"Incoherent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Distin and Vane both looked wonderingly at their fellow-pupil, who had made a peculiar incoherent guttural noise, faintly ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... perilous life, orally, but with pantomimes so graphic and vivid that it may be presented truly as a specimen of gesture language. Indeed, to any one familiar with Indian mimicry, the story might have been intelligible without the expedient of verbal language, while the oral exposition, incoherent as it was, could hardly be styled anything better than the subordinate part of the delivery. I have endeavored to reproduce these gestures in their original connections from memory, omitting the verbal accompaniment as far as practicable. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... friend of my companions, and at his cabin we stopped to pass the night. Our host was only remarkable for his great hospitality and greater taciturnity; he had always lived in the wilds, quite alone, and the only few words he would utter were incoherent. It appeared as if his mind was fixed upon scenes of the past. In his early life he had been one of the companions of the celebrated pirate La Fitte, and after the defence of New Orleans, in which the pirates played no inconsiderable part (they had the management ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... and Sonia, and the student friend, and the uncircumscribed, protaplasmic humanity of Raskolnikoff, all upon a level that filled me with wonder: the execution also, superb in places. Another has been translated - HUMILIES ET OFFENSES. It is even more incoherent than LE CRIME ET LE CHATIMENT, but breathes much of the same lovely goodness, and has passages of power. Dostoieffsky is a devil of a swell, to be sure. Have you heard that he became a stout, imperialist conservative? It is interesting ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wild turmoil of a deadly struggle. Then the Guard had secured Sagan. The Duke stood trembling and incoherent, leaning upon the table, and between them, face downwards on the floor, the Chancellor with a bullet in his groin and for once playing a role ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... means of the railroad. An industrial community, which was, comparatively speaking, well-organized and well-furnished with machinery, was taking the place of the agricultural community of 1830-1840, which was incoherent and scattered and which lacked everything except energy and opportunity. Such an increase of organization, capital, and equipment necessarily modified the outlook and interests of the people of the Middle West. While still retaining many of their local traits, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... see A handsome woman with a fish's tail, Or a man's head upon a horse's neck, Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds, Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds; Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad? Trust me that book is as ridiculous, Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams, Varies all shapes, and mixes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... assumption. Let the earth, instead of offering a fixed centre for the revolving motions of other heavenly bodies, be supposed itself to revolve about some one of these, as the sun. That supposition was tried, and gradually all the phenomena which, before, had been incoherent, anomalous, or contradictory, began to express themselves as parts of a most harmonious system. 'Something,' he goes on to say, 'analogous to this I have practised with regard to the subject of my inquiry—the human understanding. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... many strange and incoherent dreams arose to his imagination. He thought he received a message from his friend Lord Lovel, to come to him at the castle; that he stood at the gate and received him, that he strove to embrace him, but could ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... At length, the period of the swoon having expired, with returning animation she gradually raised herself. She now began to relate what she had seen in her vision, mentioning several of her countrymen by name, whom we knew to be dead; mixed with other strange incoherent matter, equally new and inexplicable, though all tending to one leading point—the sacrifice of her charms ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... way of speaking was not like that of any other man I have ever heard. He was always clothed in the undress uniform of a Prussian general; and, as he rose, his bulk made him imposing. His first utterances were disappointing. He seemed wheezy, rambling, incoherent, with a sort of burdensome self-consciousness checking his ideas and clogging his words. His manner was fidgety, his arms being thrown uneasily about, and his fingers fumbling his mustache or his clothing or the papers on his desk. He puffed, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in state! In Tuscan wilds now let them villas rear[68] Ennobled by the charity we spare. There let them warble in the tainted breeze, 75 Or sing like widow'd orphans to the trees: There let them chant their incoherent dreams, Where howls Charybdis, and where Scylla screams! Or where Avernus, from his darksome round, May echo to the winds the blasted sound! 80 As fair Alcyone,[69] with anguish press'd, Broods o'er the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... end is either ingenious or successful. Arcading is a very beautiful decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. But where it is used to fill up an irregularly-shaped mass of wall which there is no need to decorate, it looks incoherent and confused. Had the wall been left bare it would have afforded an excellent contrast to the elaborate pattern of the central window. As it is, this decoration seems to be conceived in a spirit, of which there are further evidences in the decoration of the west front of the east end—the spirit ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... Mrs. Macfadyen did not take nervous little notes during the sermon—all writing on Sabbath, in kirk or outside, was strictly forbidden in Drumtochty—or mark her Bible, or practise any other profane device of feeble-minded hearers. It did not matter how elaborate or how incoherent a sermon might be, it could not ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... years the father earned a few coppers by playing before public-houses in the East End, and then took to the road. Somehow or other he found himself on the Continent, and after many years he had turned up here. It was all very vague and incoherent. Often starving, homeless, and speaking no language but his own, is it to be wondered that the man had lost count of days, years, and time? Now he had a desire to journey to Greece, why, he knew not, but he clung to it with all a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... I lay in that lethargy I do not know; only I remember dreaming incoherent and distorted dreams, because, after all, a chair is no proper place in which to seek slumber. I thought I was wandering in a wood where satyrs grinned at me and nymphs eluded me, and where I was mightily vexed at my ill fortune. Then suddenly all the trees began to talk at the tops ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... chief cook of his own party, appeared before them, with the book in his hand and Judge Child at his elbow as usual; and I do believe the citizen from my very soul, when he says they gave him no such advice. The committee were composed of sensible men; and after listening to his incoherent display of folly and nonsense on that occasion, it would be literally casting pearl before swine, to have given them ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... hardly taken place, when he heard the scream of a woman in fear. A flying figure darted out and down the trail, up which Phil was now hurrying from the beach. He failed at first to make out who the figure was. It was followed closely by the Chinaman, crying out his incoherent Chinese jibberish and broken English, and, despite his years and apparent shuffling gait, he was bear-like in his agility and gained at every step on the woman he was pursuing. She turned her head in fear, and seeing how ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... hysterically incoherent. What's the matter with you? It can't be all my going off. Can't you come home with me, and ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... remake all which we have, indeed, victorious Analysis. Honour to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the Workshop and Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet known to make? Detection of incoherences, mainly; destruction of the incoherent. From of old, Doubt was but half a magician; she evokes the spectres which she cannot quell. We shall have 'endless vortices of froth-logic;' whereon first words, and then things, are whirled and swallowed. Remark, accordingly, as acknowledged ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was trying to follow Peggy's incoherent description of the camp life they were to begin on the morrow. Back in her mind was a tiny doubt as to whether she would enjoy twenty girls—all strangers! But she would fight this shyness and do ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... read was foolish, it mattered nothing; he would mingle with it his own fancies, and weave the whole into the loveliest of foolish dreams, all made up of unaccountably reasonable incongruities: the sensible look in dreams of what to the waking mind is utterly incoherent, is the most puzzling of things to him who would understand his own unreason. And the wild MR CHENHAFT lovelinesses that fashioned themselves thus in his brain, outwardly lawless, but inwardly so harmonious as to be altogether credible to the dreamer, were not lost ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the hurrying steps were heard again, and Mrs. Ashton came quickly into the room, carrying a candle, for the evening had by this time closed in. She was greatly agitated. "O come!" she cried, "come directly. I'm sure he is going." "Going? Frank? Is it possible? Already?" With some such incoherent words the doctor caught up a book of prayers from the table and ran out after his wife. Lord Saul stopped for a moment where he was. Molly, the maid, saw him bend over and put both hands to his face. If it were the last words she had to speak, she ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... describe Mr. Hewson's feelings, but his wife's first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few incoherent words of explanation, she led him into the presence of his master, who, looking at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... beginning, And not ended, as you fancied. All these strange events so much Have unnerved him and unmanned him, That, forgetful of himself, Of himself he is regardless. Nothing to the purpose speaks he. In his incoherent language Frenzy shows itself, delusion In his thoughts and in his fancies:— Many times I 've listened to him, Since so high-strung and abstracted Is his mind, he takes no note of Who goes in or who departeth. Once I heard him deprecating Some despotic beauty's ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... not reply. He felt that if he spoke his words would be wild and incoherent, and that all his strength was required to crawl along this terrible crevice in the rock. He was conscious of a hand touching his foot from time to time, and of hearing voices, and of passing over loose, small pieces ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and squeezed it to his breast, and kissed it— yes, he actually kissed its nose in the height of his glee, and continued to utter incoherent exclamations, and to perpetrate incongruous absurdities, until long after they had descended the river and left the muddy Portuguese and his ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... our camp at night, and were very gay and good-humoured with the men. Among other exhibitions was that of a squaw who appeared to be crazy: she sang in a wild incoherent manner, and would offer to the spectators all the little articles she possessed, scarifying herself in a horrid manner if any one refused her present: she seemed to be an object of pity among the Indians, who suffered her to do as she ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... moment when sympathy unlocked the heart, and shame was lost in the sense of injury. Nothing more was needed to call from Arthur the history of his wrongs, as well as he was able to tell it, eking out with his papers the incoherent sentences which he was unable to finish, so that Percy succeeded in collecting, from his broken narration, an idea of the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with my own idea to pay much attention to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... The rest of the company looked on and listened in silence. Then he resumed the reading. "Vell, dere wash a pig sthorm, and t' ship most goes down to t' pottom. Den she does'nt go to t' pottom. No, she no goes to t' pottom. Den mine poy, he shaves t' ship." Hanz went over the letter in this incoherent manner, and then handed it to the Dominie to read for the entertainment of the company. The letter was dated at Bahia, where the ship had put in for fresh supplies, as was the custom with whalers. He gave a glowing account of the voyage, and the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... the tumour. It is rather difficult to prove them wrong. There is, however, a fact which seems to indicate that they would be mistaken. When Mrs Piper is ill, her mediumship decreases or becomes less lucid; she only furnishes incoherent, fragmentary, or quite false communications. The syncope or "trance," which is easy when she is well, becomes difficult or even impossible when she is ill. Her health has been good since her last operation, the syncopes are easy, and the communications obtained ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Paris or London, the various cities which are like quarters scattered over Europe of the fluctuating 'Cosmopolis,' christened by Beyle: 'Vengo adesso da Cosmopoli'. It is the contrast between the rather incoherent ways of the rovers of high life and the character of perennity impressed everywhere in the great city of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose the spot where even the corners speak of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... incoherent words fell from his lips, hot and low, with no reason in them but the overwhelming reason of love itself. For he was not an eloquent man, and now he took no thought of what he said. He was far too natural to be eloquent, and far too deeply stirred to care for the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the winning lot[bt]. 270 Then through my brain the thought did pass, Even as a flash of lightning there, That there was something in her air Which would not doom me to despair; And on the thought my words broke forth, All incoherent as they were; Their eloquence was little worth, But yet she listened—'tis enough— Who listens once will listen twice; Her heart, be sure, is not of ice— 280 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Mendoza greeted the stranger, turning upon him the solemn welcome of her eyes, Codlingsby swooned almost in the brightness of her beauty. It was well she spoke; the sweet kind voice restored him to consciousness. Muttering a few words of incoherent recognition, he sank upon a sandalwood settee, as Goliath, the little slave, brought aromatic coffee in cups of opal, and alabaster spittoons, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the note from Rousselet, perused it with an expression of lively curiosity. When he had finished, he crumpled it in his hand, and said, without attempting to dissemble his vexation, "Always nothing but incoherent expression. Not two words together, from which you can draw any reasonable conclusion. One would really think this man had the power to control himself even in his delirium, and to rave ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... have got," he writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ask me to write letters is like asking a lame man to walk; it is not, as horse-dealers say, 'the nature of the beast.' When others TALK to me charmingly, my answers are short, faltering, incoherent sentences; so it is with my writing." "You," he says to another lady correspondent, "have the pleasant faculty of easy, pleasant letter-writing, in which I ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... first place," she began timidly, and then continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only person he would consent to see at all—the only doctor, I mean. But, of course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... emotion, however condensed the words may be that express it, must not be so condensed that it is incoherent. You must make your punch lines as clear in words as though you were drawing a diagram to explain a problem in geometry. The effect you must secure is that ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... I think I shall do as you suggest. But where to stay? I have not yet come to any decision. And indeed my mind is so uneasy about Quintus, that I can determine on nothing. However, I will let you know immediately. From the incoherent nature of my letters I think you will understand the agitation of my mind, caused not so much by my misery, though I have been overwhelmed by an incredible and unparalleled calamity, as by the recollection of my blunder. For by whose unprincipled advice I was egged on and betrayed you certainly ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was still up. In the midst of an excited crowd a taxicab purred and smoked. There was a general parting in the crowd as the door was flung open. Two figures emerged, were lost from sight, and reappeared at the foot of the plank. An incoherent something was roared ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Fergusson had pointed out to her near the gate. Meanwhile, for a few minutes, she was alone with this suffering lad. Was he fatally hurt—dying? She managed to get some brandy down, and then he lay groaning and unconscious, murmuring incoherent words. She caught "Mamma" again, then "Lisa," "Hans," and broken phrases that meant nothing to her. Was his mind back in some German home, which, perhaps, he ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he took it continually, never either prepared it or resolved it at all, but by using the words "experience of the race" sprang this seeming paradox upon us, with the result that his words were barren. They were barren because they were incoherent; they were incoherent because they were approached and quitted too suddenly. While we were realising "experience" our minds excluded "race," inasmuch as experience was an idea we had been accustomed hitherto to connect only with the individual; while realising the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... his bunk exhausted. The fires burned in his head again. He grew dizzy, and he talked to her, or thought he was talking, but it was only a babble of incoherent sound that made Kazan, the one-eyed old Eskimo dog, lift his shaggy head and sniff suspiciously. Kazan had listened to Pelliter's deliriums many times since MacVeigh had left them alone, and soon ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... kitchen to the parlor. Terror and horror had prevented the ladies from being spectators, but they did not feel the less. Frances continued lying in the posture we have mentioned, offering up fervent and incoherent petitions for the safety of her countrymen, although in her inmost heart she had personified her nation by the graceful image of Peyton Dunwoodie. Her aunt and sister were less exclusive in their devotions; but Sarah began to feel, as the horrors of war were thus brought home to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... is impossible to believe the account as fabricated and divulged by Henry the Seventh, on whose testimony the murder must rest at last; for they, who speak most positively, revert to the story which he was pleased to publish eleven years after their supposed deaths, and which is so absurd, so incoherent, and so repugnant to dates and other facts, that as it is no longer necessary to pay court to his majesty, it is no longer necessary not to treat his assertions as an impudent fiction. I come directly to this point, because ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... flock, heard shouts at a distance, and, turning to look, saw Liddy coming at great speed towards him, shouting out some great news as he ran; but what it was Caleb could not make out, even when the little fellow had come to him, for his excitement made him incoherent. The ewe had lambed, and there were twins—two strong healthy lambs, most beautiful to see! Nothing so wonderful had ever happened in his life before! And now he sought out his friend oftener than ever, to talk of ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... being had swept through my mind. It was indeed days before this feeling passed perfectly away, and even now, when I have sought refuge in the only definite faith, I feel a great tolerance for those people with incoherent personalities, who gather in the chapels and meeting-places of certain obscure sects, because I also have felt fixed habits and principles dissolving before a power, which was hysterica passio ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... these blind and incoherent efforts to rehabilitate the woman's pre-glacial standing have been named—there are at least two elements discernible, both of which are of an economic character. These two elements or motives are expressed by the double watchword, "Emancipation" and "Work." Each ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... and in many ways recalls its dusky prototype. Its color above is a light gray-blue, gradually fading till it becomes white on the breast and belly. It is a very small bird, and has a long, facile, slender tail. Its song is a lisping, chattering, incoherent warble, now faintly reminding one of the goldfinch, now of a miniature catbird, then of a tiny yellow-hammer, having much variety, but ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and are in harmony with history and historians —modern and ancient, sacred and profane—on the subject of the unity of the human family. There are, however, a few who differ; but their wild, incoherent, and unscholarly theories deserve the mercy ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... camel as quick as lightning and shoved the muzzle of his Winchester in the man's face. As the stranger's demeanour was most peculiar and his answers incoherent as well as flippant, Sadek first disarmed his adversary, then turned his own rifle the round way about and gave the man a good pounding for his impertinence in holding up my camel man. We heard a number of voices of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... covering the upper part of her deadly pale face, through which her wild sparkling black eyes, protruding from their sockets, glanced and glared with the fire of a maniac's, while her blue lips kept gibbering an incoherent prayer one moment, and the next imploring mercy, as if she had still been in the hands of those who knew not the name; and anon, a low hysterical laugh made our very blood freeze in our bosoms, which soon ended in a long dismal yell, as she rolled off the couch upon the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... consideration. In some measure, indeed, it may be truly said that, like the history of the Senecan drama or of classical versification, the history of the dramatic pastoral in England is that of a long series of incoherent and more or less fruitless experiments. There is, however, an important difference between the two cases, for in the pastoral we are at least aware of a striving towards some new and but dimly apprehended ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... within hailing distance they did not understand, for what between keeping a foothold on the slippery rocks, hanging on to her periwinkles, and her excitement over her discovery, Grizzel was getting breathless and incoherent, and all she did was to point a small forefinger at the ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... am I?" cried the other, incoherent with passion. "Though ye're three times ma size, I'll teach ma son to ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... his language became more and more incoherent and inconsequent. He addressed himself at one moment to the representatives of the people, who were quite overcome by astonishment; at another to the military in the courtyard, who could not hear him. Then, by an ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... He muttered an incoherent apology, and fervently hoped that she had not observed the direction of his gaze. A vain hope, seeing that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... turned into the first place I found open. It was an all-night cafe. It was packed to suffocation with German soldiers and the feminine underworld of Berlin. There was a glorious orgy of drunkenness, nauseating and debasing amusement, and the incoherent singing of patriotic songs. The other sex appeared to have thrown all discretion and womanliness to the winds. A soldier too drunk to stand was assisted to a chair which he mounted with difficulty. Here he was supported ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... by the warmth of the frieze coat, and his spirits, now that the dreadful scene into which he had been so unexpectedly cast had passed away without danger, began to rise so exuberantly that his conversation became quite loquacious and mirthful, if not actually, to a certain extent, incoherent. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... there, which prevents her from breathing properly, and, in fact, seems to threaten actual suffocation. The patient now generally becomes insensible, and faints; the body is thrown about in all directions, froth issues from the mouth, incoherent expressions are uttered, and fits of laughter, crying, or screaming, take place. When the fit is going off, the patient mostly cries bitterly, sometimes knowing all, and at others nothing, of what has taken place, and feeling ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... obtained general belief, and passed from mouth to mouth with wonderful additions. The priesthood were, on this account, so much the more zealous in their endeavors to anticipate every dangerous excitement of the people, as if the existing order of things could have been seriously threatened by such incoherent ravings. Their exertions were effectual, for exorcism was a powerful remedy in the fourteenth century; or it might perhaps be that this wild infatuation terminated in consequence of the exhaustion which naturally ensued from it; at all events, in the course of ten or eleven months ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... letter and seated myself, and was soon absorbed in the poor mother's hurried and almost incoherent relation, when suddenly I was startled by a gesture or sound from Lina that made me look up hastily. She stood with the letter she had been reading crushed in her hand, her face wearing an expression of agony. For a moment she swayed to and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... have fancied that initial reverses would induce it to abandon its duty, its rights, and its great permanent interests, they will live to see their mistake. They will find it giving a deaf ear to these unworthy complaints of temporary trouble or present loss, and turning gladly from all this incoherent and resultless clamor to the new world opening around us. Already it draws us out of ourselves. The provincial isolation is gone; and provincial habits of thought will go. There is a larger interest in what ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... told him in language which at least would have been forcible and dignified? Instead of that, she had begun with mawkish compliments, unable in her excitement to think of anything else, and ended with an incoherent jumble that barely escaped being hysterical He would think that she was as lacking in sense as in womanly self-respect. At last she turned up the gas, for very shame avoiding a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did so, and ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... consciousness) her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the sad change that had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength returned, his appetite was something enormous, but his eyes wandered continually; his regard could not be arrested; his speech became slow, impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call an idiot ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... are there hung about the necks of children, as in Europe, and also worn by persons whose situations expose them to risk. They are long narrow scrolls of paper, filled with incoherent scraps of verse, which are separated from each other by a variety of fanciful drawings. A charm against an ague I once accidentally met with, which from circumstances I conclude to be a translation of such as are employed by the Portuguese Christians in India. Though not ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... her letter—probably in very incoherent language. It was handed to the German police agent. He smiled sardonically as he took it in his horny hand with its dirty broken nails. The Governor General disliked these appeals to the All Highest. Indeed, in most cases executions that were intended to ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... into her ear—wild, incoherent words that seemed to have the power to quiet the storm. And she was responding—she knew that eager words were falling from her lips, but she never knew what they were—responding with a fervor that was overwhelming ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... she brooded hours together when no one was near, studying the bonny, gladsome face through blinding tears, and sometimes murmuring incoherent words of tenderness. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... was very incoherent; but it seems that the Blackfaces departed, leaving him with his wife and children nearly frightened to death, and with the top of ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... something incoherent, his manner became more sullen, and long before dinner was completed it was evident that he had had far more wine than was good ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... they roared with laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was leze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, to the joy of all the steaming, soddened company, and I am not able to guess where ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of his late 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, never," he repeated in unspeakable sorrow; "I will rather believe that my ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... father taken him in? It did not sound like a conversation; it was monotonous, unvarying, unnatural. She hastily threw on a dressing-gown, and crept to her father's door. She recognized his voice now, but the words were incoherent. He was ill, he was delirious. There was no light within. She opened the door and whispered "Papa," but he did not hear her. In a moment she had lighted a lamp; another moment, and she stood beside him. He ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... million eons in the original cloud, comes forward, and dead matter becomes alive in the lowest order of vegetable life; there takes place, as Herbert Spencer says, "a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, into a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiation and integration." The dead becomes alive; matter passes from unconsciousness to consciousness; passes up from plant ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... light up. They leave us our pipes, tobacco and matches; presently, one knocks with his pipe on the iron trap of the door and asks for water, which is brought in a tin pint-pot. Then follow intervals of smoking, incoherent mutterings that pass for conversation, borrowings of matches, knockings with the pannikin on the cell door wicket or trap for more water, matches, and bail; false and fitful starts into slumber perhaps—or wild attempts at flight ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... obtained an incoherent account of the attack, together with the statement that he was the only person in camp that escaped, all the others having been cut down by the savage horde that overwhelmed them. It was with difficulty that von Horn persuaded the man to ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rebellious behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the unfortunate man in the Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent. He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a madhouse than in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... which had come into Patience's face died away. She could not speak, but she put out one shaking hand and thrust it into that of her husband, and so they read the glad news. It was a curious, excited, incoherent letter, but it told them all they wanted to know, for the time, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the tall figure that guarded the door, with his little eyes half closed. But quite suddenly those eyes flew wide with astonishment. For the figure against the door had begun to sway from side to side, gently and rhythmically, with a low mutter of incoherent words. Hito looked again, somewhat startled. The slave's face was set and blank; his eyes stared straight ahead and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... was not dead. For days he lay upon his hard bed, now muttering incoherent words beneath his red beard, now raving fiercely with the fever of his wound. But one day he woke again to ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... top of his head covering with perspiration. What was this incoherent voice, mysterious as a voice from ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... transcends the vivacious sentiment of poor Gallus. I tell you, my wary critic, I am almost willing to believe that through this silly young dandy we are getting a new voice in our literature. Who knows? who knows? It is un-Roman, yes, incoherent and moody and subversive of law and order, but is it false to human life? A man may choose to dwell apart with his own heart rather than with Lucretius's science or Virgil's nature, or your own practical philosophy. Certain lines that this boy ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... made to him because of recent foolish statements by members of Mr. Seymour's family, which Dickens thus contradicted: "It is with great unwillingness that I notice some intangible and incoherent assertions which have been made, professedly on behalf of Mr. Seymour, to the effect that he had some share in the invention of this book, or of anything in it, not faithfully described in the foregoing paragraph. With the moderation that is due equally to my respect for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... impertinent or incoherent ones, with accompanying drawings to illustrate the text; these we addressed to the different eccentric people in our neighborhood, and, with the aid of a thread, we lowered them to the sidewalk at about the same ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... remarked after Braden's somewhat wild and incoherent beginning. "And sit down. You will not get anywhere pacing this twenty by thirty room, and you are liable to run into something immovable if you don't stop glaring at me and watch out ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... said Hamilton, "just as I was going to bed, and knocked me up." He was almost incoherent in his joy. "He offered me three thousand five hundred pounds for my shares, and I took ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... during Mr. Colton's life-time, under the title of "Visit to Athens and Constantinople," with additions from the original manuscripts of the author, and revised and condensed by the editor. Mercurial, sketchy, and incoherent, tasting strongly of the salt water and the ship's-cabin, enlivened with occasional flashes of harmless vanity, it rewards the attention of the reader by its lively, rapid descriptions, its unfailing fund of good humor, and its local and geographical ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... treatise, in September 1524, was struck with the feebleness of its contents. So far, indeed, from defining the operation of the human will, Erasmus floated vaguely about in loose and incoherent propositions, evidently not from want of extreme care and circumspection, but from the fact that, in this province of antiquarian research, he failed in the necessary acuteness and depth of observation and thought. He declared himself ready to yield obedience to all ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... certain forms of lease, with a view to promote the substitution of a system of farming for the system of metayers. He abolished an obstructive privilege by which the Hotel Dieu had the exclusive right of selling meat during Lent. The whole of the old incoherent and vexatious police of the corn-markets was swept away. Finally, he inspired the publication of a short but most important writing, Boncerf's Inconvenients des Droits Feodaux, in which, without criticising the origin of the privileges of the nobles, the author showed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... passed while the young man sought in vain to enchain his incoherent thoughts. He could think of nothing vividly. He ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... who was present at both trials, 'was there so poor and abject a spirit.' He listened to his indictment with fear and trembling. He confessed he had hammered in his brains imaginations of the matters charged against him, but never had purposed to bring them to effect. He repeated in an incoherent manner his charges against Ralegh. Ralegh, he asserted, had stirred him up to discontent, and thereby overthrown his fortunes. Ralegh had proposed the despatch of a Spanish army to Milford Haven. Ralegh had made himself a pensioner ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... manners. About the eleventh year of her age she was attacked with a fever, and among other symptoms vomited for twenty days. Then she became speechless and so continued for twenty-four days. Then she talked, but her speech was raving and incoherent. Finally she lost all power of motion and of sensibility in the parts below the head and could not swallow. From thenceforth she could not be persuaded to take food. Six months afterwards she regained the use of her limbs, but the inability to swallow remained and she acquired a great ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... gruel, the flavor of which he appeared to relish. Toward eleven o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the stable knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to himself about the horse and Topping's family, and to add some incoherent expressions which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his approaching dissolution or some wishes relative to the disposal of his little property, consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in different parts of the garden. On the clock striking ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... and groans. Sometimes the eyes were open, fixed, dull, wild, and the brain was seized by a quiet delirium; in other instances the eyes were red and manifested a transient excitement of the brain; there was marked delirium in these cases. Some stammered incoherent words, others had a reserved and convulsive cough. In some blood flowed from the nose and ears; they agitated their limbs as if groping. (This description of Beaupre complements the account given by ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... to St. John's genius that in spite of her incoherent utterance he understood precisely what the woman was ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... new surroundings, the strangeness of our sudden removal from America, the long distances travelled, awoke in me new thoughts and I readily surrendered myself at times to the incoherent struggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive to my young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though he was, immersed in demonstrations and problems. It was then that this distant picture ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... in an impossible jargon of allegories, twisted and obscure metaphors, incoherent symbols, ambiguous parables, enigmas, and ciphers. And here is an example." He took from one of the shelves of the library a manuscript which was none other than the Asch-Mezareph, the book of the Jew Abraham and of Nicolas Flamel, restored, translated, and annotated by Eliphas ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... nor have we made use of a green-colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or you may soon convert the whole thing into an incoherent ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... amazing campaign, with its absurdities and follies, its courage and devotion. There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and, except for its one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think, to the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a simple assumption; it was the first crude expression of a ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... heat come mounting up over cheeks and temples, tingling and spreading into her very neck, just because it was the most hateful thing that could happen? And he saw it. She knew he did so, for he dropped his eyes at once, and there was an absolute silence, which she broke in desperation, by an incoherent attempt to say something, and that ended by blundering into the tender subject—the children; she found she had been talking about the place to which she thought of taking them, a quiet spot on the northern ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thrust the note into the boy's hands, was already some paces off. He called out some rather incoherent reply, of which 'thank you, thank you,' were ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... astounded than ever, "the Moors said that? Well it was very kind of the malandrines to speak in such good terms of my honored master.—Good God! good God!" he then continued, in a confused incoherent manner—"My lady, pray forgive my impertinence, but will you tell me ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had passed seemed like an incoherent dream. The joy of having my father in safety remained, and gratitude to Heaven for his preservation. These feelings spread inexpressible pleasure over what seemed to be a new sense of existence. Even the most common things appeared delightful; the green lawn, the still groves, the birds singing, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... a right simply to fall back upon "common sense," and refuse to listen to the idealist. The deliverances of unreflective common sense are vague in the extreme; and though it may seem to assure us that there is a world of things non-mental, its account of that world is confused and incoherent. He who must depend on common sense alone can find no answer to the idealists; he refuses to follow them, but he cannot refute them. He is reduced ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... perfectly erect and motionless, facing them. There were five of them, hulking youths all inflamed by drink if not actually tipsy, and they came around her with shouts of idiotic laughter and incoherent joking, evidently taking her for a ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... perceived the amounts were larger than could ever be realized. He took in the whole situation at a glance. He hastened to consult with Mr. Bellows, but he was listened to with entire apathy. The merchant would say but little, and that was so incoherent and unintelligible, it was evident he was laboring under mental aberration. He continued moody through the day, and the next morning was found dead in his bed. He had severed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the effect that all the forces of the civilised world were concentrating into two camps—the world and God. Up to the present time the forces of the world had been incoherent and spasmodic, breaking out in various ways—revolutions and wars had been like the movements of a mob, undisciplined, unskilled, and unrestrained. To meet this, the Church, too, had acted through her Catholicity— dispersion rather than concentration: franc-tireurs had been opposed ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... that the heat had hurt his head. And all the time, in a secret, shame-faced way, she was listening to his incoherent sentences and rough exclamations, and remembering them one by one, and every one. And she looked at his pale face, and saw the queer light in his blue eyes, and the squaring of his jaw—and then and long afterwards the whole picture, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... BLAKE. The Poetical Sketches, published in 1783, is a collection of Blake's earliest poetry, much of it written in boyhood. It contains much crude and incoherent work, but also a few lyrics of striking originality. Two later and better known volumes are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, reflecting two widely different views of the human soul. As in all his works, there ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... getting well on in the afternoon, I suppose, that Tom Jecks' fever came to a height. He muttered, and then began to talk angrily, but in an incoherent way, and his voice grew so loud that at last I roused myself and went up to the look-out, to watch whether it was ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... great exhaustion. "I must tell the captain, to-morrow," some of them would say, "that I can pull no more." To-morrow came, and they pulled on, as if reluctant to yield to circumstances. Macnamee at length lost his senses. We first observed this from his incoherent conversation, but eventually from manner. He related the most extraordinary tales, and fidgeted about eternally while in the boat. I felt it necessary, therefore, to relieve him from ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... letters, for which a large and capacious drawer was provided in the office, into which they were tossed as they came, on the chance of their containing some reading which might be interesting when the trouble was over. As the fight waxed, they came by every post and in every form, ranging from mere incoherent personal abuse to threats of assassination. Hundreds of them were entirely insane: many hundred more the work, on the face of them, of anarchists pure and simple. A large proportion of them were written in red ink, and in many—very many—cases the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and incoherent letter, she sank on her knees by her bedside, unable in any other attitude to bear the strain which it put upon ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... they had been laboring so long suddenly released, the two girls locked their arms around each other in a half-hysterical outburst of relief. Margaret's meaningless words and Dorothy's incoherent praises of her lover and Crane mingled with their racking sobs as each fought to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... place of residence, Mrs. Gerome had never met Muriel's governess, and he conjectured that she had either known her in earlier years or now alluded to another person bearing the same name. Miss Dexter was very fair, with a profusion of light yellow hair, and suited in all respects the incoherent description that fell from the sick ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... travelling on horseback through Palestine. He fell ill on the 27th of April, but recovered his health, as it seemed, to such an extent that Mr. Glennie parted from him on the 21st of May. On the 29th of May, at Damascus, Mr. Buckle died. Among the incoherent utterances of his illness, it was possible to distinguish the exclamation, "Oh, my book, my book, I shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the woman and the son took the other, and they lifted her, without her connivance, to her feet and kept her on them. Then they walked her down the steps. On the level below she showed taller than either of them; she was bundled up in different incoherent wraps; her head was muffled, and she wore a battered bonnet at an ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... brought down his horse and our young gentleman on it, who fell crushed and stunned under the animal, and came to his senses he knows not how long after, only to lose them again from pain and loss of blood. A dim sense, as of people groaning round about him, a wild incoherent thought or two for her who occupied so much of his heart now, and that here his career, and his hopes, and misfortunes were ended, he remembers in the course of these hours. When he woke up, it ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... same style, here revealed by fitful hints in casual phrases, as that which animates and distinguishes even a work so insufficient and incompetent as Webster's "tragecomoedy" of "The Devil's Law-case." The noble and impressive extracts from this most incoherent and chaotic of all plays which must be familiar to all students of Charles Lamb are but patches of imperial purple sewn on with the roughest of needles to a garment of the raggedest and coarsest kind of literary serge. Hardly any praise can be too high for their dignity ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... there was snatchy, excited, and incoherent conversation over the telephone, during which Selwyn and I alternated in the talking in an effort to learn what Tom Cressy was saying at the other end of the line, and what it was he wanted me to do. Tom's voice was not ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even understand. He began to speak, slowly and haltingly at first, then more rapidly. At last he poured out with breathless, incoherent speed the strange story of the Armageddon vision, the hopes that were in him, the fierce enthusiasm, the passionate love for Ireland which burnt in his soul. He was not conscious of the gaping inconsequences of his train of emotion. He did not recognise ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... else, from witnessing such misery again! One child died after another, and then the darling mother! I had nothing to give her; literally nothing. Every one round us was in the same state. On her death-bed she was rambling and incoherent, but talked of Wales, and her father ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and hard; down into a shallow valley, leaping gorse bushes, crashing through whortle and meadowsweet, stumbling over peat-cuttings and the workings of forgotten tin-mines. An idiotic popular tune raced through his brain. He found himself trying to frame the words, but they broke into incoherent prayers, still to ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... cause for dread she was compelled in some degree to forget herself. She saw the intense solicitude of her father and mother, who had been so readily accessory to Martine's expedition; she also saw that his mother's heart was almost breaking under the strain of anxiety. His incoherent words were not needed to reveal that his effort had been prompted by his love. She was one of his watchers, patiently enduring the expressions of regret which the mother in her sharp agony could not repress. Nichol's last letter was now known by heart, its ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... him tenderly from the floor, and placed him upon the cushions. This movement seemed to disturb the sufferer, and he opened his eyes, muttering some incoherent words. At the same time he threw his arms and legs about in a frightful manner. Dan was quite as much puzzled and alarmed as Lily had been. He did not know what to do for him. His experience as a nurse had been very limited, and his knowledge of ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... to Amy, bade them tell her mother that she would write soon, and often begged for pencil and paper to try to say a word, that Father might not think she had neglected him. But soon even these intervals of consciousness ended, and she lay hour after hour, tossing to and fro, with incoherent words on her lips, or sank into a heavy sleep which brought her no refreshment. Dr. Bangs came twice a day, Hannah sat up at night, Meg kept a telegram in her desk all ready to send off at any minute, and Jo never ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... delightfully shocked at this invitation, and was so stricken down by the happiness thus suddenly offered to him, that he thought he should have dropped from the Captain's arm at first, and trembled lest the other should discover his emotion. He gasped out a few incoherent words, indicative of the high gratification he should have in being presented to the lady for whose—for whose talents he had conceived such an admiration—such an extreme admiration; and followed the Captain, scarcely knowing whither that gentleman ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in chorus, then fell upon him noisily, shaking his grimy hands and slapping his back until he coughed weakly. Summoned by their shouts, Big George broke in upon the incoherent greeting, and at sight of his late comrade began ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... sanity. It was still hoped that this agitation of spirits might pass away as they proceeded; but, on the contrary, it grew more and more violent. His comrades endeavored to divert his mind and to draw him into rational conversation, but he only became the more exasperated, uttering wild and incoherent ravings. The sight of any of the natives put him in an absolute fury, and he would heap on them the most opprobrious epithets; recollecting, no doubt, what he had suffered ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... echoing in his head. Then he paused at a Mollah preaching the Jehad, in doubt whether he too wasn't a German pastor, and then at an Anglican clergyman still lying abed and thinking out a great mission of Repentance and Hope that should restore the authority of the established church—by incoherent missioning—without any definite sin indicated for repentance nor any clear hope for anything in particular arising out of such activities. The bishop's hand went seeking to and fro, but nowhere could he find any religious teacher, any religious body rousing itself to meet the new dawn of faith ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Hugo?" said Angela, startled by the tenor of his incoherent sentences. "Who has set upon ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... who, in an affected and forced manner, bring in religion, and talk much of duty on all occasions; of all smooth and fawning people; of those who are very talkative, and who, in dealing with you, endeavor to draw off your attention from the point in hand by incoherent or random expressions. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott |
