"Fits and starts" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spoken consecutively, but in fits and starts between paroxysms of dreadful physical suffering. Her racked mind and body prevented the mother from quickly comprehending Agnes. And it was not until the latter had talked to her soothingly and cheerfully for several minutes, that she began ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... grenadiers, cavalry and artillery-men, all clothed in their rich new costume, as on a field day. Some of the crowd were singing a la Parisienne, others were lamenting, praying, hoping, despairing, and, by "fits and starts," abandoning themselves to those opposite extravagances of sentiment so peculiarly characteristic of a French population. When night drew her sable curtains around, the picturesque of the scene was still more heightened. Fresh bands of miners, conducted by their respective ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... in motion; now slow; now by fits and starts; washing her face to-day, her hands to-morrow. Never going straight, even along the road; talking with the waggoner, helping a child to pick watercress, patting the shepherd's dog, finding a flower, and late every ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... savage exultation, and gleaming, as it were, with a pale phosphoric fire, from out of the dark ground of his swarthy face and lank black hair. He moved restlessly and uneasily upon his withered limbs, clenching by fits and starts his rosary from his bosom, and murmuring a hasty, and—to judge by the wildness of his eyes, that showed how his mind was fixed upon far other thoughts—a vain prayer. He rolled also his head and the upper part of his body continually backwards ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... they were kind only by fits and starts. Minna suddenly discovered how sad was the humble life of devotion of old Frida, who had been a servant in the house since her mother's childhood, and at once she ran and hugged her, to the great astonishment of ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... then suddenly, with a few leaps, will cover more of alteration and event in a week than it has passed through in a decade. So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an unbroken line of adventures or ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... life and the new that she was hurrying toward lay the vast gulf of distance, of custom, of class even. It was bound to be crude, to be full of inconveniences and uncouthness. Her brother's letters had partly prepared her for that. Involuntarily she shrank from it, had been shrinking from it by fits and starts all the way, as flowers that thrive best in shady nooks shrink from hot sun and rude winds. Not that Estella Benton was particularly flower-like. On the contrary she was a healthy, vigorous-bodied young woman, scarcely to be described as beautiful, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Gently! You are putting the cart before the horse, old fellow; and if we continue to talk by fits and starts, never shall we come to the end of all we have to say to each other, and must say. Are you aware, Fandor, that we have been drawn into a succession of incomprehensible occurrences—a mysterious network of them?... But I have good hopes that now we shall be able to work together again; ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... it. Much is changed in it; much probably added; for the old garment of speech, which once served all needs, has grown too narrow, and serves them now no more. "Change in language is not, as in many natural products, continuous; it is not equable, but eminently by fits and starts"; and when the foundations of the national mind are heaving under the power of some new truth, greater and more important changes will find place in fifty years than in two centuries of calmer or more stagnant existence. Thus the activities and energies which the Reformation awakened among ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... out above over all the world, and the horse, in fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes broke into a gallop. When they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne's heart beat so fast that she could hardly breathe, and when she saw from a distance the brick pillars of the boundary-line of her ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... kept on her way. Except when Godfrey was asleep Luka did not steer, for he did not like the management of the sail, especially now that the boat at times heeled over a great deal with the beam wind. He himself took his sleep by fits and starts two or three hours at a time, and except when cooking, paddled away assiduously. Twice Godfrey was lucky enough to bring down some ducks when a flock swept past the boat within shot. They had, too, a supply of fresh fish, for Godfrey now always had two lines out towing astern, with some white ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... before the first Balkan War. This was used as the central hospital, where the staff lodged, and the most serious surgical cases were nursed. In the basement an operating-room was rigged up, there were bathrooms, disinfecting-rooms, a laundry, and an engine-house, where gimcrack German machinery in fits and starts provided us with electric light and hot water. The village school on the hill opposite was annexed and cleaned by a sculptor, a singer, a painter, and a judge of the Royal Horse Show. This was run as a convalescent home, and ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... feels her degradation so little. It is not happy that she has come to feel towards her miserable life so differently now from what she would have felt towards it, had it been set before her while she was the blooming, thoughtless creature in the little cottage in the country. It is only by fits and starts that the poor drunken wretch, living in a garret upon a little pittance allowed him by his relations, who was once a man of character and hope, feels what a sad pitch he has come to. If you could get him to feel it constantly, there would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... so gay, so very gay, And not by fits and starts, But ever, through each livelong day She's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... worked well by fits and starts; but when they did not chose to be diligent, they considerately gave their tutor a holiday. The last threat of a thrashing for Diavolo happened to be on ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... words. I was sorry enough for myself, I need not dwell on that, having fallen all my length and more than all my height in a few seconds; but, indeed, I was near as sorry for the girl, and sorry enough to be scarce angry with her save by fits and starts. Her plea was good: she was but a child; she had been placed in an unfair position; if she had deceived herself and me, it was no more than was to have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was less to be congratulated than Gloriani had taken it into his head to believe. He was discontented with his work, he applied himself to it by fits and starts, he declared that he did n't know what was coming over him; he was turning into a man of moods. "Is this of necessity what a fellow must come to"—he asked of Rowland, with a sort of peremptory flash in his eye, which ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... later, she began to dress for the adventure—to find herself weaker than she had at all supposed. Although she forbore to mention it to the Second Nurse, there was an irresponsible funny feeling in her legs. They seemed to belong to her but by fits and starts. But the clothes were hers: the merino skirt a deal too short for her—she had grown almost an inch in her bed-lying— the chip hat, more badly crushed than ever, a scandal of a hat, but still hers. The dear, dear clothes! She held them in both hands ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... either shoe, She rode astride as troopers do; With kirtle kilted to her knee, To which the mud splash'd wretchedly; And the wet dripp'd from every tree Upon her head and heavy hair, And on her eyelids broad and fair; The tears and rain ran down her face. By fits and starts they rode apace, And very often was his place Far off from her; he had to ride Ahead, to see what might betide When the roads cross'd; and sometimes, when There rose a murmuring from his men, Had to turn back with promises. Ah me! she had but little ease; ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... is called in another place, a continuing in the way of life. "If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel." Not to run a little now and then, by fits and starts; or half-way; or almost thither; but to run for my life, to run through all difficulties, and to continue therein to the end of the race, which must be to the end of my life. "So run, that ye may obtain." And the REASONS ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... in another place, 'a continuing in the way of life. If ye continue in the faith grounded, and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel' of Christ (Col 1:23). Not to run a little now and then, by fits and starts, or half-way, or almost thither; but to run for my life, to run through all difficulties, and to continue therein to the end of the race, which must be to the end of my life. 'So run, that ye ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... supplying some word for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high spirits, sauntering about the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him, but evidently mentally acknowledging Miss Kelly to be the rara avis of his thoughts, by the great attention he paid to every word she uttered. Truly pleasant it must have been to her, even though accustomed to see people listen breathless with ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... read Shakespeare rather often, and I read Dante by fits and starts; and I do not mind Milton from time to time. I like Wordsworth, and I like Keats a great deal better; every now and then I take up Cowper with pleasure, and I have found myself going back to Pope with real relish. And Byron; yes, Byron! But I ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... rode, he had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon." His daily habits were exceedingly irregular; he took his meals at unusual hours; and either ate voraciously, or abstained rigorously. He studied by fits and starts; but when he did read, it was with such rapidity and eagerness, that, as some one said, it seemed as if he would tear out the heart of the book he was upon. He could with difficulty believe any one who spoke of having read any book from the beginning to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... and while I was with him, and afterwards upon other occasions, I saw little by little how it was furnished. The table in the midst, at which His Majesty wrote, was all in disorder; it was piled high with papers and books, for he would do what writing or reading he cared to do by fits and starts. The walls were hung with panels of tapestry, and tall curtains of brocade hung at the windows. Between the panels were pictures hung upon the walls—three or four flower-pictures by Varelst; three pictures of horses and dogs by Hondius, and a couple of ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... one of them, venturing further than his fellows, broke suddenly into loud cries of mingled pain and rage, and when at last he came whining piteously back to the ranch it was found that he was bleeding from a gash along the flank, where an Indian arrow had seared him. Only by fits and starts did any man sleep. Hour after hour Folsom's little garrison was on the alert. The women had all been moved to the deep, dry cellar, Mrs. Hal moaning over her baby, utterly unnerved, Jessie silent, but white and ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... tragic mopers, and seen there the end of suspicion: the cynic, in the moody madness muttering in the corner; for years a barren fixture there; head lopped over, gnawing his own lip, vulture of himself; while, by fits and starts, from the corner opposite came the grimace ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... When this takes place the planet or satellite falls slightly towards the body around which it revolves, thereby increasing its speed till the centrifugal force again balances the centripetal. This would seem to make it descend by fits and starts, but in reality the approach is nearly constant, so that the orbits are in fact slightly spiral. What is true of the planets and satellites is also true of the stars with reference to Cosmos; though many even of these have subordinate motions ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... should have been by the chilly dusk falling on the muddy green sea of the soundings from a smoothly clouded sky. A fitful wind swept the cheerless waste, and the ship, hauled up so close as to check her way, seemed to progress by languid fits and starts against the short seas which swept along her sides with a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... clear nor dark, or rather was both by fits and starts. Light fleecy clouds were constantly passing over the heavens, now gathering densely together and completely hiding the stars, and now breaking up and revealing between the rifts then shining points. A low wind softly moaned through the leafless trees on the banks of the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... of his divorce, until 1541, the year of his election, Henry attempted, by fits and starts, to assert his supremacy in Ireland. He appointed George Browne, a strenuous advocate of the divorce, some time Provincial of the order of St. Augustine in England, Archbishop of Dublin, vacant by the murder ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... topic; it was in every person's mouth, and nothing else was either thought of or talked of. It was the subject of every one's almost hourly inquiry, both in London and the country, even in the most remote parts. Mr. Cobbett well described it at the time, "a state malady; appearing by fits and starts; sometimes assuming one character, and sometimes another. At last, however, it seems to have settled into a sort of hemorrhage, the patients in Downing-street expectorating pale or red, according to the state of their disease. For some weeks past it has been remarkably vivid; whether ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... the profitless conversation (conversation is generally profitless) went on by fits and starts, till the sand and dirt-pellets ceased to drift. Half-an-hour later, it was an almost perfect calm, though the air was still charged ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... road. They will give the fruit of their body for the sin of their soul. They will wear hair shirts and scourge themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labour by fits and starts all through your lives at the endless task of making yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather than listen to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of land and home, but from the longing to found a home in a new land, like the restlessness of us, their children? As soon as we meet them in historic times, they are always moving, migrating, invading. Were they not doing the same in pre-historic times, by fits and starts, no doubt with periods of excitement, periods of collapse and rest? When we recollect the invasion of the Normans; the wholesale eastward migration of the Crusaders, men, women, and children; and the later ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... spent in dozing and dreaming by "fits and starts," I was again fairly awake, and could sleep no more for thinking of the great rat. Indeed, the pain I suffered was of itself sufficient to keep me awake; for not only my thumb, but the whole hand was swollen, and ached acutely. I had no remedy but to ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... and de Peyster's conduct in regard to Henry was regulated again by fits and starts. Sometimes he was allowed to walk in the great court within the palisade. On the fourth night he heard the signal cry once more from the Canadian woods. Now, as on the first night, it was the voice of the owl, and he ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... penal legislation. It is therefore right and desirable that public opinion should be directed against them. But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and temperately; not by sudden fits and starts. There should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not daring to open it,—as he says that he did with that eligible invitation. At last he had given it to one of his girls to examine,—to see whether the thorn would be too sharp, whether I had turned upon him with reproaches. A man so susceptible, so prone to work by fits and starts, so unmethodical, could not have ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... my father. Whether from fatigue or over-excitement, he slept only by fits and starts, and when awake he could not rid himself of the idea that, in spite of his disguise, he might be recognised, either at his inn or in the town, by some one of the many who had seen him when he was in prison. In this case there was no knowing what might happen, but at best, discovery would ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... through the park, she was planning, by fits and starts, what she would say to her father. But still more was the thinking of Tatham—asking herself questions about him, with little thrills of excitement, and little throbbings ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... argument would not avail with the count; his mind was not sufficiently clear; it only had glimpses of reason which allowed him to comprehend by fits and starts. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Charley and Hubert to obey orders, for the ship rolled so tremendously that they could only proceed with their dressing by fits and starts, and were more than once interrupted by attacks of their weary seasickness. However, their father stayed with them, helping and joking with them until they were ready to go up. Then, taking them by the arm, he assisted them up the stairs to ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... signals in eight miles but traffic moved in fits and starts at this time of day. He could see the first light when he was a hundred yards from it and was sure ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is momentaneous, "burst into tears" is inceptive, "keep crying" is continuative, "start in crying" is durative-inceptive, "cry now and again" is iterative, "cry out every now and then" or "cry in fits and starts" is momentaneous-iterative. "To put on a coat" is momentaneous, "to wear a coat" is resultative. As our examples show, aspect is expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a consistently worked out set of grammatical forms. In many languages ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... electricity. Kyrgyzstan has been fairly progressive in carrying out market reforms, such as an improved regulatory system and land reform. Kyrgyzstan was the first CIS country to be accepted into the World Trade Organization. With fits and starts, inflation has been lowered to an estimated 7% in 2001, 2.1% in 2002, and 4.0% in 2003. Much of the government's stock in enterprises has been sold. Drops in production had been severe after the breakup ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... principal question: By what right do some people punish others? Not only was there no answer, but all reasoning tended to explain and justify punishment, the necessity of which was considered an axiom. Nekhludoff read much, but only by fits and starts, and the want of an answer he ascribed to such superficial reading. He, therefore, refused to believe in the justice of the answer which constantly occurred ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... slippery plank gave her something to elude either canister or catapult. Occasionally she felt a pain, a strange parched pain; it burned awhile, and left her once more oblivious. She slept a little, by fits and starts; sometimes the very stillness stirred her. She listened and heard the turtle plumping down into the stream, now and then the little fishes leaping and plashing, the eels slipping in and out among the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts." ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now-departed and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in this place, a chapter from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts, during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard of my time out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a desultory conversation of fits and starts. Woodsmen of the genuine sort are never talkative; and Thorpe, as has been explained, was constitutionally reticent. In the course of their disjointed remarks Thorpe explained that he was looking for work in the woods, and intended, first of all, to try ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... communities are most healthy and happy, not because they live in a proper manner, by fits and starts, but because they have, from some cause or other, adopted and persevered in HABITS which, compared with the habits of other families, or other communities, are preferable; that is, more in obedience to the laws which govern the human ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... storm. Her instrument was but an added touch of artistry to heighten the suggestion. Prom a slow, rhythmic swing she went by gusts and fits and starts to the wildest, utterly abandoned fury of a hurricane, sweeping a wide circle with her gauzy dress; and at the height of each elemental climax, in mid-whirl of some new amazing figure, she would set her instrument to screaming, until the German shouted "Bravo!" and ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... says a certain person, forasmuch as it is more to render a man's self impassible by his own study and industry, than to be so by his natural condition; and even to be able to conjoin to man's imbecility and frailty a God-like resolution and assurance; but it is by fits and starts; and in the lives of those heroes of times past there are sometimes miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to exceed our natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and 'tis hard to believe, that these so elevated ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... and after luncheon took his cigar and his book to his room. When next he came out, he felt that something had happened since the little adventure of the falling block. The captain was pacing the bridge by fits and starts. The boson was leaning over the quarter-rail. The pump-man was busy ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... away down the road she closed the harmonium softly, and fell to walking to and fro, musing, tidying up the schoolroom by fits and starts. She wanted to sit down and have a good cry; but always as the tears came near to flowing she fell to work afresh and checked them. Not until the room looked neat again did she remember that she was hungry. Nuncey had cooked a pasty for her, and she fetched it from the cupboard, where ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sight. There can be no doubt that this man was to a certain extent an impostor; no person exists having a thorough knowledge either of the past or future by means of the second sight, which only visits particular people by fits and starts, and which is quite independent of individual will; but it is equally certain that he disclosed things which no person could have been acquainted with without visitations of the second sight. His papers fell into the hands of Defoe, who wrought them up in his own peculiar manner, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and give us a rest," appealed the Little 'Un, somewhat testily. "I'm all right, only I don't relish the confounded motion of the craft. First she rocks one way, then another, and then again she seems to have the fidgets, and pitches in fits and starts. I don't see any sense in it. Steamboats don't cut up such capers, at least, none of those that ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... the life of man's mind, where man has a mind—which is not always the case—is a thing of fits and starts. I even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at once, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... world would have believed. Avaricious in trifles, and parsimonious in those every-day habits which brand the reputation immediately with the fault of avarice, this woman was one of those misers who can be generous by fits and starts, and who have been known to give hundreds of pounds, but never without reluctance would ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... all about her school, and the girls, and what they did in summer, and what they did in winter, and about Top-knot, and the other chickens, and her dolls,—for Eyebright still played with dolls by fits and starts, and her grand plan for making "a cave" in the garden, in which to keep label-sticks and bits of ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... hammering—my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think it only right the public should know too, that in our careful toil and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence—not in any little gifts, misused by fits and starts—lies our highest duty at once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... night in which he slept by fits and starts, mostly starts, and occupied the intervening wakeful hours in considering the Judge's unparalleled effrontery, Jim dawdled over a breakfast for which he had no appetite, reflecting meanwhile what he could do. Ordinarily his nerves were equal to any strain; but now he found himself fidgety, which ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... these two last are the poets your pond poets would explode. But if one half of the two new Cantos be good in your opinion, what the devil would you have more? No—no; no poetry is generally good—only by fits and starts—and you are lucky to get a sparkle here and there. You might as well want a midnight all stars ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... veritable hell. There were incessant counter-attacks, which the Allies, on the bare plateau, entirely devoid of cover, could repel only with the greatest difficulty. They pushed forward step by step, and by fits and starts. On the 19th our troops were hard put to it to hold the ground they had taken the day before; on the 20th they barely began to nibble at the ravines, at Ploisy and L'Echelle. On the 21st the Americans took Berzy-le-Sec, and ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... a certain charm for two classes of people: habitual vagabonds who beg and are freely accused of stealing, and the literary, artistic, antiquarian, or scientific vagabonds who take to tramping by fits and starts. The latter class, being quite incomprehensible to the rustic mind in Guyenne, are regarded by it with almost as ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the "set," the old male badger seemed to lose suspicion of any obnoxious presence. Then, lumbering after him, every member of his family would appear in full view on the mound, and, with little fits and starts of pretended rage and fright, would roll over and over each other, rush helter-skelter back to the underground dwelling and out again, and round and round the tree-trunks. A favourite trick, indulged in by young and old alike, was that of raising themselves on their hind-legs close ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... amiss, something altered in his manner. Not, indeed, that her lover was less affectionate or less tender than usual,—if anything he seemed rather more so; but his talk was embarrassed, pre-occupied, spasmodic. He spoke by fits and starts, and seemed to hold back something. Dolly taxed him with it at last. Walter tried to put it off upon her approaching departure. But he was an honest young man, and so bad an actor that Dolly, with her keen feminine intuitions, at once detected him. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... rescued from the shelf? A Boswell, writing out himself! For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conquers at last which makes as little change as possible in the existing forms of life. A history of the gradual attenuation and subsidence of eschatologlcal hopes in the II.-IV. centuries can only be written in fragments. They have rarely—at best by fits and starts—marked out the course. On the contrary if I may say so they only gave the smoke, for the course was pointed out by the abiding elements of the Gospel, trust in God and the Lord Christ, the resolution to a holy life, and a firm bond of brotherhood. The quiet gradual change, in ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... prevented my sleeping. How different was the style of our present conversation to that of the preceding evening; no sound of gaiety was heard; hushed alike were the witty repartee, and the approving laugh which followed it. Now, we spoke but by fits and starts, with eye and ear on the watch to catch the slightest sound, whilst the most trifling noise, or the opening of a door, made us start with trepidation and alarm. The time appeared to drag on to an interminable length. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the vapours,' said Betty, drawing a long breath, and doing her best to be cheerful; and so she finished her labours, stopping every now and then to listen, and humming tunes very loud, in fits and starts. Then it came to her turn to take her candle and go up stairs; she was a good half-hour later than Moggy—all was quiet within the house—only the sound of the storm—the creak and rattle of its strain, and the hurly-burly of the gusts over the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the general bulk of discontent. Mrs. Maitland, after making a fruitless attempt to rally the spirits of the party, gave up the effort in despair and retired to write letters in her room. Conversation was carried on in fits and starts, whilst from time to time people knocked about the billiard balls in a desultory fashion without exhibiting even a show of interest in the result ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Pruyn, that general supervision which a kindly old maid can exercise in the home of a young and prosperous widower. Were Destiny on the lookout for still another opening, she could have found it in the fact that Miss Dorothea Pruyn, whose father's discipline came by fits and starts, while his indulgence was continuous, had reached a point in motherless maidenhood where, according to Miss Lucilla, "something ought to be done." There was thus unrest, and a straining after new conditions, in that very family toward which Mrs. Eveleth's imagination ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... date, he found himself at irreconcilable variance, not on matters of detail but on essentials, with the standards of Scotch Presbyterianism. We know that he never repented or regretted his resolve; that he went, as continuously as possible for a mind so liable to fits and starts, further and further from the faith of his fathers; but that he remained to the last so much affected by it, and by the ineffaceable impress of early associations, that he has been plausibly called "a Calvinist without dogma," ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... "has one immense profound vice," to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbor not absolutely clear of an "immense profound vice," as like ours in color and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable, only that we are detestable; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and walked rapidly into the library. Nellie was startled, and was troubled with a suspicion that her father had a coup de soleil, or coup de something-else; for he did not often do anything by fits and starts. She followed him into the library. It was a fact that the captain had left his hat there; but it was not for this article, so necessary in a hot day, that he hastened thus abruptly into the room. Nellie found him flying ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... fits and starts The sunset on the moss doth burn, He often dreams, and, lo! the marts And streets are ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... excited the ingenious gratitude of the people, who raised monuments to them, as ephemeral as the feelings which prompted them. Obelisks and pillars of snow and ice, engraved with their names, were to be seen all over Paris. At the end of March the thaw began, but by fits and starts, constant returns of frost prolonging the miseries of the people. Indeed, in the beginning of April it appeared to set in harder than ever, and the half-thawed streets, frozen again, became so slippery and dangerous, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and Greek well! What a blessing and delight it would be now! I fear that I shall never be a good Hebrew scholar, I can't make time for it; but a decent Greek scholar I hope to be. I work away, but alas I for want of time, only by fits and starts, at grammars, and such a book as Vaughan's "Epistle to the Romans," an excellent specimen of the way to give legitimate help to the student. Trench's books I delight in. The Revision by Five Clergymen is an assistance. There was a review in the Quarterly the other day ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It is equally clear that they cannot be repressed by penal legislation. It is therefore right and desirable that public opinion should be directed against them. But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and temperately, not by sudden fits and starts. There should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Margaret had shared the feeling which regarded her brother Tom's trade as being disgraceful. They, of Arundel Street, had been idle, reckless, useless beings—so Tom had often declared to his wife—and only by fits and starts had there existed any friendship between him and either of them. But the firm of Rubb and Mackenzie was not growing richer in those days, and both Thomas and his wife had felt themselves forced into a certain amount of conciliatory demeanour by the claims of their seven surviving children. Walter, ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... always looking over their shoulders to see if some British joint expedition was not hovering round the flank exposed to the coast. The French Navy, though very gallant, could only help French shipping here and there, by fits and starts, and at the greatest risk. So, while the British forces used the highways of the sea the whole time, the French forces could only use them now and then by great good luck. Thus British sea-power hampered, spoilt, or ruined all ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... by fits and starts. If the demon seized upon me, I raved about for a time as before, but I did my duty for the principal. I not only honoured but loved him, and censure from his lips would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... less of a dreamer himself, consented, and, after lighting fresh cigars, they threw themselves on the soft, dry grass near the tall hedge that fenced the avenue as it neared the castle grounds. For half an hour they talked by fits and starts; long silences were common, broken only by brief phrases which seemed so to disturb the one to whom they were addressed that he answered gruffly and not at all politely. Their, cigars, burnt to mere stubs, were thrown away, and still the ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... subscriptions of thousands of pounds to the repeal rent, and the O'Connell rent, and other funds of that description? No, my lords, that poverty must be relieved by a perseverance in industry and sobriety; not taken up by fits and starts for the sake of a more orderly appearance at seditious meetings, where the people are marshalled by bands of music and flying colours. The evils, whence that poverty proceeds, are not to be cured in a day. The remedies ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... mathematical. London does not grow as the circles spread from a splash in a pond, nor regularly and certainly as geologists say stones grow in the soil—a fascinating and rather dreadful secret of growth. London grows suddenly by fits and starts. Once, perhaps, the town crept out quietly, a field at a time, a new road in a twelvemonth. Now it catches great parks and manors. But which way it will go out to catch them you cannot guess. It may walk threateningly, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... mountains and the Thuringian forest, but he seems mostly to prefer the Hakel, from which place he derives his name, and especially the neighbourhood of Dummburg. Ofttimes is he heard at night, in rain and storm, when the moonlight is breaking by fits and starts through the troubled sky, following with his hounds the shadows of the wild beasts he slew in days of yore. His retinue generally proceed from the Dummburg, straight over the Hakel to the now desolate ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... that Emily and I each started a diary to record the events of our new life. Hers flourished by fits and starts; but I having perforce more leisure than she, mine has gone on with few interruptions till the present time, and is the backbone of this narrative, which I compile and condense from it and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... since the day before, and the whole day long we remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the cold so much; we did not venture to speak or even move, and we slept by fits and starts, like you sleep when you ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... eyes. By and by he frowned, and the frown, instead of passing, grew deeper. His sermons, as a rule, arranged themselves neatly and rapidly, when once the text was chosen: but to-day his thoughts ran by fits and starts, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the close arguments used by Mr Bosenna, plunged Cai in thought; and for the remainder of the meal he sat abstracted, joining by fits and starts in the conversation, now and then raising his eyes to a portrait of the deceased farmer, an enlarged and highly-tinted photograph, which gazed down on him from the opposite wall. The gaze was obstinate, brow-beating, as though ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time I could see Olivia before my marriage. Afterward I should see much of her; for Julia would invite her to our house, and be a friend to her. I spent a wretchedly sleepless night; and whenever I dozed by fits and starts, I saw Olivia before me, weeping bitterly, and refusing to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and his aides, retire mostly into their own rooms. Then, quietly and shyly, on this night or the other night, one or two, three or four of the more intelligent of the black boys steal silently up to the Bishop's side, and by fits and starts, slowly, often painfully, tell their feelings, state their difficulties, ask for help, and, I believe, with God's blessing, rarely fail to find it. They are not gushing as negroes, but shy as Englishmen; we Englishmen ought, indeed, to have ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about everything—by fits and starts. It only doesn't last. She seems to be losing something of her medical fervor, and probably this is taking its place. I suppose she has met somebody who slums for a living, and the idea enchants her. I used to have aspirations that way, myself; but ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... been able to sleep except by fits and starts. A dozen times during the night she had caught herself on the verge of sinking into deep slumber, and each time she had got up and washed her eyes with some water from a pitcher on the bureau, determined that she would not take any chances ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... exclaimed Hamilton, who was holding her hand between both his own, "do not let your imagination run away with you. I am very well with Burr, and he is jealous by fits and starts only. Why in the name of heaven should he be jealous? He has never given a thought to the welfare of the country, and I have devoted myself to the subject since boyhood. If I reap the reward—and God knows the future is precarious enough—why should he grudge me a power ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... just sometimes feel as I ought," said Marian; "but it is by fits and starts. O, Edmund, I would give anything that you ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... transformation from a centrally controlled economy to a modern market-oriented economy. Macroeconomic performance improved steadily in 1994 and 1995 - with 4.8% and 6% growth, respectively. But privatization progressed only in fits and starts. Strong export performance boosted growth in both years, with consumption and investment rebounding. Unemployment fell to 12.8% in November 1995, the lowest level since mid-1993, and inflation dropped from ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... pleasure. At last an interval followed; it was the chord of the fourth. While the player had before reveled in the sound of the single note, now his voluptuous enjoyment of this harmonic relation was very much more susceptible. His fingers moved by fits and starts, as did his bow. Through the intervening intervals he passed most unevenly, emphasizing and repeating the third. Then he added the fifth, now with a trembling sound like silent weeping, sustained, vanishing; now constantly repeated with dizzy speed; always the same intervals, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... beauty is best enjoyed when it is sought for with some trouble and difficulty, and partly because such beauty, and the romance which is attached to it, should not make up the staple of one's life. Romance, if it is to come at all, should always come by fits and starts." ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... it that has grieved you lately, Lucy?" she gently asked. "I am sure you have been grieving. I have watched you. Gay as you appear to have been, it is a false gaiety, seen only by fits and starts." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in his very presence a power which controls and commands. He is spared the necessity of declaring himself, for his grit speaks in his every act. It does not come by fits and starts, it is a part of his very life. It inspires a sublime audacity and a heroic courage. Many of the failures of life are due to the want of grit or business nerve. It is unfortunate for a young man to start out in business life ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... at Ariosto's Alcina, because her change into an old woman destroyed all the charm of the previous picture. He dwelt on the enchantress who remained in unaltered beauty. But even this he did only by fits and starts, and found himself continually wandering away towards a more ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... nay, if it was not for his buckles, he would even leave his shoes behind him. Neither his arms nor his legs seem to be a part of his body, and his head is never in a right position. He joins not in the general conversation, except it be by fits and starts, as if awaking from a dream; I attribute this ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore |
