"Coherently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I couldn't doubt. Of one thing I was certain, I would defend Ruth Schuyler to the end of time. I would defend her against Vicky Van—why, if Ruth was Vicky Van—where was this moil to end! I couldn't think coherently. But I suddenly realized that what they told me was true. I realized that all along there were things about Ruth that had reminded me of Vicky. I had never put this into words, never had really sensed it, but I saw now, looking back, that they ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... speaking of one thing allusively in terms of another, and by a profound desultoriness of thought, the poet produces a blurred and tangled impression. The beauties of Sordello would not lose by being expressed coherently and connectedly. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... think coherently, tried to speak coherently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid. All in vain, all in vain! He stumbled, and fell heavily forward on the brink of the ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... his wrists and throat, while a tenderness of pity actually wet his eyes. At times he spoke in a hushed voice, phrases meaningless in word but charged with inarticulate emotion; Hannah replied more coherently; but for the most they were silent. She accepted the situation with evident calm as an inevitable part of life. Drawn against him she rested her head lightly on his shoulder, her ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of course, Trigger thought. The Federation must have an enormous variety of means at its disposal when it set out seriously to locate one of its missing citizens. But the Dawn City would be some hours on its way before Mihul even began to think coherently again. She'd spread the alarm then, but it should be a while before they started to suspect Trigger had left the planet. Maccadon was her home world, after all. If she'd just wanted to hole up, that was where she would have had the best chance to do ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... to suggest to him that he was tired and should go to bed: she was so anxious to get him out of the way before Louis came out of his corner that she could scarcely talk coherently. But just at that moment Louis came up to her. He took no notice of Kraill or Mrs. Twist, who was quite used to him by this time. At the back of Louis's mind was the obsession that in two days he would draw his pay; half of him was a blazing hunger for whisky after three weeks' abstinence ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... make it impossible to predict, and almost impossible to guess them. He looked on with more curiosity than interest, as at the different combinations in a kaleidoscope. He could not conceive that David, or any one, could so come under the dominant influence of a conviction as to act coherently and consistently upon it through any or all emergencies. But he was kind and sympathetic, and his heart responded to the passionate earnestness of his friend with ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological theory could account for the discovery of the lens. The medium might, by means of biological rapport with my mind, have gone so far as to read my questions and reply to them coherently. But biology could not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects and admit of its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have passed through my ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... Jim's thoughts had become more and more confused, and his brain was refusing to act coherently. Flashes of lurid light passed before his eyes, and the horrible feeling of suffocation became ever more and more acute. Finally, with what he fancied was a shout for assistance, but it was, in reality, only a weak whisper, Jim lost consciousness altogether, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... tell us nothing, except that she had felt herself drawn forward by some strange power that had seemed to come from the baneful, glittering eyes. She was bewildered and stunned and unable to talk coherently. We assisted her to the wall, and she sat there with her back propped against it, breathing heavily from the exhaustion ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other." "Man is the metre of all ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... some portion of a bottle of whisky unfinished. This fortunate circumstance enabled them to recover something of their color, though, even when he felt his blood warming again, Mr. Gallosh could scarcely speak coherently of his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... suddenly turned dark with rage. He burst out, scarcely coherently: "I'll tell you that! And you can all digest it! A fat chance I'd have had among you! A fat chance I have now of getting a fair hearing! If she came all this way to find me, it's clear she wanted to make up, isn't it? Yet ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... in charge, sir?" asked the policeman, while Richard Foster was making vain efforts to speak coherently, and explain his claim upon me. I clung to the friendly arm that had come to my aid, sick ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... spoke—coherently—after you left him. At the end he motioned to me, but there were no words. If I could possibly love you more, it would be because ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it, at least coherently. Doris's hand was on his sleeve. Pete thought she had a mighty pretty hand. And as for her eyes—they were gray and misty and warm . . . and not at all like he had ever seen them before. He laughed happily, "You look plumb lonesome!" ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... from the first of her friend's entrances coherently enough, even with a small quaver that overstated her calm; but she held her breath every few seconds, as if for deliberation and to prove she didn't pant—all of which marked for Fanny the depth of her commotion: her reference to her thought about her father, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... As Eva leaned her head on the work-box, she talked earnestly, but not quite coherently of the plans for ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... almost too surprised to answer him coherently, but she faltered out something about an unexpected journey. Afterwards, on the way to her stateroom, she overtook him near one of the companion-ways, and laid her hand ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he asked quietly after awhile, when he saw that she appeared to be more calm and more able to speak coherently. "You don't deny that you are in trouble. . . . You have half made up your mind to tell me. . . . Well, then, out with it. . ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in Kent's Bay, and among the men employed were some "assigned" convicts. One Joseph Murrell, master of the sealing schooner Endeavour, wrote to his owners a letter in which he stated he was too ill to write coherently, in consequence of the usage he had received from one Delano, master of the American schooner Pilgrim. Delano's name was familiar to Governor King, inasmuch as he had taken a part in the 1803 attempt to colonise Port Philip, as follows: One of the officers, ...
— The Americans In The South Seas - 1901 • Louis Becke
... not best to go on with the Pole, and is perfectly nonsensical, uncle," began Amy, petulantly, and not very coherently. ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... room. The latter merely bowed to me, went out, and locked the door behind her. I was very glad she did not speak to me, for the sudden revulsion of feeling produced by the appearance of the two would have prevented my answering her coherently. I do not know whether my nun bowed or not. If she did, the motion was very slight. She took her seat and prepared for work. I did not say anything, for I did not know what to say. The proper thing to do, in order to relieve my embarrassment and ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... I passed another hour of bliss, and I think we must have got to the sixth heaven by now—Robert says the seventh is for the end, when we are married. Well, that will be soon. Oh, I am too happy to write coherently! ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... of the soldiers and civilians—the latter being mostly too unnerved to talk coherently—the Americans made their way back to the quay with heavy hearts. They threaded lanes filled with sobbing women, many of whom had frightened children clinging to their skirts, passed groups of old men and boys who were visibly trembling with trepidation and stood aside for ranks ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... the principal street together, and had it not been the prevailing opinion that sailors of that time did not meditate either coherently or incoherently, they might by their manner have been thought to be in deep soliloquy, whereas their silence was merely momentary. Any one hard by could have heard a spontaneous "Well, by George, we are in luck! What an experience!" And then ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... at our very doors; that is to say, in Maine and New Brunswick. It is at least certain, as the reader may convince himself, that these Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, legends give, with few exceptions, in full and coherently, many tales which have only reached us in a broken, imperfect ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the only person present who kept his senses. Margaret was too shocked, the lovers too amazed, to speak coherently. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... perhaps, at some time or other, as a storeroom. It was some time before his brain was clear enough to understand what had happened, or how he had got into his present position. Gradually the facts came back to him, and he was able to think coherently, in spite of a splitting headache, and a dull, throbbing pain at ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... of Mrs. Prockter's lawns up at Hillport. Yet there were only three persons present besides himself. But decidedly they were not of his world; they were of the world that referred to him as "old Jimmy Ollerenshaw," or briefly as "Jimmy." And he had to sit and listen to them, and even to answer coherently when spoken to. Emanuel Prockter was brilliant. He had put his hat on one chair and his cane across another, and he conversed with ducal facility. The two things about him that puzzled the master of the house were—first, why he was not, at such an hour, engaged in at any ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... slavery! Hang the war!" I exclaimed. "Of course, we had a family quarrel. But we were a family once, and a fine one, too! We knew each other, we visited each other, we wrote letters, sent presents, kept up relations; we, in short, coherently joined hands from one generation to another; the fibres of the sons tingled with the current from their fathers, back and back to the old beginnings, to Plymouth and Roanoke and Rip Van Winkle! It's all gone, all done, all over. You have to be a small, well-knit ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... coherently as I could that I had only got his telegram early in the morning, and had not a minute in coming here, and that I could not make any one in the house hear me. He paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly, "Then I fear we are too late. God's will ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... colleges, the palaces, the temples, and the law-assemblies, all like so many toys before the resistless instinct of the people, who revolt at injustice, and who feel and know when they are injured, though they are not clever enough to explain WHERE their injury lies. And so, as they cannot talk about it coherently, any more than a lion struck by an arrow can give a learned dissertation on his wound, they act, . . and the heat and fury of their action upheaves dynasties! Again,—reverting to the question of taste and literature,—the mob, untaught and untrained in the subtilties of art, will applaud to the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which a sudden shock is apt to have, of inducing a sense of curious unreality. I neither read nor slept, nor even thought coherently. I was just aware of disaster and fear. I was alone in my compartment. Sometimes we passed through great, silent, deserted stations, or stopped outside a junction for an express to pass. At one or two places there was a crowd of people, seeing off a party of soldiers, with songs ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his neutrality to Caesar. But Marcellus gave her little comfort. She broke in upon the noble lord, while he was participating in a drunken garden-party in the Gardens of Lucullus. The consul—hardly sober enough to talk coherently—had declared that it was impossible to start any troops that day to Praeneste. "To-morrow, when he had time, he would consider the matter." And Fabia realized that the engine of government would be very slow to set in motion in favour of ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... dispatch carriers, as usual, behaved with the greatest bravery. Theirs is a lonely life, and very often a lonely death. One cycle messenger lay upon the ground, badly wounded. He stopped a passing officer and delivered his message, together with some verbal instructions. These were coherently given, but he swooned almost before the words were out ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... "He talks very coherently," thought Ivan, "though he does mumble; what's the derangement of his faculties that Herzenstube ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thrust it into some other part of me; which he surely could have done, for I was wholly at a loss as to what measures should be taken to assure my own safety. Indeed, I was very well convinced that my life was as good as ended, and a curious flash of thought went through me that I cannot coherently remember, but that was in the nature of a query as to whether or not in a future state the many scientific truths which as yet are but imperfectly understood will be wholly ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... I stammered out something; but, really, the more I tried to speak coherently the more confused I became. This was indeed a very bad beginning for a visitor from a distant world who wished to show to the best advantage in such an august presence, and before such a great assemblage of the people; but it is useless to attempt to conceal ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... should have gotten a prompt ten seconds ago. The program's in deep space somewhere." Compare {buzz}, {catatonic}, {hyperspace}. 2. The metaphorical location of a human so dazed and/or confused or caught up in some esoteric form of {bogosity} that he or she no longer responds coherently to normal communication. Compare ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... a loud exclamation from Captain Barclay, and a scream of delight from their mother, and Milly; and it was a good ten minutes before they were sitting round the table, talking coherently. It was but six weeks since they had left, but it seemed like years; and there was as much to tell, and to talk about, as if they had just returned, after an absence of ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... to the police, the composure which a woman assumes in returning to her husband with the kisses of a lover tingling on her lips. It is a feat to change the current of the mind, to let the burning thought that is dearest or bitterest to us go by the board, to answer coherently to the banalities of conversation, to check the throbbing pulse. The feat was beyond Miss Joliffe's powers; she was but a poor actress, and the churchwarden saw that she was ill at ease as she ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Nigel's story was a long one, and as the young man was too agitated to tell it altogether coherently, we will go back for a certain space of time, and tell the very remarkable story, the details of which were told to Mr. Narkom and his nameless associate in the Superintendent's office, and which was to involve Cleek of Scotland Yard in a case which was later to receive ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... of your ability, you should maintain toward the examination an attitude of confidence. Believe firmly that you will pass the examination. Make strong suggestions to yourself, affirming positively that you have the requisite amount of information and the ability to express it coherently and forcefully. Fortified by the consciousness of faithful application throughout the work of a course, reinforced by a thorough, well-planned review, and with a firm conviction in the strength of your own powers, you may approach your examinations with ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... Highgate to hear the rhapsodies of "the old man eloquent." Coleridge once asked Charles Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, referring to the early days when he was a Unitarian preacher. "I never heard you do anything else," was the answer he received. He was the prince of talkers, and talked more coherently and connectedly than he wrote: drawing with ease from the vast stores of his learning, he delighted men of every degree. While of the Lake school of poetry, and while in some sort the creature of his age and his surroundings, his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... could not make a mistake, and yet be so cautious that the true purpose, the inner meaning of the order, would not betray him. Commines' voice was clanging in his ears like the clapper of a bell, and would not let him think coherently. Twelve hours! Twelve hours! Even now—no, not yet, but soon, very soon, it might be too late. "Perdition!" he cried, striking his hand upon the woollen coverlid—he was chilly even ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... of early colonial discovery and romance, from the memories of war and reconstruction, it has been as difficult to choose coherently as to maintain restraint in selection among the many grotesque negro legends and superstitions so rich in imagery and music. Coupled with this there has been another task; that of keeping these legends and stories in their natural matrix, the semi-tropical landscape of ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... words by what Judith had done, but Judith was her little sister. "Yes, ma'am," she said, to Miss Miller's question, speaking, for all her agitation, quickly and fluently as was her habit, though not very coherently. "Yes, ma'am, I know. Everybody was saying this morning that the Fingals' mother was a negro, and so the girls weren't going to invite Camilla to the picnic, and ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... capable of thinking quite coherently on what had just happened until I was once more fairly outside of the forest shadows—out in that clear open daylight, where things seem what they are, and imagination, like a juggler detected and laughed at, hastily takes itself out of the way. As I walked homewards ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... at this remark, made in all seriousness; but he went on, walking up and down the room like a caged beast, intent on expressing what he felt, but found such difficulty in putting coherently. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... as he became able to think more coherently, there occurred to him a chance, slender and desperate enough, but still a chance, of escaping even yet the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... sanctum the gloom was too oppressive to permit an elevated tendency of either thought or spirit. I could do nothing but sit listless and inert. Paper and pencil were before me, but I could not write—I could not even think coherently, and was on the point of rising and rushing out into the streets for a wild walk, when there came a hesitating ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... though the sea was calm, it seemed to him that the ship gave a great dizzying lurch. But in a moment he contrived to answer coherently: "Engaged to Miss Garland! I ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... whole speech coherently and with fervour, pacing back and forth, with short strides, in front of the tea-table, and with his eyes flitting ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... effort to my mind, and, besides shrinking from the mere mental labor of considering them, I find it difficult, in the rapid and desultory manner in which I must needs answer letters, to place even the few ideas that occur to me upon them clearly and coherently before you. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... grass, in the shadow of the wagon, where the soft breeze could play freely upon the patient, also by swathing her head in towels which were kept continually dripping wet; and after about an hour of this treatment the fever so far abated as to permit her to talk coherently, when she told us her story, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of young Lord Ambleside, a nobleman remarkable for a vague stare, and seldom saying anything but 'What!' or 'Dey-vil take me!' though I'll admit he could curse almost coherently—at times. I found him nothing but a lord, and very crude material at that, yet in less than six months ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... intended to be answered. . . . Your account of Mrs. Stowe was stimulatingly interesting. I long to see you, to get you to say it, and many other things, all over again. My father continues better. I am better too; but to-day I have a headache again, which will hardly let me write coherently. Give my dear love to M. and M., dear happy girls as they are. You cannot now transmit my message to F. and J. I prized the little wild-flower,—not that I think the sender cares for me; she DOES not, and CANNOT, for she does not know me;—but no matter. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... down beside the stream, my uncle, as we went, asking a score of questions about our adventures and about my father and his plans—questions which I was in no state of mind to answer coherently. But this mattered the less since he had no leisure to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... what is the interest of the story especially dependent? b. Are the incidents presented rapidly and coherently, or slowly and disconnectedly? c. Is there a clearly defined plot or not? d. Does the plot have a climax of entanglement, or does it fail in developing this feature of ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... sea. Mixing brandy with the last of the sediment water, Wayland got him into the saddle. There were queer splotches of blood under the skin on the backs of his hands; but when the brandy relieved his fatigue, he stopped babbling of the sea and spoke coherently. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the joy at their liberation was intense. Some laughed, some cried, others were too overcome to speak coherently. Among the rest were found, to the intense pleasure of their rescuers, three knights of the Order who had for years been missing. They had been taken prisoners on an island at which the galley to which ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the colossal idea of fortune which neither he nor its late possessor could spend. Was he more bound to take it and its cares to himself than its author was bound to care for his own flesh and blood? Anger clouded his reason and he knew it. Yet if he could not think coherently on the matter, of what use were the three days of grace he had claimed? He could not endure company at present, and the four walls of his room were as a prison. At last he sent a hasty message to the motor house, tossed a few necessaries into a bag and wrote a note to Caesar. "Dear ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... how many miles we went down-stream, leaving no trail in the shallow water or along its hard-baked edges. But by the time we dropped that line I had begun to think coherently and to take note of everything possible to me, bound as I was, face downward, on the pony's back. It was when we had left the river that the hard riding began, and a merciful unconsciousness, against ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... if your wish would be gratified. Your friend has had an epileptic fit, but the physical shock has started his mental machinery again. He has recovered his faculties; his memory is returning: he thinks and speaks coherently; he is as sane as ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... and to treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working intermittently at one or other of these, but it would have been impossible to deal coherently and effectively with the growth and completion of these two books—really the most important of all he left behind him—while chronicling the goings and comings of a life so adventurous as that ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... journey seemed endless; and when late in the afternoon they drew up before the squat, low hovel in which she was to spend a long and desolate winter, Blanche was shivering violently, and so depressed that she could not coherently thank the kindly young fellow who had afforded her this brief respite from her care. She staggered into the house, so stiff she could scarcely walk, and sank into a chair to sob out her loneliness and despair, ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... set down connectedly and coherently the events which culminated in the humbling of Will ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... held the world. Inside, I stood, trying to understand what it meant—what that little pile of dust and dry bones, on the carpet, meant. But I could not think, coherently. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... isolated facts, says Fontenelle, take form, group themselves together coherently, and present the mind so vividly with an idea of their interdependence and mutual bearing upon each other, that no matter how violently we tear them asunder they insist on coming together again; then, and not till then, have we ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... before the boys could talk coherently. A dry change of clothes and the good supper their companions had prepared in readiness, made Ned and Nugget feel pretty much like themselves again, and sitting about the camp fire they told the thrilling story ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... make your acquaintance, Mr. Brown," Ned said. "One is always glad to meet Americans in a place like this. Now," he went on, resolved to have his talk out before the sailor became too befuddled to talk coherently, "you spoke about wanting to get back to New York. Well, the Fultonia leaves for New York by way of Manila, to-morrow afternoon, and I may be able to arrange a passage for you. I'm ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... he should have needed to enquire concerning the health of herself and the children had puzzled her. The only explanation was that they didn't know everything, not even up. There—may be, not the new-comers. She had answered as coherently as her state of distraction would permit, and had then dropped limply to the floor. It was the sound of her falling against the umbrella-stand and upsetting it that brought them all trooping out ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome |
