"Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for her comfort, but the girl was firm in her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, and ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... father and mother in one to motherless children, bears a burden which men shirk or stagger under; and there was not a shirking cell in his ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... head against a stone wall.... They crept nearer and nearer, and then our officers gave the word. A sheet of flame flickered along the line of trenches and a stream of bullets tore through the advancing mass of Germans. They seemed to stagger like a drunken man hit between the eyes, after which they made a run for us.... Halfway across the open another volley tore through their ranks, and by this time our artillery began dropping shells around them. Then an officer gave an order and they broke into open formation, rushing like ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Charms, Fir'd each breast with martial glow, Ah, see what piteous scenes appear. When warriors yield their breath; Now dying groans invade the ear, They sink in glorious death. Prussian rage the foe confounds, Some stagger, fall, are slain, Some cover'd o'er with blood and wounds, Lie weltring on the plain, Surpriz'd and confounded, With horror surrounded, And pale fear half dead, They're vanquish'd and fled. Hark! hark! ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... list to starboard. This, while not wholly satisfactory to the more experienced, allayed the fears of the women—there were two or three on board beside the widow—who welcomed the respite from the wrench and stagger ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dark-soul'd ATHEIST stand, And watch the breakers boiling on the strand, And, while Creation stagger'd at his nod, Mock the dread presence of the mighty God! We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean's roar, Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore We hear Him in the riot of the blast, And shake, while rush ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to drive her in. She sped in like an arrow; and again the white wave reared high and broke upon its prey. By then, I was in water to my waist. I caught Helena out with one reach of my arms, just as I saw Williams and Peterson stagger in with Mrs. Daniver between them. In some miraculous way we got beyond danger, and met my pirates, dancing and shouting a welcome to our desert isle. Their advent, thereon, gave the two womenfolk a fervent wish to embrace, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... pointed in silence to a boat entangled amongst the reeds, through which an attempt had evidently been made to force it. The stranger had now arrived within a few paces of the shore, when he began to stagger, and Canondah, who hurried to his assistance, was but just in time to prevent his falling back into the water. Supporting him in her arms she assisted him to the bank, and the cause of his weakness became apparent, in a stream of blood that flowed from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... triumphantly declared that in a century and a half the Holy Office sent to the stake over thirty thousand.[2] Of course we must take such round numbers with a grain of salt, as they always are greatly exaggerated. But the fact remains that the condemnations for sorcery were so numerous as to stagger belief. The Papacy itself recognized the injustice of its agents. For in 1637 instructions were issued stigmatizing the conduct of the Inquisitors on account of their arbitrary and unjust prosecution of sorcerers; they were accused of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... walked by the horse, keeping on the upper side of the road. Jonas went behind, taking hold of the back part of the sleigh, so as to hold it in case it should tip down too far. They went on thus for some distance tolerably well. The horse sometimes got in pretty far, and for a moment would plunge and stagger, as if he could hardly get along; but then he would work his way out, and ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... fever while he was writing, and the blood-and-thunder Magazine diction he adopted did not calm him. Two months afterward he was reported fit for duty, but, in spite of the fact that he was urgently needed to help an undermanned Commission stagger through a deficit, he preferred to die; vowing at the last that he was hag-ridden. I got his manuscript before he died, and this is his version of the affair, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... much more so in the expressing of the Eternal Life through endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... home disappointed, but not till they had each taken a pint or two of beer at the "Blue Lion" on their way home, uttering many curses on "that there Gobbleall." Captain Carbonel did not hear those same curses, but as he rode home he saw the two men stagger out of the "Blue Lion," refreshed not only by their own pints, but by those of sympathisers. And the sight did not make him sorry for what he had done, knowing well that George Hewlett, Cox the cobbler, and Mrs Holly, the widow with a small shop, ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... charge is sacred; that the sheets he has produced are impossible to replace. High words. Abrupt re-opening of the front door. Struggling humanity projected on to the pavement. Three persons—my scribe in the middle, an emissary on either side—stagger strangely past me. The scribe enters the purple night only under the stony compulsion ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... careening into anarchy. "The facts of our peace and independence," wrote a friend of Washington, "do not at present wear so promising an appearance as I had fondly painted in my mind. The prejudices, jealousies, and turbulence of the people at times almost stagger my confidence in our political establishments; and almost occasion me to think that they will show themselves unworthy of the noble prize for which we ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... spirit has gone for ever. My passions have expired like my hopes. The remaining sands of my life are few. Once it was otherwise: you can recall a different picture of the Marmion on whom you smiled, and of whom you were the first love. O Annabel! grey, feeble, exhausted, penitent, let me stagger over your threshold, and die! I ask no more; I will not hope for your affection; I will not even count upon your pity; but endure my presence; let your roof screen my ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... knowest not how far the arch-enemy of mankind may be permitted to afflict bodily our guilty race. I could tell thee such tales of yonder creature as would stagger even ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... efforts of the electrician struggling with the controller or through another change in the polarity of the comet, the ship would be saved on the very brink of ruin and stagger away out ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... at once overcome with sleep. Hardly was he able to stagger to his cot before he fell into a deep, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... to mark the end of the summer. Mrs. Poppit, alone in her disgusting ostentation, had seemed to think two days ago that it was cold enough for furs, and she presented a truly ridiculous aspect in an enormous sable coat, under the weight of which she could hardly stagger, and stood rooted to the spot when she stepped out of the Royce. Brisk walking and large woollen scarves saved the others from feeling the cold and from being unable to move, and this morning the High Street was dazzling with the shifting play ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... death in the grip of pain. The brig was in sore distress, her timbers creaking, snapping, quivering, like one being beaten to death, his bones cracking, his muscles pulping under heavy blows. We were above water-line there in the cockpit; we could feel her flinch and stagger. On her side there came suddenly a crushing blow, as if some great hammer, swung far in the sky, had come down upon her. I could hear the split and break of heavy timbers; I could see splinters flying over me in a rush of smoke, and the legs of a man go bumping on the beams above. Then ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... by surprise this time. To be attacked in such a way by the very person he meant to attack, to be accounted the injurer by the very person who, he thought, had injured him, sufficed to stagger ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... began to shew signs of peculiar interest in their guide. In spite of her unquestioning readiness to shoulder burdens, Prescott would run to relieve her. Liosha has assured me that Jaffery did the same—and indeed I cannot conceive Jaffery allowing a female companion to stagger along under a load which he could swing onto his huge back and carry like a walnut. To go further—she maintains that the two quarrelled dreadfully over the alleviation of her labours, so much so, that often before they had ended their quarrel, she had performed the task in dispute. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... to make up for that now. You're going to have so much home life from now on, that you can hardly stagger under it. And I'm going ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... girl! ... Now Lucy, let me tell you something funny. This will stagger you. Because it's gospel truth, I swear.... Rustler you call your dad. What's that? It means a cowman who has appropriated cattle not his own. He has driven off unbranded stock and branded it. There's no difference. Lucy, my dad rustled cattle. So have all the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... aviator landed, and as he climbed out of his machine, helped by orderlies and others who rushed up, he was seen to stagger. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... Ralph, and this news caused the prisoner to turn pale and stagger back. He realized that he had come to the end of his plotting and must now suffer the consequences of his misdeeds. He was marched off to jail, and it may be as well to state, was, later on, sent to prison for a ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... the bit of coast that Kingsley so vividly described: 'What a sea-wall they are, those Exmoor hills! Sheer upward from the sea a thousand feet rise the mountains; and as we slide and stagger lazily along before the dying breeze, through the deep water which never leaves the cliff, the eye ranges, almost dizzy, up some five hundred feet of rock, dappled with every hue, from the intense dark of the tide-line; through the warm green and brown rock-shadows, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Tonneraire if he had now put his ship before the wind. But no, he still fights on and on, and suffers terribly; and just as the shades of night deepen into blackness, he manages to hoist enough sail to stagger away, and the Frenchman is ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... no doubt, is the thing To stagger Big Bounce, in a fashion Socratic. I fancy I know now to plant a sharp sting, The success of my bayonet-play is emphatic. Remember a picture I once chanced to see, A Pompeian sentinel posed at a portal, And "faithful to death" though fire threatened. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... from his neck; but he felt no bullet shock. He saw before him only the buckle of Seagrue's belt forty paces away, and sent bullet after bullet at the gleam of brass between the sights. Both men were using high-pressure guns, and the deadly shock of the slugs made Seagrue twitch and stagger. The man was dying as he walked. Smith's hand was racing with the lever, and had a cartridge jammed, the steel would have ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... very decently volunteered to stagger along with me, and we hopped into a taxi. We sat around at the police-station for a bit on a wooden bench in a sort of ante-room, and presently a policeman appeared, leading ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... pediment from behind, and we saw the two tall pillars that supported it stagger, snap like two sticks, and bend forwards, looking suddenly queer and corpulent in their fore-shortening; then they parted and fell, bringing down the whole ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... of the selectmen whose terms expired. In his dual capacity as selectman and town clerk Asaph felt himself to be a very important personage. To elect some one else in his place would be, he was certain, a calamity which would stagger the township. Therefore he was a busy man and made many calls upon his fellow citizens, not to influence their votes—he was careful to explain that—but just, as he said, "to see how they was gettin' along," and because he "thought ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Neptune explained the perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitates towards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws our yearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictions stagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking irony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the world! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they disappear amidst the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... steerage passage back to his previous democratic retirement. There had been others, less sincere but more pretentious in quality, to whom, however, a letter to the Heralds' College in London was all sufficient, and who, on payment of various fees and emoluments, were enabled to stagger back to New York or Boston with certain unclaimed and forgotten luggage which a more gallant ancestor had scorned to bring with him into the new life, or had thrown aside in his undue haste to make them citizens of the republic. Still, all this had ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... meaning now. As the warm evening wanes into coolness and gray, the one unspoken pain of his life comes back, and whitens his cheerful face. There is blood on his hands. He sees the old man's gray hairs blown again by the wind, sees him stagger and fall. Gaunt covers his bony face with his hands, but he cannot shut it out. Yet he is learning to look back on even that with healthy, hopeful eyes. He reads over again each day the misspelled words in the Bible,—thinking that the old man's haggard face looks down on him with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... spent without danger of awakening. And he had dropped into the habit of storing it about him, so that in any pocket into which he plunged his hand he might find a roll of crisp evidence of reality. He liked his bills to be of all denominations, and some so large as exquisitely to stagger imagination, others charming by their number and crispness—the dignified, orange paper of a man of assured position and wealth-crackling greenbacks the design of which tinged the whole with actuality. He was specially partial to engravings of President Lincoln, the particular savior and patron ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... departure the box with the diamonds was brought down into the hall just as they were about to depart. The tall London footman again brought it down, and deposited it on one of the oak hall-chairs, as though it were a thing so heavy that he could hardly stagger along with it. How Lizzie did hate the man as she watched him, and regret that she had not attempted to carry it down herself. She had been with her diamonds that morning, and had seen them out of the box and into it. Few days passed on ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... do not like it. I do better with an adding machine down on Wall Street than a typewriter. But let us join the others." There was a noticeable reluctance about dwelling upon the typewriter subject. Warren hurried into the drawing-room, as Shirley followed with a perceptible stagger. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... entirely, one was shot, an' Ah was caught. They took me to the stockade an' whipped me 'mos' to death, three days runnin'. The third day Ah was so near dead that they didn't tie me up, an' when, hours later, Ah did stagger to mah feet, they jes' pointed to the fields whar the hands was workin'. Ah heard one o' the guards say, 'He won't go far,' an' Ah hid in the woods, Ah don' know how long, jes' livin' on berries, an' at las' Ah got away. Ah knew Ah would be ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had just encountered. He had scarce called for a quartern of brandy when the robbed passengers thronged into the kitchen; and the fright gave him enough sobriety to leave his glass untasted, and stagger to his horse. In a wild fury of arrogance and terror, of conflicting vice and virtue, he pressed on to Hockcliffe, where he took refuge from the rain, and presently, fuddled with more brandy, he fell asleep ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... were limits to the strain which the rope would stand, though none apparently to the lifting powers of this infernal machine. There was a sharp crack, and we were in a heap upon the ground with coils of rope all over us. When we were able to stagger to our feet we saw far off in the deep blue sky one dark spot where the lump of basalt was speeding upon ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a soldier would stagger from weariness. Jean was at his side in a moment relieving the soldier of some of his burden which the boy would carry until someone took it away ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... out patterns. The squares used are tiny particles having not over a quarter-inch surface; and the amount of labor and the expense in covering the vast ceiling of this tremendous structure with incomputable myriads of these small particles fairly stagger any ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... think of doing in public, or permitting to be done, anything which was not desirable for the child to do either in public or private. Why should any man who walks upright, with his head pointing to the stars, be permitted to profane the name of Deity, to stagger under the influence of liquor, to puff at a cigar, to gamble, to run a disorderly resort or show, to enrich himself through the manufacture and sale of poisons, or to do anything else that corrupts the community and destroys her children? Surely ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... to what I had conceived of human powers. Perhaps you have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating. The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I see in you a new instance of that abuse which is so generally made of talents, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the dozens Who are always in the skies, And forever capture fortunes Of the most gigantic size; But we stagger from their presence And their glories that repel, For the quiet-spoken persons ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... done it, locked 'em all in a room and put 'em on the carpet one by one. They was scared stiff, too stiff to talk. All but old Vincenzo, the white-haired old pirate the count had left in charge. He was a lovely peagreen under the gills, but he made a stagger at putting up a game of talk. No, he hadn't seen no one. He had been watching their excellencies in their little affair of honor. Still, he couldn't swear that we hadn't seen some one. Folks did see things ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... create it without such agency. Hence there is nothing to stumble over in the idea of the miraculous conception, to one who fully accepts the God of the Bible in the character in which He is revealed as a divine creator. To accept God as the creator of heaven and earth, and then stagger at His performance of any miracle ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... the latch. As the door flew open I knew in a moment that my worst apprehensions had been fulfilled. Barrington Cowles was leaning against the railings outside with his face sunk upon his breast, and his whole attitude expressive of the most intense despondency. As he passed in he gave a stagger, and would have fallen had I not thrown my left arm around him. Supporting him with this, and holding the lamp in my other hand, I led him slowly upstairs into our sitting-room. He sank down upon the sofa without a word. Now that I could get a good view of him, I was horrified to see the change ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enable him to throw him with greater ease. But Ben was wary, and experienced in this mode of warfare, having often had scuffles in fun with his school-fellows. He evaded Tim's grasp, therefore, and dealt him a blow in the breast, which made Tim stagger back. He began to realize that Ben, though a smaller boy, was a formidable opponent, and regretted that he had undertaken a contest with him. He was constrained to appeal to his ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... that he had stuck his blade into his enemy as a gardener that he has stuck his spade into the ground. Yet the Marquis sprang back from the stroke without a stagger, and Syme stood staring at his own sword-point like an idiot. There was no blood on it ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, and none large enough for a moderate tea-garden, or sufficiently solid to have resisted the point-blank stagger of a drunken man. Lower down were two holes in the rock, which, from their size and appearance, I should have taken for a rabbit-burrow and a badger's earth, but for the young lady's joyous exclamation—"Ah! voila les hermitages. Messieurs, il y a deux hermites la-dedans." "A la bonne heure, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... it as you go to bed; if you are as soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for old men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood, to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again, and to do this five nights and days—O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, how can you ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... was made of tough fiber and the extreme shock that would leave some men stunned and prostrate only made him stagger a little. His revolver was spitting an intermittent stream of fire and it continued this after a second slug through his lungs had forced him to his knees. He sank down fighting and got his third fatal wound before the cow-boys carried him up to the ranch-house to die. There, ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... well away, in fact so far back that they are near our bus. The German battery notices this, and we are forthwith bracketed in front and behind. We swoop away in a second, and escape with nothing worse than a violent stagger, and we are thrown upward as ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... said Mrs. Bennet, continuing her story, "was my lord departed, than Mrs. Ellison came to me. She behaved in such a manner, when she became acquainted with what had past, that, though I was at first satisfied of her guilt, she began to stagger my opinion, and at length prevailed upon me entirely to acquit her. She raved like a mad woman against my lord, swore he should not stay a moment in her house, and that she would never speak to him more. In short, had she been the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss that all this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed more than he did of the old lady's story, there would have been no sense of intrusion or impropriety in such a visit to the mother. Indeed, had Christina been living in the civilized world, her chamber would have been hung with black cloth, black velvet would have ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... terms with the rest; but there her assistance ended. She would still say nothing, promise nothing, bind herself to nothing, and, so far as she was concerned, the war would have been soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox, broken in body, and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, still thundered in the parish church; and his voice, it was said, was like ten thousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism. All the Lowlands answered to his call. Our English Cromwell found in the man of religion a match for ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a baby. His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly-mountain of misery. He'd get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins. And then he'd cry, but always on the run. O man, the gods themselves would have wept with him, and you yourself or any other man. It was pitiful, and there was so I much ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... morning for the last leg of the trip. I recognized the 'Sea Monster' a long way off, but I must say I was surprised when I saw Jerry's shirt signaling so distressfully. Of course I knew who you were at once, when you called the place the 'Sea Monster,' but Christine did stagger ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... least exhausted giant would stagger to his four and a half remaining legs, hoist his assailant, together with a mass of the midgets, high in air, and stagger for a few steps, before falling beneath the onrush of new attackers. It made me wish to help the great insect, who, for aught I knew, was doomed because he was ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... gloomy world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust To suffer death or shame ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward, and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young girl in that hand-clasp—the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... past; [4] And willingly have laid thee here at last: For thou hadst lived till every thing that cheers In thee had yielded to the weight of years; Extreme old age had wasted thee away, 15 And left thee but a glimmering of the day; Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,— I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze, Too weak to stand against its sportive breath, And ready for the gentlest stroke of death. 20 It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed; Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead; Not ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... bed and crawled, scrambling toward the door. The twisting and writhing appeared to increase. The air was oppressive. I seemed to be saying to myself, will it never, never stop? I wrenched the lock; the door of the room swung back against my shoulder. Just then the building seemed to breathe, stagger ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... observing, eagerly drank up from the ground. I cut down the bladder as fast as I could, and saved about half a pint in the bottom of it, which I tasted, and could not distinguish it from the best mountain wine. I drank it all, and found myself greatly refreshed. By this time the eagles began to stagger against the shrubs. I endeavoured to keep my seat, but was soon thrown to some distance among the bushes. In attempting to rise I put my hand upon a large hedgehog, which happened to lie among the grass upon its back: it instantly closed round my hand, so that I found it impossible ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... walking through silent streets at sunrise and hostile windows seemed watching her, while the few persons she met turned round to look at her. On she went in the dawn-light, hampered by her long skirts, and holding a little green plush bag, much as some criminal might stagger homewards. The past night was to her as a night of delirium. Something mad and strange and overwhelming had happened, yet how or why she knew not. To have flung all shame aside, to have forgotten her love for another man, it was this ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... notice that he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of the stable. He used to beat and starve my mother. I have seen him use his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood. When ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... on the cowpuncher, who was now uncoiling his lariat and preparing it for a cast, Bard edged the piebald into the current. He felt the mustang stagger as the water came knee-deep, and he checked the horse, casting his eye from shore to shore and summing ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... bring themselves to understand the meaning of Sam's words both the sufferers were revived by the excitement sufficiently to stagger to an upright position, but as only at intervals was the cheering sound heard, fatigue soon overpowered them again, and once ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... the best machine in the shop—a big seven-seated, shiny one, half as long as a Pullman parlor-car, with a top and brass housin's and extra tires strapped on, and a place for a trunk—an outfit that made me look like a street-railway magnate. It set me back a whole lot, but I wanted to stagger dad—and I did. As we rolled up to the door he came out with eyes you ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Hauberks and helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live inclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod by these spectral citizens ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... stones of Carnac (or rather, to leave them), if anyone should, after all these opinions, ask me mine, I would emit an irresistible, irrefutable, incontestable one, which would make the tents of M. de la Sauvagere stagger, blanch the face of the Egyptian Penhoet, break up the zodiac of Cambry and smash the python into a thousand bits. This is my opinion: the stones of Carnac ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... be, he never forgot his duty and when the hour for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as ever, himself ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Bartley for his approval, "and I've always thought that, if I ever got run clean ashore, high and dry, I'd make a stagger to write it out and do something with it. Do ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... does Kant state, by contradistinction, the value and the nature of his own procedure. He first, according to his own representation, thought of applying his investigation to the mind itself. Here was a passage which for years (I may say) continued to stagger and confound me. What! he, Kant, in the latter end of the 18th century, about the year 1787—he the first who had investigated the mind! This was not arrogance so much as it was insanity. Had he said—I, first, upon just principles, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... walked around the corner of the inn, and up the lane. The colonel, with Silas and Sheppard, followed in more leisurely fashion. At a shout from some one they turned to see a dusty, bloody figure, with ragged clothes, stagger up from ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... a bed at his sister's, no matter at what hour of day or night he chose to stagger in; but the large family combined efforts to prevent the contretemps of a meeting between him and Ruth. Their promise to her mother was too sacred for trifling, and they loved the girl too well to risk being deprived ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... sense or with the severely literal meaning of some Scripture text. They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... unusual commotion reigns in Reikjavik. Numerous groups of men and horses fill the streets; goods are loaded and unloaded; friends who have not met for a year or more welcome each other, others take leave. On one spot curious tents {44} are erected, before which children play; on another drunken men stagger along, or gallop on horseback, so that one is terrified, and fears every moment ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... a sufficiency of men. The fighting in the main town was now practically at an end; and as Dick ran hither and thither, seeking the commander, the streets were thick with wandering soldiers, some laden with more booty than they could well stagger under, others shouting drunk. None of them, when questioned, had the least notion of the duke's whereabouts; and, at last, it was by sheer good fortune that Dick found him, where he sat in the saddle, directing operations to dislodge the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pains increasing upon him, one asked him whether he would rather still endure those pains or forsake Christ? "Alas!" said he, "I know not what to say, being a child: for these pains may stagger a strong man; but I will strive to endure the best I can." Upon this he called to mind that martyr, Thomas Bilney, who, being in prison the night before his burning, put his finger into the candle to know how he could endure the fire; "O," said the child, "had I lived then, I would have run ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... health will be better looked after if I am there to give him his midday bite and sup, and brush him up, than if he is left to cater for himself; and as to exercise for the Billy-boy, 'tis not so far to the Thames Embankment. The only things that stagger me are the blacks! I don't know whether life is long enough to be after the blacks all day long, but perhaps I shall get used ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... words were empty; she stretched out her hands, and the gesture was lifeless. She fixed her eyes on no one; she merely gazed about. She had a habit of shaking her bracelet in a way that aroused sympathy. And after making a lewd remark she would turn her head to one side, and thereby stagger even the most hardened frequenter of this sort of places. Her complexion had been ruined by rouge, but underneath the skin there was something that glimmered like water ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... as his jaded fancy might suggest, the battalion adjutant, returning from his quest, came slowly to the major's side. "I've picked out nine, sir. It was simply impossible to find another in the whole two hundred. Some of these look barely able to stagger as ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... parentheses above. The exigencies of English grammar as also of perspicuity have obliged me to use, even in the portions unenclosed, more words than what occur in the original Sanskrit. All these verses are cruces intended to stagger Ganesa. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... inclination, he pulled out the ferret, and pitched it right upon Fred's shoulders as he stood with his back half turned. Fred gave a cry of fear and anger, and darting at Harry, struck him full in the face a blow that made him stagger backwards. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... of such people and their victims. We look upon a face under whose steady gaze we stagger; there are eyes we cannot encounter in a full unflinching look; there are hands whose touch thrills and weakens us, there are voices which sink into our souls, and mesmerize us at their will. Let the circumstances ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... miles, one knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea, carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their foreheads with just the shadow ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... black rock. The water on Maskull's garment and body evaporated very quickly. He gazed upward at the towering mountain, but at that moment some strange movements on the part of Panawe attracted his attention. His face was working convulsively, and he began to stagger about. Then he put his hand to his mouth and took from it what looked like a bright-coloured pebble. He looked at it carefully for some seconds. Joiwind also looked, over his shoulder, with quickly changing colors. After this ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Missouri, but that it was to be a "clinch" at last was the generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether, said Boynton, unfeelingly. "I could add a charge or two myself if I didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger." Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... paying it out when necessary. In a few moments, although the time seemed hours to the watchers, the feet of Teach touched the shore, and although the terrific undertow of the wave that had dropped him there almost bore him back again, yet by a superhuman exertion he managed to stagger forward, and the next moment they saw him fall prostrate on ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the Texan. He knew that surprise and quick action always counted more than numbers. Everything now depended on boldness. As they neared the two adobes, he pretended to reel and stagger close against Blacksnake for support, as if he had been beaten until he could hardly stand. This, too, allowed him to keep the gun against the outlaw's side ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... to proceed to other portions of the English settlements, shoot down the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives and children, load them with packs of plunder from their own homes, and drive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able to stagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps torn off, and exhibited to their masters, and for such trophies bounties were paid. The French government in Paris paid bounties for the scalps of women and children, as Connecticut did for those of wolves, and it not only fitted out ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... that look that went so home to the heart of the stern father—in those loving, broken words of the poor abused boy? If they did not stagger the conviction of his guilt, they made him feel most unhappy. Had he acted well, or wisely, or like a Christian? Was the punishment that he had inflicted—so harsh and degrading to a sensitive mind—likely to produce the desired effect? He could not answer the question ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... in the street I led thee, dearest, Though the veil hid thy face divine, They who beheld thy graceful motion Would stagger as though drunk ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... told upon its character and appearance was shown in the remnants of whitewash on the high wall, scaling off in discolored patches; in the stagger of the tall fence opposite, drooping like a drunkard between two policemen of posts; and in the unkempt, bulging rear of the third wall,—the front house,—stuffed with rags and ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and certainly they cannot be arranged so as to suit the case of the Hopeless Poor. Shall I tell you, dear sentimentalist, that the Hopeless brigade would not accept your kindness if they could? I shall stagger many people when I say that the Hopeless division like the free abominable life of the rookery, and that any kind of restraint would only send them swarming off to some other centre from which they would have to be dislodged by degrees according to the means and the time of the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... The Daily Record missed being the first to give out certain information that was to stagger the world. The dispatch, which had evidently outrun an earlier ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... been out of sight these two hours; when last seen she was in chase of something in the south—east quarter, and carrying all the sail she could stagger under." ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... this Paradise, in which, according to the Jehovistic record, the drama of the Fall was enacted, but represents man as immediately commissioned to subdue and populate the world. Such discrepancies are enough to stagger ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... leaving off work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... my eyes at once. All around me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The Hispaniola herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opened fire on the officer, firing three or four shots. The third shot struck Mora in the right hip, and was subsequently found to have taken an upward course. Although badly wounded, Mora drew his pistol and returned the fire. At his third shot the Negro was noticed to stagger, but he did not fall. He continued his flight. At this moment Sergeant Aucoin seized the other Negro, who proved to be a youth, Leon Pierce. As soon as Officer Mora was shot he sank to the sidewalk, and the ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... head, or for my ruin; and one never feels very comfortable under such offers, at any time or in any country. The reckless lies which this man gets adventurers at Cawnpore to write for him, and careless or corrupt editors to publish, are apt to stagger those who do not know the vile character of the individual, or the true nature of the facts ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger like an ox under a butcher's bludgeon. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... saw the prince totter, he advanced toward the threshold of the pavilion. Diana, on her side, perceiving Francois stagger, sat herself down ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... truth clearly, looking back through the mists of nearly a hundred years. In the strange story of that famous battle, only one fact stands out clear beyond all dispute, and that is so incredible as to stagger belief. It appears at first utterly past belief that the white army, marching against the red army with the open purpose of attacking it on the next day, should have lain down almost at the feet of the desperate foe, and have gone quietly to sleep. Only the recorded word of the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... of the whirling haze. She pulled the horses up, and as she stood still listening, a blurred object appeared almost in front of them. It shambled forward in a curious manner, stopped, and moved again, and in another moment or two Hastings lurched by her with a stagger and sank down into a huddled white heap on the sled. She turned back towards him, and he seemed ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... be a task to frighten and stagger many a person, but it only kindled Mrs. Carey's love and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it was an illusion of the sense of hearing, I agree; but do we not stagger among illusions? Who so well as we know the illusory nature of every fact? Nothing is stable under our hands. Of what avail to reduce the universe to one substance, as the monists do? We pry, we peer into that substance—it fades like smoke. Forty years I have probed among the cells of the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of liberty would barely consent to promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the seeds of a spirit, which, in less than two hundred years, would stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his united kingdoms to the centre. So far is it from the ordinary habits of mankind to calculate the importance of events in their elementary principles, that had ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams |
