"Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but creatures of the night Led forth by day, Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps Spell out our ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... motto of all men as they plod up the hill of life. Great souls do not whine and fret in adversity. The men and women who lay the foundation of great institutions that bless mankind, that fling rainbows on the black bosom of the tempest, do not tremble and falter because of the clouds and mountain peaks, but onward and upward they go until the victory is won. The church came up by the way of the cross. If you would know the path of civilization, look for the great battlefields in the world's history. The greatest battles of reform ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... death to falter, not to die.' It was under to-day's date, and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk where Father used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It was very wonderful and queer. It sort of made ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it, and it must not falter in ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... 'em," he would say, with his great merry laugh, when his wife sometimes suggested that the old gateway should be repaired. However, it was only a few times during the year that the matter disturbed her, for she was not one to falter long at the small stumbling-blocks of life; a cheerful skip had she over them, or a placid glide aside. When she had the minister's daughter and other notable ladies to tea, who held it due to themselves to enter the front door, she was somewhat uneasy ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nor shrink from the race I must run; I've peace and repose for the heart-stricken one, And strength for the weary who fail in the strife, And falter before the great warfare of Life. I've love for the friendless; a morrow of light For him who is wrapped in adversity's night; With trust for the doubting, a field for the soul, That has dared from its loftier purpose to stroll, To haste to the conflict, and blot out ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... once, the hostile purpose of Ohquamehud, and the imminence of his own danger, but betrayed not the slightest fear. His cheek blanched not. His eye lost none of its usual daring as he surveyed the assassin; nor did his voice falter, as, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... blessings or curses to our generation. There is a Babel of voices now preaching other messages which promise good tidings of good. Let us cleave with all our hearts to Christ alone, and let our tongues not falter in proclaiming, 'Neither is there salvation in any other.' The gospel of the Christ who died for our sins, is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... cold the turning blood The bridegroom's cheek forsook: He shook and stagger'd as he stood, And falter'd as ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... who chase the roe, Whose footsteps never falter, Who bring with them, where'er they go, A smack of old SIR WALTER. Of such as he, the men sublime Who lead their troops victorious, Whose deeds go down to after-time, Enshrined in ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... the young lady, he grew pale; and if this was sudden, started. If his eyes accidentally met hers, the blood rushed into his cheeks, and his countenance became all over scarlet. If common civility ever obliged him to speak to her, as to drink her health at table, his tongue was sure to falter. If he touched her, his hand, nay his whole frame, trembled. And if any discourse tended, however remotely, to raise the idea of love, an involuntary sigh seldom failed to steal from his bosom. Most of which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... bell-music of Malines, In this dark hour how much you mean! The dreadful night of blood and tears Sweeps down on Belgium, but she hears Deep in her heart the melody Of songs she learned when she was free. She will not falter, faint, nor fail, But fight until her rights prevail And all her ancient belfries ring "The Flemish Lion," "God Save ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... As for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why; ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue, O cruel one, through the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... forward, and let the other crawl into a shell hole to hide for the rest of time; then both Jebs would have been supremely satisfied. But, being first and foremost a courageous man, he did not suspect that any one of his unit could possibly falter. Jeb knew this, and it made him feel ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... not falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as he had ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... toward the house. Bang! A shot rang out, and a puff of smoke came from one of the windows. Nort's hat went sailing away as though it were on a string. Bang! Nort saw the agent's pony falter, then recover and go dashing on. Now they were almost to the house. It had seemed as though one of them surely would be hit, for they were speeding across perfectly open territory and the occupants of the house were ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... embrace them. I shrunk from them as it were like a cold lover who fears the too ardent caresses of his mistress. I could not believe that the supreme happiness I had so long pined for was at last so near. Might not M. le Duc d'Orleans falter at the last moment? Might not all our preparations, so carefully conducted, so cleverly planned, weigh upon his feebleness until they fell to the ground? It was not improbable. He was often firm in promises. How often was he firm ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... delicate bloom of the race has not yet been brushed from their thoughts. Curled within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations—than each other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... and started again, although he felt that he was growing weaker. Such intense exertion, under such conditions, was bound to tell even upon a frame like his, but he would not let himself falter, passing from island to island, resting a little at every one, bearing toward the southeast, and intending to enter the forest about a mile from the fire on that side. Meanwhile, the chill of the deadly cold and elation over his escape ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for dead branches in the woods for my kitchen stove!" And Mrs. Carroll, unexpectedly stirred by the pitiful memory, broke suddenly into tears, the more terrible to Susan because she had never seen her falter before. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... going badly, the city falling into a state of anarchy, and that some strong remedy was required, everyone felt amazed. Some of his colleagues began to murmur, others to cough; and at last he began to falter and became so confused that he could not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... is not merely shooting arrows promiscuously, is actually improving for all that. He must strive to remember that not only is each and every point important in itself, but that all must coordinate, must be working well together. No matter how crisp the release, it avails not an [sic] the bow arm falter or the back muscles relax. Again like golf, one day one thing will be working well, and another day another; but it is only when they are all working well that the ball screams down the fairway or the arrow consistently ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... melancholy record,—you at least will understand me. Does not your heart throb, in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were ready to crack" with its own excess of strain? What if instead of throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... curtain, had watched his approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... and right is right, Right the day shall win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... they protected themselves as much as possible from the fearful fire of the Spaniards, the troopers, some of them stripped to the waist, watching the base of the hill, and when any part of a Spaniard became visible, they fired. Never for an instant did they falter. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... her fair-weather friends, bereft of her looks, poverty-stricken, and ravaged by an insidious illness, the situation of Lola Montez was, during that winter of 1860, one to excite pity among the most severe of judges. Under duress, even her new found trust in Providence began to falter. Was prayer, she wondered forlornly, to fail her like everything else? Suddenly, however, and when things were at their darkest, a helping hand was offered. One bitter evening, as she sat brooding in the miserable ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... heard the clashing of his fall, Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms, Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound, And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drained her dear lord's life. Then after all was done ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... haunt all Fairs, And thrust among the thickest Throng; That neither Purse nor Pocket spare, But what they get to bear along: But if they Falter in their Trade, And so betray their bad intent; I give them Tyburn for their share, By this my Will ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... But now, yea, even while I reel And falter, one poor hope, as hope now is, I clutch at in this coil of miseries; To save some honour for my children's sake; Yea, for myself some fragment, though things break In ruin around me. Nay, I will not ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... battle flame, In fortress and in field, Our war-cry is thy holy name, Thy love our joy and shield! And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be, And God forget us in the hour We cease to ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... come! and witness thou, If terror be upon me; if I shrink To meet the storm, or falter in my strength 610 When hardest it besets me. Do not think That I am fearful and infirm of soul, As late thy eyes beheld: for thou hast changed My nature; thy commanding voice has waked My languid powers to bear me boldly on, Where'er ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... I say one word to hold you back?" (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then.) "I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first." (It certainly was.) "You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others have gone come back through the gardens. The door by the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... makes the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;—the field is open, and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the hands of men, never fails ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the girl's contralto thrilled ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs heavy ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... me, sweet Marie, sweet Marie, come to me! Not because your face is fair, love, to see; But your soul, so pure and sweet, Makes my happiness complete, Makes me falter at your feet, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... dweller in the valley longs for the height, and sets forth, heeding not the eager hands that, selfishly, as it seems, would keep him within their loving reach. Having once turned his face upward, he does not falter, even for the space of a backward look. He finds that the way is steep, that there is no place to rest, and that the comfort and shelter of the valley are unknown. The sun burns him, and the cold freezes his very blood, for there are only extremes on the way to ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the whole pile flying. Let him wander blindly in the dust of imaginings rather than be tortured by the grim austerity of ordered facts. More than this, there was one most comfortable memory to which he desperately clung—that falter in her voice when she had said "You understand?" Whenever, during that evening, doubt stirred and bade him recognise himself for a fool, George flattened the ugly spectre with the arm he ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... danced elfishly, and trippingly—for very joy it made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's attention. As the final tripping notes ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... easy explanation for every confusing statement, and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018 herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty then arose because she could not begin to reach the throttle. Again, with much chaffing, the stepladder was ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... tiger. Again and again Frank's fist cracked on his face, and still he did not falter, but continued to stand up and "take ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... surprised me. On one very steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two feet apart. How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess; but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs. To my astonishment, he lifted a fore-leg out of the abyss of mud, put it between the logs, where I expected to hear it snap; clawed in front, and shuffled behind; put the other over the second ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... food;—with senses bleared and deadened, she had heard them piteously wailing but for a morsel of that bread of life without which even the footsteps of the self-reliant, the strong and brave of heart, faint and falter by the way, and she had cruelly denied them that precious nutriment; she had given them life, but had robbed them of all that makes life endurable. Life's duties unfulfilled, life's high and holy aims trampled ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Martha, I didn't—I don't—" I was beginning to falter a denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fourteenth-century cul-de-sac, and I knew that he was good for an hour. I hesitated. The vista of the street ahead brought more attraction to my eye than the indication of the perfume-factory to my nose. But there would still be time for the street, and in the acquisition of knowledge one must not falter. I knew only that perfumes were made from flowers. But so was honey! What was the difference in the process? Visiting perfumeries is evidently "the thing to do" in Grasse. For I was greeted cordially, and given immediately a guide, who assured me that she would show me all over ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... the pursuers; and it was only Biddy, looking over her shoulder for Monny, who even saw that they were followed. She cried out to her friend to hurry, that some one was coming, that they must get to the gate or all would be ended; then feeling Mabel falter, she held her more tightly ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... probably not. Well, my poor child, I have shown you your painful duty. See that you do not falter in it," said the rector, as he rose ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... man's thought that the power and the vengeance both of the government and the prelacy would soon be set in array against us. I therefore bethought myself, in that peril of our lives and cause, of two things which seemed most needful; first, Not to falter in our enterprise until we had proved the utmost of the Lord's pleasure in our behalf; and second, To use the means under Him which, in all human undertakings, are required to bring whatsoever ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... occurred to him at school, and he had liked it immensely. Warrender had been a word to conjure withal, named by lower boys with awe, fondly cherished in the records of Sixth Form. But the glimmer in the Head Master's eye as he said good-bye, the little falter in his tutor's voice,—did these mean no more than an appreciation of his progress, and an anticipation of the honour and glory he was to bring them at the university, a name to fling in the teeth of the newspaper fellows next time they demanded what were the results of the famous public ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... now witnessing a third revolt against her authority; and it remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,—she that never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,—that put down the Reformation in France by one terrible blow,—that by the help of dungeons and racks banished the light from Italy ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the earth, O weary head! This is not Troy, about, above— Not Troy, nor we the lords thereof. Thou breaking neck, be strengthened! Endure and chafe not. The winds rave And falter. Down the world's wide road, Float, float where streams the breath of God; Nor turn thy prow to ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... killed. The plague propagated itself; for the only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a mental vigor which even the theocracy could not subdue, and Massachusetts had ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... us to falter by the wayside before we reached Lafayette was a sign on a big, old-fashioned farmhouse near the road ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... fire with repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense of the city ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... the love is not—as it certainly is in the first act—that passion which is but one remove from deadly hate. Almost at the beginning of the first act Isolda, devoured by a longing for revenge, schemed to murder Tristan, and she does not falter in her purpose until he has taken the drink; the reaction has all the violence of a cataclysm; all is delirium; there is not a moment of happy lingering over the joy of a possible; new life; there is no time for that, no ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... he, "if that town over yonder is not taken; if my brave captains fall, and my brave soldiers falter at that stone wall; and if our flag shall not soon wave over those ramparts, France may yet ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... was October, 1880, when you were sixteen. You and Laura flashed like meteors on to a dreary scene of empty seats at the luncheon table (the shooting party didn't come in) and filled the room with light, electrified the conversation and made old R—y falter over his marriage vows within ten minutes. From then onwards, you have always been the most loyal and indulgent of friends, forgetting no one as you rapidly climbed to fame, and were raffled for by all ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... wrongs, and his woe. There came to his memory his father's dying words summoning him to vengeance. There came to him the thought of those who yet lived and suffered in England, at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Should he falter at a superstitious fancy, he—who, if he lived, had so ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... more look at the silvery sea: One thought of the lark in its musical glee; One breath of the sweet breeze, balmy and free; One prayer from two hearts that falter; And Lo! in reply to a mortal's nod, From the gibbet-tree dangle two pieces of clod, Their souls standing face-to-face with their God, Each ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... circling brightness, in the center of which two supple figures swayed and heaved. The red light smiting the faces of the two showed great drops of sweat, the swell of toil-hardened muscles on the corded arms, and the rise of each straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... anything else. But I think the explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or not. Take ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... the forest-covered steep at our end of the hill sprang alive with dun-clad figures darting upward from tree to tree. Volley after volley thundered down upon them as they climbed, but not once did the dodging charge up the slope pause or falter. Unlike all other irregulars I had ever seen, whose idea of a battle is to let off the piece and run, these mountain men held their fire like veterans, closing in upon the hilltop steadily and in a grim silence broken only by the shouting encouragements ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... hear the joy in her tone, too. It has been a good time for many, I know, and gladness will soften the hardest and coldest, Joyce. Don't falter because wrong must still be, daughter. People have to be educated in enjoyment as well as in anything else. It may not be one of the first, or best, things in life, but it has its uses, and they are many. My Joyce is not working for appreciation, nor for praise, but just to better ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... God's love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its rays breed corruption and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to him, with the calm rebuke, "Put up thy sword into his sheath; the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Yes, cold and bitter as that cup was, pressed next to his very lips, he had learned to drink it. God had given him strength, and no more did he falter, no more did he groan-save once, for a moment, when, upon the cross, drooping, and racked with intense pain, he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But that passed away in the triumphant ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... skipped to accommodate our unworthiness, it required a previous familiarity with the church to know (as I did) that there was, indeed, more and more skipping; yet the little lady played her part so evenly and with never a falter of voice nor a change in the gentle courtesy of her manner, that I do not think—save for that moment at the window-sill—I could have been sure what she thought, or how much she noticed. Her face was ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... began a butchery.... Some fifty men, women, and children were cooped together in that narrow space.... And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith which she was vowed to re-establish. It was part of the great ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... cut her short here, and Hazel, whose loving heart she had almost torn out of his body, could only falter out in a broken voice, that he would obey her. "I'll work no more for you at present," said he, "sweet as it has been. I will think instead. I will go this moment beneath the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... or true man and no pretender, his eyes did not falter. They were absorbed, as if in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not even falter when he reached Schroeder's corner. He marched straight on, looking steadily ahead, the heavy bags swinging from either hand. Even if he had stopped—though she knew he wouldn't—Terry Platt would not have seen him. She remained seated at the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... these are anxious, trying days for us all, testing those who are upholding the banner of the working class in the greatest struggle the world has ever known against the exploiters of the world; a time in which the weak, the cowardly, will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fibre to endure the revolutionary test. They fall away. They disappear as if ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... this evening to tell you something that will alter your opinion of me so effectually that nothing hereafter can reinstate me in your mind." He spoke slowly and deliberately, without tremor or falter. Whatever of struggle lay behind his words, it lay with the past. It was evident as he stood there in the pretty, luxurious room, that he possessed a purpose, and that he held to it without thought of ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... With the first sound of his voice, she had entered in, had knelt before a shrine whereon, wrapped in fire, a Secret lay. Ever since she had needed to guard that shrine, not, indeed, for fear that the light would falter, but rather that it might not leap up, and lay waste her being. As one guards a flame, so Ume-ko, with silence and prayer and self-enforced tranquillity, guarded the sacred spark from winds of passion. Each day at dawn, and again at twilight of each day, it flamed ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... with the sheep to falter, and presently it dropped its burden and limped away for the nearest patch of firs. As it did this the second and the third wolf ranged up by the side of the two young Americans. Roger fired three ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... observation just. Apart from the moral inspiration which appears throughout his philosophy, which is indeed a passionate attempt to exalt (or debase) values into powers, it offers, I should say, two starting-points for ethics. In the first place, the elan vital ought not to falter, although it can do so: therefore to persevere, labour, experiment, propagate, must be duties, and the opposite must be sins. In the second place, freedom, in adding uncaused increments to life, ought to do so in continuation of the whole ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... were so great, and burdens so crushing, that I was almost ready to falter. My greatest anxiety was to guide my dear children aright. The four older ones had resolved to follow the dear Redeemer, but the slippery paths of youth were theirs to walk in. The consideration of these multiform ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... birthright! think'st thou I would deign to breathe on wretched sufferance? No, no; her death is necessary to my honor and my peace. Come on! my hand may falter, but my heart's resolved; 'tis sworn, inexorably sworn: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... bare brick walls of the little rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... I understand," replied the woman who had known happiness. And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... left helpless and destitute behind them. Riches cannot remove the pang of bereavement, but alas! for 'the comfortless troubles of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the poor.' And yet the brave fellows never hang back and never falter. There ought to be, there is amongst them, a trust ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... Mark that the news of Mistress Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by day, with earnest effort, the steep ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is a critical year in the defense effort of the whole free world. If we falter we can lose all the gains we have made. If we drive ahead, with courage and vigor and determination, we can by the end of 1952 be in a position of much greater security. The way will be dangerous for the years ahead, but if we put forth our best efforts this ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... cayuse, the fleetest Buffalo horse of all the Blood tribe, galloped with the full fear in his heart of the danger that was behind. Low over his neck crouched Eagle Shoe; one false step—a yawning badger hole, a swerve at a white rock, a falter, and crunching hoofs would grind the Redskin ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... the voice of the signal cannon, France calls her sons their aid to lend; "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle! 'Tis our mother we defend!" To die on Freedom's Altar—to die on Freedom's Altar! 'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter! ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... cold increased, and although we were spurred on to almost superhuman efforts by sheer desperation to thwart the fate we knew would be ours should we falter by the way, gradually our strength failed us, and although we tried to encourage each other to quicker progress, it took every vestige of our will power to drag our benumbed feet from step to step against ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... taking out his cigarette-case and saying before he said anything else: "May I smoke?" She met it, for encouragement, with her "My dear!" again, and then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be nervous—a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... resistance to a common danger. With every external circumstance against us, of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent! The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later, the victory ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... kinds of people, they so uniformly favor education? Why, if they must err, do they err so pertinaciously in one direction? How does it happen, that, summon as many witnesses as you please, and cross-question them as severely as you can, they never falter in this testimony, that, where intelligence abounds, there physical vigor does much more abound? that, where education is broad and generous, there the years are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... touch; our glances meet, And falter; falls your golden hair Against my cheek; your bosom sweet Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen Rides slow, her soldiery all between, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, [-their-] {theirs} was the calmest ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... his steps. He slouched but did not stagger, a circumstance which caused Simmy a sharp twinge of uneasiness. He was not intoxicated. Simmy's good sense told him that he would be more dangerous sober than drunk, but he did not falter. At the second shout, young Tresslyn stopped. His hands were thrust deep into his ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... producing a handful of silver, 'I denude myself, I am not to be trusted with the price of a fare. Take it, keep it for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river—I will homologate your action. Save me from that part of myself which I disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if necessary, wreck the train! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any extremity were better than for ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ear had fed upon the harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth—far too deep down for ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... there was no other way; and if so, needs must. But seeing this, my mind misgives me and I falter. I'm a plain-dealer, Madam, with all my faults, and 't is easy to be seen your daughters are a world's wonder. I never saw the like, and that being so, 't is certain the dangers are tenfold for them. They'll see the glories and grandeurs, ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,— North, South, East, West, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that these evening fireside meetings with the doctor's lovely daughter, once such unalloyed delight, were now only a keenly pleasing pain? Why did his face burn and his heart beat and his voice falter when obliged to speak to her? Why could he no longer talk of her to his mother, or write of her to his friend, Herbert Greyson? Above all, why had his favorite day dream of having his dear friends, Herbert and Clara married together, grown so abhorrent ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... were quick to see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was this very speed that saved his life. Bullet after bullet pierced the thin canvas sides and one struck ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... path would be full of thorns he could not doubt, since every step in it would widen the breach which must be opened between his father and himself. Possibly it might lead him to the bar of justice as that father's accuser, but even in that hard case he must not falter. He said to himself, in a fresh access of passionate determination, that though he might have to blush for his father, Patricia should not be ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... see him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder, anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they remained motionless, and then the color began to come back into ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... on the door behind which his one darling lay ill! Even now, it was easy for me to recall his face as I had sometimes caught a glimpse of it through the crack of the suddenly opened door, and I felt my breast heave and my hand falter as I drew forth the stiletto and moved to place it where his eye would fall upon it on his leaving ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... fortune which involves the welfare, happiness and progress of many millions of people. The history of civilization in Europe has reached a new page, one which must be written by those who have in keeping the Divine destiny of the Germanic race. It is not a time to falter before the graveness of our responsibility and the magnitude of our undertakings. I spoke of these things at Eckartsau. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Miss Corbet's visit, Anthony came home. At first he pronounced against her inexorably, dismissing her as nonsense, and as a fine lady—terms to him interchangeable. Then his condemnation began to falter, then ceased; then acquittal, and at last commendation succeeded. For Miss Corbet asked his advice about the dogs, and how to get that wonderful gloss on their coats that his had; and she asked his help, too, once ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... lagged slowly came back. His face was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted ...
— The Road • Jack London
... Phelim," she said; "this is my swan-song; listen;" and she began to sing. She sang bravely, at first, with her head held high, and then, suddenly, her voice began to falter. ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... paternal as well as practical in the camaraderie of this actual capitalist and possible Maecenas and patron as he quietly hung up his hat and overcoat, and helped to set the table with a practiced hand. Nor, as he suggested, did the conversation falter, and before they had taken their seats at the frugal board he had already engaged John Milton Harcourt as assistant editor of the "Clarion" at a salary that seemed princely to this son of a millionaire! The young wife meantime had taken active part in the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... was in his hand now, and the round, white ray shot down the corridor—seemed suddenly to falter unsteadily—swept in through an open door that was almost beside him—and then, as though a nerveless hand held it, the ray dropped and played shakily on the toe of his ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... believing that our feet are planted on an eternal foundation, that our position is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"—though our ranks be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the conflict? ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... upon his power, And learned how weak are mortal men When brought into temptation's hour, And "storms arise and tempests lower?" The strong may even falter then. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... sedition from within as well as conquest from without a nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government, which provides the indispensable instruments of common action. Let it fail or falter and the great majority, undecided about what to do, lukewarm and busy elsewhere, ceases to be a corps and disintegrates into dust. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied, the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
