"Stammering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... George!" Mr. Benny could only repeat with stammering lips. If, a while ago, he could not believe his ears, just now he felt as if the ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was waiting for her with open arms, and put his arms round her in a transport of love, while she, embracing him more closely, said, stammering: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... queer desire to bite one's nails to the quick that is so common in children and which persists in the psychasthenic adult, to the odd grimaces and facial contortions, blinking eyes and cracking joints of the inveterate ticquer. Against some of these habit spasms, comparable to severe stammering, all measures are in vain, for there seems to be a queer pleasure in these acts against which the will of ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the thought of such perils that he was impelled to seek his old friend the clergyman, who had lost him over the ancient Hebrew mythologies, and now won him back by his living moral force. With much embarrassment and stammering Thyrsis managed to give a hint of what troubled him; and the man, whose life was made wholly of love for others, opened his great heart ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of sincerity, and maybe for once she was sincere. Vane did not trouble one way or the other. He was in that condition of nervous excitement to be strongly affected by her sensuous beauty. He was stammering something in reply when a man in a puce satin coat and a flowered brocaded waistcoat thrust ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Just once she put one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevice between two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall that racked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect she was talking—stammering half incoherent words that came bursting jerkily from her ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Stuart said, stammering and looking unutterable astonishment. "Where would they like to go? There were two vacant seats in Mr. Pembrook's class, and ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... raised one poor bewildered boy to sit up on his bier, and begin to speak—broken exclamations possibly, and stammering words of astonishment—shall be flung, like a trumpet that scatters marvellous sounds, through the sepulchres of the nations and compel all to stand before the throne. You and I will hear it; let us ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... knew better than he himself all that the true Christian believes, and my mother was almost moved to tears when for the first time I read the evening blessing aloud by lamp-light, without faltering or stammering. Indeed she felt so edified that she gave over to me forever the office of reader, the duties of which I hereafter performed for a considerable length of time with much zeal and not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... heaven, if those be wanting who can say, "We went through fire and through water; and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place."' In like manner, those praise Him most acceptably among men who know their feebleness, and with stammering lips humbly try to breathe their love, their need, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... before—such a town as one sees in a foreign land, built with quaint roofs and gables and curiously coloured. As he crossed the bridge he met a woman who stared at him in amazement. He raised his head to speak, but he had lost the power of utterance. The woman waited; and at last with a feeble stammering speech he asked her the name of the place. She shook her head and said she did not understand his words, and with a look of pity she went on ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... rapturous delights, languishing smiles, and first caressing, stammering utterance of love, you who can be seen, who are you? Are you less in God's sight than all the rest, beautiful cherubim who soar in the alcove and who bring to this world man awakened from the dream divine! Ah! dear children of pleasure, how your mother loves you! It ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... might happen? That we must leave for a last resort—a last desperate resort. First we must tell the boy." Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him, staring. "But—but you, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But you! I hadn't realized—I hadn't thought—it never occurred to me what this means to you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was asking this girl to help him in robbing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... in a strange position, Liza," I began, stammering and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. "No, no, don't imagine anything," I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. "I am not ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary, I look with pride on my ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... bewilderment he imagined that she too had been murdered, until he realised that it was only a swoon from which she recovered in a moment. He helped her regain her feet and she looked about as if still dazed, stammering: "Has he gone?" ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... Berta was trying to explain her own ignorance and failing brilliantly. Now the second was stammering through a transparent bluff. Berta had settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle! Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle! For strange to say she flunked too and the question ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... her out of the ambulance after receiving them with a grave salute, and regretted that, in the absence of Major Carew, there was no one but himself to receive them. He was evidently a trifle shy and embarrassed, stammering a little as he offered his services to superintend the pitching of their camp, with eyes that would wander from the elder cousin to Diana's ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... these intoxicated old gallants, I made my mortified way up the avenue, they wobbling and sliding and stammering, and he who held my arm, I distinctly remember, recited Byron to me, and told me many times that the Judge was "a p-perfect gentleman, and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... least so they appeared to those who had grace enough to respect his position and his age. As often as reference is made in my hearing to Charles Lamb and his stutter, up comes the face of dear old Professor Fraser, and I hear him once more stammering out some joke, the very fun of which had its source in kindliness. Somehow the stutter never interfered with the point of the joke: that always came with a rush. He seemed, while hesitating on some unimportant syllable, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... sincere delight and so strong a desire to be effusive and in evidence, that he could not repress a smile upon hearing from the companion of his youth, such a confirmation of his triumph. They are our most severe critics, these friends of our youth, they who have listened to the stammering of our hopes and dreams of the future. And when at length we have conquered the future, these are often the very ones to rob us of it! Lissac, however, was not one of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... much about her," he said, stammering a bit. "I saw her here and there, and talked ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... should set in; but alas! our wishes were not destined to be fulfilled. Our uneasiness concerning the real intentions of the Meer was again excited towards the evening, for one of our followers came to us almost frantic with terror, stammering out as soon as his nervous state permitted him to speak, that he had heard it stated as a notorious fact that we were all to be detained at Koollum—that such was the pleasure of the Meer. The reader will believe that this intelligence ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... he was educated in the famous old Christ's Hospital School in London, but when he was ready for college he found himself barred by his stammering, stuttering tongue. Giving up his hope of further schooling, he was glad to take a small clerkship in a government office, where he remained for thirty-three years, a long period with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a cry; in it rang long repressed passion, hopeless adoration, fierce joy in having broken the bonds of silence. He spoke rapidly, thickly, with a stammering tongue, now throwing out his hands in passionate appeal, now crushing between his fingers the dried moss and twigs with which the ground was strewn. "I loved you the day I first saw you. I have loved you ever since. I love you now. My God! ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... all like to speak poetry at the moment when we truly live, and if we do not speak it, it is because we have an impediment in our speech. It is not song that is the narrow or artificial thing, it is conversation that is a broken and stammering attempt at song. When we see men in a spiritual extravaganza, like Cyrano de Bergerac, speaking in rhyme, it is not our language disguised or distorted, but our language rounded and made whole. Rhymes answer each ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... true in essentials of the Irish people to this day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. And even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country, stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue, loved still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences. Uttering them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of the impediment; and winning out of the very difficulty a ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... exactly what I would myself have written, but there were phrases in it which to Mary's mind could have come only from me. Oh, I admit it was cunningly done, especially the love-making, which was just the kind of stammering thing which I would have achieved if I had tried to put my feelings on paper. Anyhow, Mary had no doubt of its genuineness. She slipped off after dinner, hired a carriage with two broken-winded screws ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... electric flash without; the granite cliff loses one atom from its bald front, and every other atom quails before the dumb shiver of gravitation and shifts its place; the breathing, breathless marble, which a sculptor has rescued from its primeval sleep, and, repeating after God, though with stammering and insufficient lips, the great drama of Paradise, makes a man out of dust,—once, once, in the dcadness of its beauty, that marble thrills with magnetic life, drinks its maker's soul, repeats the Paradisaic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... result of emotional conflicts, memories associated with established motor dispositions, inevitably tend to find some sort of direct or symbolic expression. In this way they give rise to the symptoms which we meet in hysteria and psychasthenia—fears, phobias, obsessions, and tics, like stammering. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is a long story, and I thought it was so easy to tell, and I find it isn't easy a bit. I want to do something—to help my parents—I mean they do not need any help—but they can't help me. I have tried lots of things." She was now stammering and blushing in a way that made her hate herself mortally, and the innocent man in front of her tenfold more, but she pushed on manfully and concluded, "I thought may be you could help me get something I ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... secret agent on the case—deliberately tipped over a champagne glass that stood within a few inches of the bag. Of course, Mademoiselle was worried lest the wine run over on her gown and while thus preoccupied, the waiter, stammering apologies, mopped up the table cloth with his serviette—mopped up the wine and cleverly covering the bag folded it in the napkin and hurried away. In two minutes he had opened it, abstracted the letter from the young ordnance officer; and was back, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... door of a wine-merchant; and in this group Chicot recognized M. de Monsoreau and M. de Guise, and fancied that the Duc d'Anjou could not be far off. But he was wrong. MM. de Monsoreau and Guise were occupied in exciting still more an orator in his stammering eloquence. This orator was Gorenflot, recounting his journey to Lyons, and his duel in an inn with a dreadful Huguenot. M. de Guise was listening intently, for he began to fancy it had something to do with the silence of Nicolas ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... Monsieur," cries the other, pale and stammering; "it was no doing of mine—he would have ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... happened that Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which had somehow surprised his own doubts of Dissent, and beyond them into a mind which had come to its own decision and quietly, firmly, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broke off, stammering; for a second visitor had suddenly appeared at his bedside: Father Regan who had entered the infirmary unheard and unseen, and who now stood with his eyes fixed in grave displeasure on the ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... out. Why did she not speak up, he should like to know? Instead of stammering and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... love; and behind her came a man, my cousin Gotz, whose newly-married wife's daring leap was indeed after his own heart. One more plunge, and their horses were on the highroad, and I had lifted Margery out of her saddle and we held each other clasped, stammering out foolish disconnected words, while we first laughed and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that she knew regarding the fugitives, stammering very much from sheer anxiety to get it all out as fast as she could, and delaying her communication very much in consequence,—besides rendering her meaning rather obscure—sometimes unintelligible. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... was the indignation of Don Quixote when he heard the audacious words of his squire! So great was it, that in a voice inarticulate with rage, with a stammering tongue, and eyes that flashed living fire, he exclaimed, "Rascally clown, boorish, insolent, and ignorant, ill-spoken, foul-mouthed, impudent backbiter and slanderer! Hast thou dared to utter such words in my presence and in that of these illustrious ladies? Hast thou ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not seen Caroline then, Louisa says," proceeded Clara, but there she got into an inextricable confusion, and was not speedy in stammering out of it, having suddenly remembered that it was no great compliment to tell Marian that Louisa had said how glad they all were that it was not Miss Arundel. Marian cut the hesitation short by saying, "You have not told me when it was settled, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the rooms, searched the cupboards and chests, and came at last, without having found anything, to the dormitories, where the Little Sisters' old nurselings were lying. Every head was upraised in astonishment and fear, and all, stammering and trembling, began jabbering out at once, "What are you doing here? You are not going to hurt the good Sisters? It's a shame! It's infamous! Go away! It's cowardly! My good monsieur, what will become of us if you take them away?" ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... hindered his utterances, he could be quicker than the quickest, and sharper than the most acrid, as the loquacious barrister discovered who was suddenly checked in a course of pert talkativeness by this tart remark from the stammering Lord Keeper: "There is a difference between you and me,—for me it is a pain to s-speak, for you a pain to hold your tongue." That the familiar story of his fatal attack of cold is altogether true one cannot well believe, for it seems highly improbable that the Lord Keeper, in his seventieth ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... marching up from the village, the brass band tearing the air into ribbons with cornets and trombones, his stiff resolve wilted suddenly. He began to grin shamefacedly under his grizzled beard, and hobbled out onto the porch and made them a stammering speech, and turned scarlet with pride when they cheered him, and basked in the glory of their compliments, and thrilled when they respectfully called him "Chief." He even told Louada Murilla that she was a darling, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:—Friends, shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come; the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... said Rosanette. The effort of self-suppression had shattered her nerves. She sank down on the divan, shaking all over, stammering forth words of abuse, shedding tears. Was it this threat on the part of the Vatnaz that had caused so much agitation in her mind? Oh, no! what did she care, indeed, about that one? It was the golden sheep, a present, and in the midst of her tears the name of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... visibly, as if the blow she had aimed at him had, after glancing off harmlessly, returned to crush her. She touched Dorothy's proffered hand, murmured a few stammering phrases of vague compliment, rejoined her friends. Said Dorothy, when she ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... my flashlight, and a very muddy face covered with a shock of red hair looked in at the door of my little room, and with many contortions and winkings, emitted a series of incomprehensible noises. What with the stammering man and the barking dog, I was at my wits end to find out the trouble. At last by a process of synthesis, I pieced the various sounds together and found that the man wanted the location of a certain British battery. I gave him ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... of it, but the whole church,—having in us the heart and soul of orthodoxy itself, the essence of all that gave life to its creed, the utmost significance and vital force of what it taught and still teaches, in what we conceive to be a stuttering and stammering way, in a cumbrous and outworn language, with a circuitous and wearisome phraseology; but meaning really what we mean, and doing for men essentially what we are doing. All that we claim is a better statement of the old and changeless truth, a disembarrassed account of the ever true and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... must get back to Wendover to-night. Fact is, I'm on the wing again," said the young man, stammering and blushing. "Business of importance calls me to—to Charlottesville, miss. So if you should have a letter or a message to send to—to Mrs. Grey I should ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... you a day to think over my proposal," he said, stammering the words in his haste. And then, "Don't write to me! I will find a means," and, almost before she was aware of his movements, he had snatched up his cap, and the room was empty. The curtain was torn aside; the glass door stood open; beyond ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... of asking this counterfeit fisherman how or which way he came thither, his whole thought being only to oblige the fair Persian. With much ado he turned his head towards the door, being quite drunk, and, in a stammering tone, calling to the caliph, whom he took to be a fisherman, "Come hither, thou nightly thief," said he, "and let us ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... disappear, leaving a wonder about the empty saddle. And the blush and the stammer,—will men be pleased never to write in books any more, how these things are marks of the guilty? For here was Cynthia, as composed as the October afternoon, and here was I stammering and red. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... speak, the tremor passed out of my limbs, the blood came back to my brain, and I began without stammering. This first paper, fortunately for us all, dealt with Edwin Booth, whom I revered. To my mind he not only expressed the highest reach of dramatic art in his day, he was the best living interpreter of Shakespeare, and no doubt it was the sincerity of my utterance ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ran to Setanta, and kneeling down he took him by his right hand, and said, "I am thy man from this day forward." And after that he arose and kissed him, and standing by his side cried, "O Cumascra Mend Macha, O stammering son of Concobar, if ever I was a shield to thee against thy mockers, come hither; and thou too come O Art Storm-Ear, and thou Art of the Shadow, and thou O Fionn of the Songs, and you O Ide and Sheeling, who were nursed at the same breast and knee with myself." So he summoned to him his ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Hazelton, was unable to perform that evening, and begged to be excused. Grandison was to have gone home with the lecturer to supper, but he said he considered Mrs. Hazelton would be the better of a little quiet, and, stammering out some excuse, slunk away in the direction ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... fanlight across the White Horse of Hanover, which stands in so many Irish fanlights, she could see that the lady was in one of the towering rages she remembered and had dreaded in her youth. Looking at her, with a stammering apology on her lips, she had a wandering memory of the day at Inch long ago when Terry had broken a reproduction of the Portland Vase. He had been a big boy of sixteen then and he had flatly refused to meet his mother, going away and laying perdu in a stable loft ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... farther end, where the bear durst not come. Hereupon Friday cried out, Now master, me make much laugh, me make bear dance. Upon which he fell a shaking the bough, which made the creature look behind him, to see how he could retreat. Then as if the bear had understood his stammering English, Why you no come farther, Mr. Bear said he, pray, Mr. Bear come farther; and then indeed we all burst into a laughter; especially when we perceived Friday drop like a squirrel upon the ground, leaving the beast to make the best of his way down the tree. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... stammering and uncertain, as if hard to get it through. But the Ouija spelled out Peter's name, and when she—Miss—when the lady with us asked if it had a message from Peter, it pointed to 'yes.' Then she tried to get ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... building, but Captain Zeb remained outside, stammering that he cal'lated he'd better stay where he could keep an eye on his horse. This was such a transparent excuse that it would have been funny at any other time. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... open eyes through the field of psychology. Quite near stand chorea and the epidemic impulses to imitative movements. And we might bring into this neighborhood also the disturbance in the equilibrium of the speech movements through all degrees of stammering and severe impairment. Up to a certain degree, though not often completely, they too ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... up, as he called it, and so marched into the shop one day, and going straight toward the mournful eyes, he asked for a pair of gloves. Mr. Firkin says the French women are so perfectly trained to conceal their emotions, that she did not betray, by any trembling, or turning pale, or stammering, the profound interest she felt for him, but quietly looked in his eyes, and in what Mr. Firkin called "a strain of Siren sweetness," asked what number he wore. He replied with his French esprit, as Kurz Pacha calls it, that he thought the size of her hand was about right for him; upon ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... articulation is of such importance, that without it speech or reading becomes not only inelegant, but often absolutely unintelligible. The opposite faults are mumbling, muttering, mincing, lisping, slurring, mouthing, drawling, hesitating, stammering, misreading, and the like. "A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such a distinction ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... boy boldly. "After all," as he thought, "I had better put a frank face on this stupidity of mine; a stammering answer will only make this fellow ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... bed—her chemise unfastened and falling off revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement of Eve—and would call Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine blushed, lowered his eyes, and knew not what to do in presence of this innocent creature. Stammering, he turned his head, feared, and fled. The Daphnis of darkness took flight before ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... stammering and smiling. But he had flushed a rosy red, and there was no real resistance in him. He explained the invitation to Louie, who had been looking helplessly from one to the other, and she at once accepted it. She understood perfectly that the French girl admired her; ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought I had been drinking when I went, white and stammering, confused and hesitating, into his room. He ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... sort of claim to originality; viewed as translations, they are characterized by a barbarism which is only the more perceptible, that this poetry does not naively display its own native simplicity, but strives, after a pedantic and stammering fashion, to imitate the high artistic culture of the neighbouring people. The wide deviations from the original have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the language harsh and quaint.(9) We have no ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... I have read in the newspapers,' said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little, 'that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am one: far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it), he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being now the afternoon in the—College—of which you are the eminent head, the young ladies might gain nothing, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... following Emperor or Pope to that Monteaperti which made Arbia run colour of wine, or shrill Benevento, or Altopasdo which cost the Florentines so dear.[1] But Ilaria stayed at home to trifle with lap-dogs and jongleurs under the orange trees: heard boys make stammering love, and laughed lightly at their Decameron travesty, being too proud to be ashamed or angered; and sometimes (for she was not too proud but that love should be of the party), she pulled a ring from one lithe finger, and ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... stars, The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon; Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell, And flashings upon faces without hope.— And I will think in gold and dream in silver, Imagine in marble and conceive in bronze, Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands, Allure the living God out of the bliss, And all ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... make a stammering attempt when the string of his apron parted, and the ten cow-horns were scattered in the snow. He dived in pursuit of them, and his speech was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... like a huge mirror that reflected his own independence. Yet no one ever said harder or fiercer things of his own fellow-craftsmen. His description of Charles Lamb as "a pitiful rickety, gasping, staggering, stammering tom-fool" is not an amiable one! Or take his account of Wordsworth- -how instead of a hand-shake, the poet intrusted him with "a handful of numb unresponsive fingers," and how his speech "for prolixity, thinness, endless dilution" excelled all the other speech that ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in front of the shop door in order that people outside might not see what strange company she was receiving. Fortunately her husband came to the rescue. A violent quarrel ensued between him and his brother. The latter, after stammering insults, reiterated his old grievances twenty times over. At last he even began to cry, and his companion was near following his example. Pierre had defended himself in ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... ease, strangely stammering over an apparently simple and unimportant statement of the condition of her fellow orphan. She changed color slightly. Layson, watching her, decided that the son of the one victim must be the sweetheart of the daughter of the other, and would have smiled had not the ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Toby spoke breathlessly, stammering a little as her habit was when agitated. Her face was averted, and she was trying very, very hard to resist the closer drawing ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... of its circumference, which reinvigorates the consciousness of our own powers by recalling and confirming our own unvalued sensations and perceptions, gives classic shape to our own amorphous imaginings, and adequate utterance to our own stammering conceptions or emotions. The poet's office is to be a Voice, not of one crying in the wilderness to a knot of already magnetized acolytes, but singing amid the throng of men, and lifting their common aspirations and sympathies (so first clearly revealed to themselves) on the wings of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and she was so angry, that no words would come but a passionate stammering "I can't—I can't leave off; ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the most terrible in life—when the lips are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express what the muffled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering compassionate circumlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but to such a question silence and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... glad I had it in my pocket," said Dora, stammering. "I took it up to London with me, and—and found it often refreshing in the middle of the heat and fatigue. I am thankful to hear it was of use to you, who have the best right ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... application he had tipsily determined on, and was about to leave the place, when M. Derville arrived. The ship-broker's surprise and anger at finding Hector Bertrand in his house were extreme, and his only reply to the intruder's stammering explanation, was a contemptuous order to leave the place immediately. Bertrand slunk away sheepishly enough; and slowly as he sauntered along, had nearly reached home, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... do next?" He stopped suddenly, in his surprise forgetting to shut his mouth. The same eyes which had laughed up into his when she offered him ten cents as a tip were laughing into them now. He dragged his hat from his head, stammering. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... exclaimed—and then came a peevish voice—"Jadvyga, you are giving the baby a cold. Shut the door!" Jurgis stood for half a minute more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth of an inch of crack; and then, as there was really nothing more to be said, he excused himself ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... stammering, "she thought Ellen was so smart. She heard her valedictory, and the school-teacher had talked about her, what a good scholar she was, and she thought it would be nice for her to go to college, and she should be ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and pick it up again with the facility of a tailor resuming his work on a waistcoat. One can't say: "Where was I? How far had I gone before this miserable interruption came?" In a word I found mysef stammering and stuttering and wasting moments ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... bestowed upon him. Then straightway touched with pity we run to meet the prodigal son and snatch the fugitive slave from the gates of death. The book he has not forgotten is handed to him to be read, and while with lips stammering with fear he reads a few words, the power of the judge is loosed, the accuser is withdrawn, and death is put to flight. O marvellous virtue of an empiric verse! O saving antidote of dreadful ruin! ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely overwhelmed and, after stammering her thanks for the unexpected ovation of the evening, said in a voice which broke in spite of her self-control: "If this were an assembled mob opposing the rights of women I should know what to say. I never made a speech except to rouse people to action. My work is that of subsoil plowing.... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the occupants of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on the sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door. Then he flew to his room with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but the impatient William of Yuba ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... I think, in my position, it is ridiculous, you see," Eustace began stammering, but was wearily cut short by Harold with, "As ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a treat spread before her such, as Lucia had truly said, she never had at home; but to Mrs. Horton's surprise and Lucia's dismay, Rebecca declared that she must go home; and taking her sunbonnet, with some stammering words of excuse ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... about uneasily in his seat and stopped his stammering gratitude by saying: "Hold on, now; don't make such a fuss over a little thing. When I see a man down, an' things all on top of 'm, I jest like t' kick 'em off an' help 'm up. That's the kind of religion I got, an' it's about the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... But that stammering little soul-flight has done me good. It has given me back my perspective. I refuse to be downed. I'm still the captain of my soul. I'm still at the wheel, no matter if we are rolling a bit. And life, in some way, is still going to be good, still ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... heavy, somewhat timid man, the reverse of his predecessor in all things, but a very good sort of person upon the whole. On seeing the baronet there, however, something seemed strangely to affect him—a sort of confused surprise, which, after various stammering efforts, burst forth as soon as the usual salutation was over, in the words, "Pray, Sir Philip, did ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... quick and nervous, with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and he instantly became a ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... the wide wrapping-gown and nightcap, showed illness; but the dimmed eye, once so replete with living fire—the blabber lip, whose dilation and compression used to give such character to his animated countenance—the stammering tongue, that once poured forth such floods of masculine eloquence, and had often swayed the opinion of the sages whom he addressed,—all these sad symptoms evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... me in dreams a stammering woman, Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted, With hands dissevered and of ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... Priscilla. She tried to smile; looked helplessly at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering "Because you are so ill and it's all my fault," to her horror, to her boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden, rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie's and her ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sportive whirl, Had taken up a long lithe girl And tied a graceful knot in her. I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss! I needed no interpreter; I knew the Japanese for kiss, - I had no other thought but this; And she, with smile and blush divine, Kind to my stammering prayer did seem; My thought was hers, and hers was mine, In the swift logic of my dream. My arms clung round her slender waist, Through gold and silk the form I traced, And glad as rain that follows drouth, I kissed and kissed her bright ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... profile, carrying an empty pitcher, smiled with a knowing air and a wink in her eye. And in the next scene, where the husband and wife were embracing each other with the trepidation of a worthy old couple, stammering with joy and clasping trembling hands, the same woman, seen full-face this time, was so delighted at their happiness that she could not keep still, but, holding up her skirts, was almost in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... follies and vices of King John were the salvation of England." Cranmer was peculiarly fitted to organise the Church of England by being "unscrupulous, indifferent, a coward, and a time-server." James I. was given to "stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears," alternating between the buffoon and the pedagogue. James II. "amused himself with hearing Covenanters shriek"; he was "a libertine, singularly slow and narrow in understanding, obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving." ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... interior of a clock-maker's shop joined in one after another just as the shutters were enclosing them, like a row of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the curtain; then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian Mariners' Hymn; so that chronologists of the advanced school were appreciably on their way to the next hour before the whole business of the old one was ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Anspach, Berlin, to compliance with the Imperial Majesty and France. [Ib. lxxiii. 133.] Would not that be sublime! But that, like the rest, in spite of one's talent, came to nothing. Talent? Success? Madame de Chateauroux had, in the interim, taken a dislike to M. Amelot; "could not bear his stammering," the fastidious Improper Female; flung Amelot overboard,—Amelot, and his luggage after him, Voltaire's diplomatic hopes included; and there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... at home,' replied the man, stammering; 'but he desired me to say he couldn't be interrupted, sir, by any of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... before. Whether the concussion of that meeting is too severe, we cannot say, but the result is, that the three pair of eyes drop to the ground, and their owners blush. George even goes the length of stammering something incoherent about "Highland scenery," when a diversion is created in his favour by Jacky, who comes suddenly round the corner of the house with a North-American-Indian howl, and with the nine ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... swinging swaying censer, a ball of incense, an ellipsoidal fall. The rhythm died out at once; the cry of his heart was broken. His lips began to murmur the first verses over and over; then went on stumbling through half verses, stammering and baffled; then stopped. The heart's ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Frances, blushing and stammering at her curiosity, "it might be well to ascertain something about both ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... stammering a very little, as he sometimes did when more nervous than usual, 'then will you oblige me for the future by coming ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... progressive confusion of the speaker, I whispered (pulling his coat gently at the same time)—'Retire, General, you no longer know what you are saying.' I made a sign to Berthier to second me in persuading him to leave the place; when suddenly, after stammering out a few words more, he turned round, saying, 'Let all who love me follow.' So ended this famous scene—in which, more than in any other upon record, eloquence and presence of mind were needful. And if ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey |
