"Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called 'Poison Bushes.' Large numbers of cattle are lost annually in Western Australia through eating them. The finest and strongest animals are the first victims; a difficulty of breathing is perceptible for a few minutes, when they stagger, drop down, and all is over with them. . . . It appears to be that the poison enters the circulation, and altogether stops the action of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... who very decently volunteered to stagger along with me, and we hopped into a taxi. We sat around at the police-station for a bit on a wooden bench in a sort of ante-room, and presently a policeman appeared, ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... his frame. His head sank into his hands, and he looked and felt like one utterly crushed by a fate from which there was no escape. His ever-recurring thought was, "I have but one life, and it's lost, worse than lost. Why should I stagger on beneath the burden of an intolerable existence, which will only grow heavier as the forces of ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... drinking-houses even in Paris, and more in some sections of Germany, but even those sent few or no drunk men upon the streets. A fellow that would stagger upon the pavement would be conducted to the station house at once. I did not see a single drunk person in Paris in half a month's stay, and only several in the rest of my tour through Europe. It ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... pleaded that he had not done any wrong, and that though he had not shouted, neither had the great mass of people standing round. This seemed somewhat to stagger the officer. The man was about, indeed, to let Ernst go, when a priest, who had been standing near, stepped forward, and looking the boy earnestly in the face, exclaimed: "Oh! young traitor, I saw thee when I was performing mass at ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... oath, Captain Ellerey, this is no work of mine," said the Baron, attempting to stagger to his feet, but falling ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... name of it, but it is well known to every shepherd, and grows in luxuriance along some of the river beds. It is about a foot high and has dark green leaves. If by any chance a mob of hungry sheep are driven into this plant, they will attack it ravenously, and in a few minutes they will stagger and fall as if intoxicated, and if not immediately attended to they will die. The only chance for them is to bleed them by driving in the blade of a small knife each side of the nose. The blood will flow black and thick, and the animal will speedily ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... importation that I daily practice, but in order to give an American basis of fact to these idle chapters. In all the paths I meet, daily, girls and boys bearing on their heads large baskets of the fruit, and little children with bags and bundles of the same, as large as they can stagger under; and I understand they are carrying them to the packers, who ship them to New York, or to the depots, where I see them lying in yellow heaps, and where men and women are cutting them up, and removing the peel, which goes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tell me next, that the invention of wine is very much to his credit; though you see for yourself how drunken men stagger about and misbehave themselves; one would think the liquor had made them mad. Look at Icarius, the first to whom he gave the vine: beaten to death with mattocks ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... giving many directions, and bidding a solemn farewell to his family and friends, resolutely drank its fearful contents. Every eye was fixed upon the brave man, to see what effect the strange liquor would produce. Soon he began to stagger, to whine fearfully, to roll up the whites of his eyes, to loll out his tongue, to shout, and to act a thousand other extravagancies. At last, he fell prostrate on the ground, and a deep sleep came over ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the people pay into the liquor traffic that gives a few cents into the treasury, is costin' the people ten times that dollar in the loss intemperance entails, loss of labor, by the inability of drunken men to do anything but wobble and stagger, loss of wealth by the enormous losses of property and taxation, of alms-houses, mad-houses, jails, police forces, paupers' coffins, and the diggin' of thousands and thousands of graves that are filled yearly by them that reel into 'em." Sez I, "Wouldn't it ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... add something to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating. The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I see in you a new instance of that abuse ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with very uncertain steps, and supporting each other shoulder to shoulder, stagger out of the outhouse ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... severely literal meaning of some Scripture text. They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... common-weal and divinity, and fears it may be an arch-practice of state. In our differences with Rome he is strangely unfixed, and a new man every new day, as his last discourse-book's meditations transport him. He could like the gray hairs of popery, did not some dotages there stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. He is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. He cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of truth to our corner, and is as hardly persuaded ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Coat is rent asunder on all Sides. God's Vineyard is spoiled by more Boars than one. The Authority of the Clergy with their Tythes, the Dignity of Divines, the Majesty of Monks is in Danger: Confession nods, Vows stagger, the Pope's Constitutions go to decay, the Eucharist is call'd in Question, and Antichrist is expected every Day, and the whole World seems to be in Travail to bring forth I know not what Mischief. In the mean Time the Turks over-run all where-e'er ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... if she isn't. She—she needn't have come at all. Mr. Courtlandt told her and told Captain Forrest that it should make no difference; but she is self-willed and obstinate, and nothing would do but she must quit his roof forever and come to be a burden on her brother, who has quite enough to stagger under already." ("Hum!" thought Bayard at this juncture, "how little she realizes the truth of that assertion!") "Mr. Courtlandt had been devoted to her from her childhood, had lavished everything on her, had educated her, sent her abroad, provided for her in every ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... ship quivered, and seemed for a moment to stagger under the blow, while the wind shrieked through the rigging as if laughing at the success of its efforts, but the whitey-grey hull rose heavily, yet steadily, out of the churning foam, rode triumphant over the broad-backed ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... a year before I saw the Irish battalions come out of Guichy, a poor remnant of the strength that had gone in, all tattered and torn, and caked with the filth of battle, and hardly able to stagger along. But they pulled themselves up a little, and turned eyes left when they passed their brigadier, who called out ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... joke or for a staggerer. You should provide your conversation with a series of printed instructions for the listener. Get a lot of cards, and have printed on one, "Please laugh"; on another, "Please stagger"; on another, "Kindly appear confused." Then when you mean to be jocose hand over the laughter card, and so on. Shall ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... however, phases of bravery, endurance, and resourcefulness that test every fibre of the seaman's versatile composition; and a communication to the outer world of the tremendous struggles he is called upon to bear would be calculated to stagger the lay imagination. It would take a spacious library to contain all that could be written of his bitter experiences and toilsome pilgrimages throughout ages of storm and stress. The pity is so much of it is lost to us, but this again is owing ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... and nine, more than a half are simply definitions of the type of this: "Foolish are they who trust women or good luck, as both like a young serpent creep hither and thither," or this: "Men who are rich are like those who are drunk; in walking they are helped by others, they stagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly." It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... at best, and at worst it is very near the other place. The least we can do is to make the way as smooth as possible for the new-comers. There is not the least danger that it will be too smooth. If you stagger under the weight which you have imprudently assumed, stagger. But don't be such an unutterable coward as to illumine your own life by darkening the young lives which sprang from yours. I wonder that children do not open their mouths and curse the father that begat ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... won't say so, Marcus, when you are yourself," said Ormond. "Oh! how dreadful to come to one's senses all at once, as I did—the moment after I had fired that fatal shot—the moment I saw the poor fellow stagger ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... boundless opportunity of future aggrandizement. The seed planted by John Smith still grows. The voice of John Smith still lives. That voice has been swelled into the mighty chorus of 60,000,000 Americans singing the song of United States. We look forward to a future whose possibilities stagger all conjecture, to a common ruler of John Smith's ancient dominions; to a common destiny, such as he mapped out for us. And with devout and heartfelt gratitude to him, a reunited land proclaims, "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... to possess himself of a Greek lexicon and a Graeca Majora, and also a Greek grammar, though the only one he could get that suited his purse was the Westminster grammar, in which the alternatives of Greek were all Latin. That did not stagger him. He came home rich in his classical library, and very resolved to do ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... sides, taking them completely by surprise. They hastily put themselves in order of battle, but their muskets, wet with rain, would not fire, and Laporte hastened with his men to seek the shelter of a cliff near at hand. While in the act of springing from one rock to another, he was seen to stagger and fall. He had been shot dead by a musket bullet, and his career was thus brought to a sudden close. His followers at once fled ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... at once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was wheeling ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heard whispering to Everychild: "I cannot enter here. The things which are taking place in this room—they stagger me. But you may do so." Whereupon he placed Everychild on the window sill and withdrew ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... regulation. This being so, I doubt not that the gentlemen of the Academy will find themselves much hampered in delivering a judgment on your case, and that, on the one hand, your arguments will stagger them, whilst, on the other, the public approbation will keep them in check. You have the best of it in the closet; he has the advantage on the stage. If the Cid be guilty, it is of a crime which has met with reward; if he be punished, it will be after having triumphed; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... corner of the inn, and up the lane. The colonel, with Silas and Sheppard, followed in more leisurely fashion. At a shout from some one they turned to see a dusty, bloody figure, with ragged clothes, stagger up ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... loudly that his cousin Jasper Jay heard him half a mile away and came hurrying up to see what was going on. He arrived just in time to see Nimble and Dodger stagger ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... important than renunciation; and the first virtue that we who do not wish to be bores must practise is abstemiousness of self. I know it is hard, but I do not mean total abstinence. A man who tried to converse without his I's would make but a blind stagger at it. This short and handsome word (as Colonel Roosevelt might have said) is not to be utterly discarded without danger of such a silence as would transform the experimenter into a Bore Negative of the most negative description. Practically ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... As the door flew open I knew in a moment that my worst apprehensions had been fulfilled. Barrington Cowles was leaning against the railings outside with his face sunk upon his breast, and his whole attitude expressive of the most intense despondency. As he passed in he gave a stagger, and would have fallen had I not thrown my left arm around him. Supporting him with this, and holding the lamp in my other hand, I led him slowly upstairs into our sitting-room. He sank down upon the sofa without a word. Now that I could get a good view of him, I was horrified to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she heard similar words. She shuddered. Would that placid foreshore blaze out into a roar of artillery, and the worn-out Unser Fritz, like the worn-out Andromeda, stagger and lurch ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, shorten sail, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and boundless hall, Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom The snowy skirting of a garment hung, And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes That minister'd around it—if I saw These things distinctly, for my human brain Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night Came down upon my ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... rest; but there her assistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bind herself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would have been soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox, broken in body, and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, still thundered in the parish church; and his voice, it was said, was like ten thousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism. All the Lowlands answered to his call. Our English Cromwell found in the man of religion ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... expected to see him stagger to his death below. But he stood motionless in the middle of the little platform and stretched out his arms toward the raging torrent, as though in invocation. Then he leaped across with the agility of a wild sheep and rushed ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... bread-fruit tree, following the turtle to see where it deposits its eggs, discovering the spring of water, building the hut—housekeeping, Melisande. . . . Or take Robinson Crusoe. When Man Friday came along and left his footprint in the sand, why did Robinson Crusoe stagger back in amazement? Because he said to himself, like a good housekeeper, "By Jove, I'm on the track of a servant at last." There's ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... greatly surprised. "As to anything of public employment in the country, my tender age and manner of living, not free from follies and youthful excesses, forbad me to hope or expect any such thing.... This sudden change were enough to stagger a philosopher of more ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... burnished gold. As he gazed, they were flung open on silent hinges, and a host, clothed in spotless white, entered their portals, welcomed with swelling anthems and seraphic songs. Then the toppling precipice began to reel and stagger beneath his feet—a fierce bright flame burst from amidst the night below, more brilliant than the sun's intensest ray. It drank up the darkness, and filled the gulf with liquid fire. It flashed through his eye-balls ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... that he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of the stable. He used to beat and starve my mother. I have seen him use his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood. When I ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... abrupt. For a minute I can't make out what has happened; but when I sees the mast stagger and go lurchin' overboard, sail and all, I thought it was a case of women ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... at my feet," she continued. "I saw him stagger and sink down, and the pistol was smoking still in my hand. I bent over him. Anna had told me that he carried always with him this bogus marriage certificate. I undid his coat, and I took it from his pocket. I ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shells are well away, in fact so far back that they are near our bus. The German battery notices this, and we are forthwith bracketed in front and behind. We swoop away in a second, and escape with nothing worse than a violent stagger, and we are thrown upward as a shell bursts ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... fatherless, I must smile. I recall the days of our storm and stress, when those sleek and slippery wolves, the 'business friends' of my father, sat round waiting for my poor distracted, gallant-hearted mother to stumble and stagger in her struggle with those wild-cats of investments. Wild cats! Bengal tigers were a better name for them! But she didn't! She won out and defied the whole caboodle, as she called them when she was roused. She won out, or ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of a whip, the scuffle of a horse's feet, a rippling movement over the crowd, and a great murmured roar, like the roar of the waves on a pebbly beach, as the horse's head began to move forward; and the priest's figure to sway and stagger on the jolting cart. Anthony shut his eyes, and the murmur and cries of the crowd grew louder and louder. Once more the deep sweet voice rang ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... next moment I had him by the throat, and he went reeling sideways among his comrades. Then, as by a signal the tumult began, for with a crash of splintered glass the nearest lamp went out, and a rush was made upon us. Something struck me heavily on the head; I saw Johnston stagger under a heavy blow; but I held myself before the girl as we were hustled through the doorway, and when a pistol-barrel glinted one of the railroad men whirled aloft an axe. We were outside now, but the pistol blazed before ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... by special delivery, and seemed considerably puzzled over it. No, I don't know what it was about. Of a sudden I saw him start in his chair, rise up unsteadily, clap his hand on the back of his head, stagger across ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... gravel marked the thrust of foot with which George stayed his stagger, from which he impelled the savage spring that ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... certain to cause Percival. His illness and long residence on the island had weakened his physical force. In almost the first time in his life he felt a sensation of faintness, which made him turn pale and stagger, as he recognised the faces of the two persons whom he loved better than any other in the world—his friend and his betrothed. A thought of Brian, too, embittered this his first meeting with Elizabeth. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... with careless liberality, and Lord Polperro ran up the stairs to his flat. More strictly speaking, he ran for a few yards, when breath failed him, and it was all he could do to stagger with loud pantings up the rest of the ascent. Arrived in his sitting-room he sank exhausted on to the nearest chair. Gammon saw that he pointed feebly to the drink cupboard, and heard a gasp that ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... summer when you were abroad, you'll understand, too. Everybody knows everybody else's business. It is the main occupation of a certain set, and the per-capita output of gossip is a record that would stagger the census bureau. Still, you can't get away from the note, Craig. There it is, in Dixon's own handwriting, even if he does deny it: 'This will cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.' That's ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later the most costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on its base. Then, as the thousand-pound shell, striking at the twenty-seventh story, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out through the crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... over, tightening their hug. Suddenly the water let them down with a brutal bang; and, stranded against the side of the wheelhouse, out of breath and bruised, they were left to stagger up in the wind and hold on where ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... that I was raving. I could hear it now whilst I was talking. My madness was a delirium of weakness and prostration, but I was not out of my senses. All at once the thought darted through my brain that I was insane. Seized with terror, I spring out of bed again, I stagger to the door, which I try to open, fling myself against it a couple of times to burst it, strike my head against the wall, bewail loudly, bite my fingers, cry ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the remainder of the expedition reached Prospect Hill more dead than alive. Wilson alone had kept heart, and managed to sustain the flagging spirits of his companions sufficiently to enable them to stagger in to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... she will struggle on, striving to get bread for the children and the rent for the landlord. She knows that as evening comes on, instead of sitting down to rest, her duty will be to go down to the public-house and wait till it pleases her lord and master to try to stagger home, and then to guide his clumsy steps to the threshold. Of course there are wives who become as bad as their husbands, who drink, or do worse, and neglect their homes, but they are the exception. As a rule, the woman, once married, does her best ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... excuse till hair had clothed his cheek, * And gloom o'ercrept that side-face (sight to stagger!) A fawn, when eyes would batten on his charms, * Each glance deals thrust like ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... than a typewriter. But let us join the others." There was a noticeable reluctance about dwelling upon the typewriter subject. Warren hurried into the drawing-room, as Shirley followed with a perceptible stagger. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the Indians. Charity would incline to the belief that the continuance of the war was rightly attributable to these causes—the other reason assigned for it, supposing the existence of a depravity, so deep and damning, as almost to stagger credulity itself. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and at times finding myself unable to give utterance to my thoughts. Though I was able to answer questions, that fact hardly diminished my feeling of apprehension, for a single failure in an attempt to speak will stagger any man, no matter what his state of health. I tried to copy certain records in the day's work, but my hand was too unsteady, and I found it difficult to read the words and figures presented to my tired vision ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Lemuel to go with him that afternoon to his cousin's and make, as he phrased it, a stagger at the job. ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger. ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... I longed to relieve Daniel of his heavy basket; for even he seemed to stagger beneath ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... of Neptune explained the perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitates towards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws our yearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictions stagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking irony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the world! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they disappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakes in the ocean. "The ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Indians seemed to have no effect. Charlie saw the bull at which he aimed stagger and go down. Another stopped with a broken shoulder, and Jack's second barrel finished it. Schoverling fired again, but either missed a vital place or his bullet went wide, for a moment later the herd was gone ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... getting a blame thing out of this," he complained to Belshazzar. "There are riches to stagger any scientist wasting to-day, and all I've got to show is one oriole. I did hear his first note and see his flash, and so unless we can take time to make up for this on the home road we will have to christen it ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... slain four Burgundians from Worms beyond the Rhine. Giselher was greatly wroth thereat. "Now by God, Sir Iring," he cried, "thou shalt pay for them that lie dead!" and he fell on him. He smote the Dane, that began to stagger, and dropped down among the blood, so that all deemed the doughty warrior would never strike another blow. Yet Iring lay unwounded withal before Giselher. From the noise of his helmet and the clang of the sword his wits left him, and he lay in a swoon. That had ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... strip of rawhide fastened to a stick, awkward in other hands; but Van Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, shaggy Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck or disturb the horse, and he could deliver a blow with it by mere sleight that made the animal stagger and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... do, the main purport of which was that it ought to be kept concentrated to fight the enemy's cavalry. Heretofore, the commander of the Cavalry Corps had been, virtually, but an adjunct at army headquarters—a sort of chief of cavalry—and my proposition seemed to stagger General Meade not a little. I knew that it would be difficult to overcome the recognized custom of using the cavalry for the protection of trains and the establishment of cordons around the infantry ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... underfoot. Jones and Grant turned to a door at the right, and I leaped after them. One of the two fired, and the ball struck my shoulder, the impact throwing me back against one of my men. An instant I felt sick and dizzy, yet realized I was not seriously hurt, and managed to stagger to my feet. The door was closed and locked, and, although my head reeled, I ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... ready to fall foul on one another, when the Duke of Nemours, for fear of hurting the King, retreated abruptly, and ran back his horse against a pillar with so much violence that the shock of it made him stagger. The company ran up to him, and he was thought considerably hurt; but the Princess of Cleves thought the hurt much greater than anyone else. The interest she had in it gave her an apprehension and concern which she took no care to ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... I could see that if he once passed me and got to the open air he would save himself yet. My heart softened to him, but again the thought of his treasure turned me hard and bitter. I cast my firelock between his legs as he raced past, and he rolled twice over like a shot rabbit. Ere he could stagger to his feet the Sikh was upon him, and buried his knife twice in his side. The man never uttered moan nor moved muscle, but lay were he had fallen. I think myself that he may have broken his neck with the fall. You see, gentlemen, that I am keeping ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... posture that, flinging a glance across the room, I saw the Captain's sword describe a small circle of light, and next moment, with a sharp cry, Anthony caught at the blade, and stagger'd against the wall, pinn'd through the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... Max leaped at the Chief's throat. All the advantage of youth was his, against the other's bulk; but as he sprang Ahmara bounded on him from behind, winding her arms around his body and throwing on him all her weight. It made him stagger, and, snatching up the heavy campstool on which he had been sitting, Stanton struck Max with it on the head. Weakened already by the anguish in the torn nerves of his hand (most painful centre for a wound in all the body), Max fell like a log, and lay unconscious ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... huge black waves rose like tremendous ruins, and came rolling, fringed with devouring fire; and each wave as it charged them, curled up to an incredible height and dashed down on the doomed ship—solid to crush, liquid to drown —with a ponderous stroke that made the poor souls stagger, and sent a sheet of water so clean over her that part fell to leeward, and only part came down on deck, foretaste of a watery death; and each of these fearful blows drove the groaning, trembling vessel farther on the sand, bumping ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... books—quite romantic names. She called them the Montmorencys when she did not call them the Large Family. The fat, fair baby with the lace cap was Ethelberta Beauchamp Montmorency; the next baby was Violet Cholmondeley Montmorency; the little boy who could just stagger and who had such round legs was Sydney Cecil Vivian Montmorency; and then came Lilian Evangeline Maud Marion, Rosalind Gladys, Guy Clarence, Veronica Eustacia, ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... value and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787—he the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he said—I, first, upon just principles, or with a fortunate result, investigated ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a stouter, bolder drinker—one that loved his liquor more— Never yet did I encounter than our friend upon the floor! Yet the best of us are mortal, we to weakness all are heir, He has fallen, who rarely stagger'd—let the rest of us beware! We shall leave him, as we found him—lying where his manhood fell, 'Mong the trophies of the revel, for he took his tipple well. Better't were we loosed his neckcloth, laid ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... wrong. The other day he asked to have his boots on to be led round the room. He tried to walk, but he couldn't stand. 'Ah, I told you before, father,' he said, 'that those boots were no good. I could never walk properly in them.' He fancied it was his boots that made him stagger, but it was simply weakness, really. He won't live another week. Herzenstube is looking after him. Now they are rich again—they've got ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... you have absolutely nothing to fear," he assured her, whereupon she followed him meekly, feeling very faint now. She half feared that she might have to clutch at his sleeve, if her footsteps failed her, for she felt that at any moment she might stagger and fall. She gasped again as she looked at the shack they were nearing, but, as she beheld the scenery of the great pool, something in it that was very grand and beautiful appealed to her for an ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... shack. Seconds must have passed while he stood staring from the threshold, for Fat Joe came puffing back from his fruitless chase in time to see him bend and lift a black-robed, lifelessly limp body from the floor and stagger with it toward a bunk. Fat Joe's steady flow of profanity, oddly, double vicious in his thin, complaining voice, was checked short. He, too, stood and stared from the doorway—stood and lifted his ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... son, thou art too hard, Not stagger'd by this ominous earth and heaven: But heaven and earth are threads of the same loom, Play into one another, and weave the web That ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... into this race. And still the chestnut gained. At the sixteenth her flying tail was reached by his nose And still he ate up the distance. Yet spent as the mare was, the chestnut was much farther gone. If there was a roll in her weary gallop, there was a stagger in his gait; still he was literally flinging himself towards the finish. No help from his rider certainly, but every rancher in the crowd was shouting hoarsely and swinging himself towards the finish as though that effort of will and body might, mysteriously, be transmitted to the struggling horse ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... little help. The particular application of the two systems is dependent not only on the dip but on the method of supporting the excavation and the ore. With rill-stoping, it is possible to cut the breaking benches back horizontally from the winzes (Fig. 25), or to stagger the cuts in such a manner as to take the slices in a descending ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... would trembling see Inexorable fate beneath the lee; And Epictetus, at the sight, in vain Attempt his Stoic firmness to retain: Had Socrates, for godlike virtue famed, And wisest of the sons of men proclaim'd, Spectator of such various horrors been, Even he had stagger'd at this dreadful scene. In vain the cords and axes were prepared, 630 For every wave now smites the quivering yard; High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade, Then on her burst in terrible cascade; Across the founder'd deck o'erwhelming roar, And foaming, swelling, bound ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... if anything, would stagger their simple old Saxon faith; one thing would make them fearful, as indeed it makes the preacher this day, that the time of real brotherhood and peace is still but too far off; and that the achievements of our physical science, the unity of this great Exhibition, noble as they are, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wit's end, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Facts of this Universe, and followed the transient outer Appearances thereof; and so was arrived here. Properly it is the secret of all unhappy men and unhappy nations. Had they known Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth would have made them free. They have become enchanted; stagger spell-bound, reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they were not wise enough. They have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up with the Outer Sham-true. They answer the Sphinx's question wrong. Foolish ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... an undertone, as though he did not wish the others to hear him; to tell the truth, he felt as though he could not stagger on much further over that rough trail, and carry the heavy pack in the bargain, as well as the new bag containing his ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... station this morning as I was unlocking the office door, and I heard a chugging behind me. I looked up, and here came the car with only one man in it. He pulls up short, picks up a bag, which was very heavy, for it was all he could do to stagger along ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... struggle to blind the lookers-on, if there be any curious enough to interest themselves. This man in khaki is often "the terror of the innocent, the laughing-stock of the guilty." The poor man or the foreign sailor, if he stagger ever so little, is sure to be "run in." The Argentine law-keeper (?) is provided with both sword and revolver, but receives small remuneration, and as his salary is often tardily paid him, he augments it in ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... results of this legalized injustice, derived from a past experience, must be tame to those who stand face to face with the gigantic conspiracy in which it has concentrated its venom, and from which it must stagger to its doom. The familiar proverb which declares that the gods make mad those whom they would destroy has a significance not always considered. For when a man loses his intellectual equilibrium, a baseness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... this kind go. Now what about all this? I used to think many person just returned from England ridiculously affected in their speech. And many of them are—those who say caun't when they can't do it unconsciously. That is, over here. In Britain, perhaps, it is just as well to make a stagger at speaking the way the Britains do. When you accidently step on an Englishman's toe, it is better to say "I'm sorry!" or simply "sorry," than to beg his pardon or ask him to excuse you. This makes you less conspicuous, and so more comfortable. And when you stay any length of time you ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... with vengeance about him, an effort was made by a man to drag the unfortunate process-server out of the lines. He was immediately pulled back by a policeman, but was scarcely restored to his place, When he was struck on the side of the head with a wattle. The blow caused him to stagger, and would have caused him to fall, but that he was seized and kept upon his legs by the policeman. He had not time, however, to recover his steadiness, when he was felled to the ground by a blow from a stone, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton |
