"Inarticulate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chair, and wiped his forehead with a spotted cotton handkerchief extracted from the hat-crown, that it was "raight dahn warm for Febewerry." Mr. Moore assented—at least he uttered some slight sound, which, though inarticulate, might pass for an assent. The visitor now carefully deposited in the corner beside him an official-looking staff which he bore in his hand; this done, he whistled, probably by way of appearing ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... attend to what the invisible and inarticulate voice was saying, and tried to recall what his father had told him about not letting new scenes and new companions tempt him to forget of neglect the lessons of duty and religion which he had learned at his parents' home; but it was not easy work, and to him it was a relief ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... all the strength of my free arm and it held firm. But would it hold my weight? This I could not test, but I must perforce stake all upon the chance, for there was no other chance. Should a strand of the canvas give, down I must go hurtling to my death. There was no other way, and with an inarticulate prayer I gripped the strap fast with my other hand and swung myself upwards. A second later although in my agony it seemed an eternity and my hand clutched the pinnacle itself; a wild convulsive scramble and I was up safe . . . and free ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... spellbound, but none so much as Elisinde. The music seemed to be speaking straight to her, to pierce the very core of her heart. It was an inarticulate language which she understood better than any words. She heard a lonely spirit crying out to her, that it understood her sorrow and shared her pain. And large ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... our better feelings. His poems of nature give us no definite picture of the external world but are filled with murmurings, tremblings, undertones,—all the vague impressions which one receives when alone in the solitudes, as if the world were alive but inarticulate: ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... bank, yes! John Law once had a bank, too; ask my old father. What do we want with a bank? Down with banks!" The speaker ceased; he had not finished, but he saw the apothecary. Frowenfeld heard a muttered curse, an inarticulate murmur, and then a loud burst ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... what time M. de Vilmorin's eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d'Azyr's, as if searching there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and with his open hand struck M. le Marquis full and hard upon ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... spells and effluences of his shovel-hat and apron; but I find the atmosphere of his heights cold, and the rarefied air he breathes does not feed my lungs. Up yonder, above the clouds of human weakness, my vertebrae become unhinged, my bones inarticulate, and I collapse. I meet missionaries, and I hear the music of the spheres; and I long to descend again to the circles of the everyday inferno ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... partner were alone in the little smoking room. The former was almost inarticulate. The night porter brought them brandy, and ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer, till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk of failing—it isn't true; and don't pray for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... what is spoken lightly of as a "nervous disturbance" may imply that the whole machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual organ would groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible inarticulate one of pain by which to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ministers then officiated according to the Roman liturgy; the creed was chanted with the addition of filioque; the acquiescence of the Greeks was poorly excused by their ignorance of the harmonious, but inarticulate sounds; [73] and the more scrupulous Latins refused any public celebration of the Byzantine rite. Yet the emperor and his clergy were not totally unmindful of national honor. The treaty was ratified by their consent: it was tacitly agreed that no innovation should be attempted in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a curse about books or knowledge or faith as he walked through the snow across that gleaming white patch in the dusky forest. His heart cried aloud in forlorn protest against the surging emotions that beset him. His eyes stung. And he fought against that inarticulate misery, against the melancholy that settled upon him like a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the soil after rain, the joy of the yearly miracle when the earth is again carpeted with green from the bursting into life of the seed which he has sown, and the pleasure of watching the harvest of his labours come to fruition. He, too, as has been seen, feels something corresponding to "That inarticulate love of the English farmer for his land, his mute enjoyment of the furrow crumbling from the ploughshare or the elastic tread of his best pastures under his heel, his ever-fresh satisfaction at the sight of the bullocks stretching themselves as they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... upon the gallery so deep that the receding voices and footsteps of Grant and his hostess in the long passage were distinctly heard until they reached the end. Then Fletcher arose with an inarticulate exclamation. Clementina instantly put her finger to her lips, glanced around the gallery, extended her hand to him, and saying "Come," half-led, half-dragged him into the passage. To the right she turned and pushed open the door of a small room that ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... made some inarticulate disavowals. She felt it presumption to let her name be coupled with Miss Martindale's, and there was a sense of something dangerous and wrong in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sudden hubbub of voices called us from the house, to find the whole white colony already gathered on the spot as by concerted signal. The "Sans Souci" was overrun with rabble, the stair and verandah thronged. From all these throats an inarticulate babbling cry went up incessantly; it sounded like the bleating of young lambs, but angrier. In the road his royal highness (whom I had seen so lately in the part of butler) stood crying upon Tom; on the top step, tossed in the hurly-burly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excitement surpassed even his. The dumb man no sooner saw what had attracted his comrade's attention, than he uttered an inarticulate and horrible noise, and tumbling off his horse, more like a beast than a man threw himself bodily ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... resplendent flood of light, they saw the babe poised for one brief instant on a huge, foaming shoulder of the lake. In her frenzy the squatter woman was murmuring over and over strange, inarticulate words which Ben did not heed. Their arms were locked tightly about each other. Ben Letts slowly fixed his cold, shivering lips on those of the girl, drawing her closer and closer into his embrace. The majesty of death was upon them, this squatter father and mother. Another glare of light showed ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... he would keep laughing out loud, and volunteering inarticulate declarations that he was 'all right;' in proof of which, he feebly bespoke the evening paper after the next gentleman, but finding it a matter of some difficulty to discover any news in its columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had any columns ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... hand was put over his mouth, and the rest of the words was lost in an inarticulate gurgle. Mr. Sutherland had ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the ears of the two negroes. It was close at hand,—not more than twenty feet away. This was succeeded, after a few seconds of intense stillness—(notwithstanding the uproarious frogs!)—by a hair-raising screech from Hattie. An instant later she was scuttling for her own kitchen door, emitting inarticulate ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the bishop Tode started and uttered a little inarticulate cry of joy; then, as he understood what the bishop was saying, a singular expression passed over his face. The doctor, watching him closely could make ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... master, employing in his questions subtle suggestions and shadings of tone and manner, and avoiding words of debatable and dangerous meanings;—a fine craft, often attempted by blunderers to their own undoing, but which, practised by Joseph Louden, made inarticulate witnesses articulate to the precise effects which he desired. This he accomplished as much by the help of the continuous fire of objections from the other side as in spite of them. He was infinitely careful, asking never an ill-advised question for ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... carrying market baskets, mothers with little children, here and there a swarthy foreigner, old folks, too, and well-dressed youths, here a farmer and his wife, and there a workman in a blue jumper with his hat in his band, silent, inarticulate, yet bidding his good-by, too. On the following day, with only his nearest and dearest about him, all that was mortal of the people's poet was quietly ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... that there was another group of men at a little distance, gathered around something that lay still and straight on the grass. The sound of a hoarse groan reached him suddenly—an inarticulate cry of distress—and he felt with a savage joy that it was from Fletcher. He looked down, drawing together his tattered sleeves. For a time he was silent, and when he spoke it was with ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Restrained by Tessibel's hand on his head, he laid down again making whining noises in his throat, inarticulate expressions of his love for ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Chinese hymns of praise of the two white-lily girls, whose hair was woven sunlight, and whose eyes were deep and blue even as the waters that washed about the shores of his father's dwelling-place. For Li Koo, the impassive and inarticulate, in secret seethed with passion. Which was why his cakes were so wonderful. He had ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... thrust me before him, shaking his waddy menacingly. The next moment he uttered a cry. There was a sharp crack as of one war-club striking another, and then I was struck down by two men struggling fiercely. There were some inarticulate words, and a snarling and panting like two wild beasts engaged in a hard fight, and then a heavy fall, a dull thud, and the sound of a blow, as if some one had struck a tree branch with ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... my arm, pushed the blistered manuscript under my nose, and utterly unable to speak to me, rose, covered her face with her hands, and left the room weeping bitterly. I could hear her praying in a low, solemn, yet sobbing and almost inarticulate voice, as she crossed the passage to her own dressing—room.—"Even as thou wilt, oh Lord—not mine, but thy holy will be done—yet, oh! it is a bitter bitter thing for a widowed mother to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... considered them at all it was as cold and conscious creatures who taught themselves to cover up what they felt, so that when their emotions strove to assert themselves they were found, through long disuse, to be dumb and inarticulate. Edouard rejoiced that to the men of his race it was given to feel and suffer much. He was sure that beneath the calmness of her beauty this woman before him could feel deeply; he read in her eyes the ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... that menaced themselves, bowed to the earth, weeping like women, as mortal weakness stole upon the strong right arm of the Confederacy. Without the tent "the whole army was praying for him," while incoherent sentences of command and inarticulate murmurings fell from his lips—fainter with each utterance. The watchers thought speech and consciousness gone forever, when the voice that had pealed like the blast of Roland in charge and rally, sounded through the hushed chamber, sweet, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... although he is so dissatisfied with Byron because he "cannot reflect," would probably in another mood admit that "reflections" are not what we demand of a poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book of proverbs. He should rather be the articulation of what in Nature is great but inarticulate. In him the thunder, the sea, the peace of morning, the joy of youth, the rush of passion, the calm of old age, should find words, and men should through him become aware of the unrecognised wealth ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the flush of a black, bilious anger mounted to the roots of his hair; he gave an inarticulate cry, leapt upon his feet, and began rapidly pacing the stone floor. At first he kept his hands behind his back in a tight knot; then he began to gesticulate ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... air, unheralded, invisible, there were passing some thin inarticulate sounds, far above the tops of the tallest smoke spires, as though some Titan blew a far jest across the continent to another near the sea, who answered with a gusty laugh, sardonic, grim, foreknowing. Every horse free on the range came into the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... notions as to right and wrong. He is as ready to maintain the desirability of benevolence, justice, and veracity, as was Bishop Butler, who wrote the famous "Analogy "; although, to be sure, he is most inarticulate when called upon to explain what constitutes benevolence, justice, or veracity. But the strangest thing is, that he seems to place some of the most important decisions of his whole life quite outside the realm of right ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... but the sheep with the bell, which the flock follows.' Another thing, very wonderful this learned body should omit, is, learning to read; which is a most necessary part of eloquence in one who is to serve at the altar: for there is no man but must be sensible, that the lazy tone, and inarticulate sound of our common readers, depreciates the most proper form of words that were ever extant in any nation or language, to speak our own wants, or His power from whom we ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... but I had given it a more penetrating note than usual; but it did not hesitate to say that it would not produce any more effect upon those whom I sought to influence "than the less articulate, or even than the absolutely inarticulate, protests of many generations of his fellow-sufferers." And the Saturday Review was right, for fifteen winters have passed since I wrote my protest ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the reader there may have been for some time a growing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about dromena and drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits, even about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in a way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less what ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... in their faces that she no longer possessed a son. At that instant her large eyes, opening wildly, seemed to wander. Her face grew pale, her features changed, her lips lost their colour, she struggled to speak, but uttered only inarticulate sounds, accompanied by piercing cries. Her gestures were wild, her reason was suspended. Every part of her being was in agony. To this state of anguish and despair no calm succeeded, until her tears began to flow. Friendship and the tenderest ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... scrape but by telling a plausible untruth. "Some one must have come into the kitchen and stolen it!" And with that, choking upon the handle of the mill, which projected into his throat, he burst into inarticulate sobs. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Leonora; for that was what it amounted to.... Well, Mrs Ashburnham had simply forced Edward to settle all his property upon her. She could force him to do anything; in his clumsy, good-natured, inarticulate way he was as frightened of her as of the devil. And he admired her enormously, and he was as fond of her as any man could be of any woman. She took advantage of it to treat him as if he had been a person whose estates are being managed by the Court of Bankruptcy. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... before her shadowy figure, that sustained the pale oval of the face, till his forehead struck the rock. Plunging his hand into the ashes, he poured a fistful with inarticulate low cries over his gray hairs; and the agitation of that obese little body on its knees had a lamentable and grotesque inconsequence, as inexplicable in itself as the sorrow of a madman. Full of wonder before ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... under-graduates, if the lesson for the day was pertinent or an occasion afforded the opportunity, I talked to the men in the classroom about their careers—not concerning vocational training; what I emphasized was the right mental attitude toward life itself, the perhaps inarticulate philosophy underlying all ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... be inarticulate with wrath, made a dash for the shrouded object on the table, with the intention, apparently, of once more using it as a weapon of offence, and the policemen ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... here? Shall I wake at thy side and smile at my dream? The dream that grips me so hard that I cannot wake nor stir! O love! O my own love, found but to be lost! My soul sends over the waters a wild inarticulate cry, Like a gull's scream heard in ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... of the confidence with which he had rung the bell, Ford found it difficult now to begin. It was only after one or two inarticulate attempts that he ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... inarticulate cry, he sought to draw there and then, but those about flung themselves upon us, and held us apart—I, passive and unresisting; the Marquis, bellowing, struggling, and foaming ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... Well, kiss me again, then, Edward. And now do go, dear. M-m-m-m.' The inarticulate endearments represented by these signs terminate in a wild embrace, protracted halfway across the room, in the height of which ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... Sister, there in the blood? She drew it back as she stood, She opened her bosom bare, She bent her knees to the earth, The knees that bent in my birth.... And I ... Oh, her hair, her hair.... [He breaks into inarticulate weeping ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... to say it, but became inarticulate with emotion. After five minutes of preamble and exclamation, her daughter was in possession of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... forget old days or friends with a rumpty-iddity-iddity, or letting it be known that they would die for England's glory with their tooral ooral, etc. Even the vices of that society (which 'sometimes, I fear, rendered the narrative portions of the song almost as cryptic and inarticulate as the chorus) were displayed with a more human softening than the same vices in the saloon bars of our own time. I greatly prefer Mr. Richard Swiveller to Mr. Stanley Ortheris. I prefer the man who exceeded in rosy wine in order that the wing of friendship ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... older than Leonard, older than the whole world. With a love almost impersonal in its unconscious motherliness, she yearned with the mighty power of her woman's body and soul to protect this immature and inarticulate being who was faring forth to the peninsula of the "Dead English" to make his silent sacrifice. The great house seemed to be listening, hushed, to the sober ticking of the clock on the landing. Suddenly, with ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... physical or a moral hindrance, impatiently pushed the child on one side. It was the wrong side. Rosie struggled to recover her balance for one moment, during which her father's hand might have grasped her, had he been quick to do it; her mother had not time to reach her. Then, with an inarticulate cry for help, she went down the well of ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... gruffness; there was no riot, no tumultuous swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have often noted in an American crowd, no noise of voices, except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling nothing so much as the rumbling of the tide among the arches of London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all, a gale of wind, the thing of mighty sound, is inarticulate. It is man who, in a chance phrase, interprets the elemental passion of his enemy. Thus there is another gale in my memory, a thing of endless, deep, humming roar, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Scarcely had the words fallen from his lips, when roars of laughter rang through the court. The judge himself laughed outright at the happy and humorous description of the combative attorney, who, pale with passion, gasped in inarticulate rage. The name of ram-cat struck to him through all ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... sank and again became inarticulate, but Adams could not doubt that Christian was praying, by name, for the rest of his companions. Presently the name of Jesus was heard distinctly, and then ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... rate, after a time, Deane smiled, the great man smiled responsively, saluted, and disappeared, murmuring something about Anglais, milords, and droles. The precise purport of his reflections could not be distinctly understood by those in the house, for civility made him inarticulate, but when he was safely outside he looked at a piece of crisp paper in his hand, then, with his thumb pointing over his shoulder, he gave an ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... French looked upon her lost lover, she could have wept for joy. The sight of him, indeed, rendered her inarticulate, and, before she had found her voice, came Shyness to tie up her tongue. This is important, because her sudden inability ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... deliberation. "The truth is, he reported nothing. He was one of those inarticulate fellows who travel everywhere, and can give no better account of their travels than just a catalogue of names. He chanced to let fall that he had visited Sampaolo, and I thus learned that such a place existed. I can't tell why, but the fact struck me, and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... something particularly agreeable in the circumstances in which our young Englishmen found themselves. They were extremely good natured young men; they were more observant than they appeared; in a sort of inarticulate, accidentally dissimulative fashion, they were highly appreciative. This was, perhaps, especially the case with the elder, who was also, as I have said, the man of talent. They sat down at a little ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... his Sire is gone To Pylus, or to Sparta's land divine. He said; and where she stood, her trembling knees Fail'd under her, and all her spirits went. Speechless she long remain'd, tears filled her eyes, 850 And inarticulate in its passage died Her utt'rance, till at last with pain she spake. Herald! why went my son? he hath no need On board swift ships to ride, which are to man His steeds that bear him over seas remote. Went he, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... gully, rising with awful deliberation between him and escape, sent a thrill of terror through his frame. The great, dull, bloodshot eyes glared at him with a dumb, wondering fury; the large wet nostrils were so near that their first snort of inarticulate rage made him reel backwards as from a blow. The gully was only a narrow and short fissure or subsidence of the plain; a few paces more of retreat and he would be at its end, against an almost perpendicular bank fifteen feet high. If he attempted to climb its crumbling sides ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... could know what had happened, a wild commotion arose, as if by magic, in the crowd around them. Loud cries of "Taboo! Taboo!" mixed with inarticulate screams, burst on every side from the assembled natives. In the twinkling of an eye they were surrounded by an angry, threatening throng, who didn't dare to draw near, but, standing a yard or two off, drew stone knives freely and shook their fists, scowling, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... on to the bulwarks had been the last effort of that prince of demons, sea-sickness, rending her ere he left. When the occasion for remaining there had thus passed away, she soon tired of her cabin and of listening to the inarticulate moans of her beloved Agatha, who was a most faithful subject of the fiend, one who would never desert his manner so long as he could roll the tiniest wave, and, sallying forth, took up her position in the little society ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... she talked in her inarticulate pitiful voice the tears added luster to her eyes as her ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... interesting paper on "The Conception of Love in Some American Languages" (Proceedings American Philosophical Society, vol. xxiii, p. 546, 1886) states that the words for love in these languages reveal four main ways of expressing the conception: (1) inarticulate cries of emotion; (2) assertions of sameness or similarity; (3) assertions of conjunction or union; (4) assertions of a wish, desire, a longing. Brinton adds that "these same notions are those which underlie the majority of the words of love in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... knell, without its natural hope or sense of rest. Such shall I be (is the thought that haunts me), but O! not such; O! with what a different retrospect! But I owe it to justice to say, Such good I truly can do myself, etc., etc." The rest of this painfully inarticulate letter is filled with further complaints of ill health, with further protestations of irresponsibility for the neglect of duties, and with promises, never to be fulfilled, of composing or assisting others to compose ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... a small inarticulate sound of dissent. "Sex is a duel. Don't you know"—an infinitesimal hesitation marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's married life alone:—"that—that's what's wrong with Bernard? Oh! ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... A faint, inarticulate cry escaped her, and she sank back an instant in the corner of the seat; but the chatter of the nurses, and the whimpering wail of one dissatisfied baby mercifully drowned the sound. The car, the trees on the Street, the belfry of a church seemed spinning ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... door of the smoking-room, we heard the sounds of energetic splashings, mingled with the inarticulate groans of the miserable Gumbo. Moore could not sit still, but kept pacing the room, smoking fiercely. Presently Peter came ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... welled from her in an inarticulate cry. He had come close to her, and was standing beside the stirrup, one bold hand upon the rein. Her quirt went swiftly up and down, cut like a thin bar of red-hot iron across his uplifted face. He stumbled back, half blind with the pain. Before he could realize what had happened the spur on her ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... extraordinary dreadfulness of your behavior. Such moments happen in the lives of all small boys; they happened to me times enough, to my dead father, to that grandfather of the portrait which is now in my study, to his father and his, and so on through long series of Strattons, back to inarticulate, shock-haired little sinners slinking fearfully away from the awful wrath, the bellowings and limitless violence of the hairy Old Man of the herd. The bottom goes out of your heart then, you are full of a conviction of sin. So far you did but carry on the experience of the race. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... recall as especially noteworthy several instances of atrocious abuse. Five patients were chronic victims. Three of them, peculiarly irresponsible, suffered with especial regularity, scarcely a day passing without bringing to them its quota of punishment. One of these, almost an idiot, and quite too inarticulate to tell a convincing story even under the most favorable conditions, became so cowed that, whenever an attendant passed, he would circle his oppressor as a whipped cur circles a cruel master. If this avoidance became too ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... sorrow or sin or failure or remorse. Only in his large, gray-black eyes was there something not of the child—something that spoke of an inheritance from many hearts, now ashes, which had aforetime grieved and joyed, and struggled and failed, and succeeded and grovelled. The inarticulate cries of their longings had passed into this child's soul, and transmuted themselves into the expression of ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to where Susan D. stood; the next moment she had the child in her arms, and was pressing her close, close. A rocking-chair was by; she had seen it, and knew where to lay her hand to draw it forward. She sank down in it, and rocked to and fro, murmuring inarticulate words of comfort. The night was warm, but still the child shivered; Margaret, groping again, found a shawl, and wrapped it round her. There was no more holding off, no more resistance; the little creature ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... The inarticulate language of our Darwinian relatives has one considerable advantage over the articulate speech of a trained parrot: it has a definite meaning. Mumbling with protruded lips is an appeal for pity and affection; a coughing grunt denotes indignation; surprise is expressed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... of the air ship was tipped up at an angle of forty-five degrees by the pressure, and with inarticulate cries most of those on board tumbled off, some falling into the water and some disappearing amidst the tangled vegetation. Ala was visible, as the machine sank lower, and crashed through the branches, clinging to an upright on the sloping deck, while Juba, who hung on like a huge baboon, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Bacon growled something inarticulate as he cuffed the man from side to side, shook him like a rag, and threw him to the ground. He lay there dazed and scared, while Bacon caught his horse and tied ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... For many generations the power of speech still remained voluntary, but gradually the vocal organs had become atrophied, and for several hundred years the power of articulation had been wholly lost. Infants for a few months after birth did, indeed, still emit inarticulate cries, but at an age when in less advanced races these cries began to be articulate, the children of the mind-readers developed the power of direct vision, and ceased to attempt ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... I must make sure you understand that it isn't the sort of story that you usually find enveloping that particular brute fact. I wasn't deceived nor betrayed by anybody. There isn't anybody you can take as a villain. Just a nice, rather inarticulate boy, whom I met at a dance the evening ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... windy and wintering moon Seen through blown cloud and plume-like drift, when ships Drive, and men strive with all the sea, and oars Break, and the beaks dip under, drinking death; Yet was he then but a span long, and moaned With inarticulate mouth inseparate words, And with blind lips and fingers wrung my breast Hard, and thrust out with foolish hands and feet, Murmuring; but those grey women with bound hair Who fright the gods frighted not him; he laughed Seeing them, and pushed out hands to feel and haul Distaff and ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... suffering greatly from thirst. And the king was very much in need of water to drink. And he entered that hermitage and asked for drink. And becoming fatigued, he cried in feeble voice, proceeding from a parched throat, which resembled the weak inarticulate utterance of a bird. And his voice reached nobody's ears. Then the king beheld the jar filled with water. And he quickly ran towards it, and having drunk the water, put the jar down. And as the water was cool, and as the king had been suffering greatly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wretch set up an inarticulate frightful howl, such a one as I never before heard of her; and seeing every one half-frighted, and me motioning to withdraw, O pity me, pity me, Mr. Belford, cried she, her words interrupted by groans—I find you think I shall die!—And what may ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... something inarticulate, but Miss Ramsay was affable to a degree. "I drove over to your cottage first, Miss Kelvin," she chatted on, after her introduction, "with some eggs Aunt Sally promised you. She was going to send them by the butcher boy, but he did not stop this morning, so, as I was going out, I offered ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... him,—an utter hopelessness. He essayed to stretch out his hand to some passer-by, but the careless faces mocked him. There was no strength or stay. He could not even cry out with his anguish,—it was a dumb, inarticulate voice. All his idols had been destroyed, and there was no God ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... rush of outrage seemed fairly to strangle Mr. Kantor that he stood, hand still upraised, choking and inarticulate above the now frankly howling ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... He protested with inarticulate noises, removed his own furs, which he threw down on to the old worn-out sofa, and drew a Windsor chair up to the fire. After a while his mother returned, and sat down in her rocking-chair, and began to shiver again under the shawl and the antimacassar. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, she sat down as before, and with her arms folded, and her eyes gazing at the fire, remained silently listening with a contemptuous face to her old mother's inarticulate complainings. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... espousing showers - And his tongue has scarce begun With its inarticulate burthen, And the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... overwhelming. Mrs. Willoughby stood thunder-struck, and the Baron utterly bewildered. The latter recovered his faculties first. It was just as Lady Dalrymple was passing out. With a bound he sprang toward Minnie, and caught her in his arms, uttering a series of inarticulate cries. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... women, piping higher, higher, until the ancient hymn resolved itself into something that was neither human nor animal, but so elemental, so primeval, that it was like a voice imprisoned in the soil—a dumb and inarticulate music, rooted deep, and without consciousness, in the passionate earth. Over the mass of dark faces, as they rocked back and forth, I saw light shadows tremble, as faint and swift as the shadows of passing clouds, while here and there a bright red or yellow ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... inarticulate sounds of refusal, and then came and sat down beside her, close beside her, so that he was almost touching her. He felt a fantastic desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, and overcame the madness by an effort. "I don't even know your name," he said, taking refuge ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... is yet more than this. Everywhere among these peoples, as one comes into close enough touch to find their hearts, there can be found underneath the inarticulate, inexpressible yearning for something they haven't. And they don't know enough to know what it is they long for. But they are conscious of the constant, weary, yearning tug within. The great heart of the non-Christian world to-day is asking dumbly, but earnestly, as only the heart ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... the winged helmets of the Norsemen. Daylight's black eyes were flashing, and the flush of strong drink flooded darkly under the bronze of his cheeks. He was greeted with round on round of affectionate cheers, which brought a suspicious moisture to his eyes, albeit many of the voices were inarticulate and inebriate. And yet, men have so behaved since the world began, feasting, fighting, and carousing, whether in the dark cave-mouth or by the fire of the squatting-place, in the palaces of imperial Rome ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... with an inarticulate grumble of sound, and a movement of one arm and his head, which did duty for ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subtler shades of emotion and thought invisible to other pairs of eyes, and cannot, because speech is modelled on the average of our intelligences, find words to express them; he is always trembling on the brink of the inarticulate. All this applies to both Donne and Browning, and the comparison could be pushed further still. Both draw the knowledge which is the main cause of their obscurity from the same source, the bypaths of mediaevalism. Browning's ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... sudden intrusion in that atmosphere of such truisms by a man who really acted as if they were true. With this simplicity of outlook Jackson possessed in an almost unparalleled degree the quality which makes a true leader—the capacity to sum up and interpret the inarticulate will of the mass. His eye for the direction of popular feeling was unerring, perhaps largely because he snared or rather incarnated the instincts, the traditions—what others would call the prejudices—of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... resembling it in Brown. After a while he made unlovely and inarticulate sounds; after a while the sounds became articulate. He said: "Betty!" several times, more or less distinctly. He opened one eye, then the other; then his hands closed on the hands that were holding his wrists; he looked up at her from where he lay on the floor. She, crouched beside him, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... the caves; but, while the new fear mitigated the former, the greater fear subdued the less. It came a little louder, then again a little louder, growing like a hurried whisper, but without seeming to approach her. Louder still it grew, and yet was but an inarticulate whispering. Then it began to divide into some resemblance of articulate sounds. Presently, to her utter astonishment, she ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... long, or else it was, "Where have you been? Tell me at once!" At the theater, when Pa lost his temper, she could reckon on a mighty fillip, and then it was over: Pa was sorry, rather than otherwise. Ma, on the contrary, would nag for hours; muttered inarticulate phrases about "devil," "wild bull," and "taming her;" there was no end to it. Lily champed the bit! A star, indeed! Was that being a star? She thought differently! She had seen others drive up to the theater in their motors, accompanied by gentlemen carrying flowers, like that famous "M'dlle" at ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... was a throbbing, strangled cry, an almost inarticulate ejaculation. "Better than life—better ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... makes some futile, inarticulate attempts to prevent The PORTER from laying the case before THE CONDUCTOR, and then stands guiltily smiling, overwhelmed with the hopeless absurdity ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... carrying in a basket. The brat answered from within the basket, "Ho, ho!" and the peasant was unspeakably shocked. When the voice from the water proceeded to ask the child what it was after, and received the answer from the hitherto inarticulate babe that it was going to be laid on the shrine of the Mother of God, to the end that it might prosper, the peasant could stand it no longer, and flung basket and baby into the brook. The changeling and the little devil played for a few moments with each other, rolling over and over, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... away? They had set a trap—that sees itself—in addition to being cowards. You save them, and you think you have made a fine gesture; but you are nothing but simpletons." She shrugged her shoulders in inarticulate disdain. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... artist had painted her excessively stout and rosy—and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out dark—a la Rembrandt—so that sometimes a visitor would go up to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur. Avdotya had taken to being rather careless in her dress; she would fling a big shawl over her shoulders, while the dress under it was put on anyhow: she was overcome by laziness, that sighing apathetic drowsy laziness to which the Russian is ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and shoulders went down. He knew in that moment what even he himself had sometimes doubted, that his boasted love for the boys was deep and sincere. Few fathers could have experienced a more poignant combination of pride and pain than that which shook him now. But he remained, as always, inarticulate. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... probability. The comic portion shows clearly the influence of Ben Jonson, and there is much to remind one of Lyly's court-comedies. In the serious scenes the philosophising and moralising, at one time expressed in language of inarticulate obscurity and at another attaining clear and dignified utterance, suggest a study of Chapman. The unknown writer might have taken as his motto a passage in the dedication of Ovid's Banquet of Sense:— "Obscurity ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... little as it has asked in times past. To call upon Christ's name, to bless God for goodness and mercy, suffice it; and no form of words enabling it to do this seems to be found too feeble, or affected, or grotesque. For anything more, the inarticulate tones of music are as adequate to devotion as the sublimest formula that Milton or Dante could have shaped. It is only since religion has been so much philosophized, and has in so great degree ceased to be a passion, that we have begun to find the hymns which our forefathers sang ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... time while that inarticulate passion of dread spent itself. But it was nearly half an hour later when she started up at the echo of a light step on the gravel path, dashing her handkerchief ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... possesses. This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, "What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?" It expresses our individual sense of it in the most definite way. Why then not call these reactions our religion, no matter what specific character ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... made an inarticulate sound which might almost be termed a snort, and walked from the room with her head well up and a manner which silently made plain to the onlooker that she might say many things which would effectually ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of peace, and in spite of its continued justification, other movements, wishes, and efforts, inarticulate and often unconscious, live in the depths of the soul of the German people. The agelong dream of the German nation was realized in the political union of the greater part of the German races and in the founding of the German Empire. Since then there lives in the hearts ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... feet, stumbling about among the dogs, his face working, his eyes starting. Try as he would, he could not stretch his jaws wide enough to slip the ball out. Marcus lost his wits, swearing at the top of his voice. McTeague sweated with terror; inarticulate sounds came from his crammed mouth; he waved his arms wildly; all the four dogs caught the excitement and began to bark. A waiter rushed in, the two billiard players returned, a little crowd formed. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... from the beginning? Had any authority interfered, with a decree that Gibbie should no more scour the midnight streets, no more pass and repass that far-shining splendour of red, then indeed would bitter, though inarticulate, complaint have burst from his bosom. But there was no evil power to issue such a command, and Gibbie's ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in her arms and murmured an inarticulate complaint. Tenderly she drew her closer. How cold it was! How cruelly, how bitingly cold! All her bones were beginning to ache. A dreadful stiffness was creeping over her. How long would her senses hold out, she wondered piteously? How ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... to see some prisoners?" he asked, in a somewhat inarticulate voice. "You are all honest men. Well, then, to be frank with you, I should like to see the value ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... waist, and Elizabeth's breath was caught in a quick little sigh. Madame le Claire replied to these inarticulate expressions of sympathy as ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... haven't heard the Idea yet," said the Lord Chamberlain. "It's this," and he proceeded to tell them the Idea. They were stricken dumb with reverential admiration; it was some time before they could even coo little murmurs of inarticulate wonder. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to—filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From a hencoop abaft the mainmast (the Bute was a brig, by the way) I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war's great historian, that the English are a bellicose rather than a martial race, and by consequence sometimes find themselves committed to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... regularly prescribed by Mrs. Grubb, and almost as regularly rejected by them, would have melted the stoniest heart. And who was the angel of deliverance? A little vacant-eyed, half-foolish, almost inarticulate child, whose feeble and sickly mother was dragging out a death-in-life existence in a street near by. The child saw Mr. Grubb wheeling the twins in a double perambulator: followed them home; came again, and then again, and then again; ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... made him an energetic apostle of reform, and intolerant of old and passively accepted abuses. His insistence upon the principle of impartiality in the distribution of happiness has made him a champion of the inarticulate and the oppressed. Whatever one may think of his abstract principles, the general character of the specific measures he has advocated must meet with the approval of enlightened moralists of very ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Some had degenerated into bourgeois traders, managers and financeers, but the great majority had been crushed down and down in the mass of submerged proletariat, losing liberty, degenerating in character, becoming more and more servile in status and wretched in estate, so forming a huge, inarticulate, dully ebullient mass, cut off from society, cut off ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... the most peremptory manner, as coolly as if we had three decks under us and an admiral on board. The large ships, for the most part paralysed by our audacity, reply meekly. Sometimes we meet with a foreigner, and get answered by inarticulate yelling or disrespectful grins. But this is a rare case; the general rule is, that we maintain our dignity unimpaired all down the Channel. Then, again, when no ships are near, there is the constant excitement of consulting our charts and wondering where ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated, making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... in earnest. We could no longer distinguish the faces of the people who passed us by with an inarticulate good-evening. And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil; for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village. I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our predicament every pace counted three times ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but out of their senses and distraught, avoiding every sight and touch, and at first turned round and round alone, but afterwards meeting many other souls whirling round and in the same condition as themselves, they moved about promiscuously with no particular object in view, and uttered inarticulate sounds, like yells, mixed with wailing and terror. Other souls in the upper part of the air seemed joyful, and frequently approached one another in a friendly way, and avoided those troubled souls, and seemed to mark their displeasure ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Peyster!" wailed that lady—she couldn't help it, though she tried to keep inarticulate her sense of complete annihilation. "When they publish that letter the damage will have been done. It's a forgery, but nobody will believe her when she says so, and she can't prove ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... inarticulate word or two; in his face was a light of gladness that went to the girl's heart. His name had risen freely to her lips; he felt as if she had laid her hand in his with ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... An inarticulate answer from within intimated Malachi's acquiescence in the commands imposed; and, Mr. Trumbull, shutting the door, muttered something about fast bind, fast find, turned the key, and put it into his pocket; and then bidding his visitor have a care ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to his feet with a hoarse inarticulate cry. "They'll never get me into hell! God has got to keep His contracts and I've fixed it all up so He'll have to save me whether He wants to or not. The papers are all signed and everything. My lawyer has got ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... constructive imagination is the queen of those mental functions which meet in what we loosely term "thought"; and imagination is ever most active where, on the outer fringe of the mind's routine work, our inarticulate questionings radiate into the unknown. When the genius has his vision, almost invariably, among the ruder peoples, it is accepted by himself and his society as something supernormal and sacred, whether its fruit be an act ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... would have said died away into inarticulate gasps, which seemed to choke him, and sinking into a chair, he dropped his face upon the table, and wept aloud. Perhaps in all the dismal scenes of domestic misery which had been acted in those spare and dreary houses—in all the petty miseries, the burning ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon |
