"Wobbly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were not completely under the domination of man. The range of their mental powers was still uncomprehended by those who had bred, trained, and worked with them from the days their eyes had opened and they had taken their first wobbly steps away ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... forward. The cosmetic could not hide the growing pallor of the parchment drawn over the old reprobate's skull. He crept around the table and, with a marvellous piece of 'business' by which he held his wobbly legs while he slowly swung a chair under him, collapsed. The picture was terrible, but fascinating. People who would, could not turn their heads. His valet was quick with water and held the glass in place on the salver while he directed it ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... minstrelsy, for one day there was a tremendous rap on the front-door knocker at Burswood Farm, then a sound of running footsteps, and inside the letter-box was a note addressed to 'Miss Merle Ramsay,' in a rather wobbly and unformed hand. At the top of the sheet of paper was painted a boat with brown sails on a blue sea, and ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... I fancy," answered Amy. "I hate undecided things. I like either a cheerful downpour or else sunshine. I think wobbly weather is as bad as wobbly folks—trying to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... now, in a low rocker by the window, with one foot upon a wobbly stool. A marvellous cover, of Aunt Hitty's making, which dated back to her frivolous and girlish days, was underneath. Nobody ever saw it, however, and the gaudy woollen roses blushed unseen. A white linen cover, severely plain, was put upon the footstool every Wednesday and every Saturday, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... is away for the day, and Mrs. Rose invited a girl-cousin down for the afternoon; and to do honour to her, I imagine, she had provided a sumptuous tea, including shrimps and one of those wobbly white things that ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... rival courtier came— A dashing dapper Lieut. R.N.; And, as this paragon pressed his claim, Oh, what could William hope for then? How could a wobbly-braided swain Vie with the actual Royal Navy, Whose stripes were half as broad again ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... of what was evidently an old and rackety conveyance. One of the wheels was loose and askew on the axle, with the result that it made a wobbly mark on the ground, while the tyres on all the wheels were uneven in width and ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... stupid pigs I am he. But I had not given you the credit of such nerve, M. Rohscheimer. I had forgotten how once you lived the rough life in South Africa. It is so? I did not think you had the courage to write—though wobbly—those lying words in presence of the dead Gottschalk. Why did you do it, you bad, foolish fellow? The yataghan already was stuck in the desk, eh? That Legun is a fury when the blood thirst is upon him, when the big vein throb. And you saw the blank ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... they want to be downright discouraging. David showed how he felt about it by asking if supper wouldn't soon be ready, and throughout the meal he bore himself with dignity. Although it is not easy to pass the rolls when one's arms are so short and the plate is so large and wobbly, the little boy was sure that to-night he was reaching a surprising distance across the table. Surely Mother must have been impressed with this new and astonishing ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... didn't write it, and if he did he surely is a wonder at disguising his hand. I doubt if any one could disguise what the rayograph shows. Now, for instance, this is very important. Do you see how those strokes of the long letters are—well, wobbly? You'd never see that in the original, but when it is enlarged you see how plainly visible the tremors of the hand become? Try as you may, you can't conceal them. The fact is that the writer of this note suffered from a form of heart disease. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... "I'm a bit wobbly," the rescued man answered. "I suppose I ought to expect that. But I feel all right. I can get as far as that bench, anyway, and I'd like to see the drill. You teach them ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... an' dey started by burnin' de cotton house an' killin' most of de chickens an' pigs. Way atter awhile dey fin's de cellar an' dey drinks brandy till dey gits wobbly in de legs. Atter dat dey comes up on de front porch an' calls my missus. When she comes ter de do' dey tells her dat dey am goin' in de house ter look things over. My missus dejicts, case ole marster am away at de war, but dat doan do no good. Dey cusses her scan'lous ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... to the fish-houses and flakes that crop out like queer mushrooms on stilts all over the edges of the cove, and it was a shaky damsel who shuddered over the passing of a wobbly plank. The crew of two waited below in the boat, and smiled encouragingly, so that I had to try and show more bravery than I really felt. I had no desire to intrude among the squids; one sees them dimly through the clear water and they impress one, as they move about, as resembling ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... and the force of the sun terrific. It seemed to possess actual physical weight, and to press us down from above. We filled our canteens many times at the swift-running stream, and emptied them as often. By two o'clock F. was getting a little wobbly from the sun. We talked of stopping, when an unexpected thunder shower rolled out from behind the mountains, and speedily overcast the entire heavens. This shadow relieved the stress. F., much ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... of this wobbly thing; I want to lie on my own bed." The walking-doctor promptly lifted her in his arms like a little child and deposited her on one of the cots. Her hands were cold, and he covered her with a Roman blanket that lay on the foot of the bed. Then he found two hot water bottles, ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out. Don't maul ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the Blaneys in the city was much like the one Patty had seen at Lakewood, only a little more elaborately bizarre. The Moorish lamps were bigger and dustier: the thick brocade draperies a little more faded and tattered; the furniture a little more gilded and wobbly. ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... bounds have been set to the meaning of "Proved.'' All disciplines furnish examples of the fact that things for a long time had probable validity, later indubitable validity; that again some things were considered proved and were later shown to be incorrect, and that many things at one time wobbly are in various places, and even among particular persons, supposed to be at the limits of probability and proof. Es- pecially remarkable is the fact that the concept of *the proved is very various in various sciences, and it would be absorbing to establish the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... wobbly wave That she was standing on, And high aloft she flung a scarf That must have weighed a ton; And she was rather tall—at least She reached ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... of 'em," continued the Jelly-bean his voice rising slightly, "and I ain't worth shucks. Name they call me by means jelly—weak and wobbly like. People who weren't nothin' when my folks was a lot turn up their noses when they pass ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Whitefoot recovered his strength. At last he could sit up, and finally he began to move about a little, although he was still wobbly on his legs. Farmer Brown's boy put some bits of food where Whitefoot could get them, and as he ate, Whitefoot's beautiful soft eyes were ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... kind of weak and wobbly," agreed Amy plaintively. "But you know how reckless you are, Mollie, and on these wet roads we're very apt ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... be a princess, comes out of a wobbly thing that we agree to pretend is a castle; and old man Johnson, pretending to be a pirate, is pushed up and down on another wobbly thing that we agree to pretend is the ocean. Mrs. Johnson pretends to be in love with him, which we know she is not. And Johnson pretends to be a very ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... advance guard, panic-stricken, suddenly disappeared—officers, men, and savages—leaving twenty-one wagon loads of rich spoil. This heroic deed was a part of Willett's stock in trade, and, although he was wobbly in his politics, the people could not forget his courage and good judgment in war. But Willett's influence was confined to the wards of a city. The rural counties believed in New York's mayor rather than in New York's hero; and when the votes were counted, Clinton ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... failed to stifle, a sense of humor mocking, but good-tempered. She wears a man's cap, double-breasted man's jacket, and a grimy, calico skirt. Her bare feet are encased in a man's brogans several sizes too large for her, which gives her a shuffling, wobbly gait.] ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... Mr. MacTavish, anyhow. A stern parent and a strong-armed crammer projected him into the Navy, and in the Navy he remained for years bucketing about the salt seas in light and wobbly cruisers, enforcing intricate Bait Laws off Newfoundland in mid-winter, or playing hide-and-seek with elusive dhows on the Equator in midsummer, but always with a vision of that little place in his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... on top of the windlass, and landed almost in each others arms, half dazed. I sat down on deck to consider who I was, and what was the matter, and Evers made a wobbly run aft, the ship still ripping along, for we had been checked in our mad career for a second ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... wobbly on his feet. He felt both sore and sick at the pit of his stomach, in no mood for any further altercation with this hard-hitting athlete. But he would not ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... skeered fer myself. I felt so kind o' queer an' wobbly inside o' me. Then dad came runnin' out to show the other fellers what he'd found, an' seemed like ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... had guessed—of course she would. I ought to have gone in the beginning. I poured out my story into that old doctor's understanding ears, and he opened the way for me finally. He let me escape. Very weak and wobbly I took an early train on Monday morning for Hilton. At the same time I sent the following telegram to my sister-in-law: "Arrive Hilton 6:15 tonight. Have been ill. Still some fever, but doctor finally ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... early record, Pericles Priam and the Temple of Jimjambo, which had ruined him as a witness in the Goober case. McGivney answered dryly that he couldn't let himself out with that excuse; he was invited to pose as a reformed "wobbly," and the more crimes and rascalities he had in his record, the more convinced the jury would be that he had been ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... smiled. Gradually Gerald let the car out until she was doing fully forty miles an hour. This could be kept up only on the smooth level stretches which they encountered every now and then. In climbing the hills, the car did not average over eight. The streams of light from the gas lamps made a wobbly path in the darkness when occasionally clouds blew across the sky, obscuring ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... had been satisfied. Amy voiced the general disappointment when she said regretfully, "I hadn't an idea they looked like that to start with. I thought they'd be fluffy and cute, like the chickens on Easter cards." Peggy, who had herself found the appearance of the wobbly, shrill-voiced mites a distinct shock, said bravely that they would undoubtedly be ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... loving, mawkish, wobbly look in his eyes, it made me feel quite sick. The horrible part is I don't know what I have promised any more than the man in the moon. It may be something perfectly dreadful, for all I know. Well, if it is a fearful thing, like kissing him, I shall have to break my word, which I never ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... cupboard boasted no cornstarch. Nor was there gelatine in stock, with which to make a gay-colored, wobbly jelly. As for prune souffle, he could make that easily enough. But—the longshoreman did not want to lay eyes on another prune souffle before Washington's Birthday, at least, and the natal anniversary of the Father of His Country was still ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... discovered that he was very tired, and that his legs were weak and wobbly. Stubs and sticks protruded everywhere; stones rolled from under his feet. Once on a steep shale, he fell and rolled ten feet out of sheer weariness. In addition he was again very thirsty, and his canteen empty. A chill gray ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... weighed twenty-five pounds each, our knees were wobbly, we could hear each other pant, and my heart thumped so that the beats all ran together. But with a cheer we toiled hard for the summit, before resting. We didn't race—not at fourteen thousand feet; we weren't so foolish—and I don't know who reached it first. ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... none too p'lite. He were a leetle runt of a sergeant. I jest laughed at him an' went to t' other feller an' took the papers out o' his pockets. I see then a number o' British boys was makin' fer me on the wobbly top o' the river. They'd see me goin' as easy as a hoss on a turnpike an' they was tryin' fer to git the knack o' it. In a minute they begun poppin' at me. But shootin' on logs is like tryin' to walk a line on a wet deck in a hurricane. Ye got to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... that he wouldn't see the tremble that I could feel in my lower lip. For an unreasonable and illogical and absurdly big wave of compassion for my poor old Dinky-Dunk was welling up through my tired body, threatening to leave me and all my make-believe dignity as wobbly as a street-procession Queen of Sheba on her circus-float. I was hearing, I knew, the words that I'd waited for, this many a month. I was at last facing the scene I'd again and again dramatized on the narrow stage of my woman's imagination. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... "Feel kind o' wobbly, eh?" he jeered. "Got a bad little hangover from last night? Perhaps we were a little playful, but it's just our hearty way of welcomin' strangers. 'Specially when they come without an invitation and we ketches them peepin' through ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... if by April you simply can't stand it—talk the thing over with me again," she ended rather vaguely and wistfully; for it had been her heart's desire to wed Sylvia's beauty and Quarrier's fortune, and the suitability of the one for the other was apparent enough to make even sterner moralists wobbly in their creed. Quarrier, as a detail of modern human architecture, she supposed might fit in somewhere, and took that for granted in laying the corner stone for her fairy palace which Sylvia was to inhabit. And now!—oh, vexation!—the neglected but essentially ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... afternoon studying some scratched hieroglyphics on the gravel in front of the house. It was quite an elaborate design with squares and circles and curving lines, and with a wobbly streak running through it. And that evening she announced once and for all that the house was bewitched and she gave it up. She had found a loofah, two sponges and some cakes of soap elaborately arranged in a pattern on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... look at things, and almost the minute he got there had been knocked over by a falling spar. "For th' old ship's shook a-most to pieces," the man went on; "with th' foremast clean overboard, an' th' mizzen so wobbly that it's dancin' a jig every time she pitches, and everything at rags an' tatters ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... two others, and after landing them made several trips with both boats to ferry the rest over, including all their saddles and baggage. The Navajos were rather afraid of the boats, which to them probably looked small and wobbly, but they all got on board with much hilarity, except one who preferred to swim. He struck boldly out with a sort of dog-paddle stroke. Having no confidence in his swimming ability, we followed closely. The water was cold; ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... I must apologize for calling my politics were rather wobbly just then, ten thousand Bradders could not make me a Home Ruler, and had I not known that other things happen at political meetings in Oxford besides the ordinary programme, I might have been content to stay in college and go on being dull and peaceable. As it was I thought that Jack and I had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Spot found it very pleasant to roll on the ground with his small friend, and pretend to bite him, and upset him off his somewhat wobbly legs. But as time passed Spot began to weary of never-ending play. There were moments when Spot wanted to lie still and doze. But as soon as he had settled himself for a nap the puppy was sure to come bouncing up and sprawl all over him. He would ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... show you nothing of the sort. But I'll agree to stack you up against a run of hard luck that will make you wobbly on your legs." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... heat of the summer months Appleboy would rouse Tunnygate or conversely Tunnygate would rouse Appleboy, and each in his own wobbly skiff would row out to the spot which seemed most propitious to the piscatorial art. There, under two green umbrellas, like two fat rajahs in their shaking howdahs upon the backs of two white elephants, the friends would sit in solemn ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... is so wibbly-wobbly thet he can't trust his own idees," said Uncle Ezra Mudge as he stopped in the midst of his wood-chopping and leaned up against a log to rest, "is the kind of a feller who never amounts ter shucks in a cow ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... pitiful ululation. He fell forward from the chair, asprawl on wobbly hands and knees, on elbows and knees as he tried to press away the torrent of agony that hammered back and forth from temple to temple. James watched Brennan with cold detachment, Professor White and Jack ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... going-away gown"—I know you'll wail for all the trimmings, Sally dear,—the veil and the train and all the rest, but that sort of thing belongs to eighteen, not twenty-eight. I'm beyond the age of opera bouffe weddings,—I don't vision myself coming down a white-ribboned aisle with wobbly knees, covered with orange blossoms and gooseflesh! But—oh, Sally, the truth is that I would be married in a mackintosh or a bathing suit, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... salve was the bulliest stuff I ever used on a bullet hole, an' my arm begun to mend right from the start. His shoulder was splintered purty bad, but still, it didn't seem as if it ought to have bothered his legs none. The next day he was a little wobbly in his head, an' it seemed to rest him to hold my hand. He didn't want no one else in the room, so I just sat an' talked nonsense to him, an' twice Barbie came ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... She was hardly a month old, yet she seemed to understand—Mammy Lou said she did-that she must look her "beau'fulest"; so when her father came and bent over her little crib, she smiled, then coyly ducked her wobbly head, to smile again at Mother, the dear mother who only to-day had been allowed by the doctor to sit up for an hour. Mammy Lou must have been right, for there Baby lay playing with her fingers and the disappointed pink ribbons of her booties, while, now and then, when the discussion was specially ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... wobbly?" said Nancy. "I thought pea-sticks wouldn't be strong enough, but Andrew wouldn't let ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... quarter—influence, and that sort of thing, you know. He went down to the coast in a carriage containing seventeen other men, but he got a fat sleepy youth to sit on, and was passably comfortable. He crossed over in a wobbly boat packed from cellar to attic with Red Tabs invalided with shell shock, Blue Tabs with trench fever, and Green Tabs with brain-fag; Mechanical Transporters in spurs and stocks, jam merchants in revolvers and bowie-knives, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... Anderson Crow. Fifteen minutes later a wobbly craft put out to sea, manned by a picked crew of determined citizens of Tinkletown. When they were in midstream a loud cry came from the bank they had left behind. Looking back, Anderson Crow saw excited men dashing about, most of them pointing ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... wobbles even worse than Landy here, which goes to show he's getting pretty tuckered out. Can you blame the poor fellow when p'raps he's weak from hunger? If any of us had to go without a bite to eat all day we'd get wobbly on our ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... promised, with many native grimaces and a waste of tribal vocabulary, to have a satisfying breakfast ready in half an hour. Then Godwin drew Major Ross and Ned to one side, his good-natured face assuming a grave expression as he seated them in a private room of the rambling and wobbly ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... down the valley, by a somewhat "wobbly" bridge, and picking our way through the mixen which forms the approach to every well-appointed hut, we arrived upon the roof which supported the tent. This we achieved without any undue trouble, the building, like most "gujar" ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... "Say, what do you suppose they're planning to put up on us for a Christmas job? Some of those big-as-all-outdoors, wobbly, crocheted slippers?" ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... neighbors. Cheer up. Life looks just as good to me as it does to you. I love this old world just as well as any man that ever lived in it, and I'm not a bit pleased over leaving it—any more than you are. But I can't see where I could better matters by letting myself get wobbly in the knees. I'm sorry I didn't make a bigger fight to keep my guns, though. I'd like to have perforated a few more of our most worthy Committee before I quit; our friend Shorty, for instance," he stipulated wickedly and clearly, "and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... moment no further word was spoken. The officer presently helped the soldier to his feet and stayed him, for the latter's legs seemed wobbly. Field let his salvage get its breath before asking questions. Yet he was puzzled, for the man's face was strange to him. "Who are you?" he asked, at length, "and what on earth are you doing out ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King |
