"LISP" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... midnight, the cedars were sleeping. Their shadowy tresses outlined in the bright Crystal, moon-smitten mists, where the fountain's heart leaping Forever, forever burst, full with delight; And its lisp on my spirit Fell faint as that near it Whose love like a lily bloomed out in ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... northeaster or the first sudden and violent gale from the southwest. But there it stood, and there it stands as yet,—though its obituary was long ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,—leafing out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as softly as ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bust, The trophy'd arch had crumbled into dust; The sacred symbol, and the epic song, 110 (Unknown the character, forgot the tongue,) With each unconquer'd chief, or fainted maid, Sunk undistinguish'd in Oblivion's shade. Sad o'er the scatter'd ruins Genius sigh'd, And infant Arts but learn'd to lisp and died. 115 Till to astonish'd realms PAPYRA taught To paint in mystic colours Sound and Thought. With Wisdom's voice to print the page sublime, And mark in adamant the steps of Time. —Three favour'd youths her soft attention share, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the old, old melody of youth and home! Again we are around the old hearthstone. Again do we kneel at mother's knee to lisp the evening prayer. Again she takes us in her arms, and sings to her tired child the soft, low lullaby of childhood's happy days.—Oh, Music, Music! Art Divine! Thou dost move and stir the heart as nothing else can do! Yet never canst thy sweet potency ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... are!" she greeted her. "Goody! What a relief! I've been worrying about what you'd be like, and just praying you wouldn't have spectacles and talk with a lisp. Miss Todd gave me to understand you were a peach, and I might think myself in luck to room with you, but you never can trust head mistresses till you see for yourself. She's told me the truth, though, after all. Yes, I like you right straight ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... affairs that perch on the top of the puffs and frizzes of the modern old lady, but a substantial structure that covered her whole head and was tied securely under her chin. She talked in a sweet old treble with a little lisp, caused by the absence of teeth, and her laugh was as clear and ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... over sea. Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eldest son of one of the great up-country Chiefs. He was returning from Singapore with the Raja, to whom he had fled after some escapade of his had excited the paternal wrath. He was a nice-looking youngster, with a slight lisp, and a manner as soft as floss-silk, and he was always smartly dressed in pretty Malay garments. We travelled together for more than three months, and I got to know him pretty well, and took something of a liking to him. I knew, of course, that his manner to his own people was not ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... down in—dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... to lisp the name Of martyr, yet she thinks it shame Life should so long sport with that breath, Which, spent, can buy so ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... to the sun; To revel in the bright young eyes, Whose lustre sparkled through The sable fringe of Southern skies Or gleamed in Saxon blue! How oft I heard another's name Called in some truant's tone; Sweet accents! which I longed to claim, To learn and lisp my own! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lights up your innocent eyes, little Annie, and dispels the gathering shade. The flame dies down again, and you draw closer to my side. The pure moon looks in at the southern window, replacing the ruddier glow; while the fading embers lisp and prattle to one another, like drowsy children, more and more faintly, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... preliminary arrangements for starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... have to modify the scene if it were to represent the facts. His father did not brighten all over and demand, "Miss Pasmer, of course?" he contrived to hide whatever start the news had given him, and was some time in asking, with his soft lisp, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... subservient; As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent Towards her with the Muses in thine heart; As if the ministring stars kept not apart, 50 Waiting for silver-footed messages. O Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees Feel palpitations when thou lookest in: O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din The while they feel thine airy fellowship. Thou dost bless every where, with silver lip Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine, Couched in thy brightness, dream of fields divine: ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... The lisp of children's voices, The chance of happy choices, The bugle sounds of hope and faith, through fogs and mists that call; The heaven that stretches o'er us, The better days before us, They all combine to make this earth a good ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the most pensive tune. They had always done this from the time they could lisp... ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... without cause; after remaining silent for a time, she almost always ended by turning to some one of her elders, with a question which showed that her brain was working over a new impression. She very early ceased to lisp, and already in her fourth year she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father; her feeling toward her mother was undefined,—she did not fear her, neither did she fondle her; but she did not fondle Agafya either, although she loved only her alone. Agafya ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... no more pathetic and terrible thing than the prejudice of love. Both you and I have suffered from it. Six years ago, ay, and before that, I felt and resented the growing difference between us. When under your spell, it seemed that I was born to lisp in numbers and devote myself to singing, that the world was good and all of it fit for singing. But away from you, even then, doubts faced me, and I knew in vague fashion that we lived in different worlds. At first ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... said I, "as that mock literary air which it is so much the fashion to assume. 'Tis but a wearisome relief to conversation to have interludes of songs about Strephon and Sylvia, recited with a lisp by a gentleman with fringed gloves ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... audience will not pay much attention to them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word—though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; their ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... eyes reverently and said, 'It is something good,' speaking, as he always did, in a baby lisp inimitable here. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... priests, and statesmen blast the human flower, Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child, Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts His baby sword even in a hero's mood. This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth: whilst specious names, Learnt ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... friends in hopes and fears In joys and griefs the same— Since first we learned in childhood's years To lisp each other's name. ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... back of his neck. He's about five foot three, both ways, one of these rolypoly boys, with dimples all over him, pink and white cheeks, and baby-blue eyes. Oh, he's cute, Benny is; but the bashfullest forty-four fat that ever carried a cane, a reg'lar Mr. Shy Ann kind of a duck. He has a lisp when he talks too, and that makes him seem ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... right in the nursery, teaching little fingers to play before the tongue can lisp a sentence. Alas! this natural training has often been stopped at school. Hitherto, until quite lately, in schools both low and high, rede-craft has had the place of honor, hand-craft has had no chance. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... had always been his misfortune to fail of his designs. Not a scrap of a warrant or other process could he obtain. Not the lisp of a word or oath would the good Squire take from his lying lips. "Get rid of your passion; go home, and work, and help me keep the peace," was Fabens' reply to all ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... his cane. John fell as if he were dead. I was looking in at the window, not thinking any harm, and saw it all. I thought he had killed John, and ran away, determined not to tell. I never breathed a lisp of it before, son, and nobody ever knew of that quarrel, only your grandfather and me. I know it troubled him greatly after John died. Oh, I can see that awful paper, as John held it up to the light, as plain as this one in my ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... her heart is high, For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, And prosperous leaves lisp busily Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring Vext twittering To ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... the audience became more enthusiastic and clamored loudly for encores. Elfreda's imitations provoked continuous laughter, and dainty Arline Thayer, looking not more than seven years old, was a delightful success from her first babyish lisp. Her song of the goblin man who stole little children to work for him in his underground cellar, with its catchy chorus of "Run away, you little children," was immediately adopted by Overton, and when later it was noised about that Ruth ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... not my notion of a reassuring appellative. And what are you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderae, which, whomsoever "Sanderae" may be, I don't want to "crisp" him; "A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his name is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter or lisp him. I've not a doubt that, whoever he is, he is probably liked and considered by some a gem. Gyp. Chamberlainianum has a political sound, and has a strong savour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and left her to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... curtsy, whisp- er, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... energy, till the Grand Duke were found. Grand Duke being found, Seckendorf remonstrated, rebuked; a thought too earnestly, some say, his temper being flurried,"—voice snuffling somewhat in alt, with lisp to help:—"so that the Grand Duke took offence; flung off in a huff: and always looked askance on the Feldmarschall from that time;" [See Lebensgeschichte des Grafen van Schmettau (by his Son: Berlin, 1806), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... cotton he had in store at any rate, and, if he really had in his grasp all the news of the rise, he might make by it a plump ten thousand dollars out of Captain Grant's "Orion." But to this end he must be sure that not a lisp of the rise would be published in the morning papers, and he must see Captain Grant and close his bargain for the "Orion's" cargo before the wires should begin to furnish additional news by the "Africa" to the evening papers. They would not, after obtaining such news, lose a moment in parading ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the dead o' the night, And he shuffles the shadows about As he gathers the stars in a nest of delight And sets there and hatches them out: The Zhederrill peers from his watery mine In scorn with the Will-o'-the-wisp, As he twinkles his eyes in a whisper of shine That ends in a luminous lisp. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... bright bloom on their complexion, and very precious necklaces on very withered necks. Among these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkably coolly dressed as to her back and shoulders, who spoke with an engaging lisp, and whose eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great deal of trouble on her part, and whose manners had that indefinable charm which so frequently attaches to the giddiness of youth. As the greater part of Mr Dombey's list were disposed to be taciturn, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly characteristic, are yet too slight to be described, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Devoid of truth, of sense and shame, Which smooths its chin and licks its lip, And mounts the pulpit with a skip, Then turning round its pretty face, To smite each fair one in the place, Relaxes half to vacant smile, And aims with trope and polished style, And lisp affected, to pourtray Its silly self in colours gay— Its fusty moral stuff t' unload, And preach itself, and not its God. Thus, wishing, doubting, trembling led, I oped your ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in his earliest infancy. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... beauty of Adalaisa asleep at the feet of naked Christ. Arnold goes pacing a dark path; there is silence among the mountains; in front of him the rustling lisp of a river, a pool.... Then it is lost and soundless. Arnold stands ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—a most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say— To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... reason to fear Aristophanes than any fool living. Oh, that he could but hear you trying to imitate the slang of Straton (See Aristophanes; Equites, 1375.) and the lisp of Alcibiades! (See Aristophanes; Vespae, 44.) You would be an inexhaustible subject. You would console him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Katy's baby had been anticipated quite as much as Katy herself, Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon's only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother's name. As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged it, scouring it with soap and sand, until ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... "Well-Spring" had fallen prey to my insatiable appetite for literature. With the story of the small boy who stole a pin, repented of and confessed that crime, and then became a good and great man, I was as familiar as if I myself had invented that ingenious and instructive tale; I could lisp the moral numbers of Watts and the didactic hymns of Wesley, and the annual reports of the American Tract Society had already revealed to me the sphere of usefulness in which my grandmother hoped I would ultimately figure with discretion and zeal. And ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... this man hath been set upon thee by Athena. Foolish one, he knoweth not in his heart that no man liveth long who fighteth with the gods; no children lisp 'father' at his knees when he returneth from war and dread conflict. Therefore, albeit he is so mighty, let him take heed lest a better than thou meet him, for one day his prudent wife shall wail in her sleep awaking all her house, bereft of her lord, the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... noise and shouting, the sun shining brightly overhead. After gazing at the horse-racing for a little time, feeling myself somewhat tired, I went up to one of the tents, and laid myself down on the grass. There was much noise in the tent. "Who will stand me?" said a voice with a slight tendency to lisp. "Will you, my lord?" "Yes," said another voice. Then there was a sound as of a piece of money banging on a table. "Lost! lost! lost!" cried several voices; and then the banging down of the money, and the "lost! lost! lost!" were frequently repeated; at last the second voice exclaimed: ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor I make choice of shall neither (Vid. Pellegrina.) lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;—or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers.—He shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... spiritual welfare; to see that they imbibed no erroneous opinions on the subject of religion; that they run into no excessive improprieties of belief as well as conduct. The child would have its father or mother to teach it to lisp the name of its Creator in prayer, or hymn His praise. But in this experimental school of instruction, if the orphans have any friends or connections able to look after their welfare, it shuts them out. It is made the duty of the governors of the institution, on taking the child, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... rankled in his heart; (So will each lover inly curse his fate, Too soon made happy and made wise too late:) I saw his features take a savage gloom, And deeply threaten for the days to come. Low spake the lass, and lisp'd and minced the while, Look'd on the lad, and faintly tried to smile; With soften'd speech and humbled tone she strove To stir the embers of departed love: While he, a tyrant, frowning walk'd before, Felt the poor purse, and sought the public door, She sadly following, in ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... When her father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe. I used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened quietly—you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune? What funny things you say when you're delirious! Father says you've been ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gently, with his engaging lisp, "I can quite understand that you shouldn't want me to have anything to do with it. The new generation is often distrustful ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they could best handle the master for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Lawrence stood erect, but rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the village. Val had come, then, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... will make Amends hereafter by some gaudy-day, When your fair child shall wear your costly gift Beside your own warm hearth, with, on her knees, Who knows? another gift of the high God, Which, maybe, shall have learned to lisp you thanks.' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... said Anne Lisbeth, "to see my darling, the count's sweet child, and press him to my heart. Certainly he must long to see me, too, the young count; no doubt he thinks of me and loves me, as in those days when he would fling his angel-arms round my neck, and lisp 'Anne Liz.' It was music to my ears. Yes, I must make an effort to see him again." She drove across the country in a grazier's cart, and then got out, and continued her journey on foot, and thus reached the count's castle. It was as great and magnificent as it had always been, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... good deal for the stage. James Bromley has seen the Overland line grow up from its ponyicy; and as Fitz-Green Halleck happily observes, none know him BUT TO LIKE HIS STYLE. He was intended for an agent. In his infancy he used to lisp ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... on the shoulder," the Port Security Officer said. "Won't you Earthmen ever learn?" The splay-tongued reptile-humanoids of Irwadi always spoke Interstellar Coine with a pronounced lisp which Ramsey found annoying, especially since it went so well with the officious and underhanded behavior for which the Irwadians were famous the ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... for you that you haven't," added the captain, shaking his head—a significant gesture, which seemed to relate to the future, rather than to the present. "If you lisp a syllable of it, you will need a patch on your skull.—Now," he continued, "what ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... wreath, the ivied wand, 'The sword in myrtles drest,' Each legend of the shadowy strand Now wakes a vision blest; As little children lisp, and tell of heaven, So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... guid auld Scotch Drink, Whether thro' wimplin worms thou jink, [winding, dodge] Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, [cream] In glorious faem, [foam] Inspire me, till I lisp an' wink, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... in a silver mist, In silver silence all the day, Save for the low, soft kiss of spray, And the lisp of sands by waters kissed, As the tide draws up ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased Grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes, Yet we can ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... man, a great diplomatist, a great tactician and an illustrious citizen and patriot. His name and his deeds will be cherished and admired as long as the English language is read or spoken, and as long as human lips lisp ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... handkerchief from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to me, the Biblical simpleton?—'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she had adventures to lisp, with all the r's liquefied into l's, and I was with her all ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not written a really good history; for ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... computed distance of 80 miles. On looking about, we found in the sand the stumps of cedar pickets, forming an antique enclosure, which, I judged, must have been the first site of the Mission of St. Ignace, founded by Pierre Marquette, upwards of a hundred and eighty years ago. Not a lisp of such a ruin had been heard by me previously. French and Indian tradition says nothing of it. The inference is, however, inevitable. Point St. Ignace draws its name from it. It was afterwards removed and fixed at the blunt peninsula, or headland, which the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... rein abruptly and crossed herself. "Holy Virgin!" she whispered, "don't lisp a word of what you heard me say, and don't ask me about ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... some persons stammer and lisp? A. Sometimes through the moistness of the tongue and brain, as in children, who cannot speak plainly nor pronounce many letters. Sometimes it happeneth by reason of the shrinking of certain sinews which go to the tongue, which are ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... "by the time he was seven years old he had read all the Waverley novels, and many of Marryat's," Mr. Compton-Rickett vaguely writes: "He was suckled on Romance, and knew his Scott and Marryat almost before he could lisp their names." That is typical of Mr. Compton-Rickett's method. Instead of contenting himself with simple and realistic sentences like Mr. Mackail's, he aims at—and certainly achieves—a kind of imitative picturesqueness. We again see his taste ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sin. But that same child caused him fresh cruel torments. Never to see her alone, from day to day, to be obliged to hide his affection for her, to have to kiss her coldly like the others, and more coldly than the others, not to be able to call her the child of his heart, not to hear her lisp the tender name of father, sometimes saddened him to a point of despair. On one or two occasions he had been allowed to take her to the Grange. Then he passed hours in ecstasy, holding her on his knees, and caressing ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... sleeves, boutonniere and ear-drops;" another "in a basque polonaise and snake bracelets;" another "in black silk dress and bonnet, gold eye-glasses and black kid gloves." One lady wore "a small bonnet made of gaudy-colored birds' wings;" one "spoke with a pretty lisp, was attired in a box-pleated satin skirt, velvet newmarket basque polonaise, hollyhock corsage bouquet;" another "addressed the meeting in low tones and a poke bonnet;" still another "discussed the question in a velvet bonnet and plain linen collar." "A ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Each boist'rous passion she'd control, And early humanise the soul, The noblest notions would inspire, As they were sitting by the fire; Her offspring, conscious of her care, Transported hung around her chair. Of Scripture heroes would she tell, Whose names they'd lisp, ere they could spell; Then the delighted mother smiles, And shews the story in the tiles. At other times her themes would be, The sages of antiquity; Who left a glorious name behind, By being blessings ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... dye, in that rough mesh, The sea has only just o'er-whispered! Live whelks, each lip's beard dripping fresh, As if they still the water's lisp heard ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... days of sadness and doubt all look for comfort and find it in their old poet. He is the intimate fireside friend, the faithful companion of the invalid; his is the first book over which the faces of affianced lovers bend; his verses are the first that children lisp and the last that grand-sires repeat. No poet is so loved as he. Every Dutchman smiles when he hears his name spoken, and no foreigner who has been in Holland can help naming it with a feeling of ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... like this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, "God bless Papa and Mamma!" and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... and Lisping (Literal Dysarthria).—Children just beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly. They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the persons most intimately ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... they say, are not valued at all, Except when the herd give a Bachelor's ball. Then drest in their best, In their gold broidered vest, It is known as a fact, That they act with much tact, And they lisp out 'How do?' And they coo and they woo, And they smile, for a while, Their fair guests to beguile; Condescending and bending, For fear of offending, Though inert, And they spy, They exert, With their eye, To be pert, And they sigh And to flirt, As ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... That's the way to publish, White-Jacket," turning to me—"fire it right into 'em; every canto a twenty-four-pound shot; hull the blockheads, whether they will or no. And mind you, Lemsford, when your shot does the most execution, your hear the least from the foe. A killed man cannot even lisp." ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... cousins the Persians, have fancies more luminous occurred. The Persians so polished their dreams that they entranced the world that was. Poets can do no more. The Hindus too were poets. They were children as well. Their first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech, is audible still in the Rig-Veda, a bundle of hymns tied together, four thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of the latter led to that of the Sun and ignited the antique altars. It flamed in Persia, lit perhaps ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. "I wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at him!—Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp. Little girl—oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—for you have done nothing to me, child, that can match ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of little white whiskers. And his grey eyes, compressed mouth and square and obstinate chin lent an expression of great austerity to his long face. The grief of his life was that, being afflicted with a somewhat childish lisp, he had never been able to make his full merits known when a public prosecutor, for he esteemed himself to be a great orator. And this secret worry rendered him morose. In him appeared an incarnation of that old royalist France which sulked ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... clammy-cold shroud on it Hitherward comes, or a flower-like star! Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it— Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar. Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it, Never is lisp or the ripple of rain: Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it, Flame without limit and frost without wane! Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them, Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale; Ghastly, with boughs ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... not hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of doing so. His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire; but the motive, which he was just old enough to lisp out, was also his excuse: 'A pitty baze [pretty blaze], mamma.' Imagination soon came to his rescue. It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and round the dining-room table supporting himself ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... dear to me, With murmur'd tone of evening prayer; When with hands clasp'd upon your knee, And learned to lisp "Our ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... in the garden with him! Good night, or, as my ancestors—don't forget, MY ANCESTORS—used to say: 'Buena noche—hasta manana!'" She lingered over the Spanish syllables with an imitation of Dona Anna's lisp, and with another smile, but more faint and more ghostlike than before; vanished with ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she spoke to him. He had gone in with Rose Geary, a blonde fairy-like little ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... tones of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with the thickish lisp and slurring of the consonants that distinguished his utterance when he sought to appear more simple and candid ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... then the first wish found a home in my breast To increase as time hurries along; 'Twas then I first learned to lisp softly the words Which I ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... their big coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is all arranged, and I'm the captain. And is it agreed that we won't lisp a word to Mr. Watson ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... erroneous belief grows in proportion to the body, and by the time this child has arrived at the age of maturity, she is as densely ignorant of the cunning of this doctrine as she was when she first learned to repeat the Catechism with a childish lisp. ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... like that fluent sweet-tongu'd Greek, Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain By Art he gladly found what he did seek A full requital of his, striving pain Art can do much, but this maxima's most sure A weak or ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the fashionable lisp of the fifties, always substituting 'th' for 's'). How do you ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... takes note of a figger coming up from the cuddy, which I made out at once for my Master Ned, spite of his wig and a pair o' high-heeled boots, as gave him the walk of a chap treading amongst eggs. When I hears him lisp out to the skipper at the round-house if there was any fear of wind, 'twas all I could do to keep the juice in my cheek. Away he goes up to windward, holding on by everything, to look over the bulwarks behind his sweetheart, givin' me a glance over his shoulder. At night I see the two hold a sort ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... tremendous questions with an effeminate lisp, and harangued on them with small feeble gesticulations of pale ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weep. Her tears fell on her lover's face, but they were tears of joy; and with them were mingled tiny bursts of laughter and a thousand endearing words without sense, like the lisp of a little child. She quite forgot that the sight of her joy might sadden the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... speak plain. Grandma couldn't speak plain. They lisp. They talk fast. Sound so funny. Mama and auntie speak well. Plain as I do now. They was up wid Mars White's childern more. Mars White sent his childern to pay school. It was a log house and they had a lady teacher. They had a accordion. Mars ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... conscience, for he paid me nothing, and was not over free with the meat and the drink, though I must say of him that he was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of which he was very proud; so much so, that he once told me that when he had saved a certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, and enter Parliament; into which, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... H-m!—have you? And you think you yourself will be retiring home presently on the proceeds of the said mine? H-m! again. There is a certain familiarity in your description of the gentleman. Tell me, has this Hibernian philanthropist a slight squint, a broken nose and a tendency to lisp in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... of such natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; such motions as these may imperceptibly happen in us. There are other ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the happy day arrives in which you set your feet upon the Path and begin your pilgrimage, the world will know nothing of it; earth no longer understands you; you no longer understand each other. Men who attain a knowledge of these things, who lisp a few syllables of the Word, often have not where to lay their head; hunted like beasts they perish on the scaffold, to the joy of assembled peoples, while Angels open to them the gates of heaven. Therefore, your destiny is a secret between yourself and God, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... gate, Spunyarn grasps his friend and companion in sorrow warmly by the hand, his bronzed face brightens with an air of satisfaction, and like pure water gushing from the rude rock his eyes fill with tears. How honest, how touching, how pure the friendly lisp-good bye! "Keep up a strong heart, Tom,—never mind me. I don't know by what right I'm kept here, and starved; but I expect to get out one of these days; and when I do you may reckon on me as your ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... it is! How soft The breezes blow! The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low; Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower. And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land, And ever quieter the hush—a ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... womanhood, rich, glorious, and warm? Like a sunbeam, like a shadow, she flitted through the corridors and galleries of the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and whenever he had sought to point her out to some one, to discover her name, lo, she was gone! Tormenting mystery! Ah, that soft lisp of hers, those enchanting caprices, those amazing extravagances of fancy, that wit which possessed the sparkle of white chambertin! He would never forget that summer night when, dressed as a boy, she had gone with him swashbuckling along the quays. And for all these meetings, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben, For ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Fadlallah, humbled yet resolved, returned to his house, leading the ragged Halil, and entered his wife's chamber. Selima was playing with her seventh child, and teaching it to lisp the word "Baba"—about the amount of education which she had found time to bestow on each of her offspring. When she saw the plight of her eldest son she frowned, and was about to scold him; but Fadlallah interposed, and said, "Wife, speak no harsh words. We have not done our ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... rosy-cheeked babe. How it came to pass none could tell, but we all thought that the cot must have been fastened to a board, which became detached from the cot at the very moment when the sea threw it on the land. The babe was just able to lisp her name—'Angela,' which corresponded with the name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two different vessels. The little ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... as we are able to read, by the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and castles, and monsters and monstrosities of every name. The exceedingly impressible and poetical nature of children (for all children are poets and talk poetry as soon as they can lisp) appropriates and absorbs with intense relish these fanciful myths, and for years they believe more firmly in their truth than in the realities of the actual world. And I more than suspect that this child-credulity rather slumbers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Lord Dereham is more like a little white rat than a man, and swears more than he converses—which would be very shocking if it were not for his lisp, which makes it very funny—needless to say, my diary dear, your Molly is not in love with him—He ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden. It may lisp only and in smooth phrases, such as "prunes" and "prisms"; and, moreover, the host further insures it against molestation by the diffusion of an exceptionally powerful odour, which, though to my ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was wont to say, with his inimitable lisp—"no, thuh, you can't keep a good man down. 'Tain't no use a-talkin', you jeth can't. It don't do me no harm to go back to rubbin' now an' then. It jeth nachully keepth me on good termth with ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... lisp, and her accent was so outlandish that the men scarce understood what she said; but this they saw, that she wanted to go and draw water from the well, and they opened the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... thee one tributary song The simple Muse, admiring, fain would bring; She longs to lisp thee to the listening throng, And with thy name to bid the woodlands ring. Fain would she blazon all thy virtues forth, Thy warm philanthropy, thy justice mild, Would say how thou didst foster kindred ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... that dwell in Olympus. But against thee azure-eyed goddess Minerva has excited this man. Infatuate! nor does the son of Tydeus know this in his mind, that he is by no means long-lived who fights with the immortals, nor ever at his knees will sons lisp a father's name, as he returns from war and dreadful battle. Therefore, let the son of Tydeus now, though he be very brave, have a care, lest a better than thou fight with him: lest at a future time AEgialea, the very prudent daughter of Adrastus, the noble spouse of horse-taming Diomede, grieving, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... together. Ann, my good Ann, thou who first taught me to lisp a thanksgiving and a request, kneel here by my side—and you, too, mademoiselle; though of a different creed, we have a common God! Cousin John, you pray often, I know, though so little apt to show your emotions; there is a place for you, too, with ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... lisp from the waters: the skies were not silenter. Peace Was between them; a passionless rapture of respite as soft as release. Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient delight The soul and the body, clothed round with ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... kind winsome wifie, A clean canty hame, An' smilin' sweet babies To lisp the dear name; Wi' plenty o' labour, An' health to endure, Make time to row round aye ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... orders other than humanity and growing old in their respective acts, even thus they become human beings that are, of course, ordained to return. Coming to sinful births and becoming Chandalas or human beings that are deaf or that lisp indistinctly, they attain to higher and higher castes, one after another in proper turn, transcending the Sudra order, and other (consequences of) qualities that appertain to Darkness and that abide in it in course of migrations in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... interest and respect felt in the hotel for this stranger. That he knew French was not strange. He had been well educated as a boy and had had his hour with the classics. His godmother, who had been in the household of Prince Joseph Bonaparte, taught him French from the time he could lisp, and, what was dangerous in his father's eyes, filled him with bits of poetry and fine language, so that he knew Heine, Racine and Beranger and many another. But this was made endurable to the father by the fact that, by ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings, no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp—they had nothing to bring back out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That way everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... Babies are troublesome things, anyway, where folks are awful poor and where there are no servants and the mother is not so very strong. And so Mary became the baby's own little foster-mother, and she carried him about, and long before he could lisp a word she had told him all the hopes and secrets of her heart, and he cooed and laughed, and lying on the floor, kicked his heels in the air and treated hope and love and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orleans had not long been in power, before France showed that Versailles had ceased to control her literature. A new Rabelais with an 18th century lisp, Montesquieu, by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a sauce piquante compounded of indecency and style, succeeded in making the public swallow some incendiary morsels. The King of France, he declared, drew his power from ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... to the very letter. Sidney says, writing in 1578, "I think, ere it be long, like the mountebanks in Italy, we travellers shall be made sport of in comedies." Twenty years afterwards, Shakespeare makes Rosalind say in "As You Like It", "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you; lisp, and wear strange suits. Disable all the benefits of your own country. Be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... lisp thousands of children speaking the "Songs of Seven" as a first "piece" at school. How Emerson loved the columbine! Dr. Prior says the flower was given its name because "of the resemblance of the nectaries to the heads of pigeons in a ring around a dish - a favorite ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a man of letters, amongst whom to his surprise, he saw Mr. and Mrs. Holcroft, when, to incite to a renewal of their late dispute, and before witnesses, (in the full consciousness of strength) Mr. C. enforced the propriety of teaching children, as soon as they could articulate, to lisp the praises of their Maker; "for," said he, "though they can, form no correct idea of God, yet they entertain a high opinion of their father, and it is an easy introduction to the truth, to tell them that their Heavenly ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... which Pope received pleased him much. But he took it only as his due, and his great ambition was to make people believe that he had been a wonderfully clever child, and that he had begun to write when he was very young. He says of himself with something of pompousness, "I lisp'd in ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... from a jarrito (little earthen jar); the portly and well-looking padre prior del Carden (the Carmelite friar), sauntering up the lane at a leisurely pace, all the little ragged boys, down to the merest urchin that can hardly lisp, dragging off their large, well-holed hats, with a "Buenos das, padrecito!" (Good-morning, little father!)—the father replying with a benevolent smile, and a slight sound in his throat intended for a Benedicite; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca |
