"Stammering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost every imaginable variety of circumstances in common life. There are in this case two considerations that make it the more wonderful; the one, that he is a person of very low genius, having, besides a stammering which makes his speech almost unintelligible to strangers, so wild and awkward a manner of behaviour, that he is frequently taken for an idiot, and seems in many things to be indeed so;—the other, that he grew ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... stammering I repeat, Thy country's tongue shalt teach; 'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet Than my own native speech; For thou no other tongue didst know, When, scarcely twenty moons ago, Upon Tahite's beach, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... that the serjeant did not speak, asked him, What his business was? when the latter with a stammering voice began the following apology: "I hope, sir, your honour will not be angry, nor take anything amiss of me. I do assure you, it was not of my seeking, nay, I dare not proceed in the matter without first ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the school before the hymn was learned, and Kitty felt very much ashamed when, after stammering through three verses, Mrs. Mordaunt gave her back the book, saying, "I would rather have no lesson from you, Kitty, than one learned so carelessly as this." However, it was too late to repair the fault, so Kitty resolved to give her very best attention to the chapter they were going to read. ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... which sent the blood coursing through my veins, and my heart into my mouth. It was a voice inside the wall,—the minister's well-known voice. I would have been prepared for it in any kind of adjuration, but I was not prepared for what I heard. It came out with a sort of stammering, as if too much moved for utterance. "Willie, Willie! Oh, God preserve us! is ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Stammering, blushing, and looking both sheepish and gratified, Tom suddenly bolted, leaving the elder lady to enlighten the younger at length, and have another laugh over this new sort of courtship, which might well be called accidental. Nan was deeply interested, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... say, sir; Mr. Jermin's a very good man; but then—" Here the mate looked marlinespikes at Bungs; and Bungs, after stammering out something, looked straight down to a seam in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... and your own sense and your own nobility will stay with you, the way it will not weigh so heavy on you to be in the shape of birds. And go away out of my sight now, children of Lir," she said, "with your white faces, with your stammering Irish. It is a great curse on tender lads, they to be driven out on the rough wind. Nine hundred years to be on the water, it is a long time for any one to be in pain; it is I put this on you through treachery, it is best for you to do ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... country." They spent many an evening together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable state; and, on some one asking "Who is this?" stammering out "Wilberforce." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with the dramatist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork-screw condition: and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr. C——, who "had no notion of meeting ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... insects all that ply the wing. The sister swift of Philomel, Intent on business, prosper'd well; In spite of the complaining pest, The insects carried to her nest— Nest pitiless to suffering flies— Mouths gaping aye, to gormandize, Of young ones clamouring, And stammering, With unintelligible cries. The spider, with but head and feet. And powerless to compete With wings so fleet, Soon saw herself a prey. The swallow, passing swiftly by, Bore web and all away, The spinster dangling ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... his exclamation Amelie recovered, if not her strength, at least her will. She rose, and, stammering, "Be quiet, Edouard! Be quite, in Heaven's name! I'm all right," she clung to the balustrade with one hand, and leaning with the other on the child, she had continued to descend. On the last step she met ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the memorial service the old Presbyterian minister, whom we had all known and loved since infancy, talked tenderly and with great sympathy to us for a few minutes and the stammering young Baptist divine gave us an insight into a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for there were then a few scattered congregations of Christians in Gaul, though the faith was not yet known through the land. And the priest, seeing something wistful in the rude porter's eye, something that seemed dumbly to ask for love, asked him if he prayed; and the porter with a stammering tongue said some words of the gods of the land; but the priest, who loved to let the good seed fall even by the wayside, told him of the Father of all, and of the Divine Son who came to teach the world the truth, and was slain by ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Harry do but draw back, stammering and looking foolish under the cold glance Duke Hamilton bestowed on him. Prudence counselled, "Withdraw. What do you here?" Angry Love retorted, "Here I stay. What! Shall I leave the field to a rival?" And so, flung himself in a chair glaring defiance, Elizabeth palpitating between ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Presently, in stammering, halting phrases, but in words that showed no lack of education, the wretched creature attempted to apologize for his unseemly eagerness, and endeavored to thank his benefactor. "I suppose, sir, there is no use trying to deny my identity," he said, when ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... popular eloquence is at a discount among the cultivated classes in England. They prefer to read at their leisure. Popular eloquence best thrives in democracies, as in that of ancient Athens; aristocrats disdain it, and fear it. In their contempt for it they even affect hesitation and stammering, not only when called upon to speak in public, but also in social converse, until the halting style has come to be known among Americans as "very English." In absolute monarchies eloquence is rare except in the pulpit or at the bar. Cicero would ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... getting into the sleigh, and crushed it so, that Hetty could hardly dance for the pain, I began to feel an unusual degree of confidence in myself, which I fortified by a stern resolution, on no account to get to blushing and stammering, but to walk coolly up to the handsomest girls and ask them out on the floor with all the self-possessed gallantry of a man of ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the occupants of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on the sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door. Then he flew to his room with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but the impatient William of Yuba ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... articulation is of such importance, that without it speech or reading becomes not only inelegant, but often absolutely unintelligible. The opposite faults are mumbling, muttering, mincing, lisping, slurring, mouthing, drawling, hesitating, stammering, misreading, and the like. "A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such a distinction between the syllables of which words are composed, that the ear shall ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... bending down in terror over the housekeeper, who lay on the floor. In his shock and bewilderment he imagined that she too had been murdered, until he realised that it was only a swoon from which she recovered in a moment. He helped her regain her feet and she looked about as if still dazed, stammering: ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... and the doctor appeared, Jeanne darted toward him, stammering out what she knew of the accident, but seeing the nurse exchange a meaning glance with the doctor, she stopped to ask him: "Is it serious? Do ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... stammered, couldn't organize a sane word, amused Fenwick intensely. Of course he was, so to speak, quite at home—understood the position thoroughly. But he wasn't going to torment the doctor. He was only making it impossible for him to avoid confession, for his own sake. He did not wait for the stammering to take ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... what all perceived, to hide. While the boy-bridegroom, shuffling in his pace, Now hid awhile, and then exposed his face; As shame alternately with anger strove The brain, confused with muddy ale, to move, In haste and stammering he perform'd his part, And look'd the rage that 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, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... maid-of-all-work, who had swallowed a spoon of soup with great discomfort, sprang up, all in a tremble, stammering with defiant virtue: ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... the moonlit drive. She had removed herself from her Dudley's embraces, for she wished to be alone, to think. The engagement had been announced. All that part of it was over—Dudley's stammering speech, the unrestrained delight of Polly Wetherby, the facetious rendering of 'The Wedding Glide' on the piano by Roscoe Sherriff, and it now remained for her to try to discover a way of conveying ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Time, misery is the soul's familiar, anguish is the gate of truth, and the highest moments of bliss are, as the Socrates of Plato affirms, negative. They are the moments of oblivion, when the manacles of Time fall off, whether from stress of agony or delight or mere weariness. Therefore with stammering lips man congratulates joy, but the response of grief to grief is quick and from the heart, sanctioned by the Unconscious; therefore in the portraiture of Heaven art fails, but in that ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the Babylonish curse Straight confound my stammering verse If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant,) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in my terms relate Half my love, or half my hate; For I hate, yet love thee so, That whichever thing I show, The ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... STAMMERING.—This may be inherited to some extent; excitement, nervousness, bodily fatigue, want of rest, etc., make ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the word of a true Knight's son," said the boy, stammering, in his eagerness, "believe me, trust me, dear uncle—and go not to this fearful Castle. It is a trap—a snare laid to be your ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the field of psychology. Quite near stand chorea and the epidemic impulses to imitative movements. And we might bring into this neighborhood also the disturbance in the equilibrium of the speech movements through all degrees of stammering and severe impairment. Up to a certain degree, though not often completely, they too ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... Slav. It is generally held now that the Slavs gave themselves the name as being 'the intelligible,' or 'the intelligibly speaking' people; as in the case of many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as 'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen's ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... groveling on the floor, pulled her gray locks into wild confusion, and uttered a cry of mingled rage and grief. "He asks that? he asks that?" she cried, stammering and choking, "when he has murdered my ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... passion. Plainly that was just what he had told the queen. And now he began to bluster, after his wont, stammering with rage. He had forgotten what we must have told ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Now, only see, since yesterday I have been thinking how many persons there are, even in my own family, who I would rather should have died than poor D'Harville. My nephew Emberval, for instance, who is so tiresome with his stammering; or your aunt Merinville, who is always talking of her nerves, her blues, and who swallows every day, while waiting for her dinner, an abominable potpie, just like a bricklayer's wife! Do you think much ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... pleasure, and as he was stammering out a few words, the door opened for the third time, and Catenac made his appearance. To cover the lateness of his arrival, he had clothed his face in smiles, and advanced with outstretched hands toward his confederates; but Mascarin's look and manner were so menacing, that he recoiled a few ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... the stammering and stuttering, the unending doubtings and guessings, to understand fully the power of a mathematical screw.—Harv. Reg., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... her out of the ambulance after receiving them with a grave salute, and regretted that, in the absence of Major Carew, there was no one but himself to receive them. He was evidently a trifle shy and embarrassed, stammering a little as he offered his services to superintend the pitching of their camp, with eyes that would wander from the elder cousin to Diana's ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... replied the idiot, stammering still most painfully, "a dark-brown shooting-jacket, and a big straw hat. His trousers ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... lack of external bonds" (speaking deliberately, for she wanted to remember this crisis of her life as accurate in all its minutiae); "but there is a primal unity, a mysterious sympathy, in power and emotion. At least, so it seems to me," suddenly stammering and picking up Hero to avoid looking at McCall, who stood in front ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... with weak and vacillating words and stammering tongue, our bravest men to-day say freedom to woman, what can we hope when the millions educated in despotism, ignorant of the philosophy of true government, religion and social life, shall be our judges and rulers? As you go down in the scale of manhood, the idea strengthens at every step, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... him standing there, stammering incoherently like a man awakening from a nightmare, and ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I take every occasion of making this protest) write, so to say, in a dead language and for a dead people, than write in those deaf and stammering (sorde e mute) tongues, French and English, notwithstanding they are the fashion with their rules and exercises." This is so with me. Alfieri wrote these words a hundred years ago, and they express what is in my own mind. I would like better to make even one good verse in the language in which ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... of Anthony. He felt like a stammering fool when Anthony was around. That was why he had invited himself to luncheon. Old ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ran to Setanta, and kneeling down he took him by his right hand, and said, "I am thy man from this day forward." And after that he arose and kissed him, and standing by his side cried, "O Cumascra Mend Macha, O stammering son of Concobar, if ever I was a shield to thee against thy mockers, come hither; and thou too come O Art Storm-Ear, and thou Art of the Shadow, and thou O Fionn of the Songs, and you O Ide and Sheeling, who were nursed at the same breast and knee with ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... as his august father, neither was his face so handsome; and, unfortunately, he was afflicted with an extreme deafness, which made him raise his voice without knowing it, and in addition to this his utterance was impeded by a slight stammering. This prince was grave and studious; and the Emperor recognized his merit, but did not rely upon his friendship. This was not because he thought him wanting in loyalty, for the prince royal was above such suspicion; but the Emperor was aware that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... time; then, shaking and stammering with that inward rage that seemed to heave like molten lava in his breast, without ever coming to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and a half centuries with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it is still imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of England. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... proceeded to state to him my business. He became much agitated when I mentioned the Testaments to him; but I no sooner spoke of the Bible Society and told him who I was, than he could contain himself no longer: with a stammering tongue, and with eyes flashing fire like hot coals, he proceeded to rail against the society and myself, saying that the aims of the first were atrocious, and that, as to myself, he was surprised that, being once lodged in the prison of Madrid, I had ever ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... g-get out of here," cried Grace. Later they had time to laugh at the chattering teeth that made it impossible to say anything without stammering—but it seemed anything but funny to them then. "Let's ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... fire-tipped arrows, and my kindling breath Are all the weapons I shall need to-day. Nor shall my tale in measured cadence play About the golden lyre of Gods long gone, Nor dim and doubtful 'twixt the ocean's moan Wail out about the Northern fiddle-bow, Stammering with pride or quivering shrill with woe. Rather caught up at hazard is the pipe That mixed with scent of roses over ripe, And murmur of the summer afternoon, May charm you somewhat with its wavering tune 'Twixt joy and sadness: whatsoe'er it saith, I know at least there ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... subterfuges,—subterfuges honest in such position,—of which a dozen would have been at once at the command of any woman, and with one of which, sufficient for the moment, most men would have been able to arm themselves. "Indeed, yes," he said, almost stammering as he spoke. "It was lately;—since your wife went there." Trevelyan, though he had been told of the possibility of Mr. Glascock's courtship, felt himself almost aggrieved by this man's intrusion on his wife's retreat. Had he not sent her there ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Samuel Wesley, halting awkwardly (as a hobbledehoy will) before this slip of a girl and stammering some words meant to comfort her for losing her sister, presently found himself answering strange questions, staring into young eyes which had somehow surprised his own doubts of Dissent, and beyond them into a mind which had come to its own decision and quietly, firmly, invited him to follow. ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hours, hours that she could not count, she would fancy that she heard a stumbling walk in the street; then a vinous voice would mount the stairs, stammering "Canaille! canaille of a saloon-keeper!—you sold me the kind of wine ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... sir," he exclaimed, drying his eyes, and pouring into the words a world of expression, which it was no light pleasure to have heard. But Eric spoke less impulsively, and while the two boys were stammering out their deep gratitude, a timid hand knocked at the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Sally and Oscar would just act like people," said Mrs. Steve once in exasperation. "They get me so nervous stammering at each other that I drop everything I lay my hands on, and I feel as if I'd robbed somebody for the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... creatures pityingly because they are dumb. If one of his own children is born dumb, he counts it a tragedy. Even that mere hesitation in speech, know as stammering, he deems a misfortune. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... said the captain; "then he is my man, for he must have his hand in, and there will be no stammering or boggling. Ay, ay; he will fetch through on one tack. Toast, go below, and present my compliments to Mr. Effingham, and say I should like to speak to him; and, harkee, Toast, desire him to put a prayer-book in his pocket, and then step into my state-room, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... limbs swathed in flannel, the wide wrapping-gown and nightcap, showed illness; but the dimmed eye, once so replete with living fire—the blabber lip, whose dilation and compression used to give such character to his animated countenance—the stammering tongue, that once poured forth such floods of masculine eloquence, and had often swayed the opinion of the sages whom he addressed,—all these sad symptoms evinced that my friend was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... themselves heard at a distance, and in adapting the loudness of the voice to the distance which separates them from those to whom they want to speak. This is the real way to learn pronunciation, not by stammering out a few vowels into the ear of an attentive governess. So when you question a peasant child, he may be too shy to answer, but what he says he says distinctly, while the nurse must serve as interpreter for the town child; without her one can understand nothing of what ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Marie's bed and beheld her, stammering entreaties with joined hands, he again paused. "And you, too, my daughter, you are in a hurry?" he said. "Be easy, there is grace enough in heaven ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... posts that supported a canopy. She couldn't pray. She didn't know what to pray for. Conventional petitions would have had no meaning, and for the moment she had no others to offer up. It was but half consciously that she found herself stammering: "Abba—Father! Abba—Father!" her lips moving ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... under foreman, sent his eyes darting from face to face. In his manner was a curious mingling of bravado and diffidence—a lumbering body, a shrinking way of holding himself, a stammering foreign accent and phrasing. But in spite of it there was ample ground for Torrance's persistent suspicions. Perhaps it was the darting, all-seeing eyes, perhaps the exaggeration of diffidence, but Koppy gave the impression of ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... world of wrong They come; God gives us them awhile. His speech is in their stammering tongue, And his forgiveness in ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and nature drove them inward, concentrating, fortifying, intensifying them; to a not wholly normal or healthy brain, freakish and without consecution, adding a stammering tongue which could not speak evenly, and had to do its share, as the brain did, 'by fits.' 'You,' we find Lamb writing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... ask for a few words alone with Knight that Easter morning, in order to explain as well as apologize for the "seeming liberty he had taken." By dint of stammering, and punctuating his sentences with short, dry coughs, he made "a clean breast," as he called it, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... so surprised at the soft, sad tone of his voice, that she replied, stammering with embarrassment, "And worthy of you also, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of moderate to me," broke in Judge Priest. He shoved a pudgy hand into a pocket of his white trousers. "I reckin this detail kin be arranged. Here, Peep"—he extended his hand—"here's your dollar." Then, as the other drew back, stammering a refusal, he hastily added: "No, no, no; go ahead and take it—it's yours. I'm jest advancin' it to you out of whut'll be comin' to ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... makes love to the innkeeper's daughter. Estelle noticed with great surprise that not only did Nina deliver the English maiden's retorts without any of the saucy spirit that the situation demanded, but also that she was quite confused about the words, stammering and hesitating, and getting through them in the most perfunctory manner. At last, when the little Capitaine Crepin says, "Bewitching maid, say you will fly with me!" Clara's reply is, "You forget I am to be married to-morrow—see, here comes ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... even further afield, following Emperor or Pope to that Monteaperti which made Arbia run colour of wine, or shrill Benevento, or Altopasdo which cost the Florentines so dear.[1] But Ilaria stayed at home to trifle with lap-dogs and jongleurs under the orange trees: heard boys make stammering love, and laughed lightly at their Decameron travesty, being too proud to be ashamed or angered; and sometimes (for she was not too proud but that love should be of the party), she pulled a ring from one lithe finger, and looked down while ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... languishing smiles, and first caressing, stammering utterance of love, you who can be seen, who are you? Are you less in God's sight than all the rest, beautiful cherubim who soar in the alcove and who bring to this world man awakened from the dream divine! Ah! dear children of pleasure, how your mother ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Stammering a dead leaf fled, Filled with elemental fear Of some dark destruction near— One, whose glowworm eyes I saw Hag with flame the crooked haw, Which the moon clutched like ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... I have read in the newspapers,' said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little, 'that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am one: far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far from it), he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It being now the afternoon in the—College—of which you are the eminent head, the young ladies might gain ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... his voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt. Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all, and his face was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great sympathy would have flared from ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... his seat and stopped his stammering gratitude by saying: "Hold on, now; don't make such a fuss over a little thing. When I see a man down, an' things all on top of 'm, I jest like t' kick 'em off an' help 'm up. That's the kind of religion I got, an' it's ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... know—I thought—nobody ever told me," said Ralph, stammering and catching at the word which came uppermost, as he had done in college when Professor Thriepneuk, who was as fierce in the class-room as he was mild at home, had him cornered ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... that he was informed by Demosthenes himself, now grown old, that the ways he made use of to remedy his natural bodily infirmities and defects were such as these; his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation he overcame and rendered more distinct by speaking with pebbles in his mouth; his voice he disciplined by declaiming and reciting speeches or verses when he was out of breath, while running or going up steep places; and that in his house he had a large looking-glass, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... So, stammering a little and pale, I performed the required hypocrisy, after which my uncle read aloud for my benefit the line or two in which were recorded the event, and the latitude and longitude of the vessel at the time, of which Madame made a note in her memory, for the purpose of making ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... heard, and participation in debate was open to all whom the spirit moved. One whom the spirit did very frequently move was Sidney's fellow-lodger; he had no gift of expression whatever, but his brief, stammering protests against this or that social wrong had such an honest, indeed such a pathetic sound, that Sidney took an opportunity of walking home with him and converting neighbourship into friendly acquaintance. John Hewett gave the young man an account of his life. He ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... when I opened my Bible this iss the word I will see, 'That thou doest do quickly,' and I knew it wass my sins that had brought great judgments on the people, and turned the minister into a man of stammering lips ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... boy, he was educated in the famous old Christ's Hospital School in London, but when he was ready for college he found himself barred by his stammering, stuttering tongue. Giving up his hope of further schooling, he was glad to take a small clerkship in a government office, where he remained for thirty-three years, a long period with little or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... reinvigorates the consciousness of our own powers by recalling and confirming our own unvalued sensations and perceptions, gives classic shape to our own amorphous imaginings, and adequate utterance to our own stammering conceptions or emotions. The poet's office is to be a Voice, not of one crying in the wilderness to a knot of already magnetized acolytes, but singing amid the throng of men, and lifting their common aspirations and sympathies (so first clearly revealed to themselves) ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the University for the sake of reading papers on natural science and discussing them. I used regularly to attend, and the meetings had a good effect on me in stimulating my zeal and giving me new congenial acquaintances. One evening a poor young man got up, and after stammering for a prodigious length of time, blushing crimson, he at last slowly got out the words, "Mr. President, I have forgotten what I was going to say." The poor fellow looked quite overwhelmed, and all the members were so surprised that no one could think of a word ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... showed her face soaked with tears, and throwing herself upon her sister, she kissed her with all her might, stammering: ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Thinking, from a depression of spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once laboring under, that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked him earnestly in the face as they were walking one day in the country together, and blurted out, in his stammering way, "My dear boy, I have a hundred-pound note in my desk that I really don't know what to do with: oblige me by taking it and getting the confounded thing out of my keeping." "I was in no need of money," said Procter, "and I declined the gift; but it was hard work to make Lamb believe ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... burst out into the corridor, then walked sedately under the flickering lamps toward the commandant's rooms. That yellow-visaged man jumped up from behind his desk, stammering: ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Brentano's clerk. D'Invilliers was partially taken in and wholly delighted. In a good-natured way he had almost decided that Princeton was one part deadly Philistines and one part deadly grinds, and to find a person who could mention Keats without stammering, yet evidently washed his hands, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... desiring Ephraim to proceed, I returned. When I entered the parlour, Susannah Temple was resting her face in her hands and weeping. The opening of the door made her start up; she perceived that it was I, and she turned away. "I beg your pardon, I left the newspaper," said I, stammering. I was about to throw myself at her feet, declare my sincere affection, and give up all idea of finding my father until we were married, when she, without saying a word, passed quickly by me and hastened out of the room. "She loves me then," thought I; "thank God:—I will not go yet, I will speak ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... part of myself. English was for me neither a matter of choice nor adoption. The merest idea of choice had never entered my head. And as to adoption—well, yes, there was adoption; but it was I who was adopted by the genius of the language, which directly I came out of the stammering stage made me its own so completely that its very idioms I truly believe had a direct action on my temperament and ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... minute passed and the silence endured, for the smouldering wrath of the king and queen choked the channels of their speech. Then the wise woman turned her back on them, and so stood. At this, the rage of the king broke forth; and he cried to the queen, stammering in his fierceness,— ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... figure, was enough to show that it was no rash utterance, such as many a combatant makes, to withdraw from it one hour after. Sir Tom, in his amazement, felt his very words come back to him; he did not know what to say. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, almost stammering in his consternation, "that whatever I may think or advise, and however mad this proceeding may be, you have made up your mind to carry it out whether ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... return to a mood of silent depression; her eyes made one think that she must have often shed tears of late. In the past twelvemonth she had noticeably aged; her beauty was vanishing; a nervous tremor often affected her thin hands, and in her speech there was at times a stammering uncertainty, such as comes of mental distress. Dr. Derwent, seeing her after two months' absence, was gravely observant ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.... The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman—couldn't conceal—knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... to be. His wife was the next person whom he addressed. "Who—who—who," he said, stammering with rage, "who asked this impudent fanatic into the house? ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... sexless eunuchs, who would stammer as I had heard them stammer in the old days when I had seen them trafficking things they had been donated by officials desirous of cultivating their friendship, in the mysterious curio shops beyond the great Ch'ien Men Gate. Nor was I wrong. Stammering, they replied by asking how it was that orders had been broken. Stammering, they said that all the great generals had promised that the inner Palaces were to be kept immune; now men were for ever climbing in, and others were coming ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... opened his eyes again; and as they were holding his hands tightly, perhaps this warm living contact gave him a momentary strength, for his gaze quickened and a vague stammering sound came to his lips. The words were not yet distinguishable. The panting breath of the multitude could be heard through the silence. Their eyes had an inward flame, because all ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... came upon him, he felt himself to be a "little stammering child," and he always declared that without this Spirit he could not comprehend even his own writings—"when He parteth from me, I know nothing but the elementary and earthly things of this world"[6]—but with this divine Spirit unfolding within him "the profoundest ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... and commanding presence are powerful auxiliaries towards oratorical success; but Curran's appearance was so mean that he was once taken for a shoeblack. His stammering, blunders, and collapses in early life earned for him the nickname of "Orator Mum." Yet to what a lofty eminence did not ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Stammering out his name he drew from his pocket the battered photograph and the shattered letter, and proceeded at once to business. Lilian Ashford blushed, and Tom blushed—that is to say, they both blushed. When he had presented his relics, he ventured to look in her face. The living ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... blood of a false pride, a false humility, surged to my brain and sang in my ears; and as the young man stepped forward with outstretched hand, crying, "A compatriot. Welcome, monsieur!" I drew back, stammering with anger. "My name is Jacques De Arthenay!"[3] I said. "I am an American, a shoemaker, and the son of ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... round along the shaft forward to the point, and again it runs to the grip. And that troop sat down on the left hand of the leader of the first troop, and it is thus they sat down, with their knees to the ground, and the rims of their shields against their chins. And I thought there was stammering in the speech of the great fierce warrior who is the ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... backed and dodged aside. "Do you mean to ruin me, and to break all our bones on the road, you cursed idiot? For these three weeks past you have been doing nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come here stammering and playing the fool! Do you think I keep you just to eat and to drive yourself about? You must have known of this before? Did you, or did you not, know it? Answer me ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thought that if, that is, should—should the dean die, that is, I said I thought—' As he went on stammering and floundering, he saw that his wife's eye was fixed sternly on him. Why should he encounter such evil for a man whom he loved so slightly as Mr Slope? Why should he give up his enjoyments and his ease, and such dignity as might ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... a mental resolve that I would punch the head of that youngster when I had a suitable opportunity, and in between my stammering explanations I made notes on the differences between the two girls. Edith was as stately as Juno, with a face that was so sweet and restful that a glance at it was better than an opiate for a man whose nerves were all out of tune. She had that kind of repose that ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... should be directed during the examination to the way in which the patient replies to questions and his mode of pronunciation. There may be peculiarities of pronunciation and stammering, characteristic of certain forms of mental alienation, or at any rate of some nervous anomaly; or articulation may be tremulous and forced, as in precocious dementia and chronic inebriety. In other cases the words are jumbled ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... clothes and all, on the settee between herself and the Queen of Sheba, Tom was conscious of but one clearly-defined thought—an overmastering desire to get away—to be free at any cost. But the way of escape would not disclose itself, so he sat in stammering misery, answering Ardea's questions about the sectarian school in bluntest monosyllables, and hearing with his other ear a terrible Major tell the Queen of Sheba all about the railroad invasion, and how he—Tom Gordon—had run to find a punk match to fire ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Maids," "Bread and Milk," and "Mayflower." Gerard says "it flowers in April and May when the Cuckoo cloth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering." One of his characters is made by the Poet ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... poets of the last two centuries,—not the most inspired period in the history of poetry. And in the ranks of our multitudinous verse-writers, it is not the most prepossessing who are loudest in promising us a fair spectacle. How harsh-voiced and stammering are some of these obscure apostles who are offering to exhibit the entire mystery of their gift of tongues! We see more impressive figures, to be sure. Here is the saturnine Poe, who with contemptuous smile assures us that we are welcome ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... We know them all—Ledyard, who died stainless, with his own sword murdered; Herkimer, who died because he was not brave enough to do his duty and be called a coward for doing it; Woolsey, the craven Major at the Middle Fort, stammering filthy speeches in his terror when Sir John Johnson's rangers closed in; Poor, who threw his life away for vanity when that life belonged to the land! Yes, we know them all—great, greater, and less great—our grandfather Franklin, who trotted through a perfectly cold and selfishly contemptuous ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... imagine the speech of man to have begun as with the cries of animals, or the stammering lips of children, and to have attained by degrees the perfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying that this or any other theory of language is proved by facts. It is not difficult to form an hypothesis which by a series ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... into some higher channel than that of mere helpless querulousness. She found that the children were truer and simpler mourners than the widow. Daddy had been a kind daddy to them; each could tell, in their eager stammering way, of some tenderness shown some indulgence granted by the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
