"Stammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the literature that my soul demands—a sad voluptuousness—is the dying poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer the infantile Latin of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... child keeping quiet in the corner. Oh, but they are stupid, these royal people, all except my own Princess and the dear old Queen at Windsor. Neither York nor Lyonesse knew in the least what to say, and the Princess let them stammer on without helping them. I ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... tea. In the evening he wrote and read aloud. The only thing that made him different from other men was that he had the fear of epileptic attacks for ever hanging over him; and further, he was unfitted for society owing to a very painful and violent stammer. I saw him twice in my life; remote impressions of people seen for a single evening are often highly inaccurate, but I will give them for what they are worth. On the first occasion I saw a small, sturdily built man, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... priests and monks who are horrified, as at some prodigy, if they stammer, or repeat even a syllable in the Canon of the Mass,[16] though this may be a natural defect of the tongue, or an accident, and is not a sin. Again, there is no priest who does not confess that he was distracted, or failed ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... they do not create merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek alphabet, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... good talker on a thousand and one subjects, a thinker and psychologist. Psychology is his strong point. He argues brilliantly on the subject, yet I need only look at him to upset his thesis, to make him stammer and redden. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... again. Poor Hilary looked very uncomfortable. With an apologetic air he began to stammer something about Parish Councils. I was not to be diverted by any such maneuver. It was impossible that he could really wish to talk on ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... a start and blushed furiously. She started to stammer a reply when the less timid ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... you bleed? and must I stammer out, Nay, I blush indeed, fair lord, only to rend My sleeve up to my ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt. Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all, and his face was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great sympathy would ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... blessed: divine love cannot come short of human in this most characteristic of its manifestations. Surely the copy is not to surpass the original, nor the mirror to flash more brightly than the sun which, at the brightest, it but reflects. In such a matter we can but stammer when we try to find words. As our text warns us, we are trying to utter the unutterable when we seek to speak of God's giving up for us; but however such a thought may seem to be forbidden by other aspects of the divine nature, it seems to be involved in the great truth that 'God is love.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as usual, or will you try again once more—I will not say to read, but to stammer through ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... to describe the feelings with which I listened to this amazing evidence. The black wickedness and the cold-blooded treachery of the man overwhelmed and paralysed me, so that when, after some further testimony, the chairman asked me if I had any questions to put to the witness, I could only stammer:— ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... me?" Mr. Darley now appealed to Sydney, who managed to stammer out: "I certainly ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... through all, still trembling to be wrong: For fear some noble thoughts, like heavenly rebels, Should rise up in high treason to his brain, He sings, as the Athenian spoke, with pebbles In's mouth, lest Truth should stammer through his strain. But out of the long file of sonneteers There shall be some who will not sing in vain, And he, their Prince, shall rank among my peers,[307] And Love shall be his torment; but his grief Shall make an immortality of tears, And Italy shall hail him as the Chief Of Poet-lovers, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... who had secured for him his flogging, he determined to have a little amusement at Walford's expense before according to him the pardon which he knew his shipmates expected of him. When, therefore, Walford staggered up to the side of the berth, and began eagerly and incoherently to stammer forth the most abject apologies and the wildest prayers for forgiveness, Rudd simply growled forth an oath and impatiently flung himself over in the berth with his back to the petitioner. This had the intended effect of causing Walford's apologies and prayers to be reiterated with increased eagerness ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine, fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... few hours Tommy was as well as ever—indeed, better; not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer, and the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated. The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena, and, in fact, stated that similar things had occurred often before, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... The mystery and companionship of the sub-tropical night was upon them with its sensuous caresses. All of Payne's hard-won man-strength seemed to leave him: he felt as weak as a child; and he began to stammer brokenly. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour, and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt, and stammer, and tremble, or else run into each other like ink upon blotting paper, and the pedals are the only part of the instrument which do the work for which they were intended. We should be sorry that our favourite dog had his paw between them and the lady's slipper. The dust which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Let the one rock bring forth for thee, Renewing so from either spring The songs which both thy countries sing: Or we shall fear lest, heavened thus long, Thou should'st forget thy native song, And mar thy mortal melodies With broken stammer of the skies. ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words. At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and, opening his arms, he threw them around the little old man's neck, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... so good as to begin her education at once, by reproving her sharply for her indecorous behavior here to-night," said the duke, beginning to stammer. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... this little leap, Wishing that from the deep, I might some pearl of song adventurous bring. Despairing, here I stop, And my poor offering drop,— Why stammer I when thou ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadnt even heard of the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... only within the sphere of the Christian revelation. From the natural point of view the whole region of the dead is 'a land of darkness, without any order, where the light is as darkness.' The usual sources of human certainty fail us here. Reason is only able to stammer a peradventure. Experience and consciousness are silent. 'The simple senses' can only say that it looks as if Death were an end, the final Omega. Testimony there is none from any pale lips that have come back to unfold the secrets of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to blush and stammer like a booby, wouldn't you! That would be an excellent way of ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... I wished my curls would fall down and hide my cheeks, I tried to stammer out some apology. But he drove it ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... one's memory just as persistently as though they had been inspired expressions of actual feelings; and the intellect must indeed have been gigantic that could so beautifully pretend. Ordinary blunderers have to feel a vast amount before they can painfully stammer out a sentence that will describe it; and when they have got it out, how it seems to have just missed the core of the sensation that gave it birth, and what a poor, weak child it is of what was perhaps a mighty feeling! I read Goethe on a special ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Geoffrey's cabin because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My God! I ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the priest knelt down before the window, covered his face with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! God! God!" ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... could stammer a word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out, all in a heap, and covered the boy's mouth with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... stammer out a few words, but I was already outside the door on the street. I dropped the watch into the bottom of my pocket, held it tight with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... at him in bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer out ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... mute appeal, Wharton ran on smilingly: "He promised to shackle you to a table until I could stammer out my halting apologies, and now that I've done so in the presence of press and public won't you forgive me and help me to bury the hatchet in a Welsh rarebit?" He was speaking directly to her with a genuine appeal in his handsome eyes. Now that she ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... stammer, and the door reply, The hall wake, yawn, and smile; the torpid stair Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... growing in his face. And I heard Witred stammer, for the fear of the great king was on him; and I knew not what Sighard might not say in his wrath, for already Selred had his hand on him to stay him. So I spoke for the rest, being a stranger, and of no account if the anger of the king sought a ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... "It somewhat hurts the feelings to see a minister stand up in his place, and after a very pretty exordium to the budget, take up a bundle of papers from the table, gaze at the incomprehensible calculations before him, stammer out a few confused numbers, and then, with a rueful face, look over his shoulder to V—ns—rt for assistance. How often have I grieved to see unhappy A—d—g—n in this lamentable predicament!" Again, on Thellusson being raised to the peerage as ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... thought and nature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the day—to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in this respect, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and immediate fame. In the long period of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept—how often!—poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all this news been digested than somebody discovered a diamond ring on Clara Tuttle's left hand. So Clara was surrounded and an explanation demanded. But before she could conquer her blushes and stammer out her news Max Longman came in from another room and, putting his arms about her, said, "Don't be afraid, girl of mine, I'm here." And so everybody knew then that it was Max, after all, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... priggish mien, If you can feel the touch of silk and satin Without despising calico and jean; If you can ply a saw and use a hammer, Can do a man's work when the need occurs, Can sing when asked, without excuse or stammer, Can rise above unfriendly ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands. Of course, I could only stammer out my thanks. The will was duly finished, signed, and witnessed by my clerk. This is it on the blue paper, and these slips, as I have explained, are the rough draft. Mr. Jonas Oldacre then informed me that there ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spiritual consolation, his intellectual delight, and indeed his daily bread; for out of that tremendous horn-book he taught me to stammer the divine Italian language, and illustrated every lesson, from the simplest rule of its syntax to its exceedingly complex and artificially constructed prosody, out of the pages of that sublime, grotesque, and altogether wonderful poem. My mother has told ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the cause is? They are shadows and Chimeraes, proceeding of some formelesse conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse lump of matter. As ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... with astonishment, Mrs. Peckover managed to stammer a faint answer in the affirmative, and to add that the initials, "M. G.," would be found somewhere on the broken board lying at their feet. She then tried to ask a question or two in her turn; but the words died away in faint exclamations of surprise. "To think ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... bright-eyed little girl of about twelve summers the remark that she tho't it was rich to talk about the crooilty of the Spaniards usin thumbscrews, when he was in a Tower where so many poor peple's heads had been cut off. This made the Warder stammer and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your heaven at a stay, Or is it his motus trepidationis that makes him stammer? I pray you, Memory, set him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... spoke, the sound of distant firing fell upon the ears of the party and the unmistakable stammer-hammer racket of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent, but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... place stools near the stove, but whether he was quite drunk or whether some narcotic had been mixed with the brandy, he fell back on his seat, trying to stammer out an excuse. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in a kind of stammer; "an' as to Sally, the nerra one o' me knows any thing about ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... manliness in him. He was not afraid of the woman; and in pleading his cause with her he could stand up for himself courageously. He had studied his speech, and having studied it, he knew how to utter the words. He did not blush, nor stammer, nor cringe. Of grandfather or grandmother belonging to himself he had probably never heard, but he could so speak of his noble ancestors as to produce belief in Lizzie's mind. And he almost succeeded in convincing her that he was, by the consent of mankind, the greatest ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... placed it unnoticed in her hand. The banker's wife flushed and then turned pale. She understood. Annie would spare her. Her lips parted to protest. Even she was taken back by such an exhibition of unselfishness as this. She began to stammer thanks. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... There was real and anxious earnestness in his assurance. "It's because I don't see you. If I were face to face with you, I'd stammer and get red and make a regular imbecile of myself. Another reason why I stick down here and ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... seemed always ready to show in a friendly, generous smile, were strong and white and sparkling. Altogether she was such a vision of healthy, unaffected, and smartly gotten-up young womanhood that O'Reilly could only stammer his acknowledgment of the introduction, inwardly berating himself for his awkwardness. He was aware of Alvarado's amusement, and this ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... gazing out on the dull leaden sky, watching the snowflakes falling through the dreary air. There followed then a long, long pause, in which I had time to recover from the effect her words had produced, and to frame and stammer forth such congratulations as seemed required by the occasion. These she did not answer, or even seem to comprehend, but roused from her revery by the sound of my voice, she crossed the room and seated herself beside me, and took ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... OXONIAN (stammer, as on a former occasion, respectfully omitted).—"With this defect, ma'am!—But to the point. Some days ago I happened to fall in with an elderly person, such as is described, with a very pretty female child and a French dog. The man—gentleman, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to stammer my contrition for having offended him: but he cut me short with a wave of the hand. "The fact is," he explained, "I was worried by ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the confidant, of all for whom you may exert your powers. Oh, George Morley, I am a poor ignorant blunderer when presuming to exhort you as Christian minister; but in your own words—I address you as man and gentleman, you declared that 'thought and zeal should not stammer whenever I said, Keep your promise.' I say it now—Keep faith to the child you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... true, and think no worse of her when he caught her fibbing. Mendacity is a thing so perfectly understood that no one is abashed by detection. In England most men equivocate and nearly all women, but they are ashamed to be discovered; they blush and stammer and hesitate, or fly into a passion; the wiser Spaniard laughs, shrugging his shoulders, and utters a dozen rapid falsehoods to make up for the first. It is always said that a good liar needs an excellent memory, but he wants more qualities than that—unblushing countenance, the readiest wit, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... continuous in the speech and the actions of the life without music? She remembered a man she had known who stammered when he spoke, but never stammered when he sang. And she thought she resembled this man. Robin Pierce had always believed that she could speak without the stammer even as she sang without it. She had never cared to. She had trusted absolutely in her beauty. Now her trust was shaken. ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he would either have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised an alarm ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I look'd—so well knowing The Colonel's opinions—my cheeks were quite glowing; I stammer'd out something—nay, even half named The LEGITIMATE semptress, when, loud, he exclaimed, "Yes, yes, by the stiching 'tis plain to be seen It was made by that B*rb*n**t b—h, VIOTORINE!" What a word for a hero, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... only speaking to my brother," she managed to stammer out, after a little hesitating pause; "I am sorry to have awakened ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to be like unto the Lord, has made me overlook it till datum, and in return for my goodness she raises this outcry against me." And when I replied, "How does your lordship know that the witch raised such an outcry against you?" he first began to stammer, and then said, "Why, you yourself charged me thereon before the judge. But I bear you no anger therefor, and God knows that I pity you, who are a poor weak old man, and would gladly help you if I were able." Meanwhile he led me up four or five flights of stairs, so that I, old man that ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... O'erpower'd by earth, or planetary sway Of Saturn; and the geomancer sees His Greater Fortune up the east ascend, Where gray dawn checkers first the shadowy cone; When 'fore me in my dream a woman's shape There came, with lips that stammer'd, eyes aslant, Distorted feet, hands maim'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... spectators, and ladies faint away. "It is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale, to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate love."[2312]—When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room, fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob, and that some pretty fainting subject should be unlaced. Mme. de Genlis, who laughs ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... stammer out some apology, which I quickly suppressed, by ordering him out of my sight. It is worthy of remark, that his men, instead of apologising for him, called him a coward to his face, and declared that it was he who had restrained them by telling ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... refreshments. It was the first warm evening; the sky was a deep blue, and at the end of the street the darkness was flooded with purple. There was something extravagant about them all; joy urged their movements to exceed the narrow every-day limits, and made them stammer and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the house in search of his wife, and Elsie began to tease her unfortunate victim, a pastime of which she never wearied. It seemed to her the funniest thing in the world to make that great creature blush and stammer, to lead him on to the perpetration of absurd things, to laugh at him, to bewilder his honest head; for any pain he might suffer, she considered it no more than she did the sorrows of a Fejee Islander, or ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... corrected herself with a stammer and a blush—"Colonel Boyce? Oh no. Indeed, he is old enough to be ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... what hotel was nearest to the lair of our boat, but in that wild moment I could discover nothing more appropriate than "I wish immediately some medicine for seasickness," and (hastily turning over the pages) "I have lost my pet cat." I began mechanically to stammer French and the few words of German which for years have lain peacefully buried in the dustiest folds of ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... powers confused. This is recognized in such common expressions as "she was covered with confusion." Persons in this condition lose their presence of mind, and utter singularly inappropriate remarks. They are often much distressed, stammer, and make awkward movements or strange grimaces. In certain cases involuntary twitchings of some of the facial muscles may be observed. I have been informed by a young lady, who blushes excessively, that at such times she does not even know what she is saying. When it was ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... father. I give orders now to change him to the chamber above the chapel. If that ye can swear your innocency with a good solid oath and an assured countenance, it is well; the lad will be at peace a little, and I will spare him. If that ye stammer or blench, or anyways boggle at the swearing, he will not believe you; and, by the mass, he shall die. There is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her, with the intention of showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only stammer: "Oh, Monsieur l'Abbe, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... lose consciousness; when the stupefying action of the powder begins to wane, the arms and hands become loose and the head droops. After remaining for some time in this attitude, the cacique raises his head, as though he were awakening from sleep, and, lifting his eyes to the heavens, begins to stammer some incoherent words. His chief attendants gather round him (for none of the common people are admitted to these mysteries), raising their voices in thanksgiving that he has so quickly left the zemes and returned to them. They ask him what he has seen, and the cacique declares ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... foot; and all he could do was to stretch out his lips, and to stammer in an almost ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... a heroic effort. He began to stammer, checked himself, and at last succeeded in imposing coherence upon ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Italy by the French and ... But it's a complicated narrative. I haven't it straight in my own mind yet. Do you know, I wake up at night sometimes with the rather naive idea that I, von Stinnes, who prefer Turkish cigarettes to women, even brunettes ... But I stammer. It is difficult to be amusing, always. I think sometimes at night that I was personally responsible for at least half ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... rektangulilo; placo. squint : strabi. squirrel : sciuro. staff : (officers), stabo. stage : estrado, scenejo. stain : makul'o, -i. stair : sxtupo. stake : paliso, fosto; veto. stalk : trunketo. stall : budo, stalo. stammer : balbuti. stamp : stampi; posxtmarko; piedfrapi. starch : amelo. starling : sturno. state : stato; Sxtato; esprimi, diri, aserti. station : stacio, stacidomo. steak : bifsteko. steel : sxtalo. steep : kruta; trempi. steer : direkti, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... he had raved out his passion for Virginia, and to-day he could barely stammer Betty's name. A great silence; seemed to surround ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... he enjoyed a calm existence, full of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the facade of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment. The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he took out of his wardrobe ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the purest light. The souls which walk in the other path are often very little known, for a length of time, as it was with Jesus Christ Himself, till the last years of His life. Oh, if I could but express what I conceive of this state! But I can only stammer about it. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... clear that the limit of the kitchen-maid's endurance had been reached. The obligation of going to the front door to "show in" a visitor was in itself so subversive of the fundamental order of things that it had thrown her faculties into hopeless disarray, and she could only stammer out, after various panting efforts at evocation, "His hat, mum, was different-like, as ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest passion must die away when it ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... of such a woman was enough to pull any broken man together—to drag a man out of his grave. And he thought this with inward despair, which kept him silent as much almost as his astonishment. At last he managed to stammer ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... dismay, though it had not shaken his fidelity to his new faith. But often a dumb, inarticulate longing possessed him to make known to his old neighbours the reason of the change in him, but speech failed him. He could only stammer out his confession, "I am no longer a Catholic, I am a Protestant, I cannot pray to the saints, not even to the archangel St. Michel or the Blessed Virgin. I pray only to God." For anything else, for explanation, and for all argument, he had no more language than the mute, wistful ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all: the temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, so weak ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... green-baize-covered table, took one of the Windsor chairs, and crashed it down beside the sofa, and planted his hulking big body on it, and reached out and captured the thin wrist of his victim, who mustered breath to stammer: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves. He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down. The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation. He glanced cautiously about him. Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Captain Snaggs managed to stammer out after a bit, his long face perceptibly longer and his rubicund complexion turned to an ashy grey. He was conscience-stricken and thoroughly frightened at the second-mate thus bringing up again, as he thought, his cruel murder of the negro cook; for, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Burnt Flesh. Just imagine one 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 Billets ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... they took me for the assassin. I recovered force and energy enough to free myself from the hands of those who held me, while I managed to stammer forth—'I did not do it! Indeed, indeed I did not!' A couple of gendarmes held the muzzles of their carbines against my breast.—'Stir but a step,' said they, 'and you are a dead man.'—'Why should you threaten ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... half are consonants. They would be almost pure hexameters, if in lieu of the long a[a-macron]nd, we could put e[e-breve]t, or te [tau epsilon]. And there are only three Saxon words in the two lines. But hexameters consisting of purely English words, especially of Anglo-Saxon words, halt and stammer like a schoolboy's exercise. The attempt of Kingsley in Andromeda is most ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... in point is the man who becomes nervous while making a speech, starts to stammer, and makes a lamentable failure of what began well enough, because he imagines that persons in the audience are making fun ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... I have a pass for all such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he assumes—'Pom-de-Tair.' A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed silhouette of a man, and affecting ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... planned this laconic statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded McTee with quietly ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... had been a bundle. The ancestress, the forgotten one, tall, bony, ghastly, remained motionless, her eyes, only seeming to have life, her eyes shining clear as spring water in her thin withered face. But on this morning, again a sudden rush of tears had streamed down her cheeks, and she had begun to stammer words without any connection; which seemed to prove that in the midst of her senile exhaustion and the incurable torpor of madness, the slow induration of the brain and the limbs was not yet complete; there still were memories stored away, gleams of intelligence still were possible. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... stuttered for pleasure and profit ever since I discovered the efficacy of it at school. When I didn't know my lesson one day I put on a stammer, and my bub—bub—bubbing, as the farmer calls it, made the master so uncomfortable that, ever afterwards, at the first sign of it he passed me over. That's why I'm such a ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... elsewhere was a profane expressman, and had become quite imbecile under Mr. Wynn's active heartiness and brotherly horse-play before spectators) managed, however, to feebly stammer with a blush something ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... black dresses, she hardly vouchsafed an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more intelligible to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inarticulate voice calls to us. He is the poor, the aging, the half-witted; the drunken sot mumbling in his stupor; the captives of life to whom death sings his insistent, luring songs; the half-idiotic peasant boy who tries to stammer out his declaration of love to the superb village belle; the wretched fool who weeps in the falling snowy night. He is those who have never before spoken in musical art, and now arise, and are about us and make us ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... which everybody was able to bear, and the enthusiasms of Coleridge which nobody was able to bear. Lamb would parade his admiration for some favourite author, Donne, for example, whom the rest of the company probably abhorred. He would select the most crabbed passages to quote and defend; he would stammer out his piquant and masterful half sentences, his scalding jests, his controvertible assertions; he would skilfully hint at the defects which no one else was permitted to see; and if he made no converts (wanting none), he woke no weary wrath. But ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier |
