"Sputter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are all simpletons," he exclaimed. "I am not like you, thank fortune! I do not sputter over my soup. Long life to women! Yes, all of them, pretty and otherwise! For, upon my word, there are no ugly ones. I do not notice that Miss Keepsake has feet like the English, and I forget the barmaid's ruddy complexion, if she is attractive ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... up the cabin, stowing the beds, washing out the lower deck, folding away the awning, and transforming the cockpit into a breakfast-room, with table neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has returned, and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red mullet cooking. Cynthia clatters the cups and saucers, while in the well by the cabin door I perform some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There is plenty to be done on board a small boat, but it is all simple enough. Only, you must not let it overtake you. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... honey, and tea for their midnight luncheon. Emma and Hippy were first to try the bacon, but no sooner did they taste of it than they began to choke and sputter. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... he could utter a cry of dismay there was a tremendous sputter and splash, for Dick had been in time, and, as the fish-hook was breaking out, had securely caught ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... give your neck, Each splendid shoulder, both those breasts of yours, 125 That this were undone! Killing! Kill the world, So Luca lives again!—aye, lives to sputter His fulsome dotage on you—yes, and feign Surprise that I return at eve to sup, When all the morning I was loitering here— 130 Bid me dispatch my business ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... where the French had a post; which and whom the Old Dessauer burnt away. And then Seckendorf, at the head of thirty thousand, he, after long delays, marched to Trarbach in the interior Moselle Country; and got into some explosive sputter of battle with Belleisle, one afternoon,—some say, rather beating Belleisle; but a good judge says, it was a mutual flurry and terror they threw one another into. [OEuvres de Frederic, i. 168.] Seckendorf meant to try again on the morrow: but there came an estafette that night: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... machine guns from all sides. Now I realized what it meant. It was war. The Austrians had taken this way to acknowledge Italy's defiance. The enemy had threatened to destroy Venice, and this was their first attempt. Above the sputter of the machine guns and the occasional explosions of shrapnel could be distinguished the buzz of an aeroplane that moment by moment approached nearer. Soon the machine itself became visible, flying oddly enough from the land direction, not from the Adriatic. It flew high and directly, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... feathers, and shouting: 'Polly tho dram dry!'—which struck on the nob of Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and cried; 'That did it! Now to business!' for he was hungry. 'And when I catch the ring of this world's laugh from you, my friend . . . !' Simeon's application ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perceived at the time, though signs of it were not wanting. Both in France and England democratic enthusiasm speedily died down, and the discontent, which now and again flared forth in both lands, was but a feeble sputter compared with the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... if it be not too late in his life, to endeavour a little at mending his style, which is mighty defective in the circumstances of grammar, propriety, politeness, and smoothness;[62] I fancied at first, it might be owing to the prevalence of his passion, as people sputter out nonsense for haste when they are in a rage. And indeed I believe this piece before me has received some additional imperfections from that occasion. But whoever has heard his sermons, or read ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the steady breeze, the privateersman rolled ominously towards the lolling Delft. A crash, a sputter of pistols, a crushing of timber, and grappling hooks had pinioned the two war-dogs in a sinister embrace. And—with a wild yell—the Frenchmen plunged upon the reddened decking of the flagship of the courageous Van Wassenaer, who cried, ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more—Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled "sputter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Jane," he said to the head cook, "you take this long fork. And as soon as a weenie begins to sputter and brown, turn it over so it browns on ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... had not quite finished the breezy article when, with an all pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn, a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged, like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a bright green coat—a heavy man with a fat, colourless face and puffy eyes, and Paul, glancing up at ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... was still trying to make himself heard, never noticing three men, who were rolling in behind him a barrel, which they had taken from a nearby store. "I demand that the law be respected, and that I be permitted to—to...." He stopped to sneeze and sputter, for having knocked in the top of the barrel, which contained flour, the three men had emptied its ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... course, the Bard of Avon had first call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... making God's beautiful creation hideous by the jarring of their brutal mirth; for surely that mirth is brutal which springs, not from a heart filled with innocent rejoicing, but from lips that sputter out the frenzies of a brain on fire with the stimulants of alcohol. How Frank Oldfield got home he could not tell. His horse knew his road, and followed it; for, dumb brute as he was, his senses were not clouded ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Manley rose to his feet with a certain air of determination, which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter of a candle burned down. "I'm going over and take my medicine—face the music," he said almost sullenly, "She's too good for me—I always knew it. And I haven't treated her right—I've left her out there alone ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... experiment with the handkerchief I discovered by accident that I was not the only doubter in Polotzk. One Friday night I lay wakeful in my little bed, staring from the dark into the lighted room adjoining mine. I saw the Sabbath candles sputter and go out, one by one,—it was late,—but the lamp hanging from the ceiling still burned high. Everybody had gone to bed. The lamp would go out before morning if there was little oil; or else it would burn till Natasha, the Gentile chorewoman, came ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... arose from, he could not say. But in the flood-tide of his own tumultuous conquest he had watched her abandoned weeping and her tumbled brown hair. And as he watched, a vague and troubling tingle sped like a fuse-sputter along his limbs, and fired something dormant and dangerous in the great hulk of a body which had never before been stirred by its explosion of emotion. It was not pity, he knew; for pity was something quite foreign to his nature. Yet as she ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... temptation long. There was the sputter of a match, the puff of a flame, and the little stove was roaring away so effectively that one of old Jeremy's sayings rose to her lips. Jeremy ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that George Bevan's train was leaving Waterloo, a grey racing car drew up with a grinding of brakes and a sputter of gravel in front of the main entrance of Belpher Castle. The slim and elegant young man at the wheel removed his goggles, pulled out a watch, and addressed the stout young ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and tempestuous, and the moon was all girt with ragged clouds. The wind blew in melancholy gusts, sobbing and sighing over the moor, and setting all the gorse bushes agroaning. From time to time a little sputter of rain pattered up against the window-pane. I sat until near midnight, glancing over the fragment on immortality by Iamblichus, the Alexandrian platonist, of whom the Emperor Julian said that he was posterior to ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life-belt. But here the demented man managed to wreathe his legs and arms in another and more terrible hold. The pair of them were now cursing horribly, cursing whenever a wave left choking them, and allowed them to cough and sputter for breath. They fought as two men whose lives had pent up an unmitigable hate for this moment. They fought, neither losing his hold, as their strength ebbed, and the weight of their clothes dragged them lower. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... door was flung open, and the sputter of a match was followed by the feeble light from a gas-jet at the end of ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... drink playing tricks with Ferris's mind—it seemed to him that he could still see those deep-set dark eyes staring up at him through the murk, with that same fearless and yet piteous look in their depths. It was a look that the brief sputter of match-light had ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... green-white sputter of a street lamp, Mallare halted. His mind was preoccupied with unraveling the mystery of Rita. He stood, a tall figure without a hat, a slant of black hair across his forehead, and ignoring eyes. A beggar in a ragged overcoat shuffled, ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... up a long time watching the candle sputter, then he pulled off his boots and tiptoed to Patsy's bedside. He leaned over her. "Po' little baby," he said; "what do she know about a step-mothah?" And Patsy saw him and heard him, for she was awake then, ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... awakened before dawn by the rapid sputter of rain on the roof. It dribbled through several holes and spread across the floor. He sat up shivering. Shera was a ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... smooth bed in the glowing coals, sliced the pork thin, laid some slices in the pan and set that upon the coals, where the pork began to sputter almost at once. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... broke very dark and windy, with dull clouds moving heavily across the sky and a constant sputter of rain. Yet a little after daybreak Monmouth's bugles were blowing in every quarter of the town, from Tone Bridge to Shuttern, and by the hour appointed the regiments had mustered, the roll had been called, and the vanguard was marching briskly out through the eastern ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... curtains," said Lysander, hastily executing his own order, as the blue sputter kindled up into a flame that lighted the room. "It ain't quite time for me ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... became necessary to provide me with a disposition, the material had run out, for the moment, nothing being left but a few remnants of other people's characters; so a living handful of these was taken up, roughly welded together, and then the mixture was sent whirling into space, to boil and sputter itself out as ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was only a little sputter to what followed. For a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs. And his daughter ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... danger lies in your tilting your nose at their ways and ideas, and insisting upon your own. That rouses the sense of individuality in them and they then fight for their ways and ideas—then there's boil and bubble and sputter and ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... and the awful,— I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, And refer myself to THEE, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter, When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest! May truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... boil in a small quantity of water, stir in wholemeal flour and milk, add a little pepper and salt, thin with hot water, and thus produce a sauce that helps down vegetables and potatoes. In making a brown sauce we put a little butter or olive oil in the frying-pan; let it bubble and sputter, dredge in Allinson wholemeal flour, stir it round with a knife until browned, add boiling water, pepper, salt, a little ketchup, and you then have a nice brown sauce for many dishes. If we wish to make it very tasty we fry a finely chopped onion first ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... one side. Take a frying-pan and put into it one scant tablespoon of butter and the chopped ham fat. When the grease is colored put in the sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper. When the tomatoes are cooked and begin to sputter put the macaroni into the pan with them, mix well, add ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... and then, with the absurd vagary of a crowd, they broke into loud laughter and slouched back to work, two of them dragging the cause of the outburst to the water-faucet, where they held his head under the stream until he began to sputter and squirm. Before those at the gangway had noticed the disturbance it was all over, and thereafter Boyd experienced no trouble. On the contrary, they worked the better for his proof of authority, and took ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... dose of their own medicine. The difference is that I am honest. I just say in plain English, 'if they don't treat you right, come to me.' They have only said it in actions and inferences. I want to teach Mag Sinton how her own doses taste, but she begins to sputter before I fairly get the spoon to ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... heart. Most excellent truth may be so spoken as to be wrong; and it is so, if spoken heartlessly, regardless of sympathy, and flung at sufferers like a stone, rather than laid on their hearts as a balm. God lets a true heart dare much in speech; for He knows that the sputter and foam prove that 'the heart's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... seized the end of a fuse projecting from one of the canisters and held the crimson end of his cigar against it until a sputter of sparks showed that it had caught. From this fuse he turned to the one in the second can and ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... tricky things for young hands to deal with. Maisie could not explain how it had happened, but a veil of reeking smoke separated her from Dick, and she was quite certain that the pistol had gone off in his face. Then she heard him sputter, and dropped on her knees beside him, crying, "Dick, you aren't hurt, are you? I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... sweet liquor were poor provisions for the night, and the thought of hot tea was infinitely seductive. Perhaps somewhere one might find a few soldiers round a kettle in some friendly dugout. We groped our way along, holding our breath at times as a shell came sweeping overhead or burst with a sputter of steel against the ramparts. It was profoundly dark, so that only the glowworms glittered like jewels on black velvet. The moon had gone down, and inside Ypres the light of the distant flares only glimmered faintly above the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... pine cones and other fallen wood, and with the help of the matches soon had a fire. Then they cut strips of bacon and fried them on the ends of sharpened sticks, the sputter making the finest music in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... did it fall on her than you would have laughed to see how the rosy color came back to the dear child's cheek, and how she began to sneeze and sputter, and how astonished she was to find herself dripping wet and her father still throwing more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... really, but mere children, and will you just for a slight mistake, go on preaching to him! what's the use of coming out with all you've said? Let him go wherever he pleases; for there are still our lady and Mr. Chia Cheng to keep him in order. But you go and sputter him with your gigantic mouth; he's at present a master, and if there be anything wrong about him, there are, after all, those to rate him; and what business is that of yours? Brother Huan, come out with you, and follow me and let ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Mrs. Temple was dying—dying. No, it could not be so. Again, I was in the garden at Les Iles on a night that was all perfume, and I saw the flowers all ghostly white under the moon. And then, suddenly, I was watching the green candle sputter, and out of the stillness came a cry—the sereno calling the hour of the night. How my head throbbed! It was keeping time to some rhythm, I knew not what. Yes, it was the song my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ignition-cord and a rocket began to sputter. He made a single wipe with his knife-blade along the twisted insulated wires of the Bissel battery, and a wavering blue spark leaped into being. The rocket shot upward, curved down, and landed with enough force to bury its head in the muddy ploughed ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... I know the plop of liquid in a pitcher. So if I spill my milk, I have not the excuse of ignorance. I am also familiar with the pop of a cork, the sputter of a flame, the tick-tack of the clock, the metallic swing of the windmill, the laboured rise and fall of the pump, the voluminous spurt of the hose, the deceptive tap of the breeze at door and window, and many ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... too cheerfully, by the frail light of a bayberry candle. Through the narrow corridors and boxed-in stair wells of a ramshackle hotel, came no sounds except the minors of the night. Somewhere far off a dog barked and somewhere near at hand a traveling salesman snored. In the flare and sputter of the charring wick and melting wax shadows lengthened and shortened like flapping flags ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... communion with Him; and for these God accepts the bold prayer as truer reverence than is found in many more guarded and lowly sounding words. Many conventional proprieties of worship may be broken just because the worship is real. 'The frequent sputter shows that the soul's depths boil in earnest.' We may learn, too, that the most loving familiarity never forgets the fathomless gulf between God and it. Abraham remembers that he is 'dust and ashes'; he knows that he is venturing much in speaking to God. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... heard the bacon sputter on the fork, And heard his mother's step across the floor. Where did you get that ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... invisible, yet seemed to have many weird faces; the giant pines loomed spectral; the shadows were thick, moving, changing. Flickering lights from the camp-fire circled the huge trunks and played fantastically over the brooding men. This camp-fire did not burn or blaze cheerily; it had no glow, no sputter, no white heart, no red, living embers. One by one the outlaws, as if with common consent, tried their hands at making the fire burn aright. What little wood had been collected was old; it would burn up with false flare, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of the thicket was rudely startled out of his nap, thinking some great catastrophe had overtaken him. As he sat up and rubbed his eyes, looking around him in bewilderment for the cause of his sudden awakening, he heard an angry voice sputter shrilly, "Well, ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and son were especially anxious that not a moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... your doughnuts shall sizzle and sputter and swim unheeded in their grease; but the beardless jaw that should have wagged filially to chew them is dropped in death; the stomach which they should have distended is ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... was not his forte, and his nervousness made him sputter. His speech was vibrant, trenchant, like hammerstrokes, and he said things to which there was no answer. He had a horror of discussion: he ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... horse trough. With a new book waiting to be read, washing his hair seemed a waste of time. But if that was what Sarah wanted, he would do it. He lathered his head with soap and ducked it into the water. Some of the soap got into his eyes and he began to sputter. He heard a giggle. ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... gloom, till her eyes swam, and a hundred fantastic figures, and sparks of fire, seemed to dance between her and the rock. Sparks of fire!—yes; but that last one was no fancy. An actual flash; the crackle and sputter of a match! What could it mean? Another match was lighted; and a moment after, the glare of a lanthorn showed her mother entering beneath the polished arch of rock which glared lurid overhead, like the gateway of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... imply a kind of dissipation or expansion, especially a quick one, particularly if there be an r, as if it were from spargo or separo: for example, spread, spring, sprig, sprout, sprinkle, split, splinter, spill, spit, sputter, spatter. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... muttering of the cockatoo, the tinkle of the fountain as the water fell into the basin, the scrape and slither of sandals beyond the lattice partitions, the rattle of a gun butt somewhere in the outer corridors—these sounds she heard. Once she thought she heard the sputter of rifle shots afar, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath |
