The state was at the mercy of venal and self-seeking politicians, bent upon regaining their ascendency at any cost, stultifying their own minds by vague sophistries and high-sounding phrases, which deceived none but those who wished to be deceived, and these but imperfectly; and dulling the public conscience by a loud clamor in which the calm voice of truth was for the moment silenced.

It does not weaken the power of thought, nor stultify the brain.

As dissipated habits obtained the mastery over him, and the unbounded flattery of his boon companions stultified his conscience, he became heartless and even brutal.

Why stultify thy boasted creed? Thine aid to them thou mightst have given, As France her aid once gave to thee; With them thy sons might well have striven, And their blood-rusted fetters riven; But why, in Heaven's name, should we Shoot men aspiring to be free?

It seemed to stultify the cry that had been trying to escape her.

If that one fact ever leaked out it would at once stultify our endeavours and weaken our position.

It keeps within the bounds of physical possibility, but it stultifies the only logical excuse for the soliloquy, namely, that it is an externalization of thought which would in reality remain unuttered.

The feebleness and inconsistency of governors often stultify the most sensible foresight.

'Blackstone says:From these loose authorities, which Fitzherbert does not hesitate to reject as being contrary to reason, the maxim that a man shall not stultify himself hath been handed down as settled law; though later opinions, feeling the inconvenience of the rule, have in many points endeavoured to restrain it.'

But, if he had stultified his own magnificent intellect, he could not impose on the convictions of mankind.

To pretend to believe a thing at which your reason revoltsto stultify your intellectthis, if it exists at all, is the unpardonable sin.

A man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law's house, anyway, nor in her owna man who could appeal to a woman for a favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason, stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and consideration which he asked for. . . .

And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their celibacy!

He next, ere the report of the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced an eye at Mr. Canning; mystified Mr. Coleridge, and stultified Lord Liverpool in his placein the Gallery.

Can we gain a view of the Bible which, without stultifying our intellectual nature, may satisfy our spiritual nature, and leave us free to call ourselves men of the Scriptures?

V. to be an imbecile &c adj.; have no brains, have no sense &c 498. trifle, drivel, radoter^, dote; ramble &c (madness) 503; play the fool, play the monkey, monkey around, fool around; take leave of one's senses (insanity) 503; not see an inch beyond one's nose; stultify oneself &c 699; talk nonsense &c 497.

But if a mind, totally void of sources of reflection, be shut up in a cell for years, or even for months, what can be expected but that every day will stultify its powers, and at last render it callous and unimpressable; or in the end imbecile, and so weak as to be irresponsible for its own acts!

To uphold such exclusion, is to lay the axe to the root of the spiritual Church, to stultify the apostolic preaching, and at this moment justify Mohammedans in persecuting Christians.

But it is extraordinary how much of that comment is made in a tone of hopeless dissatisfaction, how rarely it is associated with any will to change a state of affairs that so largely stultifies our national purpose.

He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the aged and afflicts the innocent.

And if the connoisseur meant anything at all, he was simply stultifying the rest of the article.