"Incoherent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incoherent, his manner became more sullen, and long before dinner was completed it was evident that he had had far more wine ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... man looked up with a vacant expression. It was evident that he did not quite understand the question, but he began again to mutter in a partly incoherent manner. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Mr. Waddington, "how you learn. You're getting the sense, the flair for style. I shall always be glad to think I trained you, Barbara.... And you may be very thankful it is I and not Ralph Bevan. Of all the jerky—eccentric—incoherent—" ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior. They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma they emptied two ergastula and never so much as approached the others, repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia something, I never learned what, enraged a knot ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... (16th) I was startled in my sleep by the hurried tramp of several men, who rushed in to say they were Grant's porters—Bogue men who had deserted him. Grant, they said, in incoherent, short, rapid, and excited sentences, was left by them standing under a tree, with nothing but his gun in his hand. All the Wanguana had been either killed or driven away by M'yonga's men, who all turned out and fell upon the caravan, shooting, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... against his arm exhausted. Henderson held her and learned what suffering truly means. He fanned her with his hat, rubbed her cold hands and murmured broken, incoherent things. By and by slow tears slipped from under her closed lids, but when she opened them her eyes ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... nervous and excited and incoherent, yet as they followed at her side down the broad marble staircase she made them understand dimly that their protection was now unnecessary. No, she had not been insulted; not directly. But she had been affronted. It was nothing—only the shock of seeing a drunken ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... her with a kind look. She shivered and hesitated; her eyes wavered. Then she began to say a number of rapid, incoherent things, in an under-voice. Manisty drew her hand ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... where she lived was carefully avoided. Those who ventured far in the forest after nightfall either never came back at all or returned half imbecile with terror, and afterwards poured out to their affrighted friends incoherent stories of the strange lights and terrible forms they had encountered, moving about amid the trees. Up to the present Henri had been just as scared by these tales as the rest of the villagers; but so intense was his longing for revenge that he at ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Woodward's eye, which was riveted upon her, she thought, with a baleful and demoniacal glance, that pierced and prostrated her spirit with its malignant and supernatural power; all these terrible images, with fifty other incoherent chimeras, flitted before the wretched girl's imagination during her feverish slumbers. Towards morning she sank into a somewhat calmer state of rest, but still with occasional and flitting glimpses of the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... they had brought the reckless adventurer to his knees. He smiled at the recollection of their wrath when they knew that they had been tricked, and after a quarter of an hour's anxious waiting found a few sheets of paper scribbled over with incoherent words or satirical verse, and the prisoner having apparently snatched ten minutes' sleep, which seemingly had restored to him quite a modicum ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... and down the room, he frankly unfolded his troubles—the approaching marriage of his mother (this was no news), and, in an agitated and incoherent manner, his desperate predicament with regard ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... strange being he was, and that the language which he heard had perhaps a deeper meaning than appeared upon the surface. But the manner of Batoche was quiet in its earnestness, his eye had none of its strange fire, and there was no wild incoherent gesture of his to indicate that he was speaking outside of his most rational mood. M. Belmont therefore contented himself with thanking the hermit for his good will. A lull then ensued in the conversation, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... man listened gravely to her disconnected, incoherent words, drawing but one conclusion from them—"the lover who had cast her off was pursuing the child, as her relentless foe, to the very verge ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... its absurdities and follies, its courage and devotion. There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and, except for its one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think, to the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a simple assumption; it was the first crude expression of a great mass and mingling ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and when Pablo's babbling became incoherent, the aged master of Palomar controlled his twitching hands sufficiently to roll and light a cigarette. Then he reread ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 1858 page 97.) The rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of their ancient channels, but have actually eaten 50 feet into the subjacent gneiss; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of scoriae and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones—had there been a single flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred, a great part of these volcanoes ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... stone him to-morrow; which clamours for the book everybody else is reading, for no reason under the sun save that everybody else is reading it. This is the class of whim and caprice, of fad and vogue, the unstable, incoherent, mob-mouthed, mob-minded mass, the "monkey-folk," if you please, of these latter days. Now it may be reading The Eternal City. Yesterday it was reading The Master Christian, and some several days before that it was reading Kipling. Yes, almost to his shame ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... manifested fixed delusions of having murdered a girl on August 7, 1909. Present symptoms: Fixed delusions of a self-accusatory nature, delusions of persecution; accused a medical officer whom he had never seen before as being among those who were hounding him. Becomes excited, violent, profane, incoherent and obscene in speech, and attempted to assault the officer. He attempted suicide on February 15, 1910, while at Concord, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... Girasole showed that he felt it; but Minnie could not help it. After a time Girasole mastered his feelings, and began an animated conversation with Mrs. Willoughby in very broken English. Girasole's excitement at Minnie's slight made him somewhat incoherent, his idioms were Italian rather than English, and his pronunciation was very bad; he also had a fashion of using an Italian word when he did not know the right English one, and so the consequence was that Mrs. Willoughby understood not much more ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... that early training that a good many of us have never yet been able to work up much enthusiasm over the Old Masters. Mind you, we have no quarrel with those who become incoherent and babbling with joy in the presence of an Old Master, but—doggone 'em!—they insist on quarreling with us because we think differently. We fail to see anything ravishingly beautiful in a faded, blistered, cracked, crumbling painting of an early Christian ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... cried, "You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-litterateur!" and all the mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness. ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... turned a rich crimson. It had occurred to him that this incoherent statement was not quite the one to win interest and admiration from a strange and exceedingly attractive woman. What would she think of him? Perhaps that he was intoxicated, or insane. Varick's imagination, never lively, distinguished itself during ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... borne bad fortune better than this," said Mr. Moreland; and then I remember telling him, in incoherent words, how poor we had been and how Clare was fading away for want of the nourishment and good support I was utterly ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... American Indian as the most ferocious of savages; but be had not understood at all how large a part insult plays in this ceremony of deliberate cruelty; and, insulting a woman! he had not once dream'ed it. Now, when he saw it done, his blood rushed into his head and he burst forth in choked incoherent curses. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... and done, was the motive to which he, like Marthe, ascribed the incoherent words which Philippe had uttered previous to his appearance before the magistrates; and, without going deeper into the matter, it gave him, on his side, a certain sense of anger, mingled with a mild contempt. Philippe ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... ordinary upheaval which large submarine areas are undergoing; and the real enigma which the geologist has to solve is not the extensive denudation of the white chalk or of our tertiary sands and clays, but the fact that such incoherent materials have ever succeeded in lifting up their heads above water in an open sea. Why were they not swept away during storms into some adjoining abysses, the highest parts of each shoal being always planed off down to the depth of a few ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... he really seemed to be seeing the war; few people saw it; for most of the world it came as an illimitable multitude of incoherent, loud, and confusing impressions. But all the time he was at least doing his utmost to see the war, to simplify it and extract the essence of it until it could be apprehended as something epic and explicable, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... above. When the song is over, to the success of which he feels he has materially contributed, he will inform you that you may talk of your "arias," and your "romanzas," "but for music, sir,—music—" at which point he becomes incoherent and unintelligible. It is this gentleman who suggests "China," or "Brattle Street," as a suitable and cheerful exercise for the social circle. There are certain amatory songs, of an arch and coquettish character, familiar to these localities, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... herself. "Cabin." An incoherent flood of dream-stuff welled up and up till her head was dizzy and her heart seemed bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks of things, and unintelligible associations fluttered and whirled about, and she strove vainly with her consciousness to grasp and hold them. For she felt ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... was incoherent. The detective who was with him could but smile a little, for the girl had come out of the door which, according to his instructions, led only to ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... read at the beginning of the ball... that is, I mean, of the matinee. Though this poem is not in the programme... for it has only been received half an hour ago.. . yet it has seemed to us"—(Us? Whom did he mean by us? I report his confused and incoherent speech word for word)—"that through its remarkable naivete of feeling, together with its equally remarkable gaiety, the poem might well be read, that is, not as something serious, but as something appropriate to the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he was very incoherent; but it seems that the Blackfaces departed, leaving him with his wife and children nearly frightened to death, and with the top of ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Mrs. Brigham said something incoherent about some sewing which she had to do, some black for the funeral, and was out of the room. She went up to the front chamber which she occupied. Caroline was there. She went close to her and took her hands, and the two sisters looked ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... softly, did he have to speculate—try to make more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition—every one would ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... so?" was the somewhat incoherent reply. "Isn't it always the way? See how we are watched: don't go in the sun, you'll be burned; don't do this, don't do that—all because you're a girl. I'm tired of it.—Aunt Kit, I'm not in the sun.—I wish I ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... once she put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she was talking—stammering half incoherent words that came bursting jerkily from her lips ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... for six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his return. "News! great news!" he wrote. "The Nilghai knows, and so does the Keneu. We're all back on Thursday. Get lunch ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... when a loud noise, as of a door dashed violently open, reached his ears. This was succeeded by a burst of furious vociferation in a voice which Paco knew to be that of Baltasar. Although his tones were loud, his utterance was so rapid and incoherent, the effect apparently of passion, that only a word here and there was intelligible to the muleteer, and these words were for the most part execrations. He seemed to lash himself into the most unbounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... back smiling, and sat down with Monkhouse for a little space. The eyes he saw were large, red-rimmed and troubled; tales and conspiracies flagged miserably. Bedient chaffed him for having become incoherent, and left shortly for his own room, where he pressed out two of the thinnest possible sheets of paper, closely written on both sides, and made them his own to ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... with me!" flared his son at white heat. For a full minute they indulged in a furious exchange of half-incoherent insults before Copley's voice rose clear above his father's. "I will marry Sheila as soon as she'll have me, and I warn you to keep your hands ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... perfectly sensible of the defect of my plan, or rather absence of plan. By attacking as I do, one by one, so many incoherent Sophisms, which clash, and then again often mingle with each other, I am conscious that I condemn myself to a disorderly and capricious struggle, and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... here?" Mr. Neeven asked, in his usual stern tones, which did not help to clarify Tom's understanding of his own position. He stammered some very incoherent words, which were no explanation at all, and did not even attempt to ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... you trying to say, child?" she asked hastily of Molly, who was stammering out an incoherent speech. "Well, never mind; whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it now. You run right straight home; and if you want to come over to-morrow to see how Marjorie is, you may, but I can't have you bothering around here ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... fell down on his knees and murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving. Surely his virtue in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded! But, as if the impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Gascoigne. His senses swam. The turf heaved and rolled as if an earthquake moved it; the houses fronting the square and the trees immediately before him leaped and danced as if suddenly launched into grotesque animation, while about him swirled a wild, incoherent noise of voices, rising and falling, now loud, now silent, and reaching him through a murmuring hum that surged about his ears until it shut out all else and consciousness ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Quin immediately raised him tenderly from the floor, and placed him upon the cushions. This movement seemed to disturb the sufferer, and he opened his eyes, muttering some incoherent words. At the same time he threw his arms and legs about in a frightful manner. Dan was quite as much puzzled and alarmed as Lily had been. He did not know what to do for him. His experience as a nurse had been very limited, and his knowledge of ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... not fall into the sophism refuted by St. Paul, when he forbids the vase to say to the potter: Why hast thou made me thus? I do not blame the author of things for having made me an inharmonious creature, an incoherent assemblage; I could exist only in such a condition. I content myself with crying out to him: Why do you deceive me? Why, by your silence, have you unchained egoism within me? Why have you submitted me to the torture of universal doubt ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... way of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. I had seen your Rocky Mountains, it is true, but I had seen them in March; and now I shall see them at the end of January, and that is really one of the main purposes of my journey. If from time to time in my passage I do deliver a few incoherent utterances, these utterances will not be prompted by any desire for pelf. That is far from my thoughts, but still if anyone wants to pay two dollars, or seventy-five cents, to hear those incoherent utterances ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... man, and Billy's heart went out to him. "Oh, I beg pardon, but you—he—I—" So many things occurred to him to say at one and the same time that he emitted a snort of warring and incoherent syllables. Finally, with supreme control, "Do you know that your 'gentleman of rank' couldn't set foot in a gentleman's club ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... emotions. Certainly his passion transcends the vivacious sentiment of poor Gallus. I tell you, my wary critic, I am almost willing to believe that through this silly young dandy we are getting a new voice in our literature. Who knows? who knows? It is un-Roman, yes, incoherent and moody and subversive of law and order, but is it false to human life? A man may choose to dwell apart with his own heart rather than with Lucretius's science or Virgil's nature, or your own practical philosophy. Certain lines that this ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... a muscle of his face betraying the slightest emotion at his wife's incoherent speech. But Greif had turned away and appeared to be examining one of the guns that stood in a rack against the wall. The meeting had taken place in the great hall, and he was glad that there was something ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... understand, because we are talking of a madwoman ... and because all that happens in that disordered brain is necessarily incoherent and abnormal?" ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... she murmured something incoherent. Her husband jumped up and said, 'You are not well! What is it? What ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... a cry of terror and began to entreat for his life. In the full light of the dazzling moon, his face showed all the pallor, all the contortions of a coward who, though believing himself lost, has not the resolution to mask his fear. He poured forth incoherent promises of secrecy, ejaculations of despair ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... frankness vanished, and with them his rationality. He looked queer. His contrasting eyes shot little malignant gleams. He muttered incoherently, and moved back toward the skiff, making violent gestures, and his muttering grew to shouting, though still incoherent. He got in the boat and started to row back ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... her out of a sound sleep, and begged she would be so kind as to be a Mahometan. She was very much alarmed, for she thought I was delirious, which I believe I was; for I tried to explain the reason of my request, but it was in such an incoherent manner that she could not at all comprehend what ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of assurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking—incoherent... a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... background, the ups and downs of temper, the variation of the seasons; above all you are shown the heroine through the medium of the praises, the complaints, the narratives of the past, the imaginings of the future, of the hero, whose incoherent rhapsodizing constitutes the whole poem. He, Vallera, is a well-to-do young farmer; she, Nencia, is the daughter of peasant folk of the castellated village of Barberino in the Mugello; he is madly in love, but shy, and (to all appearance) awkward, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... some little distance across the plain to meet and welcome the expected guest. She stood quietly waiting while her husband stammered over his incoherent sentences, and then put out ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... read this wild and incoherent letter, she sank on her knees by her bedside, unable in any other attitude to bear the strain which ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was leze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, to the joy of all the steaming, soddened company, and I am not able to guess where ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... too varied, and depend too much on special circumstances, for it to be possible to reduce the art of detecting them to definite rules. Only one general principle can be laid down, and that is, that when the literal sense is absurd, incoherent, or obscure, or in contradiction with the ideas of the author or the facts known to him, then we ought to presume an ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... had guttered into coffin handles and shrouds, and, choked by their long black wicks for want of snuffing, gave out a smoky yellow light. One of the young men might possibly have been in a maudlin state, for he had his arm round the neck of his next neighbour. Another was making an incoherent speech to which nobody was listening. Some of their faces were red, some were sallow; some were sleepy, some wide awake. The only one among them who appeared in his usual frame of mind was Festus, whose huge, burly form rose at the head of the table, enjoying with a serene and triumphant ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... display a liveliness of manner and conversation which would be repugnant to the feelings of a large portion of the congregation of Banff." Others of the objections assert, that his illustrations in the pulpit do not bear upon his text—that his subjects are incoherent and ill deduced; and the reverend gentleman is also charged with being subject to a natural defect of utterance—a defect which it is said increases as he "extends his voice," which is of a "very harsh and grating ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... Cora, evidently too incoherent to speak, leaped at the marshal, his fist drawn back. Keith seized him around the body, holding ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the two men met. Jacob saw his father's face grow pale in the moonlight, while he pressed his hand involuntarily upon his heart, as if struggling with some physical pain. At last he spoke, but his words were strange and incoherent. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... and then spent more than an hour walking round the grounds with her. She told him the history of her life, and wept bitterly over the retrospect of her erroneous course. It seemed a great relief to have some one to whom she could open her over-burdened heart. She was occasionally incoherent, but the fresh air invigorated her, and the quiet talk soothed her perturbed feelings. At parting, she said, "I thank you. I thought I hadn't a friend in the world. I was afraid ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... sanity. It was still hoped that this agitation of spirits might pass away as they proceeded; but, on the contrary, it grew more and more violent. His comrades endeavored to divert his mind and to draw him into rational conversation, but he only became the more exasperated, uttering wild and incoherent ravings. The sight of any of the natives put him in an absolute fury, and he would heap on them the most opprobrious epithets; recollecting, no doubt, what he had suffered ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... could bear no more. He snatched his cap from the table, and with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... after came Julia's mother and Nell, in the light carriage; and kisses, and tears, and little laughy sobs, and words that ran out with little freshets of tears, and unanswered questions, and unasked answers, broken and incoherent; yet all were happy, and all thankful and grateful to their Father in Heaven; and blessings and thanks—many of them ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... early callers at the hospital. William Dodge is still alive, but delirious. He slept much of the night, but is flighty, making many wild, incoherent speeches. Receiving permission to see him, Sir Donald and Esther ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter, pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks she ran of ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavors to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... spoke, unless the incoherent shouts of the German to the mules be termed speech. Antiochus and Caesar were sunk in stupor or reverie. Drusus settled back on the cushions, closed his eyes, and bade himself believe that it was all a dream. Six months ago he had been a student at Athens, wandering with ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... little time for speculation. The balloon carriage dropped rapidly. Their daft professor hung to the rail, babbling incoherent things about returning to the mouth of the Anadir. Jarvis was silent. Evidently there was but one thing to do; to trust themselves to the tender mercies ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was from Miss Isobel and was marked "Confidential." In incoherent sentences it told of a letter just received from Eleanor, in which she announced that she was planning to make her professional debut in July, and that as Mr. Phipps was connected with the play in which she was to appear, she felt that she could accept ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... little of what passed. His sentences were incoherent, but half finished, and bursting with passion that was neither grief nor rage, nor reproach nor pardon, though a mixture of them all. The chief impression that he left upon my mind was, that he should soon be freed from the torment ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... sudden flight spread to the vicarage, and brought Mrs Thornton rushing up to the Court, hot and panting, and almost incoherent with curiosity and dismay. When she heard of the trouble which was the cause of their departure, her best side came out, and she helped the girls in both word and deed through the last difficult hours. It was a comfort to find someone ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... extent of the disaster that had thus befallen them, the girl was awed into a despairing silence; while the old man's impaired intellect gave way completely beneath the awful strain of the situation, and he broke into incoherent ravings. At length Mary Darrell knew that her beloved father had lost his mind, and that she must share her ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... sets out from unity rather than arrives at it; and the order which it appears to discover subsequently in an experience which at first is manifold and incoherent is only a refraction of the original unity through the prism of a spontaneous analysis. Mr Bergson admirably points out ("Creative Evolution", pages 240-244 and 252-257.) that there are two types of order, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... pour out incoherent thanks and glance enviously at Emile Blondet. There was as great a difference between a great lady like Mme. de Montcornet and Coralie as between Coralie and a girl out of the streets. The Countess was young and witty and beautiful, with the very white fairness of women of the north. Her mother ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Bolingbroke is not improved when overlaid with Pope's conventional ornamentation. The imaginary history proceeds to relate the growth of superstition, which destroys the primeval innocence; but why or when does not very clearly appear; yet, though the general theory is incoherent, he catches a distinct view of one aspect of the question and expresses a tolerably trite view of the question with singular ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... had said. Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me, but the words stuck in her throat. Then, dropping her head on the piano, she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body. I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love, but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her, she was ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... appeared to relish. Toward eleven o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the stable knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to himself about the horse and Topping's family, and to add some incoherent expressions which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his approaching dissolution or some wishes relative to the disposal of his little property, consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in different parts of the garden. On the clock striking twelve ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... multiple and ever-changing needs. It is not the work of logic, but of history, and the young reasoner shrugs his shoulders at the sight of this old building, whose site is arbitrary, whose architecture is incoherent, and whose inconveniences are obvious. . . . The majority of young people, above all those who have their way to make, are more or less Jacobin on leaving college. . . . Jacobinism is born of social decomposition ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... column, and Schneider lighting up his face with his perfect teeth, I thought with an immense admiration of the unpolished and loose-hung Stires amid the eternal smell of tar and dust. It was a mere discussion of her hair, incoherent and pointless enough. No scandal, even from Schneider. There had been some sense, of a dirty sort, in his talk to me; but more wine ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of Italy, Colburn printed in his New Monthly Magazine a long, vehement, and rather incoherent attack by Lady Morgan upon her critics. The editor, Thomas Campbell, explained in an indignant letter to the Times, that the article had been inserted by the proprietor without being first submitted ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... they had been witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like the conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entire contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son) she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... incoherent, dear lad," said I; "and yet you tell me one thing plainly enough; which is that in place of loving this one or that one, or the cordwainer's strapping daughter, you are in love with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... transported into a world in which the values were changed. I stood by, at a loss, like a stranger in a land where the reactions of man to familiar things are all different from those he has known. Stroeve tried to talk to me about the picture, but he was incoherent, and I had to guess at what he meant. Strickland had burst the bonds that hitherto had held him. He had found, not himself, as the phrase goes, but a new soul with unsuspected powers. It was not only the bold simplification ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old subscriber proceeded to 'maintain', and recalled attention to the fact that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few abstract, incoherent remarks about the 'surrounding district', and concluded by stating that he 'must now conclude', and thanking the editor for trespassing on the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... cried Roque, more astounded than ever, "the Moors said that? Well it was very kind of the malandrines to speak in such good terms of my honored master.—Good God! good God!" he then continued, in a confused incoherent manner—"My lady, pray forgive my impertinence, but will you tell me if I ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Gloria winding up that clock and setting it to the right hour, he could almost have torn it down and broken it to pieces. By and by, however, tired Nature had her way, and utterly heavy and worn out in mind and body, and weary of the disturbed and incoherent thoughts in his brain, he lay back and closed his eyes. He would rest a little while, he said to himself, and 'wait.' And so he gradually fell asleep, and in his sleep wrote, so he imagined, a whole eloquent chapter of his 'Political History of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the computations seems to offer no bar to their rapid solution, and answers in which long lines of figures are reeled off come with perfect ease. In watching the effort put forth in reaching an answer, there would seem to be some process going on in the mind, and an incoherent mumbling is often indulged in, but it is highly probable that Fields does not himself know how he derives his answers. Certain it is that he is unable to explain the process, nor has any one ever been able to draw from him anything concerning it. Almost the only thing he knows ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... against Miss Barnet's engulfing arms. Her passion ebbed suddenly and her words came scant, incoherent, and ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... almost incoherent, for the moment quite irresponsible. It is very likely that, but for Claire, he would have mounted a horse and pursued Haig to his ranch, with such consequences as anybody except himself could easily have foreseen. But he was not so far ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... moment; he had drunk a third and a fourth glass, and there was nothing but a mere drain left in the bottle. Already his utterance was thick and incoherent, and his eyes were fast assuming that glassy brightness that is usually the forerunner of helpless intoxication. It was a sight Ephraim could not bear to see. Impelled by that natural, almost holy shame which prompted the son of Noah to cover the nakedness of his ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... is a hasty and rather incoherent outline of our operations, but I will forward a more minute account as soon as the official reports can be ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... to become accustomed to the atmosphere of the place. At the first moment there had arisen from his poet's head, or, simply and prosaically, from his empty stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which, spreading between objects and himself, permitted him to catch a glimpse of them only in the incoherent fog of nightmare,—in those shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating objects into unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras, and men into phantoms. Little by little, this hallucination ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... moment, and a moment only, she was beaten down by the horrible hopelessness of her situation, then her natural courage, her indomitable, self-reliance overcame fear. If he expected an outburst of anger and incoherent reproach, or if he expected her to break down into hysterical supplication, he was disappointed. She had a firm grip upon herself, perfect command of voice ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... our undergraduates is patent, and its effects are by no means limited to America, as complaints from France and from England prove. The mob—the many-headed, the many-mouthed, figured in the past by poets as dumb, or, at best, an incoherent thing of brutish noises signifying speech—is acquiring education and learning how to express it. Hundreds of thousands whose ancestors never read, and seldom talked except of the simpler needs of life, are doing the talking and the writing which their large share ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... had of seeing something of the world, after leading the student's monotonous and secluded life. Enclosed in this letter were bills of a large amount, contracted at college, of whose existence the father was perfectly unconscious. No reference was made to these, save in the postscript, most incoherent in expression, and written evidently with an unsteady hand. He begged his father to forgive him for having forgotten—the word forgotten was partially erased, and neglected substituted in its place—ah! Louis, Louis, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... love her, and again and again in the most pathetic manner entreat him not to leave her, and say, it was very wicked of him not to love her, why was it, what had she done to displease him, then murmur incoherent words about a hateful girl, beautiful but poor that he loved, but not his poor little Natalie, and then starting up with outstretched arms she would implore him to be kind to ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party, who had been so light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so anxious were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety grew and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until my fears were aroused and I began to have misgivings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer exhaustion ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... tossing of long streaks of heads and arms on the blinds, resembled the action of a violent domestic scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astraea was there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house, and they were disputing furiously over ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... seemed to have made the Prophet less incoherent than was his wont; or perhaps he found no texts to fit this situation. "I did not dive through your solid steel, Pharaoh! I used my eyes, after I had used my ears. Here!" His fists had been doubled. He unclasped his hands and held them forward. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... too, recollect that, at his last moments, this unhappy individual was said to have uttered some incoherent words about some hidden money, and that the rapid hand of death alone seemed to prevent him from being explicit upon that subject, and left it merely a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... tents shared in the excitement outside. The patients whose hurts were comparatively slight were sitting up in their beds discussing the battle eagerly. Others more seriously hurt raised their heads to listen, while some lying apparently unconscious moaned and moved uneasily, muttering occasionally incoherent words, the quiver in earth and air arousing a dim ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... been accidentally associated with his life. It is only natural that he should similarly identify himself with those other beings like himself with whom he is connected by the bonds of blood and of intimate contact. Morally, then, primitive man is an indefinite and incoherent aggregate of interests which have not yet assumed the form even ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to some explanation of his partner's, or, more terrible, if he had shown some "low" and incredible intimation of taking his partner's extravagant bet as REAL and binding. In this distress he wrote to Uncle Jim an appealing and apologetic letter, albeit somewhat incoherent and inaccurate, and bristling with misspelling, camp slang, and old partnership jibes. But to this elaborate epistle he received only Uncle Jim's repeated assurances of his own bright prospects, and his ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... war; I have omitted to give an exact account of them, because they are well known by all, and they are described by a great number of Greek and Roman authors; yet for the sake of the connexion of matters, and that my history may not be incoherent, I have just touched upon every thing briefly. Wherefore Vespasian put off at first his expedition against Jerusalem, and stood waiting whither the empire would be transferred after the death of Nero. Moreover, when ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... With an incoherent exclamation and eyes afire the Russian sat forward. Unconsciously the others imitated his action. Only the man in evening dress made a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... me," he said, as they walked side by side; and in voluble French, Desiree launched into her story. It was rather incoherent, by reason, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... 31st of August, 1572, the bearing and conduct of Charles IX. and the queen-mother produced nothing but a confused mass of orders and counter-orders, affirmations and denials, words and actions incoherent and contradictory, all caused by a habit of lying and the desire of escaping from the peril or embarrassment of the moment. On the very first day of the massacre, about midday, the provost of tradesmen ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... several times already, but each time he had slipped back into an uneasy doze, a restless, wearisome sojourn in a strange, drowsy world, in which he struggled with stupid, silly dream-spectres, all jumbled together in a huddled mass of incoherent, impossible thoughts and actions; a blank world in which all his workaday doings were forgotten; an after-life of tiring sleep following on the carouse of yesterday. He lay half-suffocated in the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... was so overcome by his unexpected release that he began to stammer out incoherent expressions of gratitude to the judge, such as "Oh, thank you, your Honor! God bless your Honor! Thank you, your Honor! I am an innocent man, your Honor!" until Gottlieb, grasping him by the arm, dragged him away from the rail ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... She sat and covered her face with her hands, giving up all attempt at a manner. "It's how you see me, it's how you see me"—she caught her breath with it—"and it's as I AM, and as I must take myself, and of course it's no matter." Her emotion was at first so incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim diffused ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... had forced himself in, and the woman of the house sat in a corner looking upon him with dread. I addressed him, but he would scarcely return an answer. At last he commenced discoursing with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I did not understand much of what he said. His words were wild and incoherent, but he repeatedly threatened some person. The last bottle was now exhausted: he demanded more. I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk enough. He looked on the ground for some time, then slowly, and somewhat hesitatingly, drew his sword and laid it on the table. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... most horrid exclamations, smote upon the ear wherever I turned. Some lay at length upon straw, with eyes half closed and limbs motionless; some endeavoured to start up, shrieking with pain, while the wandering eye and incoherent speech of others indicated the loss of reason, and usually foretold the approach of death. But there was one among the rest whose appearance was too horrible ever to be forgotten. He had been shot through the windpipe, and the breath making its way between the skin and ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... power of imagination exerted upon real things; but we should have to explain that with Mr. Browning the real includes everything which a human being can think or feel, and that he is realistic only in the sense of being never visionary; he never deals with those vague and incoherent fancies, so attractive to some minds, which we speak of as coming only from the poet's brain. He imagines vividly because he observes keenly and also feels strongly; and this vividness of his nature puts him in equal sympathy with the real ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Gerard across the room was as nakedly passionate as the incoherent simplicity of ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... his young friend's wrist and laid a cool hand upon his burning, throbbing brow, with excellent effect, for Frank's loud talking grew broken, then indistinct, and rapidly sank into a low, incoherent babbling, as he ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... life; and then I would awake shuddering at the thought that some great imponderable being had swept through my mind. It was indeed days before this feeling passed perfectly away, and even now, when I have sought refuge in the only definite faith, I feel a great tolerance for those people with incoherent personalities, who gather in the chapels and meeting-places of certain obscure sects, because I also have felt fixed habits and principles dissolving before a power, which was hysterica passio or sheer madness, if you ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... re-entered the house he found three entirely strange young women with pink faces, demonstrative manners and emphatic mourning, engaged in an incoherent conversation with Mrs. Johnson. All three kissed him with great gusto after the ancient English fashion. "These are your cousins Larkins," said Mrs. Johnson; "that's Annie (unexpected hug and smack), that's Miriam (resolute hug and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Incoherent as the narrative was, it sufficed to tell Isidore only too plainly what had happened; yet he could at first scarcely realise it all. Trembling with agitation, he pressed the innkeeper with question after question till nothing more remained to be told. "What could I do," cried ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach |
