"Stammering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by any force of will, keep her voice from stammering, as she answered: "I wasn't ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... at first, but when she came of school age, mixed more with the other children, and heard laughing, contemptuous remarks about him, the frank and devouring egotism of childhood made her ashamed of her affection, ashamed of him with his uncouth gait, his mouth always sagging open, his stammering, ignorant speech, which the other children amused themselves by mocking. Though he was prospering again with his sheep, owned the pasture and his house now, and had even built on another room as ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the poop;—Robin-a-dale himself upon them, his bonds broken, his eyeballs starting, a wild blue-jerkined Ariel filled with tidings. In this moment a scant respecter of persons, he threw himself upon Nevil, pointing and stammering, inarticulate with the wealth of his discovery. The eyes of the two men followed his lean, brown finger.... Above the quay where boats made landing a sand-spit ran out from the tamarind-shadowed bank, and now in the red dawning the mist that clung to it lifted. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... of such importance, that without it speech or reading becomes not only inelegant, but often absolutely unintelligible. The opposite faults are mumbling, muttering, mincing, lisping, slurring, mouthing, drawling, hesitating, stammering, misreading, and the like. "A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such a distinction between the syllables of which words are composed, that the ear shall ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... harmonious debauch succeeded. Like the old Egyptians they debated first sober and then drunk, and to stagger my general notion that the ancients were unwise, candor compels me to own, it was while stammering, maudling, stinking and in every sense drunk that mephistopheles driveled out a scheme so cunning and so new as threw everybody and everything into the shade. It was ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... from Berta was trying to explain her own ignorance and failing brilliantly. Now the second was stammering through a transparent bluff. Berta had settled back, coolly resigned to fate. How she must suffer, after having stooped to ask for aid! Poor Robbie Belle! Poor, lonely, disappointed Robbie Belle! For strange to say she flunked too and the question journeyed on triumphantly to ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... He was stammering, weeping, wringing his hands, grimacing with every feature of his comic face. And it was really touching, this grief, this dismay at the approach of the danger that threatened ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... curse Straight confound my stammering verse If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant,) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in my terms relate Half ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... what was said that morning over the type cases. It was not a sermon, nor a catechism; only a few stammering laboured words spoken by a boy who felt himself half a hypocrite as he said them, and who yet, for the affection he bore his friend, had the courage to go through with a task which cost him twenty times the effort of rescuing the boy yesterday ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... fixing on such as suit almost every imaginable variety of circumstances in common life. There are in this case two considerations that make it the more wonderful; the one, that he is a person of very low genius, having, besides a stammering which makes his speech almost unintelligible to strangers, so wild and awkward a manner of behaviour, that he is frequently taken for an idiot, and seems in many things to be indeed so;—the other, that he grew up to manhood in a very licentious course of living, ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... shadows of all the greenery outside flung through the fanlight across the White Horse of Hanover, which stands in so many Irish fanlights, she could see that the lady was in one of the towering rages she remembered and had dreaded in her youth. Looking at her, with a stammering apology on her lips, she had a wandering memory of the day at Inch long ago when Terry had broken a reproduction of the Portland Vase. He had been a big boy of sixteen then and he had flatly refused to meet his mother, going away and laying perdu ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... her, unsought, somewhat late in life, and therefore all the stronger, she herself would perhaps have been unable to declare. Certain only it is that at over thirty years of age this clever, sensible, clear-seeing woman fell to sighing and blushing, starting and stammering at the sounding of a name, as though for all the world she had been a love-sick girl in ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... More than that, she found herself after a time stammering a question concerning each new cavalier as he appeared. And each time Felicity's answer was unbelievably unconcerned ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... he began stammering, looking hard at the other's dreadfully altered face, from which every line of hope and cheerfulness seemed to have been obliterated as a sponge wipes markings from ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... official, besides being a man of shrewd experience of human weakness, was also kindly hearted, and having, after his first official scrutiny of his visitor and his resplendent watch chain, assured himself that he was not seeking personal relief, courteously assisted him in his stammering request. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... variations, unless for reasons already discussed they happen to lend themselves to ready assimilation by the group, will be mere slips of the tongue. They will be discarded and forgotten, or, if the individual cannot rid himself of them, will like stammering or stuttering or lisping be set down as imperfections and social handicaps. The uniformity of language within groups whose individual members have much communication with each other is thus to a certain ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... in the rough timber. The same eager grip lifted her up, stood her on her feet without her having to make any exertion toward that end. She became aware that Lingard was trying to say something, but she heard only a confused stammering expressive of wonder and delight in which she caught the words "You . . . you . . ." deliriously repeated. He didn't release his hold of her; his helpful and irresistible grip had changed into a close clasp, a crushing embrace, the violent taking possession by an ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... and said (not without stammering) that it was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the stammering English in an amazement that gave way to overwhelming anger. "Here," he said angrily, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... "'A's a stammering man, mem," said Henery Fray in an undertone, "and they turned him away because the only time he ever did speak plain he said his soul was his own, and other iniquities, to the squire. 'A can cuss, mem, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... knows not why; I never nursed a tame gazelle and all that sort of thing. I can sit through a play thinking about my supper while my wife ruins her dress and my trousers crying over them—but this business, old Sabre up in that witness box with his face in a knot and stammering out 'Look here—. Look here—'; that was absolutely all he ever said; he never could get any farther—old Sabre going through that, and the solicitor tearing the inside out of him and throwing it in his face, and that treble-dyed Iscariot Twyning prompting the solicitor and egging him ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... him. Thinking, from a depression of spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once laboring under, that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked him earnestly in the face as they were walking one day in the country together, and blurted out, in his stammering way, "My dear boy, I have a hundred-pound note in my desk that I really don't know what to do with: oblige me by taking it and getting the confounded thing out of my keeping." "I was in no need ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the school before the hymn was learned, and Kitty felt very much ashamed when, after stammering through three verses, Mrs. Mordaunt gave her back the book, saying, "I would rather have no lesson from you, Kitty, than one learned so carelessly as this." However, it was too late to repair the fault, so Kitty resolved to give her very best attention ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... I opened my Bible this iss the word I will see, 'That thou doest do quickly,' and I knew it wass my sins that had brought great judgments on the people, and turned the minister into a man of stammering lips and another tongue. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... veneration, no one to admire, no one to love.... The neighbours—rude sons of the steppes, and polished gentlemen alike—treated you as a tutor: some, with rudeness and neglect, others carelessly. Besides, you were not pre-possessing in person; you were shy, given to blushing, getting hot and stammering.... Even your health was no better for the country air: you wasted like a candle, poor fellow! It is true your room looked out into the garden; wild cherries, apple-trees, and limes strewed their delicate blossoms ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... special attributes of bearing, voice, or gesture, the circumstances of delivery, or even the antecedent conditions of character and reputation, which perhaps doomed some magnificent peroration to ludicrous failure, or, on the contrary, "ordained strength" out of stammering lips and disjointed sentences. Testimony of this kind the circumstances of my life have given me in great abundance. My chain of tradition links me to the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... So, stammering a little and pale, I performed the required hypocrisy, after which my uncle read aloud for my benefit the line or two in which were recorded the event, and the latitude and longitude of the vessel at the time, of which Madame made a note in her memory, for the purpose ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... tried to smile; looked helplessly at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering "Because you are so ill and it's all my fault," to her horror, to her boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden, rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie's ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... composer; 'how, then, does the young lady—I—I entreat your pardon,' he added, stammering as he saw that the girl was blind; 'I had not perceived before. Then you play by ear? But where do you hear the music, since you ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... stammering with rage, strode up and down and cursed the departed visitor in lurid language, cursed the errand that had brought him, and rated ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... lieutenant, stammering, "I hope your highness does not believe a word of what the Abbe ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Matthews, Cholmondeley Pennell, and the Marstons with their friend Mr. Senior in these. I have had various luck as an angler from Stennis Lake to the Usk, from Enniskillen to Killarney, from Isis to Wotton,—and so it would be a pity if I omitted such an authorial characteristic; especially as my stammering obliged me to "study ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Voice that raised one poor bewildered boy to sit up on his bier, and begin to speak—broken exclamations possibly, and stammering words of astonishment—shall be flung, like a trumpet that scatters marvellous sounds, through the sepulchres of the nations and compel all to stand before the throne. You and I will hear it; let ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... white faces! Ye with the stammering Gaelic on your tongues! Soft was your nurture in the King's house— Now shall ye know the buffeting wind! Nine hundred years ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... pure, until she had made him drunken and his carousal had so mastered him that he required her person of her; however she refused herself and questioned him of the enigma wherewith he had overcome her mistress; whilst he, for stress of drunkenness, was incapacitated by stammering to explain her aught thereof. Hereupon the Princess, having doffed her upper dress, propped herself sideways upon a divan cushion and stretched herself at full length and the Youth for the warmth of his delight in her and his desire to her anon recovering his speech explained to her the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... speech that Tom had been saying over to himself for the past two hours seemed to vanish into thin air before this excited little audience. But in faltering, stammering tones, which everyone was too excited to notice, he managed to say something about "Merry Christmas" and "good children" and then proceeded to open the magic sack. "Miss Kitty McGinnis!" he called, in deep, gruff tones. Kitty ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... heredity. What I deny is that the name of heredity offers any scientific solution of a most difficult problem. It is a name, a metaphor, quite as bad as the old metaphor of innate ideas; for there is hardly a single point of similarity between the process by which a son may share the black eyes, the stammering, or the musical talent of his father, and that by which, after his father's death, the law secures to the son the possession of the pounds, shillings, and pence which his father ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... heaven, if those be wanting who can say, "We went through fire and through water; and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place."' In like manner, those praise Him most acceptably among men who know their feebleness, and with stammering lips humbly try to breathe their love, their need, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Drinking wine, does Kage also gamble?" A shudder went through the frame of the horse—"Why speak thus? Of horses' bones the dice are made. Would Kage trifle with the relics of his kind? Make answer, Kakunai." He spoke with a fierce earnestness. Kakunai stammering sought answer. Just then Isuke appeared, to urge ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... he answered and she was silent. "I want you to know," he repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. Since I came here there has been—you. Oh, my dear, I would have been very glad. But I am obscure—without ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... to him was the thought of such perils that he was impelled to seek his old friend the clergyman, who had lost him over the ancient Hebrew mythologies, and now won him back by his living moral force. With much embarrassment and stammering Thyrsis managed to give a hint of what troubled him; and the man, whose life was made wholly of love for others, opened his great ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... may imagine the speech of man to have begun as with the cries of animals, or the stammering lips of children, and to have attained by degrees the perfection of Homer and Plato. Yet we are far from saying that this or any other theory of language is proved by facts. It is not difficult to form an hypothesis which by a series of imaginary ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... think so," she said with stammering lips—"but breakfast is ready at last. If you'll go ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Polish under foreman, sent his eyes darting from face to face. In his manner was a curious mingling of bravado and diffidence—a lumbering body, a shrinking way of holding himself, a stammering foreign accent and phrasing. But in spite of it there was ample ground for Torrance's persistent suspicions. Perhaps it was the darting, all-seeing eyes, perhaps the exaggeration of diffidence, but Koppy gave the impression of thinking ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... the terms. Artistically, "Paracelsus" is disproportionate, and has faults, obtrusive enough to any sensitive ear: but in the main it has a beauty without harshness, a swiftness of thought and speech without tumultuous pressure of ideas or stammering. It has not, in like degree, the intense human insight of, say, "The Inn Album," but it has that charm of sequent excellence too rarely to be found in many of Browning's later writings. It glides onward like a steadfast stream, the thought moving with the current ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... many crimes. When the gripping melody of the twenty-second Psalm arose in his mind, he trembled from head to foot, and left the house as if lashed by Furies, though it was in the dead of night. The recurring bass figure of the presto sounded to him as though it were a gruesome, awed voice stammering out the fatal words: "Man, hold your breath, Man, hold your breath!" And he did hold his breath, full of unresting discomfort, while his inspiration hacked its way through the ice-locked region into which a passionate spell that ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the Earl, drawing his dark-red eyebrows together, while the same dusky glow kindled on his brow—"Hast thou not learned to tell a true tale without stammering?" ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... languid grace of the latter part of this speech,—nothing except the easy unconsciousness with which she glided by the offered chair of her stammering, embarrassed host and ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... means "the speaker," and is contradistinguished from the other peoples of the world, such as the Germans, who are called in Russian "Njemez," that is, "speechless." In Isaiah (xxxiii, 19) the Assyrians are called a people "of a stammering tongue, that one cannot understand." The common use of the expression "tongueless" and "speechless," so applied, has probably given rise, as TYLOR suggests, to the mythical stories of actually speechless tribes of savages, and the considerations and instances ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... ILLO (stammering with rage and fury, loses all command over himself and presents the paper to MAX. With one hand, and his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Canadian Mother's Treatment for.—"I always stop my boy when I hear him stammering and make him say the words by syllables. I find he is getting much better." The above is one of the best plans and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fast as possible. The person hit by the ball has to name a bird, beast, or fish before ten has been counted or pays a forfeit. A name must not be mentioned which has been used by another person as that also entails a forfeit. It was not a game for a stammering person. ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Toby spoke breathlessly, stammering a little as her habit was when agitated. Her face was averted, and she was trying very, very hard to resist the closer ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... with them a keen-eyed, tall young man, who had a number of tools wrapped in an apron. Evidently he was unused to such scenes, for he became deathly pale upon seeing the ghastly spectacle on my bed. With staring eyes and open mouth he began to retreat towards the door, stammering,— ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... of his voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt. Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all, and his face was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great sympathy would have flared ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... office, but humanity prevailed to invite him previously to share our luncheon. Yet we doubted whether it had not been a cruel mercy when he entered, evidently unprepared to stumble on a young lady and a deformed man, and stammering piteously as he hoped there ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attendance at stables to water and feed they assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The captain enters the room and pro forma asks whether there are "any complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his escape, and a deputation visits the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Stammering, blushing, and looking both sheepish and gratified, Tom suddenly bolted, leaving the elder lady to enlighten the younger at length, and have another laugh over this new sort of courtship, which might well be called accidental. Nan was deeply interested, for she ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... on the subject, it is almost impossible not to believe that he really must have fancied himself in earnest when he made such protestations. In private life he frequently delivered long speeches, sometimes with astonishing fluency, sometimes with occasional interruptions of stammering, in vindication of his hostility to any proposal for ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... so bad, after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with the utmost anxiety by Williams—who, indeed, actually took the soundings with his own hands; and upon its completion he was so intensely gratified at the way in which this important service had been executed that he actually went the length of stammering out a few half-intelligible ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... he was met by the soldier, who, breathless and stammering, announced that the fair prisoner had got into the house. She had slipped from his side and ran off. Had it been an ordinary captive, he could have fired upon her, but he was unable to overtake her until she had passed ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... He stopped, stammering with rage. The angry colour had now returned to his face; it was Sally who was pale. She stared at him aghast, and presently began to ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... dedication prayer and the memorial service the old Presbyterian minister, whom we had all known and loved since infancy, talked tenderly and with great sympathy to us for a few minutes and the stammering young Baptist divine gave us an insight into ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... written in a hand which I could not have distinguished from my own scrawl. It was not exactly what I would myself have written, but there were phrases in it which to Mary's mind could have come only from me. Oh, I admit it was cunningly done, especially the love-making, which was just the kind of stammering thing which I would have achieved if I had tried to put my feelings on paper. Anyhow, Mary had no doubt of its genuineness. She slipped off after dinner, hired a carriage with two broken-winded screws and set off up the valley. She ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... from her seat. Elizabeth's tone seemed to her pure hypocrisy. All the bitter, poisonous stuff she had poured out to Desmond the night before was let loose again. Stammering and panting, she broke into the vaguest ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was not to be. His wife was the next person whom he addressed. "Who—who—who," he said, stammering with rage, "who asked this impudent fanatic into ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... (speaking deliberately, for she wanted to remember this crisis of her life as accurate in all its minutiae); "but there is a primal unity, a mysterious sympathy, in power and emotion. At least, so it seems to me," suddenly stammering and picking up Hero to avoid looking at McCall, who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates and fumbles as it were with his words, he is said to be in a state ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... my mouth. It was a voice inside the wall,—the minister's well-known voice. I would have been prepared for it in any kind of adjuration, but I was not prepared for what I heard. It came out with a sort of stammering, as if too much moved for utterance. "Willie, Willie! Oh, God ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... first address to the people he was laughed at and interrupted by their clamours, for the violence of his manner threw him into a confusion of periods and a distortion of his argument; besides he had a weakness and a stammering in his voice, and a want of breath, which caused such a distraction in his discourse that it was difficult for the audience to understand him. At last, upon his quitting the assembly, Eunomous the Thriasian, a man now extremely old, found him wandering in a dejected condition in the Piraeus, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... quite taken aback, colouring and stammering; and then, as if she could not help it—"Oh! Cousin Madelon, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... brother officers seemed to understand, but made no answer, except to jerk their heads toward me. They were too occupied to speak. I handed the skeleton a cigar, and he took it in great embarrassment, laughing and stammering and blushing. Then I began to understand; I began to appreciate the heroic self-sacrifice of the first two, who, when they had been given the chance, had refused to fill their pockets. I knew then that it was an effort worthy of ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... few months, are found gabbling away with ease; the latter, after fifteen or twenty years, can hardly, for the most part, unless when strapped up tight in their grammars and dictionaries, bring out a bit of Latin, and that not without hesitation and stammering." But all this might be remedied. There might be such a Reformation of Schools that not only Latin, but all other languages, and all the real Sciences and Arts of life to boot, might be taught in them expeditiously, pleasantly, and thoroughly. What was wanted ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... self-respect he could not let her go like this. His ministerial manner fell away, his readiness deserted him. In a moment he became all lover, pleading, entreating, with the one great abandon of his life, with the stammering ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... our acts. Our response to these ideas may be a conscious one, as when a boy purposely stutters in order to mimic an unfortunate companion; or it may be unconscious, as when the boy unknowingly falls into the habit of stammering from hearing this kind of speech. The child may consciously seek to keep himself neat and clean so as to harmonize with a pleasant and well-kept home, or he may unconsciously become slovenly and cross-tempered from living ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... said Rosanette. The effort of self-suppression had shattered her nerves. She sank down on the divan, shaking all over, stammering forth words of abuse, shedding tears. Was it this threat on the part of the Vatnaz that had caused so much agitation in her mind? Oh, no! what did she care, indeed, about that one? It was the golden sheep, a present, and in the midst of her tears the name of Delmar escaped her lips. So, then, she ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... was told to say over and over, repeated all the way until I was too full for utterance. Mistress Barber looked down upon me with her long white face and was able to guess the purpose of the boy's mission through his stammering and embarrassment. In her gentle, affable voice, as I now recall it, I recognise the tone of a lady. She would inquire when the errand was done if the little boy would like an apple or a cake. The question was too difficult; ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Humanity, to reproach and expose another for any thing that was not in his Power to escape. And therefore to make a Man contemptible, and the Jest of the Company, by deriding him for his mishapen Body, ill figur'd Face, stammering Speech, or low Degree of Understanding, is a great ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... contrary opinions; that, for what it is worth, let him proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the dead, stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not that stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. These truths survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in their dead ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drop of the little blood there is in the feeble old creature's body seemed to fly up into his face. He made quite an overpowering effort; he really looked as if he would drop down dead of fright at his own boldness; but he forced out the question for all that, stammering, and stuttering, and kneading desperately with both hands at the brim of his hideous great hat. 'I beg your pardon, Miss Gwi-Gwi-Gwilt! You are not really go-go-going to marry Mr. Armadale, are you? Jealous—if ever ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Had Dick been actually guilty, he might either have betrayed himself, or gone to stammering. But, as it was, he smiled, wanly, as ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... And thou, while stammering I repeat, Thy country's tongue shalt teach; 'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet Than my own native speech; For thou no other tongue didst know, When, scarcely twenty moons ago, Upon Tahite's beach, Thou cam'st to woo me to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... Allison! Even in the young confusion of that moment it pierced me, humbled me in adoring love before you. "Allison, speak," I said, and I could scarcely get out the words. "Do you love me?" and you, stammering like a child, said, "I don't know, William. I don't know." "Then at least you do not love any other man?" I asked you, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... long hair as she sat on her bed—her chemise unfastened and falling off revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement of Eve—and would call Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine blushed, lowered his eyes, and knew not what to do in presence of this innocent creature. Stammering, he turned his head, feared, and fled. The Daphnis of darkness took flight before the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Let our past revive; Come, sound reveille to our hearts once more. Expecting, I shall wait till at my door I see you enter, each and every one Tumultuous, eager all, with clamorous speech, To hide my stammering welcome and my tears. I am no host carousing long and late, Enticing guests with epicurean hints; Nor am I Timon, sick of this sad world, Who, jesting, cries, "The sky is overhead, And underneath that famous ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. 10. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: 11. For with stammering lips, and another tongue, will He speak to this people. 12. To whom He said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. 13. But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... miles away; but his manner gave me no chance to fob him off with an excuse, or pretend I had dropped in for a passing call. There was nothing for it but to out with my story, and into it I plunged somehow, my tongue stammering with shame. He listened, to be sure, but without offering to help me over the hard places. Indeed, at the first mention of my poverty, I saw all his first suspicions—whatever they had been—return and show themselves in his blind eyes. His mouth was set like a closed trap. Yet he heard me out, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Johnson. The precept alluded to is as follows: "In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe, or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawingly than hastily: because hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides the unseemliness, drives the man either to stammering, a non-plus, or harping on that which should follow; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and countenance[732]." Dr. Johnson's method of conversation was certainly calculated to excite attention, and to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... man had begun again. This time he had stepped forward, waving his glasses and his head and his hand, bending forward and backward, his voice rising and rising. At the end of his next paragraph he paused and, because the Russian was slow and stammering once again, went forward on ids own account. Soon he forgot himself, his audience, his translator, everything except his own dear Belgium. His voice rose and rose; he pleaded with a marvellous rhythm of eloquence her history, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... wildings. Faith and innocence are found only in children; then both fly away ere yet the cheeks are covered. One, so long as he stammers, fasts, who afterward, when his tongue is loosed, devours whatever food under whatever moon; and one, while stammering, loves his mother and listens to her, who, when speech is perfect, desires then to see her buried. So the skin of the fair daughter of him who brings morning and leaves evening, white in its first aspect, becomes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... hours what a terrible punishment is that of remorse. Amid all her thoughts of Tilderee one scene was ever before her: the picture of a rosy culprit, with tangled curls and beseeching eyes, grieved at the mischief she had done, and stammering, "I'm so sorry, Joan!" And then herself, as she snatched up the doll and answered harshly: "You naughty girl! I wish you didn't live here! I wish I hadn't any little sister at all!" Well, her wish had come true: Tilderee was gone. Perhaps she would never live in the log ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... was that she had learned Arabic! She began to speak diffidently at first, stammering and halting a little, because, though she could read the language well after nine years of constant study, only once had she spoken with an Arab;—a man in New York from whom she had had a few lessons. Having learned ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... make one more stroke before he drowns, persisted. Footsore and half-frozen, I tramped the dozen squares to the great hotel in the business district. The night clerk sized me up for precisely what I was, listening with only half an ear to my stammering question. But he deigned to answer it, nevertheless. Yes; Mr. Jewett was the gentleman who had Number 706, but he was not in. His key was still ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... lightly. "Go on, little lawyer!" But for all this attempt at banter on his part, I imagined that I saw the beginning of a very natural anxiety to close the conversation. I therefore hastened with what I had yet to say, cutting my words short and almost stammering ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... know exactly; it was not on a Saturday I am not sure that I came at all," replied Saurin, who could not for the life of him help stammering. "It's all lies; though appearances might be got up ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... was quick and nervous, with an energy in it that betokened decision of character, but ill sustained by the stammering speech; for in society he was the shyest and most undemonstrative of men. To a single friend whom he trusted, he would pour out his inmost heart; but let two or three be gathered together, above all, introduce a stranger, and ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... showed her face soaked with tears, and throwing herself upon her sister, she kissed her with all her might, stammering: ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... his future sister-in-law in the most vehement and positive manner. In his estimation, his brother's choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering—it made no difference to Uncle George. She was to be his brother's wife, and, in virtue of that one great fact, she became, in the estimation of the poor surgeon, a very queen, who, by the laws of the domestic constitution, could ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... word, amused Fenwick intensely. Of course he was, so to speak, quite at home—understood the position thoroughly. But he wasn't going to torment the doctor. He was only making it impossible for him to avoid confession, for his own sake. He did not wait for the stammering to take form, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... With darted spikes and splinters of the wood The dark earth round. He raised his eyes and saw The tree that shone white-listed through the gloom. But Vivien, fearing heaven had heard her oath, And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork, And deafened with the stammering cracks and claps That followed, flying back and crying out, 'O Merlin, though you do not love me, save, Yet save me!' clung to him and hugged him close; And called him dear protector in her fright, Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright, But wrought upon his mood and hugged ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... civilisation has accomplished are tremendous. The trouble is, the object to which the means are applied is not worthy of the means. The how is great. The wherefore receives only a stammering reply. So much is certain, that the life of the average man to-day is fuller of adventure and heroism than the life of a bold adventurer a hundred ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of, required Practical rules about Smell Sense of Sneezing Snoring Sobbing Special senses Speech Sphenoid bone Spinal column Spinal cord Structure of Functions of conductor of impulses as a reflex center Spinal nerves Functions of Spleen Sprains and dislocations Stammering Starches and sugars Sternum Stomach Coats of Digestion in Effect of alcohol on Bleeding from Strabismus Stuttering Sunstroke Supplemental air Suprarenal capsules Sutures of skull Sweat glands Sweat, Nature of Sylvester method for apparent drowning ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... from a state of melancholy to one of weakness. Isabella, who had already determined to inform him of his rescue, hesitates in dismay when she sees him fall in this way from the heights of noble enthusiasm to a muttered confession of a love of life still as strong as ever, and even to a stammering query as to whether the suggested price of his salvation is altogether impossible. Disgusted, she springs to her feet, thrusts the unworthy man from her, and declares that to the shame of his death he has further added her most hearty contempt. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Stammering.—This trouble is simply a loss of command of the vocal organs, and is distinctly nervous in its cause. Especially must we look to the roots of the nerves controlling the vocal organs, if we are to see the real difficulty. There ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... she hesitated, stammering a little, confused, still frightened, "I mean—isn't he a hypnotist, or full of those theosophical ideas, or something of the sort? You know what ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... might be Some jocose god, with sportive whirl, Had taken up a long lithe girl And tied a graceful knot in her. I tried to speak, and found, oh, bliss! I needed no interpreter; I knew the Japanese for kiss, - I had no other thought but this; And she, with smile and blush divine, Kind to my stammering prayer did seem; My thought was hers, and hers was mine, In the swift logic of my dream. My arms clung round her slender waist, Through gold and silk the form I traced, And glad as rain that follows drouth, I kissed and kissed her ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... to conclude from what I observed in him, the Minister has not been very judicious in his selection of private correspondents. Figure to yourself a bald-headed personage, about forty years of age, near seven feet high, deaf as a post, stammering and making convulsive efforts to express a sentence of five words, which, after all, his gibberish made unintelligible. His dress was as eccentric as his person was singular, and his manners corresponded with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... manner so superior to the condition of apprentice (which he stated himself to be) on board of such a vessel; and I felt such an interest, which I could not account for, towards the lad, that I then asked who were his friends. He replied, stammering, that he had not a friend in the world except a brother older than himself by many years, and he did ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat |
