"Fits and starts" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old male badger seemed to lose suspicion of any obnoxious presence. Then, lumbering after him, every member of his family would appear in full view on the mound, and, with little fits and starts of pretended rage and fright, would roll over and over each other, rush helter-skelter back to the underground dwelling and out again, and round and round the tree-trunks. A favourite trick, indulged in by young and old alike, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... late Emperor of the French, carried on the task thus auspiciously commenced, for the purpose of shedding light upon the parts of Roman history connected with Julius Caesar, the hero of his book. In spite of much opposition from the Papal Government, the work of exhumation was continued in fits and starts after the French emperor had given it up; and ever since the Italian Government have taken the matter in hand, gangs of labourers under the directorship of the accomplished Signor Rosa have been more or less continually employed, with the result that almost the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... energy apply itself to our roads. In my childhood, standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the front windows of my mother's carriage, I remember one unvarying set of images before us. The postilion (for so were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering [3] i.e., in crossing from side to side—according to the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain water; and the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... not be supposed that all this was spoken fluently. It came slowly, by fits and starts, with a long pause at the end of each sentence, and with many a sigh between, expressive ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... so very gay, And not by fits and starts, But ever, through each livelong day She's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... it that has grieved you lately, Lucy?" she gently asked. "I am sure you have been grieving. I have watched you. Gay as you appear to have been, it is a false gaiety, seen only by fits and starts." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... mirifico,' he pondered on its vastness with indefinite amazement, although probably it might not reach the quarter of his own. For it should in common charity be stated, that, with all her hiding and hiving propensities, Mrs. Quarles, however usually a screw, was by fits and starts an extravagant woman, and besides spending on herself, had occasionally helped her own kith and kin; poor niece Scott, in particular, had unconsciously come in for many pleasant pilferings, and had to thank her good aunt for innumerable filched groceries, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... our travellers on their weary way experienced that which most of my readers will find in the longer journey of life, viz., that stirring events are not evenly distributed over the whole road, but come by fits and starts, and as it were, in clusters. To some extent this may be because they draw one another by links more or less subtle. But there is more in it than that. It happens so. Life is an intermittent fever. Now all narrators, whether of history or fiction, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that the life of man's mind, where man has a mind—which is not always the case—is a thing of fits and starts. I even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... their opinions that they change, but their hearts; and this evidently is not done in a moment—it is a slow work; nevertheless, though gradual, the change is often not uniform, but proceeds, so to say, by fits and starts, being influenced by external events, and other circumstances. This we see in the growth of plants, for instance; it is slow, gradual, continual; yet one day by chance they grow more than another, they make a shoot, or at least we are attracted ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... persists and repeats itself in the roadway, and a shape of uncertain equilibrium emerges and advances towards us by fits and starts; a shape that clings to itself and is impelled by a force stronger than itself. It is Brisbille, the blacksmith, drunk, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... to say, was the friend of virtue and of every liberal art. Even that monster Domitian was versed in polite learning, and by fits and starts capable of intense application: but we read in Tacitus, that his studies and his pretended love of poetry served as a cloak to hide his real character. See History, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... of uneducated persons, happens because they are not conscious of those faculties, or of their right laws, but use them blindly and capriciously, by fits and starts, talking sense on one ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... Juggernaut's temple with their bodies along the dusty road. They will wear hair shirts and scourge themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labor by fits and starts all thru your lives at the endless task of making yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather than listen to the humbling ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... later, she began to dress for the adventure—to find herself weaker than she had at all supposed. Although she forbore to mention it to the Second Nurse, there was an irresponsible funny feeling in her legs. They seemed to belong to her but by fits and starts. But the clothes were hers: the merino skirt a deal too short for her—she had grown almost an inch in her bed-lying— the chip hat, more badly crushed than ever, a scandal of a hat, but still hers. The dear, dear clothes! She held them in both hands and nuzzled into ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fellow, who was on friendly terms with everybody, so long as they did not disturb him too much. He was one of those indolent boys, with plenty of talent, if they only care to exercise it. The disposition to do so, however, only came by fits and starts. In another respect, too, he was like a great many other boys—ay, and girls, too—and that was—he would often go to a great deal more pains to avoid a difficulty than it would have caused him by boldly facing it. So true is the proverb that lazy ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every morning at the hay-field. It was so far to come, she ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Sleep they could not, for that icy breath bit into their marrow, and of this Morris was glad, since he did not dare relax his watch for an instant. So sometimes they sat silent, and sometimes by fits and starts they talked, their lips close to each other's face, as though they were ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... were so many fortresses; the whole valley was a veritable hell. There were incessant counter-attacks, which the Allies, on the bare plateau, entirely devoid of cover, could repel only with the greatest difficulty. They pushed forward step by step, and by fits and starts. On the 19th our troops were hard put to it to hold the ground they had taken the day before; on the 20th they barely began to nibble at the ravines, at Ploisy and L'Echelle. On the 21st the Americans took Berzy-le-Sec, and the French were ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... the street below resound, And the voices of jubilant masses proclaim a glorious holiday, I painstakingly pick out words on the typewriter, By fits and starts, thinking up a story about the great Metropolitan tenor. The typewriter keys now hold no rhythmic tingle. But the local manager in Iowa wants the story. He has engaged the great tenor for a date next March When the Tuesday musicale ladies give their annual ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... equally clear that they cannot be repressed by penal legislation. It is therefore right and desirable that public opinion should be directed against them. But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and temperately, not by sudden fits and starts. There should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is an irrational practice, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
