"Incoherent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despatched by District Messenger boys to the other generals. Towards nightfall the replies began to come in, and, having read them, the Prince saw that this business could never be settled without a personal interview. Many of the replies were absolutely incoherent. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... Creation to be carried on. The first result of this would probably be that the force of gravitation would begin to act, while, from what the telescope reveals to us, we may conjecture, that at the same time the whole incoherent mass would be permeated with light and heat, and some, at all events, of those elementary substances with which chemistry makes us acquainted would be developed, and the whole mass, acted upon by the mutual attraction of its several particles, would ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... ASCENSION OF, an apocryphal book giving an incoherent account of the martyrdom of Isaiah, and a vision he had under the reign of Hezekiah, apparently the origin of the tradition in Heb. xi. 37, about the prophet having ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson's feelings, but his wife's first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few incoherent words of explanation, she led him into the presence of his master, who, looking at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... with a speed born of his dementia, hurling himself through the door with a crash of shattered glass and a trail of incoherent ravings. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... as it reaches us this strange incoherent ejaculatory effusion, signed "A Lover of the Old Italian Opera." With the general spirit of this valediction it is possible to feel a certain amount of sympathy, but the author is clearly inaccurate in including amongst the bygone glories of the institution which he deplores places, persons, musical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... all-night's search, and he was in his bedroom in the bitter sleep of utter exhaustion and despair. Suddenly his heart had failed him and his brain had reeled. He had begun to feel dazed, to forget for a minute what he was looking for. He had made incoherent replies to the men with him, and finally one, after a whispered consultation with the others, had said: "Look at here, Andrew, old fellow; you'd better go home and rest a bit. We'll look all the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Blossett stammered something incoherent, his manner became more sullen, and long before dinner was completed it was evident that he had had far more wine than was good ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... that he was seeing, of the bridge of islands that seemed to be stretching towards the south-west and leading him to the region of untold wealth, was evidently very stimulating and exciting to Columbus. His Journal is almost incoherent where he attempts to set down all he has got to say. Let us listen to him ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... whatever was valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap of incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are part of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... imploring gesture, sank trembling into the chair, and, after a few incoherent efforts, managed to speak—'If you would but come to master, my Lord—I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intuition to see," he thought, "that she can show me all the regard she feels and yet incur no danger of premature and incoherent words. She will one day yield with all the quiet grace that she shows when rising to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... long time before he had left the house, but it seemed long and as if he had thought a great many rather incoherent things before he had reached the street and presently parted from his gay acquaintance and was on his way to his mother's house where she was spending a week, having come down from Scotland ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 'thank God you're alive we'd given you up!' He made no answer, but came on slowly and falteringly, turning repeatedly as though to gaze behind. Now I saw that he was in the last stage of exhaustion: his face was drawn and ghastly, and his cracked and swollen lips were moving rapidly in broken, incoherent words; his sufferings had plainly driven him out of his mind. He snatched at the water bottle and drained it at a draught; then, clutching me by the arm, he pointed back ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... acquaintance with a Unitarian. This gentleman showed much sweetness of mind, largeness of charity, and a timid devoutness which I had not expected in such a quarter. His mixture of credulity and incredulity seemed to me capricious, and wholly incoherent. First, as to his incredulity, or rather, boldness of thought. Eternal punishment was a notion, which nothing could make him believe, and for which it would be useless to quote Scripture to him; for the doctrine (he said) darkened ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... a healthy faith that the world must be rational and self-consistent. 'All science, all real knowledge, all experience presuppose,' as Mr. Ritchie writes, 'a coherent universe.' Next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist belief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that only in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth be found. Third, the substituted conceptions are treated intellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and discontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of sense-experience is shattered ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... returned to Petersburg, and two years later he came back stricken with paralysis—tongue-tied. He found neither Anna Pavlovna nor Olga living, and soon after died himself in the arms of Yuditch, who fed him like a child, and was the only one who could understand his incoherent stuttering. ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... unable to rise without the help of one another, or of a stick. Adam was for the most part in the same low state as yesterday, but sometimes he surprised us by getting up and walking with an appearance of increased strength. His looks were now wild and ghastly, and his conversation was often incoherent. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... for it but to run away, and she ran, but from the ante-room she heard the call outside, 'Sir Guy's bag to his room,' and she could not rush out among the servants. At that moment, however, she spied Mary Ross and her father; she darted up to them, said something incoherent about Mary's bonnet, and took her up ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Henrica, called her, shook her and sprinkled her with perfumed water from the large shell, set in gold, which hung as an essence bottle from her belt. When her niece only muttered incoherent words, she ordered the maid to bring ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... kinds of consciousness—an active, vigilant, cooerdinating consciousness (the seat of which is, probably, in the cortical portion of the brain) and the passive, pseudo-dormant, and, to a certain extent, incoherent and non-cooerdinating consciousness (the so-called sub-liminal consciousness) whose seat is in the great ganglia at the base of the brain (optic thalami and corpora striata), and in other ganglia situated in the spinal cord and elsewhere in the body. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... if I am a little incoherent," she implored. "To-day I have had a shock. You, too, have read the news? You must know that the Count von Hern is dead—killed in the railway accident ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all of the middle and lower-middle or trading classes. Soon after the Restoration a number of men of good family and some means threw in their fortunes with the persecuted sect. One of them, Robert Barclay, reduced to order and system the scattered and incoherent statements of its theology. In his Apology, published in 1675, he set forth a logical and consistent statement of beliefs, couched in clear and graceful language and supported by calm reasoning and example. [Footnote: Thomas, Hist. of the Society of Friends ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... sure to plunge all who approach it, even with the best intentions, into that fatal element, the patched-up brotherhood, which but yesterday was warranted to be better than new, falls once more into a heap of incoherent fragments. The last trial of the virtues of the Patent Redintegrator by the Special Committee of the Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as all attempts to buy peace at too dear a rate must end. Peace is an excellent thing, but principle and pluck are better; and the man who sacrifices ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... and fever set in,—to relieve which bleeding was again resorted to, and often repeated. He was now confined to his room, which he never afterwards left. He at last realized that he was dying, and sent incoherent messages to his sister, to his daughter, and to a few intimate friends. The end came on the 19th of April. The Greek government rendered all the honor possible to the illustrious dead. His remains were transferred to England. He was not buried in Westminster Abbey, however, but in the church of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... shedding bitter tears of anguish, or gazing wildly on the scene with looks of despair; while the fathers, whose stern duty it was to pass through this scene unmoved, walked to and fro restlessly, in deep but silent distress, spoke in broken and incoherent words to one another, and finally aided, by a mixture of persuasion and gentle force, in drawing the children away from their mothers' arms, and getting them on board the vessels which were to convey ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... discovered, diffuses great light over the history of those nations, of whom we shall have but a very imperfect idea, unless we have recourse to the inspired writers. They alone display, and bring to light, the secret thoughts of princes, their incoherent projects, their foolish pride, their impious and cruel ambition: they reveal the true causes and hidden springs of victories and overthrows; of the grandeur and declension of nations; the rise and ruin of states; ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... region, from Charleston north to the Virginia Capes. A coastal passenger ship off Hatteras sent out a frantic radio distress call. The apparitions of men had suddenly been seen in mid-air directly in the ship's course. The message was incoherent; the vessel's wireless operator was locked in his room at the transmitter, wildly describing an attack ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... She answered my incoherent sallies in her usual sedate manner, and I believe it was only in my imagination that her cheek dimpled a little, with a heightened color, now and then, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... The senior day-room to a man condemned Sheen. The junior day-room was crimson in the face and incoherent. The demeanour of a junior in moments of excitement generally lacks that repose which marks ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... Herbert uttered sounds incoherent but loud, and expressive of a supreme physical revulsion. The shocked audience readily understood that he liked neither Cousin Virginia's chiding nor Cousin ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... whispered Dick, with his heart beating, and a strange suspicion making its way into his breast. For in an incoherent vague manner he found himself thinking of Farmer Tallington stealing out of his house in the middle of the night. He had a boat, as most of the fen farmers had, for gunning, fishing, and cutting reeds. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar of him, and then—nothingness, no visible ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... and squeezed it to his breast, and kissed it— yes, he actually kissed its nose in the height of his glee, and continued to utter incoherent exclamations, and to perpetrate incongruous absurdities, until long after they had descended the river and left the muddy Portuguese and his ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... The monk's incoherent sentences fell upon deaf ears. Like an avalanche, the mighty mob swept down upon him, carrying him ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... a wash the day, Mon Sandy, and the Sawbath but fower days syne," opined Dam, critically observing the moss-and-mud streaked head, face and neck of the raving, incoherent victim ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... mother died from lack of proper nourishment and comfort. For a few years the father earned a few coppers by playing before public-houses in the East End, and then took to the road. Somehow or other he found himself on the Continent, and after many years he had turned up here. It was all very vague and incoherent. Often starving, homeless, and speaking no language but his own, is it to be wondered that the man had lost count of days, years, and time? Now he had a desire to journey to Greece, why, he knew not, but he clung to it ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... that just at this juncture baby should see fit to wake and set up a dismal cry, so shrill as to penetrate even to the distant dinner-room. Lady Catheron rose to her feet, uttered a hasty and incoherent apology, and ran from ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of common sense. It is purely a caprice of the imagination,—and what is imagination? A mere aberration of the cerebral nerves,—a morbidity of brain in which the thoughts brood on the impossible, —on things that have never been, and never will be. Thus, Sah- luma's verse resembles the incoherent ravings of a moon-struck madman,—moreover, it hath a prevailing tone of FORCED SUBLIMITY..." here Theos gave an involuntary start,—then, recollecting where he was, resumed his passive attitude—"which ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life, which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his inequalities ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... coming into view of the picnic crowd, hearing the incoherent murmur of many voices. Miss Bridger looked at him uncertainly, laughed a little and spoke impulsively. "You needn't do it, Mr. Boyle, unless you like. It's only a joke, anyway; I mean, my throwing myself at you like that. Just a foolish ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... 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
... grotesque costume, his eyes flashing, his hat cocked over his ear, and addressing the most respectable people with unheard-of rudeness, he attempted to force his way past the sentry, and thrust himself, for what purpose God only knows, into the presence of the Sovereign. During his incoherent ejaculations, the following words were distinguished: 'bravery, Vendome column, fidelity, the dial-plate of time, the tablets of history.' When he was arrested by one of the detective watch, and taken before ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... She panted incoherent phrases. She was here to speak with Mr. Redgrave on business—about her concert tomorrow. She had not entered the house until this moment. She had met Mr. Redgrave in ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... they stood there, while he smoothed her hair with hands that trembled a little and murmured incoherent words of love. And then at last they died away, and he fell silent—while she looked at him with tired eyes. The madness was past, and with almost a groan Vane let his ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... July. I tried to be cheerful, and said, "Hello, Galbreath, old fellow, I thought you were in heaven long before this." He laughed a sort of dry, cracking laugh, and asked me to hand him a drink of water. I handed it to him. He then began to mumble and tell me something in a rambling and incoherent way, but all I could catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near Mt. Pleasant. I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... in effort to keep abreast of his racing ideas. Thoroughly respected for his sterling character, he was made the target of much good-natured hilarity because of his constant hobby-riding and the rushing speech that made him almost incoherent. His mares and boar had cost him money that could better have gone into ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... almost incoherent—aroused me to new strength of purpose. To remain idle there, amid such surroundings, would ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... was I not there? I would—I would—she must have heard me. I would not have let her go. O, mamma!" cried Henrietta, almost unconscious of what she said, and bursting into a transport of ungovernable grief; sobbing violently and uttering wild incoherent exclamations. Her aunt tried in vain to soothe her by kind words, but all she said seemed only to add impulse to the torrent; and at last she found herself obliged to wait till the violence of the passion had in some degree exhausted itself; ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... bolt from a crossbow; and his squires bore him into the little convent to die in peace. The sufferer had never fully recovered his consciousness. He seemed but dimly aware of any thing—not fully sensible even to pain. His words were few, incoherent, scarcely intelligible. What the nuns could occasionally disentangle from his low mutterings was something about "blue eyes," and "watching from the lattice." The last rites of the Church were administered, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... for some moments, and silence was apparently inevitable. Then she burst out, without preparation, in a wild, incoherent way, with her whole life's story. The story of a child deserted by her mother, neglected by her father, taken from the ayah who was the only person who had ever loved her, and sent like a parcel to the care of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... are made—(they, might have been great statesmen in the days of Richelieu, perhaps);—but they lacked faith and character: the need, the habit, the weariness of pleasure, had sapped them: when they were engaged upon vast schemes they fumbled into incoherent action, or they would suddenly fling up the whole thing, while important business was in progress, desert their country or their cause for rest and pleasure. They were brave enough to meet death in battle: but very few of the leaders were capable of dying in harness, at their posts, never budging, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... they arrived. The girl wakened, descended, smiling uncertainly at Susie O'Toole, blinking somnolently at her surroundings. Susie put her to bed in the little southwest room where hung the shiny Colt's forty-five in its worn leather "Texas-style" holster. She murmured incoherent thanks and sank again to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of unaccustomed travelling, by the potency of the desert air, by the excitement of anticipation to which her nerves ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... went to bed, tired out with his day's work, became as insensible as a dead man. The other members of the family had spent a night of anguish. His mother, after several attempts to arouse her husband, with no better success than to draw forth incoherent mumbling, followed by yet louder snoring, had spent the night praying for the soul of the senor of the tower, believing him dead. Margalida, who slept near her brother, had called him in a stifled and agonized voice when the first shots rang ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 his ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... work. As nothing in this lower world, however, is complete, Trespolo had strange moments amid this life of delights; from time to time his happiness was disturbed by panics that greatly diverted his master; he would mutter incoherent words, stifle violent sighs, and lose his appetite. The root of the matter was that the poor fellow was afraid of going to hell. The matter was very simple: he was afraid of everything; and, besides, it had often been preached to him that the Devil never allowed a moment's rest to those ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... blessed among women!" responded the blissful Bliss. And having saluted the fair member, allowed it to help him rise; when, after a few decorous endearments, he departed to papa, and the bride elect rushed up to Sylvia with the incoherent announcement— ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... stunned and terrified to do anything but drop on his knees and utter incoherent entreaties ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... the advice of the steward. By degrees, however, Mr Quelch's speech became thick, and his conversation more and more incoherent. Crean watched him with a wicked look in his eyes, continuing to press the liquor more ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak, from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child. When I ventured to urge him back ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... feeling; for the rest, however, the robber-chieftain was to be abominated as well as admired. There has been too much of the tendency to see in 'The Robbers' only a personal document; only a youth's incoherent cry for liberty. The piece is a work of art, duly calculated with ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... torrent of incoherent words, jealous of the passing moments. It was vague, it was desperate, it was crude. But they were in a world vague, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... was, in the main, their feeling: wise, modest, unenvious, and unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae. But the two great—the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... proceeding would make the humans laugh at me—though to look into their serious faces one would not believe this possible. The thoughts of those about me, as I divined them, seemed anything but jocular. They came to me incoherent and inconsecutive, a jumble of conditional premises leading to approximate conclusions expressed in symbols having no intrinsic meaning.—Of course, it is unfair to judge too soon, but I have already begun to doubt the existence of direct perception among them.—What did you say, dear?—Bother ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... thee. It seems that thou hast no friends for forbidding thee that art speedily falling into a blazing fire. Thou art unable to discriminate between what thou shouldst do and what thou shouldst not. Without doubt thy period is full. What man desirous of living would utter speeches that are so incoherent and undeserving of being listened to? This thy endeavour is like that of a person desirous of crossing the ocean by the aid of only his two arms after having attached to his neck a heavy stone, or of one desirous of leaping down from the summit of a mountain. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... violently. Words thronged to his lips, only to be crushed back by the irony of fate. For a little he would have flung himself at his son's feet. He had lied, lied, lied! What could he say? His tongue lay hot against the palate, paralyzed. His brain was confused, dazzled, incoherent. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Heaven's name is a sense of direction? The phrase explains nothing. However incoherent the mind of the animal or the savage may be, it is there somewhere, working on some data. I've been all through the psychological and anthropological side of the business, and after you eliminate the clues from sight and hearing and smell and half-conscious memory there remains ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... 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
... 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 ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... 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 ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... risk your life? In God's name, what manner of woman are you, and where did you learn to use the sword? Had you no thought of me?" I was somewhat incoherent. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... corridor to the other—a distance of about one hundred feet. My hourly output was something like twelve feet, with an average of one hundred and fifty words to the foot. Under the pressure of elation one takes pride in doing everything in record time. Despite my speed my letters were not incoherent. They were simply digressive, which was to be expected, as elation befogs one's "goal idea." Though these epistolary monstrosities were launched, few reached those to whom they were addressed; for my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... among them; and these nominally Celtic folk have no greater power of imagination than the natives of other English counties nominally Saxon. There is a strain of difference—something that is possibly pre-Celtic—something at times sinister, passionate, incoherent; but there is nothing that is more romantic, more thoughtful, than may be found in the average countryman of the southern counties. We have all met delightful Cornish people—hospitable, kindly, lovable; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the reader with extracts from Mormon documents. The Book of Mormon is ponderous, but gloomy, and at times incoherent; and I will not, by any means, quote from that. But the Revelation of Joseph Smith in regard to the absorbing question of plurality or polygamy may be of sufficient interest to reproduce here. The reader has my full consent to form his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... no vision. What the wind could only faintly shadow forth upon her cheek, sprang into life under the touch of his fevered lips, and color flooded them like a wave. Laughing, crying, sobbing, she clung to him, kissed him with little incoherent murmurs, gazed at him, wept over him, kissed him again. All the troubles of the intervening days of sadness and privation faded away from her like a disused chrysalis, and she sparkled with life and love like ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... in the effort to hold his shoulders together—is the certainty that in six months he will scrape away the hot surface sand, in order to sleep comfortably on the more temperate stratum beneath; he is the man who, with some incoherent protest and becoming invective, metaphorically makes a Raleigh-cloak of himself, to afford free and pleasant passage for the noblest work of God, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... text is here fearfully corrupt and (as in many other parts of the Breslau Edition) so incoherent as to be ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... very much amazed, and was also exceedingly terrified at this communication. He trembled and turned pale, then looked wild and excited, and began to make inquiries in an incoherent and distracted manner. Calpurnia called in Cleopatra to confirm her story. Cleopatra did confirm it, of course, in the fullest and most unqualified manner. The effect which was produced upon the mind of the emperor seemed to be exactly what the conspirators ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... louder rose the throaty voices, faster and faster passed the cups and dippers. Ben and Mundy had their arms about each other. In the wagon the Lark had slipped down, and now lay upon his back, staring at the dim, swirling stars and babbling incoherent nothings. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... settled parts of the country, however, railroad building had comparatively a more solid foundation. Yet the railroad map of the forties indicates that railroad building in this early period was incoherent and haphazard. Practically everywhere the railroad was an individual enterprise; the builders had no further conception of it than as a line connecting two given points usually a short distance apart. The roads of those days began anywhere and ended almost anywhere. A few miles ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... were suddenly 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 of the drawing which showed so rich and so singular a personality; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... day of consciousness) her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the sad change that had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength returned, his appetite was something enormous, but his eyes wandered continually; his regard could not be arrested; his speech became slow, impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call an idiot ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fact that the ship was swinging out, the plank was still up. In the midst of an excited crowd a taxicab purred and smoked. There was a general parting in the crowd as the door was flung open. Two figures emerged, were lost from sight, and reappeared at the foot of the plank. An incoherent something was roared ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... theoretic has been very rare: the problems of nature and morals have attracted the reasoners, and the description and creation of beauty have absorbed the artists; between the two reflection upon aesthetic experience has remained abortive or incoherent. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... medallion-picture, she is surprised by Wandrup, who recognizes in it his own dead love. "She is thy mother too Ingrid", he cries out. "My mother, she, and Erhard my brother!"—This is too much for Ingrid; with an incoherent cry she rushes on the bridge intending to throw herself over. But Wandrup beseechingly stretches out his arms, crying "Ingrid, stay, live for thy father". At first the unhappy girl shrinks back, but seeing the old man's yearning love she sinks on her knees, then slowly ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... morning in the orchard with many marks of insanity upon him. His air and dress bespoke some elevation of rank and fortune. My mother's compassion was excited, and, as his singularities were harmless, an asylum was afforded him, though he was unable to pay for it. He was constantly declaiming, in an incoherent manner, about some mistress who had proved faithless. His speeches seemed, however, like the rantings of an actor, to be rehearsed by rote or for the sake of exercise. He was totally careless of his person and health, and, by repeated negligences of this kind, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... 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 ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Fishwick to look to for help, and he was some way behind. Trembling, the servant knelt and groped for his master's face; to his joy, before he had found it, Sir George gasped, moved, and sat up; and, muttering an incoherent word or two, in a minute had recovered himself sufficiently to rise with help. He had fallen clear of the horse on the edge of the ditch, and the shock had taken his breath; otherwise he was ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... this all. Nat scrawled him an incoherent note that bubbled with delight; he had been promoted to the finishing department, and henceforth was to ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... the art, and I began to speak of the subjective and the objective, of the real and the ideal; and whether it was that I became unintelligible as I became metaphysical, I found Kendricks obviously not following me in the incoherent replies he gave. Miss Gage had honestly made no attempt to follow me. He asked, Why, didn't I think it was pretty well done? They had enjoyed it very much, he said. I could only stare in answer, and wonder ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his sentence. There was a rush of swift feet, a swish of skirts, then full upon him there fell a whirlwind of sobs, clinging arms, and incoherent ejaculations. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... bumpin' 'round through the air like a football, there isn't anny fool yarn you're not ready to believe." He stopped suddenly. The Duke of Wellington was coming up the steps, and his remarks trailed off into coughs and incoherent murmurs about the weather. Spectacle John knew better than to air his scientific theories before the Duke. She gave a contemptuous sniff and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... 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 smack), and that's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... blew his nose, God-blessed him, and murmured something incoherent about fighting for the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... 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 within ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... engine and the sighing of the trees, which bent down at the approach, he murmured incoherent words. The recollection of the two lovers clasped in each other's arms made him cry aloud with jealousy. He wanted to be revenged. For the first time in his life, the longing, the feverish craving to kill ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of our English Judges of the Land undertaking such a Hangman's Office! The poor Wretch made no other complaint than to murmur that the King had directed that he was not to be ill-treated; and when they further questioned him, could only stammer out some Incoherent Balderdash about the Archbishop, the Parliament, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and incoherent account of the infernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have embellished the picture; but even those poets, though more correct than their great model, are guilty of very strange inconsistencies. See Bayle, Responses aux Questions d'un Provincial, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... When I put the question to Miles, he played on a minute before answering and then could only say: "Why, my dear, how do I know?"—breaking moreover into a happy laugh which, immediately after, as if it were a vocal accompaniment, he prolonged into incoherent, extravagant song. ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... 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 of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... themselves. But though the author gain this advantage, and thereby compel the reader to think of the personages of the novel and not of the writer, yet the practice, especially pushed to the extent we have noticed, is a principal cause of the flimsiness and incoherent texture of which his greatest admirers are compelled to complain. Few can wish his success more sincerely than we do, and yet without more attention on his own part, we have great ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... continuous tread. It must have been an animal whose dimly outlined bulk, in the gathering darkness, showed here and there in vague but incessant motion; it could be nothing but an animal whose utterance was at once so incoherent, monotonous, and unremitting. Yet, when the sound came nearer, and the chaparral was parted, it seemed to be a ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... It was futile, incoherent; her tongue seemed to dry in her mouth. Besides, the abashed woman needs must pause before a silence that to her strained sense seemed rebuking. She glanced furtively up at the youth standing there. It troubled the mistress of Heartholm to realize that her protA(C)gA(C) was staring ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • 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
... startled by the approach of her two cousins in full chat, and close behind them, Morton. Isabella seemed rooted to her seat, the light swam before her eyes, her tongue was paralyzed, and her limbs were unable to raise or support her. The young seaman approached, and in broken, incoherent, and unintelligible accents, attempted to express the delight he felt at once more seeing her. Perhaps, if the two cousins had been out of the way; he would have acquitted himself better, perhaps ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... journal of a young mother registering her wonder at the unfolding mysteries of life. It became less minute and less meticulous, I notice, as the years slipped past, and after the advent of Poppsy and Pee-Wee the entries seem a bit hurried and often incoherent. But I have dutifully noted how my Dinkie first said "Ah goom" for "All gone," just as I have fondly remarked his persistent use of the reiterative intensive, with careful citations of his "da-da" and his "choo-choo car," and a "bow-wow" as applied to any living animal, and "wa-wa" ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... She went on the Sunday, an unusual day to pay a week-end visit, and she had taken with her two bags. The porter ventured the opinion that she was rather excited, but when asked to define the symptoms relapsed into a chaos of incoherent "you-knows" and "what-I-means." ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... Excited and incoherent explanations followed, and it was not until Mr. Opp, who was leaning limply against a tree, regained his breath that the mystery ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... objects, failed to hold its ground, a minute, before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had that incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers are apt to have, and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new recollection into ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt, incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... uttered a cry of rage. His eyes shot fire, his lips quivered and muttered incoherent threats, his cheeks had turned livid, and be paced his room in indescribable agitation. Then, as if to give vent to the rage filling his breast, he took up the fly-flap and struck violently at the flies seated here and there ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... name is traduced." ... "She has a molded arm, and her Juno-like form glides with a rhythmic move in the soft swell of a Strauss." ... "Her chestnut hair gives a rich recess to her lovely, fawnlike eyes, which shine like a star set in the crown of an angel." ... One writer becomes absolutely incoherent in his admiration, and lavishes a mixture of metaphors upon his subject: "She portrays a picture worthy of a Raphael. She dances like the fairies before the heavenly spirits. She looks like a celestial goddess from an outburst of morning-glories; her lovely form would assume ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... journey they were alone in the carriage, and Miss Halcombe was able to collect such remembrances of the past as her sister's confused and weakened memory was able to recall. The terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained was presented in fragments, sadly incoherent in themselves, and widely detached from each other. Imperfect as the revelation was, it must nevertheless be recorded here before this explanatory narrative closes with the events of the next ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... now began to show itself, for, becoming uneasy at being swayed about by Catullus, Roberts began to mutter impatiently, though in an incoherent way, with the result that the great black suddenly stopped short and, bending towards Caesar, uttered a few words in a tone full ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and coax Peter; but then, when Peter answered again with his provoking "I dunno," he would give another twist to Peter's wrist, and Peter would yell, almost incoherent with terror and pain—but still declaring that he could tell nothing, he knew nothing ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... delicacy beyond expression offers his general homage to the sex by giving little gifts to her, "why, then—then," thought Amy, and she was thinking so at the very moment when she sat with Gabriel and Ellen, talking in a half wild, lively, incoherent way, "why, then—then," and her eyes leaped across the room and fell, as it were, into the arms of Lawrence Newt's, which caressed them with soft light, and half-laughed "You came again, did you?"—"why, then—then," and Amy buried her face in the cool, damp roses, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular ...
— The Federalist Papers
... house so discontented at this demur, that he scarce knew whether he moved upon his head or heels; and the park chancing to be in his way, he sauntered about, giving vent to a soliloquy in praise of his departed friend, the burden of which was a string of incoherent curses imprecated upon himself; till his transports by degrees giving way to his reflection, he deliberated seriously and sorrowfully upon his misfortune, and resolved to consult lawyers without loss of time. But, first of all, he proposed to make personal ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... what I've been trying to tell you? I wonder if you will? Or if I am too incoherent. I feel that perhaps I am. I started out to say things that were bubbling within me, and I am oddly reluctant to say them. I am like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. I am an explorer setting out upon a momentous journey. I am making an experiment that fascinates ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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 ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... and her words were fast becoming incoherent. I calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened; and after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting herself sufficiently to respond with some degree ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... I fear you will think, the wild and incoherent, manner in which I have noticed the sale of the Bibliotheca Westiana had nearly driven from my recollection that, in the preceding, the same, and subsequent, year, there was sold by auction a very curious and extraordinary collection of books and Prints belonging to honest ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... he saw men approaching, but only to find that his imagination had converted trees into moving objects. He had long since left the edge of the inundation. He was parched with thirst, his mind wandered, incoherent cries proceeded from his parched lips. At last he thought he saw a native village before him; as he drew towards it figures came out from the huts and gazed at him. A moment later he fell headlong to the ground, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... forward he became conscious that his way was haunted by invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 hopes that his old partner would be more fortunate, single-handed, on ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... staggered along, Gerald still clutching the dressing-case, and supported on the other side by an excited and somewhat incoherent villager. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... visitor would brook no further waiting. He fully expected to be shot against the door. Therefore, to save time, he slunk to the entrance of the kitchen, placed himself against the jamb, crossed himself, muttered a rapid, incoherent prayer in Spanish, put his hands behind his back, closed his eyes and waited for the fatal shot that would send him straight ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... ill-natured, proud, sullen, and ambitious spirit"—clearly not the portrait of a friend. Lord Campbell thought the St. Paul sermon contemptible, and General Stanhope, in the debate, called it nonsensical and incoherent. It seems to me the very reverse, even if we abstract it from its stupendous effect. Sacheverell, no doubt, was a more than usually narrow-minded priest; but in judging of the preacher we must think also of the look and the voice ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... man sat in the green leather armchair in Dr. Brand's consulting-room. He had shown the telegram, and jerked out a few incoherent sentences; after which Sir Deryck, by means of carefully chosen questions, had arrived at the main facts. He now sat at ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Bunyan's preaching was no incoherent rant. Words of truth and soberness formed the staple of each sermon; and his burning words and startling images were only the electric scintillations along the chain of his scriptural eloquence. Though the common ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... him her hand and said, 'Good-bye, Tom,' and he had ridden over early to see if the look and tone were still there, and if they were, and he had a chance, he meant to renew his offer. But words of love would have been sadly out of place to this restless, feverish girl, whose incoherent babblings puzzled ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... which lavas found their way to the surface of the earth, pouring forth in a volcanic eruption. In some cases we can trace their relation to ancient volcanic cones which have worn down in all their part which were made up of incoherent materials, so that there remains only the central pipe, which has been preserved from decay by the coherent character of the lava ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the occasion 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 ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... managed to subdue his master's fears, he laughed wildly and idiotically. "Of course it is only you, Abdul. I had forgotten. I seem to forget everything . . . I thought that . . ." here his words became incoherent. "I was so tired, Abdul, and you were sitting up in the sky above the horizon . . . so ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of Ralph's argument might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that if Mr. Goodwood were interested in Isabel in the serious manner described by Miss Stackpole he would not care to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... maintained for long; the spontaneous impetuosity of the parents breaks it down. Nevertheless the Russian boy and girl, when they come to the awkward age, have not the least idea of what life really is. Dear me, no! They possess simply a bundle of incoherent ideas, untested, ill-digested, but a wonderful basis for incessant conversation. Experience comes, of course, and for the most part ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the heat had hurt his head. And all the time, in a secret, shame-faced way, she was listening to his incoherent sentences and rough exclamations, and remembering them one by one, and every one. And she looked at his pale face, and saw the queer light in his blue eyes, and the squaring of his jaw—and then and long afterwards the whole picture, with its memory of words, hot, broken, and confused, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... in jail, and glad to be in a solitary cell because he was handwriting a full confession. The knowledge of what Clarens had done during his few hours of freedom had scared the hypno-tech into almost incoherent co-operation. ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... of one with long hours before him, he began his history; but after a few incoherent words he jumped to the conclusion, which was that "having ceased to believe in God Almighty, he had lost every vestige of morality, and had gone so far as to commit a theft." "Could you imagine ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... one throwing herself on his breast. The letter was long and incoherent, written at night beside Carrie's bed—and borrowing much, unconsciously, from the phraseology of the novels she still got from Bowness. Alack! it is to be feared that John Fenwick—already at ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... beside himself, 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 gone in frenzy as to hurt Claire, as he must ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... and seated myself, and was soon absorbed in the poor mother's hurried and almost incoherent relation, when suddenly I was startled by a gesture or sound from Lina that made me look up hastily. She stood with the letter she had been reading crushed in her hand, her face wearing an expression of agony. For a moment she swayed to and fro with her hand outstretched to catch a chair ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... quantity of wine after dinner, in vain. No such artificial means would bring sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoherent, dragged him more unmercifully after them—as if a wretch, condemned to such expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... interior of the city, even thought itself forsook him. The images of men and houses grew indistinct and shadowy before his eyes; the burning pavement became unsteady and reeling beneath his feet; delirium gathered over him, and he went on his way muttering broken and incoherent words; the few who met fled from him in dismay. Even the monks, still continuing their solemn and sad processions, passed with a murmured bene vobis to the other side from that on which his steps swerved ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to the car, grumbling incoherent phrases. He affected to busy himself with the mechanism that had just been readjusted, looking at it wisely, thumbing a valve, though with a care to leave things precisely as ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... other, I don't know what induced me to do it, I maintained that I must keep them myself, since the Armenian had wished me to do so. The old man got angry; but whilst he was quarrelling with me I noticed a disagreeable dirty yellow colour spreading over his face, and that he was mixing up all sorts of incoherent nonsense in his talk. When we reached the Square he reeled about like a drunken man, until he fell to the ground in front of the Ducal Palace—dead. With a loud wail I threw myself upon the corpse. The people came running round us, but as soon ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... into his eyes. He rose slowly to his feet and stood upright, leaning against the tree. For the moment he forgot his bearskin covering and it half fell off. He stared at us, mumbling strange sounds, which presently became incoherent words of human speech. But he spoke thickly and uncertainly, like one long unused to the ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... piece in one act, the plot of which is weak, though of a gay cast. The music is charming. It is by LE MOYNE, who died a few years ago, at an early period of life. Les Mysteres d'Isis, which is now the rage, is an incoherent parody from a German opera, called the Enchanted Flute. To say that the music is by MOZART, dispenses me from any eulogium. The decorations are extremely beautiful and varied: a scene representing paradise ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... two iron posts. It was not now a figure in gray, but one in white—in white, with a rose-colored sash, and carrying a rose-colored parasol. Edith quickened her pace unconsciously, urged on by fear lest the girl should move away before she had time to reach her. In spite of a rush of incoherent emotions she was able to reflect that she was perfectly cool, entirely self-possessed. She was merely dominated by a need—the need of coming face to face with this person and seeing who she was. She had no idea what she herself would do or say, or whether or not she would do or say ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... more or less a replica of the first. There were more pages of consecutive composition—of such we sorted out perhaps a couple of hundred, but the rest were filled with the same incoherent scribble, with the same drawings, and with bits of scenarios of a ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... for the land along the edge of a water course; it may also denote a raised portion of the bed of a river, lake, or ocean; as, the Banks of Newfoundland. A beach is a strip or expanse of incoherent wave-worn sand, which is often pebbly or full of boulders; we speak of the beach of a lake or ocean; a beach is sometimes found in the bend of a river. Strand is a more poetic term for a wave-washed shore, especially as a place for ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Saviour, of redemption and of sin. Then, with that discursive tendency to which most minds are prone, we diverged to home and civilised lands, contrasting these with life in the wild-woods of the Great Nor'-west. After that we became sleepy, and our converse was more discursive—at times even incoherent—in the midst of which Lumley reverted to his unfinished exposition of grossness, and, in the enthusiasm of his nature, was slowly working himself back into a wakeful condition, when I put an abrupt end to the discourse by drawing a prolonged snore. It was a deceptive ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... prepared for the poor wretch, and that he should be taken great care of, which was accordingly soon done, and Mr. Carew lay very quiet for three or four hours; then waking, he seemed to be very much disturbed in his mind; his talk was incoherent, his groans moving, and he tossed from one side of the bed to the other, but seemed to find ease in none: the good people seeing him so uneasy in bed, brought him a good suit of clothes, and he got up. Being told the bodies of some of his shipmates were flung up ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... servitor said; and the Lady Adelaide ordered her to be admitted. Young and beautiful indeed, and so she looked, as, with downcast eyes, the visitor was ushered in—you know her, reader, though the Lady Adelaide did not. She began to stammer out an incoherent explanation; that news had reached her of the retirement of one of the Lady Adelaide's attendants, and of her wish to fill the vacant place. "What is your name?" inquired the countess, already taken, as the young are apt to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various |
