"Stammering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. And even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country, stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue, loved still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences. Uttering them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of the impediment; and winning out ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... pained heart to the unmeaning murmurs which fell from her lips—the echoes of that desert dreamland through which fever drags its unconscious victims. He heard his own name and that of the fast-failing sufferer in the adjoining room linked in sorrowful phrase by the stammering tongue. Even in the midst of his sorrow it brought him a thrill of joy. And when his fear became fact, and he mourned the young life no love could save, his visits to the sick-room of her who had been ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... not fair yourself, Lana! We just put our heads together—the whole of us—that's all! Put our heads together! You know! As men will!" His stammering eagerness did not satisfy her feminine penetration. Her daughterly interest in the Senator's political standing was stirred ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... STAMMERING.—This may be inherited to some extent; excitement, nervousness, bodily fatigue, want of rest, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... not 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
... silent. Two or three times he tried to find words, producing nothing but a stammering of incoherent syllables. "I—I can't talk about it here, Barbe," he managed to articulate at last. "You must let me come ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... him; he tried to speak, but his words stumbled into incoherent babbling. It was all so sudden, his rising, then falling back into his chair, then slipping sidewise and crumpling up upon the floor, all the while stammering unmeaning words—that Henry Roberts sat looking at him in dumb amazement. It was Philippa who cried out and ran forward to help him, then stopped midway, her hands clutched together at her throat, her eyes dilating with a horror that seemed to paralyze ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... The temple of 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 would ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... your words and have difficulty in pronouncing clearly, you will find it a great help to talk very slowly and take deep breaths between each two or three words. For stammering, deep breathing is also suggested before uttering the words upon which one is most ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... 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, and bring ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... regarded her, all merriment gone, their eyes shrewd, alien, inquisitorial. She began to feel like a criminal, and struggled stammering in the effort to make her desire ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the commentators; and where, too, considering him simply as a poet, they endeavor to enter into his views and to decide upon his merits, I must separate myself from them entirely. I have hardly ever found either truth or profundity in their remarks; and these critics seem to me to be but stammering interpreters of the general and almost idolatrous admiration of his countrymen. There may be people in England who entertain the same views of them with myself, at least it is a well-known fact that a satirical poet has represented Shakespeare, under the hands of his commentators, by Actaeon worried ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... little back parlour with its fussy ornaments. The three of them standing round the table, Hepworth's hands nervously clutching a chair. The reproaches, the taunts, the threats. Young Hepworth—he struck everyone as a weak man, a man physically afraid—white, stammering, not knowing which way to look. The woman's eyes turning from one to the other. That flash of contempt again—she could not help it—followed, worse still, by pity. If only he could have answered back, held his own! If only he had not been afraid! And then that fatal turning ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... nobly conquered the temptation. The eighth is his favourite commandment. There is something painfully human in these unequal virtues and mortal frailties of the best. Still more painful is the bearing of those "stammering professors" in the house of sickness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a doubt to me that, somehow or other, the dog connects together, or confounds, the uneasiness of sickness and the consciousness of guilt. To the pains of the body he often adds the tortures ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with medals and orders on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him a young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the conventional usage of the terms. Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults, obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning's later writings. It glides onward like ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... thank people as they deserved. Stammering speeches could not do it, but I hope that they all understood. "I were but little happy, if I could say ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... relatives gathered, fell down, and died from the pain of his wounds. Then, while his grief-stricken parents were loudly lamenting, while Shell-crest was accusing himself, Sandal looked up to heaven and, in a voice stammering with tears, reproached the goddess Gauri who had graciously given her this husband: "Oh, Mother! You told me that the fairy prince should be my husband, but it is my fate that ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... constraining tenderness as if the plates and dishes had been delicate glass butterflies. She stood off at a distance from the table making sudden and awkward dabs at it. When it came to passing the plates, she passed them on the wrong side and remembered herself at the wrong moment with a stammering apology. In her excess of politeness she kept up a constant murmur as she attended to their wants. Another fork? Yes, sir. She'd get it right away, sir. Did Mrs. Ravis want another cuppa tea? No? No more tea? Well, she'd pass the bread. Some bread, Master Howard? Nice French ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... held up. As the duke hastened to spoil his victims, crying out—"Where is the archbishop?" he turned and saw Anselm, impassive on his horse, gazing sternly at him. In a moment the savage and lawless duke was transformed to a pallid, stammering wretch with downcast eyes, begging permission to kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort to safeguard him through his territory. It was the moral influence of prelates such as this and monks such ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... had been drinking when I went, white and stammering, confused and hesitating, into his room. He looked very sternly ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the child to the Towers," he continued at length, "and there I shall want your help, Aunt Caro." He paused stammering awkwardly—"It's an infernal ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... and began by stammering. For I had a great fear that Major Colfax's temper would fly into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... still battling with these sensations when the music ceased and the player arose. She started slightly on seeing me, and I found myself stammering an ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... grasp, so full of warmth and thankfulness. It gave her confidence to venture on the one question on which she was bent. Her father was in the hall, showing Norman his Greek nymph; and lifting her eyes to Dr. May's face, then casting them down, she coloured deeper than ever, as she said, in a stammering whisper, "Oh, please—if you would tell me —do ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... you mean by all this?" said the boy, stammering with passion. "What is my mother ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... she was silent. "I want you to know," he repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. Since I came here there has been—you. Oh, my dear, I would have been very glad. But I am obscure—without means. There are years in front of me before I shall be anything else. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... once started as though surprised to hear a voice stammering in her ears. Turning towards Laurent, on whose countenance the fire, at this moment, cast a broad reddish reflection, she gazed at his sanguinary face, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... might be Some jocose god, with sportive whirl, Had taken up a long lithe girl And tied a graceful knot in her. I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss! I needed no interpreter; I knew the Japanese for kiss, - I had no other thought but this; And she, with smile and blush divine, Kind to my stammering prayer did seem; My thought was hers, and hers was mine, In the swift logic of my dream. My arms clung round her slender waist, Through gold and silk the form I traced, And glad as rain that follows drouth, I kissed and kissed her bright ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... love to come—to see it—but only as your friend," Mary said, stammering guiltily, as if she were doing wrong in refusing him. "Oh, I can't tell you how ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... secret agent on the case—deliberately tipped over a champagne glass that stood within a few inches of the bag. Of course, Mademoiselle was worried lest the wine run over on her gown and while thus preoccupied, the waiter, stammering apologies, mopped up the table cloth with his serviette—mopped up the wine and cleverly covering the bag folded it in the napkin and hurried away. In two minutes he had opened it, abstracted the letter from the young ordnance officer; and was ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... words; Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen To paper and put you down every syllable With those clever clerkly fingers, All I've forgotten as well as what lingers In this old brain of mine that's but ill able To give you even this poor version Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering! —More fault of those who had the hammering Or prosody into me and syntax, {700} And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks! But to return from this excursion,— Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest, The peace ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... then, the touch sent the warm blood bounding through her veins. She had passed through much since that wintry morning, had grown partially indifferent to coldness and neglect, but the extreme kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Hastings touched her heart; and stammering out an almost inaudible reply, she turned away to hide her tears, while Mr. Hastings, advancing towards the fire, exclaimed, "My double gown! And it's so long since I saw it! To whose thoughtfulness ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... a mistake at the beginning," Joe said, hurriedly. "I may not be the kind of man you're looking for. If I went in—" He hesitated, stammering. "It seems an ungrateful thing to say, but—but there wouldn't be any slackness—I couldn't ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... they used to have—fierce arguments which always ended the same way! "Louis" would make some remark which would absolutely pulverise "Mother's" side of the question, and as she was stammering to reply, he would say very gently: "It's all right, Mother, it's all right, you've won." And she would flash out with: "Don't you dare to say that to me, Louis! You always say that when you get the ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... criminal had fallen into a dose, and women and boys were murmuring that they must call home their kine and goats, and it was a shame to debar them of the sight of the hanging, long before Hans came back between crying and stammering, to say that Father Jodocus had fallen into so deep a study over his book, that he only muttered "Coming," then went into another musing fit, whence no one could rouse him to do more than say "Coming! Let ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Amarilla will not hear of this evening's performance. I declare! I had no idea that that Bodley young man would play me such a trick. I shall have to refuse to play for any more of the dances," he said, in his hesitating, stammering way. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... speech that Tom had been saying over to himself for the past two hours seemed to vanish into thin air before this excited little audience. But in faltering, stammering tones, which everyone was too excited to notice, he managed to say something about "Merry Christmas" and "good children" and then proceeded to open the magic sack. "Miss Kitty McGinnis!" he called, in deep, gruff ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... to walk home with him. I want to see him. I thought it would be nice to walk home with him. I see so little of him! I thought it would be nice to walk home with him." She was repeating herself, stammering and uncertain, but achieving nevertheless a steady retreat from the confident ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... for you not to employ persecution. Those old formulas, of which nobody takes any notice, are no longer considered to be binding." The king yielded; he made no change in the form of the oath, and confined himself to stammering out a few incoherent words. At the coronation of Louis XV. the people, heretofore admitted freely to the cathedral, had been excluded; at the coronation of Louis XVI. the officiator, who was the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... seek, thine anguish plead; But, leaving straining thought and stammering word, Across the barren azure pass to God; Shooting the void in silence, like a bird— A bird that shuts his ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... quite anticipated the result, namely, that the next morning, Cis, after kissing the Queen's hand as usual, remained kneeling, her bosom heaving, and a little stammering on her tongue, while ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Benny could only repeat with stammering lips. If, a while ago, he could not believe his ears, just now he felt as if the ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... speak, the tremor passed out of my limbs, the blood came back to my brain, and I began without stammering. This first paper, fortunately for us all, dealt with Edwin Booth, whom I revered. To my mind he not only expressed the highest reach of dramatic art in his day, he was the best living interpreter of Shakespeare, and no doubt it was the sincerity of my utterance which held my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... boy boldly. "After all," as he thought, "I had better put a frank face on this stupidity of mine; a stammering answer will only make ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had, Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... Caroline then, Louisa says," proceeded Clara, but there she got into an inextricable confusion, and was not speedy in stammering out of it, having suddenly remembered that it was no great compliment to tell Marian that Louisa had said how glad they all were that it was not Miss Arundel. Marian cut the hesitation short by saying, "You have not told me when it was settled, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that the mysteries of our redemption could be declared better to the Indians by one talking their language perfectly. He was learned, and graduated in both laws; but he did not preach because of an impediment in his speech, which was somewhat stammering.... ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... feel, wrestling with language. If he writes in a hurry, it is not because he is indifferent, but because his soul is full of something that he is eager to express. He does not gabble; he is, as it were, a man stammering out a vision. So vastly greater are his virtues than his faults as a poet, indeed, that the latter would only be worth the briefest mention if it were not for the danger of their infecting other writers who envy him his method but do not possess his conscience. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Steve was really the quickest to understand what the stammering boy meant, when he became ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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
... swung round in an alarm than which nothing could have betrayed him more effectively. "My—my love!" he cried, stammering, and by his wild haste to conceal the letter that he held, drew her ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Annas, "in my gray old age see the synagogue overthrown? No! with stammering tongue I will cry for the blood and death of this criminal, and then descend to the bosom of my fathers, when I have seen this evil-doer die upon ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... philosophy, the leaden cushion was dropped down into his coat-pocket. A motion backwards was perceptible through his whole body, and his coat was tightly pulled down behind. A powerful twitching showed itself at the corners of his mouth, and a certain stammering might be noticed in his speech, although he stood perfectly still, and appeared to observe nothing; while the little rascals, who had expected a terrible explosion from their well-laid train, stole off to a distance; but oh, wonder! ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... 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 that ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the defects of lisping and stammering which we, often turned into ridicule. And as nature had unfortunately endowed me with admirable powers as a mimic, the infirmities of this poor priest afforded only too good an opportunity for the exercise of my talent. Not only was it one of my ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... the stammering and stuttering, the unending doubtings and guessings, to understand fully the power of a mathematical screw.—Harv. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... He stopped, stammering with rage. The angry colour had now returned to his face; it was Sally who was pale. She stared at him aghast, and presently began to sob like a ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... fellow-creature in want if he had the means to feed him. 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 ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... fixing on such as suit 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 up to manhood ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... so bad, after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... qualities, 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
... said Dad, catching him up without the slightest understanding of his stammering. "She's been stickin' to you night and day. I tell you, John, them Indians can't be beat doctorin' a man up when he's been ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... returned Lilly, stammering, "the king, who is so liberal with his lady friends, is—what shall I say?—close with me, save in promises. He buys folly at the rate of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, while he pays for knowledge with large promises, and now ten shillings and again five. On ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... too swift of speech shows a man to be downright foolish, or at best but a very vain wit. A stammering tongue, or one that stumbles in the mouth, signifies a man of a weak understanding, and of a wavering mind, quickly in a rage, and soon pacified. A very thick and rough tongue denotes a man to be apprehensive, subtle ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... there'll be a fight, of course, and—who knows what might happen? That we must leave for a last resort—a last desperate resort. First we must tell the boy." Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him, staring. "But—but you, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But you! I hadn't realized—I hadn't thought—it never occurred to me what this means to you." The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly. He was asking this girl to help him in robbing her of ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... terrified. What if he should attack us in that lonely spot! Grandpa was so old! And moreover, Grandpa was so taken aback to find that it wasn't Lovell that he began some blunt and stammering expression of surprise, which only served to increase the stranger's ire. Grandma, imperturbable soul! who never failed to come to the rescue even in the most desperate emergencies—Grandma climbed over to the front, thrust out her benign head, and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... 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
... told her. The dread truth which I had trembled for her to know was made known. Word by word, sentence by sentence, often hesitating, often stammering, I related our meeting, the awful struggle on the cliff ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... 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 poor ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Spain and establish her identity in the hope of securing a great reward. But just as he was about to execute this scheme, he was seized by a disease which prostrated him for many months, and threw him into a nervous condition in which he contracted the habit of stammering. On his recovery from his long sickness he found himself stripped of everything he had accumulated; but his shrewdness and indomitable will remained, and he soon began to rebuild ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... 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 my betrothed;" but Nina only ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... 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
... mysteries last! We are but comrades with them there,— Stammering over a meaning vast, Crooning our ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... it is simply to defeat the lecturer's purpose. However, after he has submitted himself to the process, the experiments made upon him prove successful. He is naturally a fluent talker, but now cannot, without difficulty and stammering, pronounce his own name, an easy monosyllable—cannot strike the lecturer's hand—cannot rise from a chair, &c. We may add, that he cannot be made to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Stammering and other vocal defects: contains letters from Speech Sufferers, biographical sketches of Musicians, Elocutionists and Orators, the history of and essays ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... from the Aquarium followed by Ferragut, still stammering and tremulous. The questions and petitions with which he pursued her while crossing the promenade ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "The stammering, stuttering, shrieking rage of the hideously corpulent king, who, on account of his unwieldy obesity, was unable to let his arms hang by his side, and who thus gesticulated wildly, and perspired incessantly, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... said Rosanette. The effort of self-suppression had shattered her nerves. She sank down on the divan, shaking all over, stammering forth words of abuse, shedding tears. Was it this threat on the part of the Vatnaz that had caused so much agitation in her mind? Oh, no! what did she care, indeed, about that one? It was the golden sheep, a present, and in the midst of her tears the name of Delmar escaped her lips. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... think, Molly?" exclaimed Kitty, stammering almost in her eagerness. "Oh, you'll never guess, for it is so uncommon and unexpected—father and mother both went ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... lugubrious pessimism. To be thrown with Davies was to receive a shock of enlightenment; for here, at least, was a specimen of the breed who exacted respect. It is true he made use of the usual jargon, interlarding his stammering sentences (sometimes, when he was excited, with the oddest effect) with the conventional catchwords of the journalist and platform speaker. But these were but accidents; for he seemed to have caught his innermost conviction from the very soul of the sea itself. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... going swimming or fishing, of choosing a book in the Sunday-school library or a stick of candy at the village store, he had no sooner determined on one plan of action than his wish fondly reverted to the opposite one. Seesaw was pale, flaxen haired, blue eyed, round shouldered, and given to stammering when nervous. Perhaps because of his very weakness Rebecca's decision of character had a fascination for him, and although she snubbed him to the verge of madness, he could never keep his eyes away from her. The force with which she tied her shoe when the lacing came ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and developed itself under the influence of three causes, (1) a comprehension of the nature of music itself, (2) a feeling or inspiration, and (3) the influence of poetry. Guided by this generalization, it may be said that Hawaiian poetry was the nurse and pedagogue of that stammering infant, Hawaiian music; that the words of the mele came before its rhythmic utterance in song; and that the first singers were the priests and the eulogists. Hawaiian poetry is far ahead of Hawaiian song in the power to move the feelings. A few words suffice ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... days of my boyhood I attended a meeting at Tripler Hall, held as a memorial of Fenimore Cooper, who at that time had just died. Washington Irving stepped out on the speaker's platform first, trembling, and in evident misery. After stammering and blushing and bowing, he completely broke down in his effort to make a speech, and briefly introduced the presiding officer of the meeting, Daniel Webster. Rising like a huge mountain from a plain this great orator introduced ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... certainly destroyed the health and life of the little ones. Moreover, at an early age a defect may be easily overcome, which at a later period would ripen into a permanent deformity, such as defects of vision, color blindness, defects of speech, stammering, stuttering, lisping, defects of walk, and every other defect caused by a deficient development ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... a praying man," he said. "But if this is so—I'll pray for you.... It can't hurt you anyway—" he checked himself, stammering, and the deep colour stained him from his brow to his thick, powerful neck as he ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... demanded what was the row, and what the bargee meant by "stopping the race in that stupid way?" Meanwhile Bruce, wet and muddy, was declaiming on one side, and Fitzurse, bruised and dirty, on the other, was stammering his uncomprehended oaths; while a dozen men were holding Brogten, who, foiled a second time, and now in a dreadfully ungovernable passion, was struggling with the men who held him, and vowing murder ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... mistress. Horror seized him, his hair stood on end. Richmodis called him by his name and begged him to open the door. At the sound of her voice the old man started, ran upstairs, dashed into his master's room uttering incoherent sounds, and stammering: "O Lord, the dead rise; outside stands our good Mistress and demands entrance!" But the Magistrate shook his head in deep grief: "Richmodis, my beloved wife is dead and will never return, never, ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... present at the interview (at camp Charlotte) between the chiefs and the governor, in speaking of Cornstalk, says, "when he arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks, while addressing Dunmore, were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive. I have heard the first orators in Virginia,—Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee,—but ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... of things that she knew nothing about. They could walk across waxed floors as though waxed floors were meant to be walked on. They could rise to recite lessons without stammering or choking as she did. They could take reproof jauntily, where she, who had never in her life received a scolding, would have been driven into hysterics. They could wear new dresses just as though all dresses were ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... diffidence, and I always hated to do it, but it was the only way I could assume my self-control. Following the application of the two-finger movement, relief would come quickly, with a splutter and a stammering apology for not catching her last remark. My volubility from that point to the next attack, when interrupted by a suggestion which would derail me, or by a third party not following our train of thought, would impress the hearer that it was ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... courage to 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
... stolen my idea! they have stolen my idea!" shouted Topolski and fell over half-senseless on the grass, covering his face with his hands, sobbing convulsively and stammering in a drunken voice: "They have stolen my idea! . . . Help! they have stolen my idea!" And he continued to roll about on the grass, sobbing like a ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... disturbed in the very depth of their midnight revel, on their arrival at such a scene as this. They stared on each other, and on the bloody work before them, with lack-lustre eyes; staggered with uncertain steps over boards slippery with blood; their noisy brawling voices sunk into stammering whispers; and, with spirits quelled by what they saw, while their brains were still stupefied by the liquor which they had drunk, they seemed like men walking in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... fool?" said the Earl, drawing his dark-red eyebrows together, while the same dusky glow kindled on his brow—"Hast thou not learned to tell a true tale without stammering?" ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... began stammering, looking hard at the other's dreadfully altered face, from which every line of hope and cheerfulness seemed to have been obliterated as a sponge wipes markings from a ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... with excitement. He might have suspected this thing—but he had not really believed it! He asked, stammering in his haste, "Does ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Stammering incoherent sentences, I staggered into the water and swam for the hat. When I had caught it, I went on to get the shirt. I would have gone on round the headland to my cove, only the shirt was not my shirt. It was Berry's! Yes, it was—had his ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the strong come nigh to fear, by reason of her fair womanhood, and looked from her to earth, from earth to sky, and, when he would have answered, fell a-stammering, abashed by her ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... danger and sufferings. All the poor, half-paralysed, Irish girl could say was, "I am truly innocent of the whole charge—indeed I am. I liked my place. I was very comfortable." And there was pathos in those simple, stammering words, more than in half the self-conscious diffuseness of tragic poetry. In her white bridal dress (the cap she had joyfully worked for herself) she went to her cruel death, still repeating the words, "I am innocent." The funeral, at St. George the Martyr, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... seemed too good to come true, but above all by her arch, provoking smile, Rudolph sat with his head in a whirl, feeling that the wide eyes of all the second-cabiners were penetrating the tumultuous secret of his breast. Again his English deserted, and left him stammering. But Miss Forrester chatted steadily, appeared to understand murmurs which he himself found obscure, and so restored his confidence that before tiffin was over he talked no less gayly, his honest face alight and glowing. She taught him the names of the strange fruits before them; ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the most terrible in life—when the lips are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express what the muffled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering compassionate circumlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but to such a question silence and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... humanity prevailed to invite him previously to share our luncheon. Yet we doubted whether it had not been a cruel mercy when he entered, evidently unprepared to stumble on a young lady and a deformed man, and stammering piteously as he hoped there ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... She tried to smile; looked helplessly at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering "Because you are so ill and it's all my fault," to her horror, to her boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden, rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie's ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... may ask you," he said, almost stammering, and longing without knowledge for the blessing of her touch, "to—to allow me just to lead you to this seat, I may perhaps be able—I will not take the liberty of sitting at your side—but I may perhaps be ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... with her explanations, blushing and stammering awkwardly enough, as the penetrating eyes fastened themselves curiously and ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... timid man, the reverse of his predecessor in all things, but a very good sort of person upon the whole. On seeing the baronet there, however, something seemed strangely to affect him—a sort of confused surprise, which, after various stammering efforts, burst forth as soon as the usual salutation was over, in the words, "Pray, Sir Philip, did ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... stammering question. "As to where, we're quite a way from Earth, heading right now in the general direction of Altair. As to how—" He paused, looking keenly down at Kieran. "Don't you ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... room he encouraged stammering Genie Linderbeck to become adaptable. Here he scribbled to Gertie and Ben Rusk little notes decorated with badly drawn caricatures of himself loafing. Here, with the Turk, he talked out half the night, planning future glory in engineering. Carl adored the Turk for his frankness, his lively ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Spirit 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 depth" of mysteries, he ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... But that stammering little soul-flight has done me good. It has given me back my perspective. I refuse to be downed. I'm still the captain of my soul. I'm still at the wheel, no matter if we are rolling a bit. And ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... all boarders, their comfort and convenience, Fifi had the great respect which all of us feel for the source of our livelihood; and, stammering grateful thanks, she again assured him that she could not make such a nuisance of herself. However, of course Mr. Queed had his way, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... perhaps, since the days of Dr. Johnson has been oftener brought before us in biographies, essays, letters, etc., than Charles Lamb. His stammering speech, his gaiter-clad legs,—"almost immaterial legs," Hood called them,—his frail wisp of a body, topped by a head "worthy of Aristotle," his love of punning, of the Indian weed, and, alas! of the kindly production ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... ye!" he kept stammering in his snarlin, jangling voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... circulating in the blood, or that the ego is "up against" conditions for which it has "no stomach." Paralysis may be due to a hemorrhage into the brain tissues from a diseased blood vessel, or it may symbolize a sense of inadequacy and defeat. Exaggerated exhaustion, halting feet, stammering tongue, may give evidence of a disturbed ego rather than ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly."[1] It seemed too bad that "royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at the drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue." That is truly not an attractive picture. But there is something on the other side. John ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... at this stammering remark. Then, with a leer, he added: "No, that isn't the reason. It's something else. Want ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning with excitement, her heart throbbing violently. The letter was the last expression of a disappointed and barren life. The slow, stammering tongue of an almost silent existence had found the fulness of speech. The fountains of the deep had been broken up, and Sybil Eglington's repressed emotions, undeveloped passions, tortured by mortal sufferings, and refined and vitalised by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stammering on, "I thought, perhaps, Mistress Rebecca 'd be willing to stand by Mizza," nodding to the young squaw, "that is, if you asked ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... say, old Jedediah, you are a long while making up what's short," said Ben Zoof, while the Jew was still stammering on. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... writes:—Could you kindly give in The Healthy Life magazine some suggestions as to the best method to follow in a case of stammering (slight) in a boy of ten or eleven years who has been rather left to himself, the hesitancy in speech being ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... others mad had only served to make him sad and gloomy. The drunkenness of his comrades had sobered him, and, feeling satiated with all the so-called joys and delights of life, he asked himself, with a smile of contempt, whether the stammering, staggering fellows, who sat next to him, were fit and suitable companions and associates of a man who had made pleasure a study, and who considered enjoyment as a philosophical ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... which suited his finical taste. This was Stevenson's method, and it leaves much of his work with the smell of the lamp upon it. Lamb apparently wrote for the mere pleasure of putting his thoughts in form, just as he talked when his stammering tongue had been eased with a little ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... degrees Fahrenheit), Mrs. Hazelton, was unable to perform that evening, and begged to be excused. Grandison was to have gone home with the lecturer to supper, but he said he considered Mrs. Hazelton would be the better of a little quiet, and, stammering out some excuse, slunk away in the direction of ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... the affair being made, the next question he asked, in all earnestness, soberness and simplicity, was "W-h-o-i-c-h came out ahead?" The personal appearance and manner of the General, and the absurd question, uttered in a vehement and stammering way, touched a ludicrous spot in the minds of the spectators so permanently that should you ask one of them to-day, "Which came out ahead?" he will smile or give you a shout ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... embarrassment had descended upon him, and he was awkwardly stammering for words, with her cool hand in his grasp. As long as his enthusiasm had lasted he had talked fluently and naturally, swept away from his self-consciousness; but with the return of the formal amenities he became as ill at ease and shy as a boy. "There ain't anything more except that we're building ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of dead and dreaming Solomon; Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell, And flashings upon faces without hope.— And I will think in gold and dream in silver, Imagine in marble and conceive in bronze, Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands, Allure the living God out of the bliss, And all the streaming seraphim ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... distress, by the realization, too, of such magnanimity toward the trivial little mother, Jack's inner emotion was pushed, suddenly, past all the bolts and barriers. Turning a little pale, he leaned forward and took her hand, stammering as he said: "Dear, dearest Imogen, you know—you know what I want to ask—whenever you will let me speak; you know the right I want ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... boastful statement with interest. She not only believed it, but had observed that as Montgomery neared his climax his stammering became less pronounced. This coincided with the Cyclopedia and suggested the first lesson she should give. But she had herself "climbed" to this height for another matter besides instruction. To descend with a quantity of fresh eggs for Susanna's depleted larder ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... hungry, and here was a treat spread before her such, as Lucia had truly said, she never had at home; but to Mrs. Horton's surprise and Lucia's dismay, Rebecca declared that she must go home; and taking her sunbonnet, with some stammering words of excuse ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... all over with me,' he said, stammering; it was terrible to see how he struggled to rise. 'I must be bled; bleed me!' he cried, clutching my hand.... 'Adrien,' he said again, 'burn this letter!' He gave it to me, and I threw it on the fire. I called for Jacquotte and Nicolle. Jacquotte did not hear me, but Nicolle did, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... this opportunity is lost, and I am left in the lurch without a portrait, I must have recourse to my own tongue, which, for all its stammering, may do well enough to state some truths that are tolerably self-evident. I assure you then, dear reader, that you can by no means make a fricassee of these tales which I here present to you, for they have neither legs, head, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... said, hesitating, not to say stammering, notwithstanding a prodigious effort to seem philosophical and calm—"To own the truth, these minute-fellows are not quite as contemptible as we soldiers would be apt to think. It was a stone-wall affair, and dodging work; and, so, you know, sir, drilled troops wouldn't have the usual ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... up from the village, the brass band tearing the air into ribbons with cornets and trombones, his stiff resolve wilted suddenly. He began to grin shamefacedly under his grizzled beard, and hobbled out onto the porch and made them a stammering speech, and turned scarlet with pride when they cheered him, and basked in the glory of their compliments, and thrilled when they respectfully called him "Chief." He even told Louada Murilla that she was a darling, when she, who had been forewarned, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... with a growing sense of his strength of character, his poise and executive ability. He was an awkward, stammering boy in the Library yesterday. Today with this machine in his hand he was the master of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... 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 any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... entire company, entering together, sitting together by the fire, watching with serious eyes the clumsy efforts of an unhappily ambitious Freshman to make clear his opinions of the Navy, the Government and the British Islands generally—only, ultimately, producing a tittering, stammering apology for having burdened so long with his hapless ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... Francis Forcus called hisself a gentleman, but that he, the Manchester man, had always had his doubts on the subject, and that one day he hoped for the opportunity of telling him that he was a snob. And more, with unwanted, stammering loquacity, to that effect, with fire of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann |
