"Lisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its locks are crisp; Your humble servant's hair is crisper, It is not that its accents lisp; I, too, affect a stammered whisper: Nor that a gorgeous bow it wears And struts with particoloured bib on; I like these macaronic airs; I'm very ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... wont to say, with his inimitable lisp—"no, thuh, you can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully keepth me on good termth with ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... must follow to win the favor of its gods. Thus the first object which the child is made to behold at the very dawn of its existence is the sun, the great object of their worship; and long ere the little lips can lisp a prayer it is repeated ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... found in their only son the vocation of their later life. He might be anything he liked. Did he lisp in numbers, the boyish rhymes were duly scanned and criticised; had he a turn for painting, lessons were provided. He might be anything he chose, and everything by turns. Many of us have been lately reading chapters from the life of another only son, and though the comparison may ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... court whom he thought worthy of his attention: Miss Boynton, however, thought him worthy of hers. Her, person was slender and delicate, to which a good complexion and large motionless eyes gave at a distance an appearance of beauty, that vanished upon nearer inspection: she affected to lisp, to languish, and to have two or three fainting-fits a day. The first time that Talbot cast his eyes upon her she was seized with one of these fits: he was told that she swooned away upon his account: he believed it, was eager to afford her assistance; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... giving, with a forced laugh, the lisp with which that word had been given on a now ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, which he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze [pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and round the dining-room table ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... "Come with me, and," as he dragged McNeil to the door and paused there, "if you dare lisp a word of what you've overheard, I'll fire you ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... to pass none could tell, but we all thought that the cot must have been fastened to a board, which became detached from the cot at the very moment when the sea threw it on the land. The babe was just able to lisp her name—'Angela,' which corresponded with the name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... genteelly dressed, after the English and French modes, and have generally pretty faces, but they are the most determined minaudieres in the whole world. They would think it a mortal sin against good-breeding, if they either spoke or moved in a natural manner. They all affect a little soft lisp, and a pretty pitty-pat step; which female frailties ought, however, to be forgiven them, in favour of their civility and good nature to strangers, which I have a great deal ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... can I, like that fluent sweet-tongu'd Greek, Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain By Art he gladly found what he did seek A full requital of his, striving pain Art can do much, but this maxima's most sure A weak or wounded brain admits ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... olive-wreath, the ivied wand, "The sword in myrtles drest," Each legend of the shadowy strand Now wakes a vision blest; As little children lisp, and tell of Heaven, So thoughts beyond their thought to those high ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Her tears fell on her lover's face, but they were tears of joy; and with them were mingled tiny bursts of laughter and a thousand endearing words without sense, like the lisp of a little child. She quite forgot that the sight of her joy might sadden the heart of ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... of which, in beautiful language and happy illustrations, he brought to the aid of a logical power, which he wielded to a very great extent. Always ready and prompt, his conceptions seemed to me almost intuitive. His voice was fine, softened, and, I think, improved, by a slight lisp, which an attentive observer could discern. The great theatres of eloquence and public speaking in the United States are the legislative hall, the forum, and the stump, without adverting to the pulpit. I have known some of my contemporaries eminently successful ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... fair-haired, blue-eyed, his cheek as smooth as a girl's. His trim little figure, clad in picturesque buckskin, suggested a pretty actor in a Wild West play. And yet this boy, Jack Stillwell, was a scout of the uttermost daring and shrewdness. He always made me think of Bud Anderson. I even missed Bud's lisp when he spoke. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the blazing hearth shall burn Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... pants that he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper. This human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his unseeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. You see, he thought it was "Hinglish, you know," to lisp. "Thir, will you have the kindness to supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!" The hotel clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer, threw them across the counter toward the young man, and then turned away to his books. You should have seen ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... afternoon, see her fresh fair face, with the little obliquity of the upper lip, and her brow always slightly knitted, and her manner as of one breathlessly shy but determined. She had rather open blue eyes, and she spoke in an even musical voice with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a lisp. And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge still existed. "I went to Grantchester," she said, "last year, and had tea under the apple-blossom. I didn't think then I should have to come down." (It was that started the curate upon ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside. Faints into airs, and languishes with pride, On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 35 Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show. The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... drinking three elacos (halfpence) worth of pulque from a jarrito (little earthen jar); the portly and well-looking padre prior del Carden (the Carmelite friar), sauntering up the lane at a leisurely pace, all the little ragged boys, down to the merest urchin that can hardly lisp, dragging off their large, well-holed hats, with a "Buenos das, padrecito!" (Good-morning, little father!)—the father replying with a benevolent smile, and a slight sound in his throat intended for a Benedicite; and all that might be dull in any other climate ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... not been quite sure before he spoke, but his lisp, though slight, betrayed the Jew. His features were coarse, almost brutal; but the restless eyes were so brilliant, the whole face so suggestive of power and character, that, taking him as a whole, the feeling he inspired was admiration, tempered by fear. His tone was one ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... within the sphere of her observation, her little tongue was as active as her hands. She learned to talk very early, and so speedy was her improvement in the art of prattling, that, before she was three years old, she could lisp out a tale in very intelligible language. Her parents were so unwise as to encourage her in this mischievous kind of ingenuity, not only from the pleasure they took in hearing how fast she learned to speak, but because they considered it as an infallible token that she would, in time, prove an excellent ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... hand in his. The gardens seemed deserted. From the palace of the Accademia came not a sound, not a voice. Clear through the silence, they heard the lisp of the fountain in the middle of the esplanade; the avenues stretched away towards the Pincio, straight and rigid as if enclosed between two walls of bronze, upon which the gilding of the sunset still lingered; ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. "I wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at him!—Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp. Little girl—oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—for you have done nothing to me, child, that can match it ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... old-fashioned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl's lisp. That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise in her place. So it was perfectly right and natural that when he came to the brushwood-pile he should ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased Grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes, Yet ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the village. Val had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the other, balancing the letter in a careless grip between thumb and finger. 'Nobody asks you to stop to hear yourself described. You were a cad from your cradle; you were a liar as soon as you could learn to lisp, and a sponge from the happy hour when you found the first fool to lend you half a crown. You needn't wait, George, but so long as you are here I will do my best to tell you what you are. You are a fruitful theme, and I could be fluent for a week ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... myself. Ah, well, I learn To love and loathe the bonds that hold me fast, Your captive and your conquerer in turn; Am I not shamed to match my charms with those Of fair boy-beauties? gentled for your love To match the freshness of the morning rose, And lisp in murmurs like ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... about As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight And sets there and hatches them out: The Zhederrill peers from his watery mine In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp, As he twinkles his eyes in a whisper of shine That ends in a luminous lisp. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... audience will not pay much attention to them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word—though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... apostles twelve he taught, and first he followed it himself")—the summoner with his fiery face—the pardoner with his wallet "bretfull of pardons, come from Rome all hot"—the lively prioress with her courtly French lisp, her soft little red mouth, and "Amor vincit omnia" graven on her brooch. Learning is there in the portly person of the doctor of physic, rich with the profits of the pestilence—the busy serjeant-of-law, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... had not so much as dreamt of poetry: indeed I scarce knew it by name; and, whatever may be said of the force of nature, I certainly never "lisp'd in numbers." I recollect the occasion of my first attempt: it is, like all the rest of my non-adventures, of so unimportant a nature, that I should blush to call the attention of the idlest reader to it, but for the reason alleged in the introductory ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... And turmoil of the world, retreats at length, With cares that move, not agitate the heart, To the same dwelling where his father dwelt; 5 And haply views his tottering little ones Embrace those agd knees and climb that lap, On which first kneeling his own infancy Lisp'd its brief prayer. Such, O my earliest Friend! Thy lot, and such thy brothers too enjoy. 10 At distance did ye climb Life's upland road, Yet cheer'd and cheering: now fraternal love Hath drawn you to one centre. Be ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arms—not an easy performance for small muscles—and with a portentous frown, which puckered up my mouth even more than my eyebrows, receive from him certain awfully unintelligible passages from "Macbeth;" replying to them, with a lisp that must have greatly heightened the tragic effect of this terrible dialogue, "My handth are of oo tolor" (My hands are of your color). Years—how many!—after this first lesson in declamation, dear Charles Young was acting Macbeth for the last time in London, and I was his "wicked wife;" ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... she had no children—could she live to be shamed by them, scorned by them? And yet—how sweet it would have been to feel clinging arms about her neck; to hear little voices lisp the sweetest word on earth to a mother's ear, if only she might have been as other mothers—as other wives! Never, never once had she breathed or hinted a wish that Philip should marry her; she had a superstitious ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... for travel was at such a height that those who were unable to accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieur traveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." The Londoners dearly loved gossip, and indulged in exaggeration of speech and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... will spring in our bosoms, and all around will smile with approbation. — The faces of the aged will shine upon us, because we spared their sons; bright-eyed females will bless us for their surviving husbands: and even the lips of the children will lisp our praises. Thus with a heaven of delighted feeling in our hearts, and the smiles both of God and man on our heads, we shall pass the evening of our days in glorious peace. And when death shall call us to that better world, we shall obey without reluctance. Conscious of neither dread nor hate ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the word 'prank,' just like he'd never had one single advantage of foreign travel. 'He does indeed—one of those Hammersmith twin louts was with him—the speckled devil with the lisp, I gather—and praise God his bones, at least, are broke in ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... if all dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she spoke ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... tragedy, which decided the point; and Mr Revel, who knows all the actors, persuaded Mr Y—- (you know whom I mean, the great tragic actor) to come here, and give his opinion of her recitation. Mr Y—- was excessively polite; declared that she was a young lady of great talent; but that a slight lisp, which she has, unfitted her most decidedly for tragedy. Of course it was abandoned for comedy, which she studied some time; and when we considered her competent, Mr Revel had interest enough to induce the great Mr M—- ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... little sailors on life's deep sea Will be the salts of this chemistry, And the lisp of the infantile A, B, C Be ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... which Pope received pleased him much. But he took it only as his due, and his great ambition was to make people believe that he had been a wonderfully clever child, and that he had begun to write when he was very young. He says of himself with something of pompousness, "I lisp'd in numbers, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Muse! guid auld Scotch drink; Whether thro' wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink, In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp an' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... no being in the world that he reverenced as he had reverenced this aged lady. In his childhood she had taught him to lisp the measures of psalm and paraphrase; in his youth she had advised him with shrewdest wisdom; in his ministerial life she had been to him a friend, always holding before him a greater spiritual height to be attained, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... or the left we made out faint shadow-pictures of wooded islands that endured but a moment and then deliberately faded into whiteness. They formed on the view exactly as an image develops on a photographic plate. Sometimes a faint lisp-lisp-lisp of tiny waves against a shore nearer than it seemed cautioned us anew not to break the silence. Otherwise we were alone, intruders, suffered in the presence of a brooding nature only as long ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Cheops was not a perfect monarch? Oh, you railer at royalty and slanderer of all that is noble and good! When this book is concluded, I shall change the jaundiced livery which my books have worn since I began to lisp in numbers, have rose-coloured coats for them with cherubs on the cover, and all the characters ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp his first ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... little fortune on the cotton he had in store at any rate, and, if he really had in his grasp all the news of the rise, he might make by it a plump ten thousand dollars out of Captain Grant's "Orion." But to this end he must be sure that not a lisp of the rise would be published in the morning papers, and he must see Captain Grant and close his bargain for the "Orion's" cargo before the wires should begin to furnish additional news by the "Africa" to the evening papers. They would not, after obtaining such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... in the air in good season that day, and knew that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... his knife and fork Levin observed a ring, with a pure white diamond in it, flash upon the Captain's hand. He was a blue-eyed man, with a blush and a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he would look straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he seemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. One such look he gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes before it, and looked at him but ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... that he who holds Rimini to be the first poem, should believe the Examiner to be the first politician of the day. We admire consistency, even in folly. Hear how their bantling has already learned to lisp sedition. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... art. As a "livelier iris changes on the burnished dove," and the fancy of the young man turns lightly to thoughts of his pretty cousin, so the same renewing spirit touches the "silent singers," and they are no longer dumb; faintly they lisp the first syllables of the marvelous tale. Witness the clear sweet whistle of the gray-crested titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the bluebird,—the long, rich note of the meadowlark,—the whistle of the quail,—the drumming ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... surprise. Then they passed into a second room, and Peggy was instantly aware that something unusual was in the air, for every one seemed flocking together in one corner and listening in charmed silence to the sound of one flute-like voice. Peggy had hardly time to catch the sound of a familiar lisp before there came a quick exclamation of surprise, and a radiant vision, all pink and white and glitter of diamonds, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... who was a small stout man, with a black cap of dubious cut, protested vehemently against such materialistic measures. Let them put their trust in Cultur! To talk Hebrew—therein lay Israel's real salvation. Let little children once again lisp in the language of Isaiah ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... to have lost her own teeth some years ago, owing to a country dentist who did not know his business. And when excited she has a way of losing her hold, as one may say, on her upper set. She then speaks in a thick tone, with a lisp. ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pinafores. They were the schoolmates of my childhood, and many of them must have come out of their graves to run by my side that morning in Rydal. I had not thought of them for years. Little Emily R—— read from her book with a chirping lisp:— ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the point. It was impossible to see more than a yard or two ahead, but the same dense obscurity would prevent any further range of vision from the other boat, and, if it was still at its work, the sound of its oars or of voices, Michael reflected, might guide him to it. From the lisp of little wavelets lapping on the shore below the woods, he knew he was quite close in to the bank, and close also to the place where the invisible boat had been ten minutes before. Then, in the bewildering, unlocalised manner ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of thy declining years; No more her smile brings joy to thee, When tempest toss'd on life's rough sea. Fond mother, where's the rosy child Which once upon thy bosom smiled?— In her thou daily didst rejoice,— She caught her language from thy voice; When she had learned to lisp thy name, New love with those sweet accents came. Soon did this bud of promise bloom, But oh, it blossomed for the tomb!— Each art, which thy fond care has tried, The fell destroyer's power defied. And brothers, ye, too, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... shape it into verse, extempore, too, upon occasion; and many were the jokes that rebounded from his theme, whether in hall or kitchen. It was pleasant to watch his little grey eye, and the twinkling lashes, as they rose and fell, varying the expression of his lips. A slight lisp gave an air of simplicity to his ditties, which never failed to charm his auditors. He could throw the simplest expression over his features, which made the keen edge of his rebukes infinitely more cutting and effective. But the prevailing tone of feeling in him was sad ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... mother, sharply. She had a heavy voice and a slight lisp, which seemed to make it more impressive and more distinctively her ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... have myths been as frankly transparent. To none other, save only their cousins the Persians, have fancies more luminous occurred. The Persians so polished their dreams that they entranced the world that was. Poets can do no more. The Hindus too were poets. They were children as well. Their first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech, is audible still in the Rig-Veda, a bundle of hymns tied together, four thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of the latter led to that of the Sun and ignited the antique altars. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... with a charming affectation of a little lisp. 'I'm so glad I've caught you. I thought I should. What a ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye, till we meet then—I embrace you warmly, warmly, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "it is all arranged, and I'm the captain. And is it agreed that we won't lisp a word to Mr. Watson ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... and down. I would sometimes remain out late to look at the moon and the lights on board of the vessels passing; and then I would turn my eyes to the stars, and repeat the lines which I had heard my mother teach little Virginia to lisp: ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... at the same time as much surprize and emotion as possible. These arts failed not of the success she intended; and, as I grew more particular to her than the rest of her admirers, she advanced, in proportion, more directly to me than to the others. She affected the low voice, whisper, lisp, sigh, start, laugh, and many other indications of passion which daily deceive thousands. When I played at whist with her, she would look earnestly at me, and at the same time lose deal or revoke; then burst into a ridiculous laugh and cry, "La! I can't imagine what I was thinking of." To ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... of hair wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... France was drunk with the blood of her children. They led the trembling sons and daughters of faith, barefoot and blindfolded, over burning plowshares, stretched them on wheel and rack, tore them limb from limb, sparing not for the groan of age, the lisp of childhood, or the piteous cry of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... greet thee with the father's name; 'My Lud!' they lisp. Now whence can this arise? Perhaps their mother feels an honest shame And will not teach her infant to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... language: 'What aileth thee?' why is thy countenance sad? am I not better to thee than ten friends? Then has he turned my heart to him, made me feel myself close to him; he has suffered me to lean on his bosom, hang on his arm, and lisp out, Abba. At such blest moments I have thought the whole earth but one point, and from that to heaven but one step, and the time between but as one moment; and my company here sufficient to satisfy me by the way. At such blest moments I felt perfect, full, entire ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Milton, and Pope, might be said "to lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds, seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... "Steward!" according to the terms of friendship and familiarity on which you may stand with this dignitary, who, by the way, has a vote on board worth canvassing for;—I say bawl out, because, firstly, your mincing and Clarendon-like lisp of "Waiter!" would not be heard by one used to listen to the rush of the tempest and the shriek of the scourged Atlantic; also, for that your stirring call may remind some wretched skulker of a circumstance which he is miserably dozing out of remembrance, viz. that breakfast is under weigh. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... work-girl takes the palm by winsomeness and grace. At seven o'clock every evening you may meet her in thousands in Oxford Street, Villiers Street, Tottenham Court Road, or London Bridge, where the pavements lisp in reply to the chatter of her little light feet. The factory girl of twenty years ago has, I am glad to say, entirely disappeared. She was not a success. She screwed her hair into sausages and rolled them around her ears. She wore a straw hat tilted at an absurd ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... whose inexperienced sight Life lies extended, vast and bright, To peer into the future tries. Old age through spectacles too peers, Although the destined coffin nears, Having lost all in life we prize. It matters not. Hope e'en to these With childlike lisp will lie ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... And one by one the gathered clouds depart, Till not a shadow lies upon my path. Night, with its long and sombre shadows, treads Upon the steps that morn and noon have trod; And, as our children gather round my knee, And lisp those evening prayers thy lips have taught, I cannot but believe that thou art near. But when they speak of "mother," when they say "'T is a long time since she hath left our side," And when they ask, in their soft infant tones, When they again shall meet thee,—then I feel A sudden sadness ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... said I, "as that mock literary air which it is so much the fashion to assume. 'Tis but a wearisome relief to conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia, recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you haven't," added the captain, shaking his head—a significant gesture, which seemed to relate to the future, rather than to the present. "If you lisp a syllable of it, you will need a patch on your skull.—Now," he continued, "what ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... notes of wind and sea, but sweeter Sounds the song whose choral wrath of raging rhyme Bids the shelving shoals keep tune with storm's imperious metre, Bids the rocks and reefs respond in rapturous chime. Sweet the lisp and lulling whisper and luxurious laughter, Soft as love or sleep, of waves whereon the sun Dreams, and dreams not of the darkling hours before nor after, Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love's ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain. Feeling of no kind abounded in that house; this pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, and sent a gush to the eyes. Half an hour or an hour passed; Georgette murmured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. "And you shall sleep," thought I, "malgre maman and medecin, if they are not here ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... observe what a dear good lady I had? A thousand blessings on her beloved memory! Were I to live to see my children's children, they should be all taught to lisp her praises before they could speak. My gratitude should always be renewed in their mouths; and God, and my dear father and mother, my lady, and my master that was, my best friend that is, but principally, as most due, the FIRST, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the nation's vows confess, And, never satisfied with seeing, bless. Swift unbespoken pomps thy steps proclaim, And stammering babes are taught to lisp thy name." ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... were about a dozen people, men and ladies, young and old, sitting at tea at the end of a long table. A group of men was dimly visible behind their chairs, wrapped in a haze of cigar smoke; and in the midst of them stood a lanky young man with red whiskers, talking loudly, with a lisp, in English. Through a door beyond the group could be seen a light room with ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I know now, Our largest heart, our loftiest mind; Yet for the curls upon his brow And for his lisp, I could not find The helping word, the cheering touch. Ah, to be just, as well as kind,— It costs so ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... were characteristically those of the House of Cavendish, as may be seen by comparing his portrait with that of his mother. His expression was placid, benign, but very far from inert; for his half-closed eyes twinkled with quiet mirth. His voice was soft and harmonious, with just a trace of a lisp, or rather of that peculiar intonation which is commonly described as "short-tongued." His bearing was the very perfection of courteous ease, equally remote from stiffness and from familiarity. His manners it ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the cry or laugh of a child and the clear crowing of a cock, also the smaller aerial sounds of nature, the tinkling notes of tits and other birdlings in the trees, the twitter of swallows and martins, and the "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain." It was sweet and restful in that home-like place, and hard to leave it to go back to the front to face the furious blasts once more. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... echo all around, And "God's first temples" with His praise resound. And look! for now again the scene is changed; A group before that rustic altar ranged, With bended knee the throne of grace implore, On infant heads its showers of love to pour; That infant tongues may lisp the praise of God, To guide their feet in paths by Jesus trod. Sure, angels hallow scenes like this below, And holy spirits at that altar bow, Like winged messengers from Heaven, to bear These offerings, and ever guard them there, That every bud of promise reared ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... by a penetrating eye. That gentleness is ever liable to be suspected for the counterfeited, which is so excessive as to deprive people of the proper use of speech and motion, or which, as Hamlet says, makes them lisp and amble, and nick-name ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... lines, and to serve a particular purpose, had probably seldom, and never but by accident, composed a smooth one. Such has been the versification of the earliest poets in every country. Children lisp, at first, and stammer; but, in time, their speech becomes fluent, and, if ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Of common life, nor render, as it rolls, Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. There throng the people: how they come and go, Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,—see,— On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that did'st love Venice so, Venice, and we who ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... in orders other than humanity and growing old in their respective acts, even thus they become human beings that are, of course, ordained to return. Coming to sinful births and becoming Chandalas or human beings that are deaf or that lisp indistinctly, they attain to higher and higher castes, one after another in proper turn, transcending the Sudra order, and other (consequences of) qualities that appertain to Darkness and that abide in it in course of migrations in this world.[106] Attachment to objects ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sir, That Lord Rhinoceros disputes With me precedence of the brutes? That Elephantis is at war With savage hosts of Rhinocer? You know these realms, not void of fame?' 'I joy to learn them now by name,' Return'd Sir Gill, 'for, first or last, No lisp of them has ever pass'd Throughout our dome so blue and vast.' Abash'd, the elephant replied, 'What came you, then, to do?—' 'Between two emmets to divide A spire of grass in two. We take of all a care; And, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... hour I lingered near The hallowed seat with listening ear; And gentle words that mother would give, To fit me to die and teach me to live. She told me that shame would never betide, With truth for my creed and God for my guide She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer, As I knelt beside ...
— The Old Arm-Chair • Eliza Cook
... would have been perfectly at home; self-restrained, vigilant, and effective. But on this night it was nothing above mere inarticulateness—hoarse and ineffective fury—an almost painful exhibition. Sometimes his lisp became so strong that he was scarcely able to utter the words he desired to bring out. The Prime Minister became "The Primisther," the Chief Secretary the "Cheesesecry," and all this impotence was made the more manifest by thundering ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Her glory fill the skies, The world be free! Let all adore Thy name, And children lisp Thy fame— Let earth and heav'n ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... he suddenly came across the last letter written to him by Iris's mother. How she doted on their only child! He recalled one night, shortly before his wife died, when the little Iris was brought into her room to kiss her and lisp her infantile prayers. She had devised a formula of her own—"God bless father! God bless mother! God bless me, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... for this idle trade; No duty broke, no father disobey'd; While yet a child, ere yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... answered, less cheerfully and more authoritatively than was his manner at North Aston, speaking without a lisp and with a full Cumberland accent. "It is the best thing I can do for you—all I have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... exact statements of truth? Not always. The primitive human mind could only lisp its wonderful glimpses of truth in legend and myth. And so in fable and allegory the early Israelites sought to show the power of good over evil, and thereby stimulate a desire for right conduct, based, of course, on right-thinking. And thus it ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Him by walking straight before us. When the happy day arrives in which you set your feet upon the Path and begin your pilgrimage, the world will know nothing of it; earth no longer understands you; you no longer understand each other. Men who attain a knowledge of these things, who lisp a few syllables of the Word, often have not where to lay their head; hunted like beasts they perish on the scaffold, to the joy of assembled peoples, while Angels open to them the gates of heaven. Therefore, your destiny is a secret between ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... But there it stood, and there it stands as yet,—though its obituary was long ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,—leafing out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as softly as if it were ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear/ Strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love/ with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance/ you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a GONDOLA./ AS YOU LIKE IT, Act iv. Sc. 1./ Annotation of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Stammering. — N. inarticulateness; stammering &c. v.; hesitation &c. v.; impediment in one's speech; titubancy[obs3], traulism|; whisper &c. (faint sound) 405; lisp, drawl, tardiloquence[obs3]; nasal tone, nasal accent; twang; falsetto &c. (want of voice) 581; broken voice, broken accents, broken sentences. brogue &c. 563; slip of the tongue, lapsus linouae [Lat]. V. stammer, stutter, hesitate, falter, hammer; balbutiate|, balbucinate|, haw, hum and haw, be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the very letter. Sidney says, writing in 1578, "I think, ere it be long, like the mountebanks in Italy, we travellers shall be made sport of in comedies." Twenty years afterwards, Shakespeare makes Rosalind say in "As You Like It", "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you; lisp, and wear strange suits. Disable all the benefits of your own country. Be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... roof, and this roof itself is a sight to see. Loftily domed over with glass, it is at once a conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room here for trees even, for miniature palms, while birds of the rarest plumage flit silently from bough to bough among the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have descended to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely feathery ferns. The roof is very spacious, and the conservatory ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... my thoughts: And for my strange petition I will make Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day, When your fair child shall wear your costly gift Beside your own warm hearth, with, on her knees, Who knows? another gift of the high God, Which, maybe, shall have learn'd to lisp ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to say bizarre, punishment was for buzzing lips. Many of us, studying hard to get our lessons, were very likely to make sounds with our lips, and in the silence of that schoolroom the least little lisp was sure to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... there In sharp suspense and half despair ... The morn was still. A skylark hung In mid-air flutt'ring, and sung A lullaby that grew more sweet Amid the stillness, in the heat And splendour of the sun: the lisp Of faint wind in the herbage crisp Went past them; and around the bare And foam-striped sand-banks gleaming fair, The faintly-panting waves were cast By the ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... and crisp, Shone like a wheat-field in the sun, Its swift voice deafened to a lisp, Fell, ere the war was well begun, And waned and ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... with a very slight lisp, but that otherwise both his language and his intonations were better than I could ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... house brought him forward to present him to me. She called him Monsieur de la Tourelle, and he began to speak to me in French; but though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... but something less than shy, With red lip wounded in love's ardent play, On whom is bent that sweet, coquettish eye? For whom that lisp that steals the heart ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... visited Ashwood as a matter of duty; but, as time passed on those visits became his dearest pleasures. The child began to know him, her lovely little face to brighten for him; she had no fear of him, but would sit on his knee and lisp her pretty stories and sing her pretty songs ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... her happiness to be surrounded from earliest infancy with none but holy influences, and to breathe from her very cradle an atmosphere of purity. The first words which she heard, the first she tried to lisp, were the sweet names of Jesus and Mary. The first bent she received was an inclination to virtue; the first and only examples she witnessed were examples of piety. Thus passed the years preceding the dawn of reason, her beautiful soul expanding under ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... as he sipped his tea with an air of peculiar nonchalance which was meant to fascinate Fanny Dawson, who, when Furlong addressed to her his first silly common-place, with his peculiar non-pronunciation of the letter R, established a lisp directly, and it was as much as her sister, Mrs. Egan, could do to keep her countenance, as Fanny went on slaughtering the S's as fast as ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... DIONE, nursed beneath the waves, And rock'd by Nereids in their coral caves, Charm'd the blue sisterhood with playful wiles, 50 Lisp'd her sweet tones, and tried her tender smiles. Then, on her beryl throne by Triton's borne, Bright rose the Goddess like the Star of morn; When with soft fires the milky dawn He leads, And wakes to life and love the laughing meads;— 55 With rosy fingers, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... as though he had already abandoned and lost interest in that thought, so that the concluding words were indistinct, beneath the grey beard and mustache. Also at times there was the faintest suggestion of a lisp. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and "society" with Alma Montague and Nellie Harden, and grew quite familiar with the names and doings of the great society dames. She even learned—at considerable pains—a "society" tone of voice with a drawl in it and a little lisp. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... lighted up the velvety eyes in the joy of salvation. It is doubtful if he even heard half of the program of his future existence. There was something irresistible in the softness of her eyes and the fascinating lisp. He was face to face at last with a good influence. He had met, not the type of girl that men play with lightly or madly for a month or a day, but a woman, the kind rough coarse men look up to as ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... early life the home of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... inclined to the opinion that it must have many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden. It may lisp only and in smooth phrases, such as "prunes" and "prisms"; and, moreover, the host further insures it against molestation by the diffusion of an exceptionally powerful odour, which, though to my sense of smell resembles phosphorus, is, I am ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... tedious ride for the young man. The woodsmen sat jammed so closely about him that he could see only the frosty stars glimmering wanly in the moonlight. When the songs and the roaring conversations were stilled for a moment, he could hear the lisp of the runners on the smooth surface and the slashing grind of ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... me—"fire it right into 'em; every canto a twenty-four-pound shot; hull the blockheads, whether they will or no. And mind you, Lemsford, when your shot does the most execution, your hear the least from the foe. A killed man cannot even lisp." ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... old melody of youth and home! Again we are around the old hearthstone. Again do we kneel at mother's knee to lisp the evening prayer. Again she takes us in her arms, and sings to her tired child the soft, low lullaby of childhood's happy days.—Oh, Music, Music! Art Divine! Thou dost move and stir the heart as nothing else can do! Yet never canst thy sweet potency be better used than when ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... pathetic and terrible thing than the prejudice of love. Both you and I have suffered from it. Six years ago, ay, and before that, I felt and resented the growing difference between us. When under your spell, it seemed that I was born to lisp in numbers and devote myself to singing, that the world was good and all of it fit for singing. But away from you, even then, doubts faced me, and I knew in vague fashion that we lived in different worlds. At first in vague fashion, I say; ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London |
