. I was ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... hand and on his left. Then fared forward to the fight each renowned knight, and the hosts clashed together in their might, whilst the earth for all its wideness was straitened because of the multitude of the cavaliers and ears were deafened by drums and cymbals beating and pipes and hautboys sounding and trumpets blaring and by the thunder of horse-tramp and the shouting of men. The dust arched in canopy over their heads and they fought a sore fight from the first of the day till the fall of darkness, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a girl is deafened by the clamour.... And ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes like a pricked pigskin of a piper. At its best Beauchamp regarded our lordly Press as a curiously diapered curtain and delusive mask, behind which the country struggles vainly to show an honest feature; and as a trumpet that deafened and terrorized the people; a mere engine of leaguers banded to keep a smooth face upon affairs, quite soullessly: he meanwhile having ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost deafened by ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Morgue, in a state of lamentable abandonment. But what surprised one, on raising one's head, was the continuous din, the mighty tramp of the public over the flooring of the upper galleries. One was deafened by it; it rolled on without a pause, as if interminable trains, going at full speed, were ever and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... a stall spread with cotton cloth and bought enough for several skirts, the result of her complaisance being a siege of itinerant vendors that nearly deafened her. The big women were literally covered with their young ("pic'nees"), who clung to their skirts, waist, hips, bosoms; and these mites, with the parrot proclivities of their years and race added their shrill: "By'm, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... words when an enormous Cat appeared before him and began to mew so horribly that he was almost deafened by the sound. The Cat ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... There is that night of thunder, and the dawning And all that day of storm and toward the evening He says: "Deploy the eagles!" "Onward!" Well, I leave the room and say to Steward there: "The Emperor is dead." That very moment A crash of thunder deafened us. You see A great age boomed in thunder its renewal— Drink to me, clasp ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... assumed a recumbent position than a lusty and ceaseless singing began in his ears, which bewildered and half deafened him. His bed, the room, the house, the whole world tore round and round, and heaved up and down frantically with him. He ceased to be a human being: he became a giddy atom, spinning drunkenly in illimitable space. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... then to go onward for about a good mile, that we be not so deafened by the noise of the Gas Fountain; and it did be now beyond the seventeenth hour; so that we eat and drunk, and made our rest in a secure ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that shell crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... at once if we would save our lives. Even before we could reach the entrance to the long passage through which we had come into the great engine room, the water had risen half way to our knees. Colonel Smith, catching Aina under his arm, led the way. The roar of the maddened torrent behind deafened us. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... hear at eve the bleating of far flocks, The mud-hen's whistle from the marsh at morn; To skirt with deafened ears and brain o'erborne Some foam-filled rapid charging down its rocks With iron roar of waters; far away Across wide-reeded meres, pensive with noon, To hear the querulous outcry of the loon; To lie among deep rocks, and watch all day On liquid heights the snowy clouds melt by; Or hear ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... mount some stairs and then his feet were kicked from beneath him, and he shot down a steep and slippery incline into the very midst of the shouting demons. He dropped through space and landed—in a vat of ice-cold water. Then he was dragged out, thumped on the head with stuffed clubs, deafened by the horns that bellowed in his ears, and tossed in a blanket till his head bumped against the ceiling. Then he was forced to crawl through a piano box that was filled with sawdust. He was pushed and pulled and ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... had plunged a whole family into despair, and a difficult amputation was necessary. They lodged me in the house; I might say, they almost locked me up, and I saw nobody but people in tears, who almost deafened me with their lamentations; I operated on a man who appeared to be in a moribund state, and who nearly died under my hands, and with whom I remained two nights; and then, when I saw that there was a chance of his recovery, I drove to the station. I had, however, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... grew dim With the dizzying whirl—which way to swim? The thunderous downshoot deafened him; Half he choked in the lashing spray: Life is sweet, and the grave is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... one of the foremost cushioned seats, radiant with pride and delight in the red-bordered toga of his new dignity, clapped his big hands with such vehemence that his immediate neighbors were almost deafened. He, too, had been badly received, on his arrival, with shrill whistling, but he had been far from troubling himself about that. But when a troop of "Greens" had met him, just in front of the imperial dais, shouting brutal abuse in his face, he had paused, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by pain and terror, vanquished in advance by overwhelming reality. The sole advantage they derived from their disputes, consisted in producing a tempest of words and cries, and the riot occasioned in this manner momentarily deafened them. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... once made him a pair of pantaloons,—so they were connected sartorically and pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was the concierge below, who knew when he came in and went out,—that was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and the muffled cry of the marchands des legumes, were faintly heard from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could never tell whether child's or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... shouting in his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... be not sufficient adequately to open the eyes of those whom prejudice has blinded, and whose ears have been deafened against truth, by the clamours of sinister conspirators against the monarchy instead of the monarchs; if all these circumstances, I repeat, do not completely acquit the Queen, argument, or even ocular demonstration itself, would be thrown ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Had I found our native quidnuncs in a slightly less exalted humour, had they gushed a little less over their imperial painters at Burlington House, had they made the least effort to preserve a sense of proportion, I, for my part, had held my peace. But, deafened by the chorus of hearty self-applause with which British art has just been regaling itself, [W] a critic who hopes that his country is not once again going to make itself the laughing-stock of Europe is bound at all ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... almost animal natures who have seared their consciences and called sweet bitter and evil good. Thus men may so plunge themselves into the present as to lose the consciousness of the eternal—as a man swept over Niagara, blinded by the spray and deafened by the rush, would see or hear nothing outside the green walls of the death that encompassed him. And yet the blue sky with its peaceful spaces stretches ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... animal he seized his rifle and emptied the eight shots out of his magazine, firing the first three shots close to my head on the left side, the other five just as close on the other side. The muzzle of his rifle was so near my ear that the noise deafened me for several minutes and my hair was almost singed off. The ariranha, needless to say, escaped unhurt, and luckily ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Naples, crying, "Cloth! cloth!" But whenever any one asked him, "What cloth have you there?" he replied, "You are no customer for me; you are a man of too many words." And when another said to him, "How do you sell your cloth?" he called him a chatterbox, who deafened him with his noise. At length he chanced to espy, in the courtyard of a house which was deserted on account of the Monaciello, a plaster statue; and being tired out, and wearied with going about and about, he sat himself down on a bench. But not seeing any one astir in the house, which looked like ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... was instantly lost amid the streaming throng; dancers sprang round him, masks shot by him to and fro, kettle-drums and trumpets deafened his ears, and it was unto him as though human life were nothing but a dream. He walked along the lines; his eye alone was watchful, seeking for those beloved eyes and that fair head with its brown locks, for the sight of which he yearned to-day even more intensely than at other times; and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... doubt, a little deafened by the clattering of the mill, and we got up close before he noticed. Then he turned, and we saw he was a big ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... body that was not triply guarded by clothing. I instinctively stretched forth my hands and closed them, clutching by the action hundreds of enormous musquittoes, whose droning, singing noise how almost deafened me. The air was literally filled by a dense swarm of these insects; and the agony caused by their repeated and venomous stings was indescribable. It was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... beating of her heart stopped her breath. As in a dream, she saw thousands of lamps gleaming on the tables and on the walls; as in a dream, she heard the shout with which the guests greeted Caesar; as through a mist, she saw Caesar himself. The shout deafened her, the glitter dazzled, the odors intoxicated; and, losing the remnant of her consciousness, she was barely able to recognize Acte, who seated her at the table and took a place at ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and waving to them to urge them on to the succour of their captain; but, just as she fancied they would be alongside, she saw the cliffs, at the entrance of the harbour, towering above her, and the boat shooting in; directly after, the Sea Hawk opened her fire, and her ears were deafened with the reverberating reports of the guns, and the shouts and shrieks of the pirates. The moment the boat touched the shore, Zappa and his companions sprang out, he shouting,—"To the castle—to the castle! We will give them the guns ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... minute do I believe that. But whatever you turn out to be, it'll be no harm to have had the extra schooling you're getting, so you'll stay on a monitor for a while longer. And now quit talking, do, or you'll have me deafened with your clatter!" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... deafened by the incessant reports which always made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... could see a group of natives banging, screaming, yelling and beating pans, accompanied by a horrible drumming sound which nearly deafened her. The cubs, frightened and bewildered, crouched round their mother and ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... length of the noon hour one may stand at the door of the Pacific Bank and look down the broad cobble-paved, elm-shaded stretch of Main street to the door of the Pacific Club and be quite deafened by a step on the brick sidewalk and fairly shy at the shadow of a passer, so lone is the place. If it were not for the travelling salesmen, a score or so of whom come in with every boat, flood with their ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... crash which nearly deafened him, and for a moment he believed that the madman had succeeded in his awful purpose. Then a tall figure sprang across him, and with a shout Roy drove his ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... dear,— And tender memories touch the faltering choir. He sings no more on earth; our vain desire Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear In Dorian flute-notes breathing soft and clear,— The sweet contralto that could never tire. Deafened with listening to a harsher strain, The Maenad's scream, the stark barbarian's cry, Still for those soothing, loving tones we sigh; Oh, for our vanished Orpheus once again! The shadowy silence hears us call in vain! His lips are hushed; his song ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mr. Skale," faltered the other breathlessly, "quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened him a ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... they all shouted, until the beggar was nearly deafened by the noise they all made, and the lady herself stood ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... I heard nothing of the shouts which yet deafened me, and durst not so much as raise my eyes, the cheery alderman's ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Corona. She shivered; a moment before, she had been oppressed with the heat. Her monosyllabic question was low and indistinct. She wondered whether Giovanni could hear the beatings of her heart, so slow, so loud they almost deafened her. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... the Inn slammed to the door against the thunderous rush of the breaking storm. The rain dashed in torrents against the house. The blue flashes of electricity streaked the windows constantly, while the roll and roar of the thunder almost deafened those in the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... longer with carnal weapons. We of the spirituality will teach you of the temporality how to die in cold blood, our hands not clenched for resistance, but folded for prayer—our minds not filled with jealous hatred, but with Christian meekness and forgiveness—our ears not deafened, nor our senses confused, by the sound of clamorous instruments of war; but, on the contrary, our voices composed to Halleluiah, Kyrie-Eleison, and Salve Regina, and our blood temperate and cold, as those who ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... between the acts (for the tragedy involved a change of scenery) was intolerably tedious. His neighbours were talking politics and passing one another quarters of orange across him; the newspaper boy and the man who hired out opera-glasses deafened him with their bawling. He was in terror of some sudden catastrophe that ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... about a hundred yards from them, the foremost ones began firing. This feu-de-joie continued until we had reached them and had dashed through the lines of fire, for they continued loading and firing as rapidly as possible. Our ears were almost deafened with the continuous reports, and our nerves were somewhat tried, as the younger braves especially consider it great fun to fire off their heavy charges of powder as close to their visitors' heads as possible. But a well- ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... "Have you ever seen Vesuvius in eruption?" he added. "I admit no rocks were discharged—at least, I didn't see any. There may be some in the bath. I didn't wait to look.... Blinded by the steam, deafened by the noise, you make a rush for the door. This seems to have been moved. You feel all over the walls, like a madman. In the frenzy of despair—it's astonishing how one clings to life—you hurl yourself at the bath and turn on both taps.... As if by magic the ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... to the miners, when a terrific rumbling sounded, as from a distance behind them. Bill's man was far in advance of the other two rescuers, and perhaps, the crackling on the ground and the raging fire in the trees overhead, deafened him to this other ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... of Rivers's nature there heaved and roared something that, had Northrup not held the reins, would have meant battle to the death. It was not outraged honour, love, or justice that blinded and deafened Larry; it was simply the brutish resentment of the savage who, bound and gagged, watches a strong foe take all that he had believed was his by right of conquest. At that moment he hated Mary-Clare as he ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity. I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, And present, and forevermore. The universe, ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... broken glass fell over a member of the family sitting under it, and Whittier himself, who was standing near the door of the "garden room," was thrown to the floor. All in the house were stunned and remained deafened for several minutes, but no one was seriously injured. Up to that time the house had been protected by lightning rods; but Mr. Whittier now had them removed, and refused to have them replaced, though ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... they halted they heard the hoofbeats clear and close at hand; the crackling of undergrowth and the rustle of the leaves through which they had thrust their passage had deafened their ears to other sounds until this moment. They checked and waited where they stood, barely screened by the few boughs that still might intervene between them and the open, not daring to advance, and not daring to retreat lest their movements ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... alone, we mingle with the bees and butterflies and many insects and others of our kind, all intent upon a breakfast of honey dew freshly garnered and served each morning; and such a service! The very air is alive with the gathering; our ears are deafened by the whistling sounds of flight, from a plaintiff treble to a resonant bass, mingled with cries of joy and greeting and quarrelsome chatter. It is the chit-chat of the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... wholly terrified, dazzled and deafened as well, the girl dashed the rain from her eyes and strove to recollect her wits and grapple sanely ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and crisp, Shone like a wheat-field in the sun, Its swift voice deafened to a lisp, Fell, ere the war was well begun, And waned and withered ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... mache heads of bears, tigers, dragons and even stranger beasts. Wild but not inharmonious music from shaven-headed members of an orchestra of weird instruments—gongs, shawns, cymbals, long silver trumpets—deafened the ears. Crowds of gaily-clad spectators covered the flat roofs of the building and arcades, thronged the verandahs, filled the windows and squatted around the courtyard—these last kept in order ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... many places they had neither of them seen before. They stayed a week in Paris, where Helen bought more dresses and declared herself supremely happy; they visited the falls of the Rhine, which Maurice said deafened him; and ran through Switzerland, which they both voted detestably uncomfortable and dirty—the hotels, bien entendu, not the mountains. They stopped a night on the St. Gothard, which was too cold for them, and a week or two at the Italian lakes, which were too hot. They sauntered ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... three stiff, crouching men leaped into instant and united action. She saw streaks of fire—streaks of smoke. Then a crashing volley deafened her. It ceased as quickly. Smoke veiled the scene. Slowly it drifted away to disclose three fallen men, one of whom, Monty, leaned on his left hand, a smoking gun in his right. He watched for a movement from the other two. It did ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... stout poplar, just a yard away from Irons's shoulder; and as Dangerfield pronounced the word 'tree,' his hand rose, and the sharp report of a pocket-pistol half-deafened Irons's ear. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... for the dive. Finally the boat reached the crest and, with a lurch, shot from under the boy as he sprang far out into space. It seemed an eternity to Piang before he plunged into the waters below; then he sank down, down. The roaring and thundering deafened him, and he wondered if he should ever stop tumbling over in the water. It tossed him, tore from his hands any support he was able to grasp, and finally, after almost depriving him of breath, left him floating on the surface ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart |
