"Incoherent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand, and left Hellingsley in despair. But Oswald overtook him in the park; and, leaning on his friend's arm, Coningsby poured forth a hurried, impassioned, and incoherent strain— all that had occurred, all that he had dreamed, his baffled bliss, his actual ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... only be found in an octavo volume by an anonymous writer, whose incoherent chapters, in language as clogging as a linseed poultice, will for ever hinder the world from knowing her. So it will be interesting to work it up and make ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... mother and Nell, in the light carriage; and kisses, and tears, and little laughy sobs, and words that ran out with little freshets of tears, and unanswered questions, and unasked answers, broken and incoherent; yet all were happy, and all thankful and grateful to their Father in Heaven; and blessings and thanks—many of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... more, being so very false. They said that I was gone all alone with Father La Combe, strolling about the country, from province to province, with many such fables, as weak and wicked as they were incoherent and badly put together. We suffered all with patience, without vindicating ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... thing that just at this juncture baby should see fit to wake and set up a dismal cry, so shrill as to penetrate even to the distant dinner-room. Lady Catheron rose to her feet, uttered a hasty and incoherent apology, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... wail of infinite terror and despair. "I didn't do it! Don't kill me! It was not my work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed with babbled, frantic, incoherent words. I had a perfectly definite impression that she was impersonating some one with his throat cut. Her grimaces were disgusting and terrifying. The women shivered with horror. A few seconds later and her face changed; the hideous mask ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... that chapter ended, and was startled and not a little shaken by the thick letter that found me planning my lonely summer early in June. It was from Harriet, a curious, incoherent screed; tiresomely detailed as to her plans, painfully brief as to important issues. She had found a letter from Mr. Bradley awaiting her arrival, she had followed his suggestions and interested Miss Sarah Bradley, his cousin, in her schemes, with the result that the Episcopal organisation ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... religion, race, and language, they had made a haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat. An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which he could hide. Some were mounted, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the girl's incoherent asseverations that she had seen the Judge's corpse on the floor, two servants having first searched the lower part of the house, went rather frightened up-stairs to inquire whether their master was well. They found him, ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... yourself; strike your back with hard stripes; cut deep with a sharp knife, as if you would eradicate the consciousness; cry aloud; put ashes on your head; bruise yourself with stones,—then perhaps God may pardon you. Or, better still (so runs the incoherent feeling), give him something—your ox, your ass, whole hecatombs if you are rich enough; anything, it is but a chance,—you do not know what will please him; at any rate, what you love best yourself,—that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... expression of positive anger, the name of Gallia escaped his lips, as though he were dreaming that his claim to the discovery of the comet was being contested or denied; but although his attendant was on the alert to gather all he could, he was able to catch nothing in the incoherent sentences that served to throw any real light upon the problem that they were all eager ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... had parted with his shrewdness and acumen, for, as of old, his every venture prospered; but in this particular his mind seemed weakened; that, as I have said, he fancied his child lived, that he was given to low muttering and incoherent mumblings, of which the burden seemed to be that child of his, and that his greatest pleasure appeared now to be watching other little ones at their play. In fact, so changed was he from the Old Growly of former years, that, whereas he had then been wholly indifferent to ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... least, well out of their teens, makes itself comfortable for an hour or more, doing ample justice to the delicacies provided; indeed, after the ladies have all departed, bachelors and wayward husbands usually return to the attack once, and even twice, so that it is not uncommon to hear an incoherent "For he's a jolly good fellow" from a belated band of revellers returning home shortly ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... either essentially modified, or wholly dropped. Wherefore, the language of Maramma was incessantly fluctuating; and had become so full of jargonings, that the birds in the groves were greatly puzzled; not knowing where lay the virtue of sounds, so incoherent. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... cost see de Spain, Nan stepped quickly into the hall and faced the messenger. "I was over at the doctor's office just now," continued her visitor evenly, "he asked me to bring this down for your uncle." She took the package with an incoherent acknowledgment. Without letting her eyes meet his, she was conscious of how fresh and clean and strong he looked, dressed in a livelier manner than usual—a partly cowboy effect, with a broader Stetson and a gayer tie than he ordinarily affected. De Spain ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Incoherent as the narrative was, it sufficed to tell Isidore only too plainly what had happened; yet he could at first scarcely realise it all. Trembling with agitation, he pressed the innkeeper with question after question till nothing more remained ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... It was rather incoherent, but it had something to do with "inexplicable conduct." On this Keith wrote Miss Brooke, requesting a more explicit charge and demanding an opportunity to defend himself. Still he received no reply; and, angry that he had written, he took ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... shone like rolling fireballs; their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences, and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the swords ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... root and branch, but whatever was valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap of incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are part ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... mounting up over cheeks and temples, tingling and spreading into her very neck, just because it was the most hateful thing that could happen? And he saw it. She knew he did so, for he dropped his eyes at once, and there was an absolute silence, which she broke in desperation, by an incoherent attempt to say something, and that ended by blundering into the tender subject—the children; she found she had been talking about the place to which she thought of taking them, a quiet spot on the northern coast ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... broken, sick, weak, ripe for ruin. For such, every nation or empire becomes, though the minority above be never so well organized, civilized, powerful, educated, even virtuous, if the majority below are not a people of citizens, but masses of incoherent atoms, ready to fall ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... to sit by the bedside watching that familiar face, to which fever and delirium had given a strange weird look; dismal work to count the moments, and wonder when that voice, now so thick of utterance as it went on muttering incoherent sentences and meaningless phrases, would be able to reply to those questions which Gilbert ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... at the phantom of her own creation, she flew to her brother's apartment, and, in the wildest and most incoherent manner, besought him to rescue her poor Henry from chains and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... sunk down into his seat with that same strong shudder, the luminous face was already incoherent; the features had relapsed again into blots and shadows, the drapery was absorbing itself upwards into the center from which it came. Once more the nebula trembled, moved backwards, and disappeared. The next instant the radiance went out, as if turned off by a switch. The medium groaned gently ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... such a thing, but only with a grace, and generosity, and delicacy beyond expression offers his general homage to the sex by giving little gifts to her, "why, then—then," thought Amy, and she was thinking so at the very moment when she sat with Gabriel and Ellen, talking in a half wild, lively, incoherent way, "why, then—then," and her eyes leaped across the room and fell, as it were, into the arms of Lawrence Newt's, which caressed them with soft light, and half-laughed "You came again, did you?"—"why, then—then," and Amy buried her face ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... it was drawn along the floor, and a moment later he heard the door fly open and someone come rushing downstairs. Johnson sprang up with his hair bristling, thinking that some dreadful thing had occurred, but it was only his mother-in-law, incoherent with excitement and searching for scissors and some tape. She vanished again and Jane passed up the stairs with a pile of newly aired linen. Then, after an interval of silence, Johnson heard the heavy, creaking tread and the doctor came down ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... act of opening the case of his field-glass, when from where the wounded lay came another angry burst of exclamations from Roby, incoherent for the most part, but Dickenson heard plainly, "Coward—cowardly hound! To ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... anxiously, softly stroking one of her hands, trying to soothe her to sleep; but after two o'clock, when she grew more restless and incoherent in her muttering, the young nurse felt assured she was sinking into delirium, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... direction whence we had come. I did not look at Kildare, but after a minute he began to talk about the moonlight and tigers, and whether tigers were ever shot by moonlight, and altogether was rather incoherent; but I took up the question, and we talked bravely till we got back to the dining-tent, where we sat down again, secretly wishing we had not gone for a stroll after all. In a few minutes Isaacs came from his tent, which he must have entered from the other side. He was perfectly at his ease, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... is in the present phase of the world a drift in favor of evolution. In the first edition of "First Principles" an evolutive change in anything was described as the passage of it from a state of indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity. The existence of a drift in this direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves, both by a survey of facts, and by deducing it from certain laws of the elementary type, which he severally names "the instability of the homogeneous," "the multiplication ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... it standing stiff within the charmed circle which even in her sleep was deliciously grasping it with its nervous folds. I passed my hand down to her clitoris, and began fucking her. She heaved her bottom up and down, and murmured some incoherent words, being evidently still under the influence of sleep, and probably dreaming of some former events, for in her half expressed murmurings, I could ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... the reader, what was the origin of this poem; nor does any argument show its object, or train of thought. Who the maid is, no one can tell, and if there be a vision respecting the destiny of nations, it is nearly as confused and incoherent as a true vision of the night; exciting in the mind some such undefined wonderment, as must have accompanied the descent of one of Peter ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of our party, who had been so light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so anxious were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety grew and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... happily. Hervey made no reciprocal movement. He merely bent his head down to her level and allowed her to kiss his cheek. She hugged him forcefully to her ample bosom, an embrace from which he quickly released himself. Her words then poured forth in a swift, incoherent flow. "And to think I believed that I should never see you again. And how you have grown and filled out. Just like your father. And where have you been all this time, and have you kept well? Look at the tan on his face, Prudence, and the beard ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the place. At the first moment there had arisen from his poet's head, or, simply and prosaically, from his empty stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which, spreading between objects and himself, permitted him to catch a glimpse of them only in the incoherent fog of nightmare,—in those shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating objects into unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras, and men into phantoms. Little by little, this hallucination was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... uneasily, muttered incoherent words, and moved his hands restlessly. Soon, however, the effects of the cloth soaked in icy-cold water, which the farmer's wife had placed on the bandages over the wound, began to subdue the feverish heat; and in half an hour he was sleeping soundly, and quietly. He woke ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... lamp Guy saw a tall man of wild and unkempt appearance, with black hair and a begrimed face, and a basket of vegetables strapped to his shoulders, threatening angrily with a staff three or four gamins who were making fun of him. He spoke in a wild, incoherent way, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... appointed as General-in-Chief of the army, with Antonio Maceo as Lieutenant General. Tomas Estrada y Palma was chosen as delegate plenipotentiary and general agent abroad, with headquarters in New York. Both civil and military organizations were, for a time, crude and somewhat incoherent. It could not be otherwise. They were engaged in a movement that could only succeed by success. Arms and money were lacking. The civil government was desirable in a field that the military arm could not cover. Action lay with the military and with the Cuban Junta in the United States. The latter ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... became conscious that his way was haunted by invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind. From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in and found Dean in the full tide of a torrential outpouring of passionate and enthusiastic, at times incoherent, tales of the Canadians, of their spirit, of their sacrifice and devotion ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... incoherent sound with his swollen tongue. At which Maitland frowned, smitten thoughtful with a ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... himself in, and the woman of the house sat in a corner looking upon him with dread. I addressed him, but he would scarcely return an answer. At last he commenced discoursing with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I did not understand much of what he said. His words were wild and incoherent, but he repeatedly threatened some person. The last bottle was now exhausted: he demanded more. I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk enough. He looked on the ground for some time, then ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Agatha and I waited, sitting in the chimney corner. I, howling incoherent words of terror; she, with hands crossed on her knees, eyes wide open, going from time to time to the window to see what was taking place, for from the foot of the mountain one could see torches flitting in the woods. One could hear hoarse voices, in the distance, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... street bringing up. It was as short as it was fierce, however, and ended amid the cod and the mussels from the overturned bait bucket. But, as the Captain said afterwards, he was "spunky" and rose again, incoherent with rage. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... returned, and something in his look, some dumb expression of delight at her occupation, made her blush and hesitate for an instant; but then she went on, and made a cup of tea ready, saying something a little incoherent all the time about her mother's need of it. After tea Bell Robson's weariness became so extreme, that Philip and Sylvia urged her to go to bed. She resisted a little, partly out of 'manners,' and partly because she kept fancying, poor woman, that somehow or ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... beginning, And not ended, as you fancied. All these strange events so much Have unnerved him and unmanned him, That, forgetful of himself, Of himself he is regardless. Nothing to the purpose speaks he. In his incoherent language Frenzy shows itself, delusion In his thoughts and in his fancies:— Many times I 've listened to him, Since so high-strung and abstracted Is his mind, he takes no note of Who goes in or who departeth. Once ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... appealed to his mood in the Third Ballade. It seemed to him that there were words going along with it—incoherent and impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him in strenuous argument and persuasion. Each time he almost knew what they said, and strained after their meaning with a passionate desire, and then there would come a kind of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... cried, "You are a prosperous and affected pseudo-litterateur!" and all the mummies spoke sepulchrally the word of derision, which is "Tee-Hee": and many said also, "The scavenger has never meddled with us, and we never heard of you," and there was much other incoherent foolishness. ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... profounder knowledge. After some passages which have been already made use of in the building up of this narrative, or add nothing new to the psychological side of this disclosure (there is even one more allusion to the silver medal in this last entry), comes a page and a half of incoherent writing where his expression is baffled by the novelty and the mysteriousness of that side of our emotional life to which his solitary existence had been a stranger. Then only he begins to address directly ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of exhaustion was haunted by painful, incoherent dreams. With the curious freakishness of a disordered mind, he was beset by a vision of the dark, ferret face of Victor Gagnon. The trader seemed to be hovering threateningly over his rude couch, and, behind him, less distinct, but always recognizable, was the fair Aim-sa. The whole night ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... sad news, that she was living in some very poor cottage on the edge of Navan town, where her strange behaviour and her strange life had made a scandal of her. The priest had to inquire out her relations, and it took him some time to do this, for the old woman's answers were incoherent, but he at length discovered she came from Galway, and he had written to the O'Dwyers. And immediately on receiving the priest's letter, Alec sent his wife to Navan, and she had come back ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... on a table in the big room but the voice came from the little closet into which Obadiah had taken him the preceding night. For several minutes he crouched and listened. He heard the chuckling laugh of the old councilor—and then an incoherent raving that set his blood tingling. There is a horror in the sound of madness, a horror that creeps to the very pit of one's soul, that sends shivering dread from every nerve center, that causes one who is alone with ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... at the thought of what he was to hear, but he gave himself up to listen kindly, and to his relief he gathered from the incoherent words that there was no great stain of crime, as he had feared; but that the boy had come to open his eyes to the evils of the life in which he had shared according to his age, and saw them in their ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unconsciously, a perfect exhibition of a perfect process, a great mind in motion. His mind is too full, too crowded, too ratiocinative, for easy and frugal utterance. Sometimes, unless one is an acute listener, he is almost incoherent in his zeal to express all the phases and facets of the thought that flashes upon him. And yet, if one could (unknown to him) have a stenographer behind the arras to take it all down, so that his argument could be analyzed at leisure, it would show its anatomical knitting and structure. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... wobble in the course even of a brief discussion between one attitude and the other. This is a separation of opinions rather than of persons. And particularly that word Socialism has become so vague and incoherent that for a man to call himself a socialist nowadays is to give no indication whatever whether he is a Conservator like William Morris, a non-Constructor like Karl Marx, or a Constructor of any of half ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... white rabbit that had been caught in the house, and asked what should be done with it I told her to let it loose in the walled garden behind the house, and opened my letter. It was from Jack, but so incoherent that I thought he must have lost his reason. It was nothing but a series of prayers to me not to leave the house until he could get back; he could not tell me why, there were the dreams, he said—he could explain nothing, but he was sure that I must not ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... writes so early as 1873, "to shrink from the use of the pen; to ask me to write letters is like asking a lame man to walk; it is not, as horse-dealers say, 'the nature of the beast.' When others TALK to me charmingly, my answers are short, faltering, incoherent sentences; so it is with my writing." "You," he says to another lady correspondent, "have the pleasant faculty of easy, pleasant letter-writing, in which ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... a close approach to a sermon; and though the words were a little incoherent, yet the tone was solemn, and the intention good. After this the captain dropped the lofty part of a Mentor, and mingled with ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... to wheedle and coax Peter; but then, when Peter answered again with his provoking "I dunno," he would give another twist to Peter's wrist, and Peter would yell, almost incoherent with terror and pain—but still declaring that he could tell nothing, he knew ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson's feelings, but his wife's first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few incoherent words of explanation, she led him into the presence of his master, who, looking at him sorrowfully ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... and was also exceedingly terrified at this communication. He trembled and turned pale, then looked wild and excited, and began to make inquiries in an incoherent and distracted manner. Calpurnia called in Cleopatra to confirm her story. Cleopatra did confirm it, of course, in the fullest and most unqualified manner. The effect which was produced upon the mind of the emperor ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... replied, "your idea is not irrelevant. But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L'Espanaye. Tell me what you can ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... tide of an incalculable abundance, when everything necessary to satisfy human needs and everything necessary to realise such will and purpose as existed then in human hearts was already at hand, one has still to tell of hardship, famine, anger, confusion, conflict, and incoherent suffering. There was no scheme for the distribution of this vast new wealth that had come at last within the reach of men; there was no clear conception that any such distribution was possible. As one attempts a comprehensive ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... she began timidly, and then continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only person he would consent to see at all—the only doctor, I mean. But, of course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have noticed. He pretends ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... by such rebellious behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next day he was shot as a conspirator. I saw the unfortunate man in the Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent. He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... adversaries were about to rush upon one another, and this incoherent discussion was threatening to degenerate into a battle, when ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... induced a kind of intoxication or hypnotic state, accompanied by visions which were regarded by the natives as supernatural. While under its influence the necromancers, or priests, were supposed to hold communication with unseen powers, and their incoherent mutterings were regarded as prophecies or revelations of hidden things. In treating the sick the physicians made use of it to discover the cause of the malady or the person or spirit by whom the patient was bewitched." Mr. Safford quotes Las Casas as saying: "It was an interesting spectacle to ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... is traduced." ... "She has a molded arm, and her Juno-like form glides with a rhythmic move in the soft swell of a Strauss." ... "Her chestnut hair gives a rich recess to her lovely, fawnlike eyes, which shine like a star set in the crown of an angel." ... One writer becomes absolutely incoherent in his admiration, and lavishes a mixture of metaphors upon his subject: "She portrays a picture worthy of a Raphael. She dances like the fairies before the heavenly spirits. She looks like a celestial goddess from an outburst of morning-glories; her lovely form would assume a phantomlike ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... years the father earned a few coppers by playing before public-houses in the East End, and then took to the road. Somehow or other he found himself on the Continent, and after many years he had turned up here. It was all very vague and incoherent. Often starving, homeless, and speaking no language but his own, is it to be wondered that the man had lost count of days, years, and time? Now he had a desire to journey to Greece, why, he knew not, but he clung to it with all a weak man's obstinacy. We could never let him trudge through ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... with a shudder a tragedy which I was just in time with the police to prevent. A laborer, who lived in the attic, had gone mad, poisoned by the stenches of the sewers in which he worked. For two nights he had been pacing the hallway, muttering incoherent things, and then fell to sharpening an axe, with his six children playing about—beautiful, brown-eyed girls they were, sweet and innocent little tots. In five minutes we should have been too late, for it appeared that the man's madness had taken on the homicidal tinge. They ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... bestowed, as she could see, and ready for sleep; but she would not go, and there sat, with the candle in her hand, her face flushed and her great blue eyes soulfully glowing, while she continued to chatter in an incoherent and strangely irrelevant fashion: so that, astonished into broad wakefulness by this extraordinary behaviour, I sat bolt upright in bed, determined to discover ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... up and smiled a sleepy smile. She made a few incoherent remarks. They helped her into the house and into an easy-chair, where she promptly turned her face towards the cushions and resumed her slumber. Sir Leslie moved ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as Lashmar had left her. One of the two servants, looking into the dressing-room before going to bed, saw her lying, half on the floor, half against the sofa, in a lamentable state. She wailed incoherent phrases. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... This fellow—ran the thought—looks at me as though he could see somebody or something past my shoulder. He had come across that man before—in the street perhaps. He was positive he had never spoken to him. For days, for many days, he had spoken to no one, but had held silent, incoherent, and endless converse with himself, like a prisoner alone in his cell or like a wayfarer lost in a wilderness. At present he was answering questions that did not matter though they had a purpose, but he doubted whether ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... be regretted that this ballad, which from internal evidence (e.g. the use of the word 'renne,' 1.2) is to be attributed to an early age, should have become so incoherent and corrupted by oral tradition. No manuscript or printed copy is known earlier than about 1750, when it occurs in broadside form. The very word 'Carnal' has lapsed from the dictionaries, though somewhere it may survive in speech. Stanza 17 is ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... furnace. Each of these chimneys was a hundred feet in diameter. They gaped before us right in our path. I had not the courage to look down either of them. But Professor Liedenbrock had hastily surveyed all three; he was panting, running from one to the other, gesticulating, and uttering incoherent expressions. Hans and his comrades, seated upon loose lava rocks, looked at him with as much wonder as they knew how to express, and perhaps taking ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... in an impossible jargon of allegories, twisted and obscure metaphors, incoherent symbols, ambiguous parables, enigmas, and ciphers. And here is an example." He took from one of the shelves of the library a manuscript which was none other than the Asch-Mezareph, the book of the Jew Abraham and of Nicolas ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... reader with extracts from Mormon documents. The Book of Mormon is ponderous, but gloomy, and at times incoherent; and I will not, by any means, quote from that. But the Revelation of Joseph Smith in regard to the absorbing question of plurality or polygamy may be of sufficient interest to reproduce here. The reader has my full consent to form his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... he went up to his class. Unhappily for his scheme, he was so placed that he dared not expose his foot so as to allow him to avail himself of this delectable assistance, and consequently, after much looking on the floor for inspiration, and much incoherent muttering, was passed over, and the order of things being thereby disturbed, of course no one could say the missing lines until the head boy was applied to, and the lower half of the class was turned down, with the exception of Louis, who, standing on this occasion just above ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... will tell you what light I have seen you in. (Points down to the garden.) Do you see that girl playing on the grass down there with Olaf? That is Dina. Do you remember that incoherent letter you wrote me when you went away? You asked me to believe in you. I have believed in you, Johan. All the horrible things that were rumoured about you after you had gone must have been done through being led astray—from thoughtlessness, ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... philosophy of those days found in these dreams mysterious and preternatural warnings of impending danger; that of ours, however, sees nothing either in the absurd sacrilegiousness of Caesar's thoughts, or his wife's incoherent and inconsistent images of terror—nothing more than the natural and proper effects, on the one hand, of the insatiable ambition of man, and, on the other, of the conjugal affection and solicitude of woman. The ancient sculptors carved out images of men, by the forms and lineaments ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... upon the floor, torn by great dry sobs of agony. Shaking, Philip turned away. Presently Carl grew quieter and fell to pouring forth an incoherent recital about a candlestick. From the meaningless raving of the white, drawn lips came at last a single sentence of lucid revelation. Philip leaped and shook ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the other orphans. This was not mere conceit, I think, because it emanated rather from pride in my father than from any exalted opinion of myself. But, whatever the rights of it, no suitable remark came to me. Indeed, beyond an incoherent mumble over the hand-shaking, I might have been a mute for all the part I had so far taken in this interview. And just then I caught a glimpse of Sister Agatha emerging from behind the wood-stack at the end of the vegetable garden, and that gave ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... over this awful passage in my marvellous record. It is torture to dwell on the details; and indeed I have so sought to chase them from my recollection, that they only come back to me in hideous fragments, like the incoherent remains of a ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing, terrifying. His earlier and later experiences came up before him, fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with the gyrations of those religious dervishes. Nobody knew—nobody cared how long this frenzy lasted—it ceased only with the collapse of the musicians. Then, with much vague bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and incoherent partings, everybody went dazedly home; there was no other dancing after that—the waltz was the one event of the festival and of the history of Santa Ana. And later that night, when the timid Mrs. Wade, in the seclusion of her own room and the disrobing of her slim ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Not only so, but the happiness he had expected to find proved more and more elusive. The increasing frequency of his sister's aberration was a heavy burden for a back which grew daily less able to bear the strain. The leisure to which he had looked forward so eagerly was spent in listening to incoherent babblings, that rambling chat which was to him 'better than the sense and sanity of this world.' In her lucid intervals they played picquet together, or talked gravely but firmly of the inevitable separation looming nearer and nearer. In 1830 Hazlitt died. Four years later ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Henry the Seventh, on whose testimony the murder must rest at last; for they, who speak most positively, revert to the story which he was pleased to publish eleven years after their supposed deaths, and which is so absurd, so incoherent, and so repugnant to dates and other facts, that as it is no longer necessary to pay court to his majesty, it is no longer necessary not to treat his assertions as an impudent fiction. I come directly to this point, because ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... poor man had thus in an incoherent manner given vent to his first feelings, he became somewhat more composed, and was able to relate all that had passed between him and Mrs. Carver. The inquiries which he made before he saw her sufficiently confirmed the orange-woman's story; and when ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... past, he released her, and she clung to his hands, her face upturned, her eyes full of pain and joy, and woman's searching power, while she broke into almost incoherent speech; and he responded in feeling, though he caught little of the content of her words, and scarcely ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... all. Nat scrawled him an incoherent note that bubbled with delight; he had been promoted to the finishing department, and henceforth was to ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... presently discovered, after trying various ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be found in placing oneself unreservedly in God's hands—to meet all these words Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the moment at least, till one had had more time, difficult to answer—the exact right words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer the advertisement. Non-committal. Mere ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... doctrine as the neighboring nations, that the firstborn belonged to God.[1968] The firstborn must be sacrificed or redeemed.[1969] They had doctrines of ransom by beasts, as above, or by money,[1970] or by circumcision, if the incoherent text is rightly interpreted.[1971] Nevertheless, they never were sure enough of their position before the captivity to hold to it against the faith and usage of neighboring nations.[1972] The doctrine in Micah vi. 6-8, as early as the end of the eighth century B.C., raised the real issue ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... started well. The demon bowler of the enemy, having been feted considerably under the trees by enthusiastic admirers during the innings of his side, was a little incoherent in his deliveries. Four full-pitches did he send down to Dick in his first over, and Dick had placed 16 to his credit before Tom, who had had to look on anxiously, had opened his account. Dick was a slow scorer as a rule, but he knew a full-pitch to leg when ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible, horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset—hurt perhaps—or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And now one could not even ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the midst of them. They were leaping and scampering all about him. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the most part, to be very burly men. The youth turned from one to another of them as they galloped along. His incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless of his appeals. They did ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... still continued, and it sounded very loud when she came out of the flat on to the stairs. She was beside herself; that is, she was aware of two Olives, one who spoke in a strange voice and trembled, and was now going down into the darkness, stumbling at nearly every step and moaning incoherent prayers to God, and one who watched and listened and was surprised at what ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... door, Mad Sal having just before left him; but the information she had given had been in such incoherent language, that not till Harry and his friend arrived did he ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... propose to themselves, though not for the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent ravings, a disordered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... word ready at his tongue's end, and Mar-ston's anathema was muffled and incoherent. The girl's rash act had tipped over the sane and manly self-possession of both of them. The captain was too bewildered to comprehend the full enormity of his action in standing guard over the daughter of Julius Marston, as if she needed protection on her father's quarter-deck. He did not ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... civil society which necessarily generates this aristocracy is a state of Nature,—and much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by nature reasonable; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated and most predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of Nature in formed manhood as in immature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... first moment of the check, Marcus Decius had pushed the sturdy horse that he rode well to the fore. He saw Hostilius riding back, waving one arm and crying out incoherent words: his spear was gone, and the head of a Spaniard's lance had been thrust through his shoulder and broken off, so that a third of the shaft ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... was Sara Lee's turn to stand the gaff. There was another letter, a curiously incoherent one from Harvey's sister. She referred to something that the society had done, and hoped that Sara Lee would take it in kindness, as it was meant. Harvey was well and much happier. She was to try to understand Harvey's part. He had been ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... There was nothing for it, therefore, but patience and resignation; words easily pronounced, but difficult, under such circumstances, to realize in practice. My thoughts, doubtless in consequence of the blows I had received, soon became hurried and incoherent. A tumultuous throng of images swept confusedly past, of which the most constant and frequent were the faces of my wife and youngest child, whom I had kissed in his sleep just previous to leaving home. Madame Jaubert and James Martin ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... deadly, and undreamed of peril in the weird and chilling hour before dawn, was described by Napoleon as a most rare quality among soldiers, and such being the case it is hardly to be looked for among women. With chattering teeth and random motions, half-distraught with incoherent terrors, Desire made a hasty, incomplete toilet in the dark of her freezing bedroom, and ran downstairs. In the living-room she found her mother and the smaller children with the negro servants and Keziah Pixley, the white domestic. Downstairs in the cellar her father and Jonathan were at work ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... the existence of unreal sexual unions, not only from the point of view of theoretical but also of practical morality, for no community could tolerate a majority of such unions.[338] In 1857 an act for reforming the system was at last passed with great difficulty. It was a somewhat incoherent and make-shift measure, and was avowedly put forward only as a step towards further reform; but it still substantially governs English procedure, and in the eyes of many has set a permanent standard of morality. The spirit of blind conservatism,—Nolumus leges Angliae mutare,—which in this sphere ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of drunkenness. Get rid for the moment of the notions of vice or sin which, accompany it, and which give moral pain; get rid also of those points in it which awaken physical disgust; retain merely the notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capricious gait of intoxication; and we have then an image merely ridiculous, as much, so as the rambling talk and absurd gestures of the ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... he seemed of low stature." And, in Medwin's book, we even become reconciled to that shrill voice of his, which Lamb and most other people found so unpleasant. Medwin gives us nothing in the nature of a portrait of Shelley in these heavy and incoherent pages; but he gives us invaluable materials for such a portrait—in descriptions, for instance, of how he used to go on with his reading, even when he was out walking, and would get so absorbed in his studies that he sometimes asked, "Mary, have I dined?" More important, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... incoherent, it appeared that on coming out on the bit of common above the wood, as she and Clarence were halting on the brow of the hill to admire the view, they heard a call for help, and hurrying down in the direction whence it proceeded they saw a stunted ash-tree, beneath which were a young ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not reply. He felt that if he spoke his words would be wild and incoherent, and that all his strength was required to crawl along this terrible crevice in the rock. He was conscious of a hand touching his foot from time to time, and of hearing voices, and of passing over loose, small pieces of shattered rock which might ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... to sleep like a child. Seeing the Major so well advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent. With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had stretched myself upon another. But the comedy was soon over; soon he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the trembling man was murmuring his incoherent thanks. Owen waved his hand; Cytherea smiled back to him as if it were unknown to her that she ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... have thought about, with contradictory feelings. We are excited at the thought of finding our conclusions reinforced, and apprehensive less the compact and definite figure which our imaginations have gradually shaped should become vague and incoherent and dull. It is a pity to purchase enlightenment at the cost of definition; and it is more important that we should have a clear notion of the final shape of a man in whom we are interested than an exact record ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... impossible to convey to my reader, by description, an adequate conception of the scene that followed my landing on the beach, as we stood embracing each other indiscriminately in our dripping garments, and giving utterance to incoherent rhapsodies, mingled with wild shouts. It can be more easily imagined than described, so I will draw a curtain over this part of my history, and carry the reader forward over an interval ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... what she had told the patriarch, and her replies might have reassured him but that she filled him with grave anxiety on fresh grounds. Her mind seemed to have suffered under the stress of grief. It was usually so clear, so judicious, so reasonable; and now all she said was incoherent and not more than half intelligible. Still, one thing he distinctly understood: that she had not confided to the patriarch the fact of his father's curse. The prelate must certainly have censured the conduct of the deceased to her also and that had sealed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... more amazed when the old servant, in a German as exaggerated, as incoherent, but still as fluent and persuasive as his own native speech, began an extravagant but perfectly dignified and diplomatic translation of his master's protests. Where and when, by what instinct, he had assimilated and made his own the grotesque ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... devil. After all, I am afraid of God as much as of the devil, so I drift along, thinking of nothing but suicide, but with neither courage nor means here to execute the act. As you read this, it will easily prove to you my insanity. The style and the ideas are incoherent enough—I can see that myself. But I cannot keep myself from being either crazy or an idiot; and, as things are, from whom should I ask pity? I am defenseless against the invisible enemy who is tightening his coils around me. I should be no better armed against him even if I saw him, or had ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... stunned and terrified to do anything but drop on his knees and utter incoherent entreaties and ejaculations ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... carefully avoid whatever can lead him astray."[32] This separation of intellect from sense, imagination and memory is the cardinal precept of the Cartesian logic; it marks off clear and distinct (i.e. adequate and vivid) from obscure, fragmentary and incoherent conceptions. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... imprinting a caress on his dead wife's forehead with no kind of emotion, and so left the room, muttering vaguely certain indistinct and incoherent syllables, in which the words "Nina" and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Soon after the Restoration a number of men of good family and some means threw in their fortunes with the persecuted sect. One of them, Robert Barclay, reduced to order and system the scattered and incoherent statements of its theology. In his Apology, published in 1675, he set forth a logical and consistent statement of beliefs, couched in clear and graceful language and supported by calm reasoning and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... kind, nor have we made use of a green-colored tablecloth we sometimes use to drape our hills. Of course, a large part of the fun of this game lies in the witty incorporation of all sorts of extraneous objects. But the incorporation must be witty, or you may soon convert the whole thing into an incoherent ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... whole of the next week was the most distressing that I ever passed; arising from my anxiety for Tom, my daily exertions to reason Mary into some degree of submission to the will of Providence—her accusations of herself and her own folly—her incoherent ravings, calling herself Tom's murderer, which alarmed me for her reason; the distress of old Tom and his wife, who, unable to remain in their solitude, came all to me for intelligence, for comfort, and for what, alas! I dare not give them—hope. All this, added to my separation ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... distinction) if he did not ask her to do for David all that she had done for him. He would give up everything rather than desert David Sechard; David must witness his success. It was one of those wild letters in which a young man points a pistol at a refusal, letters full of boyish casuistry and the incoherent reasoning of an idealist; a delicious tissue of words embroidered here and there by the naive utterances that women love so well—unconscious revelations of the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... published by Richardson. The Preface and concluding Note to Sir Charles Grandison are, by comparison, brief and restricted in their application; while the introductory material in Pamela is, so far as critical theory is concerned, slight and incoherent. ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... entered a charge of treason against him before the house of peers; but had concerted his measures so imprudently, that the judges, when consulted, declared, that neither for its matter nor its form could the charge be legally received. The articles indeed resemble more the incoherent altercations of a passionate enemy, than a serious accusation, fit to be discussed by a court of judicature; and Bristol himself was so ashamed of his conduct and defeat, that he absconded during some time. Notwithstanding his fine talents, his eloquence, his spirit, and his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind—screams that came faster and faster until they were incoherent. And where they took him it is not good to ask, and what they did with him ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... marks of insanity upon him. His air and dress bespoke some elevation of rank and fortune. My mother's compassion was excited, and, as his singularities were harmless, an asylum was afforded him, though he was unable to pay for it. He was constantly declaiming, in an incoherent manner, about some mistress who had proved faithless. His speeches seemed, however, like the rantings of an actor, to be rehearsed by rote or for the sake of exercise. He was totally careless of his person and health, and, by repeated ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... time in trying to explain their divinity away. Where one had hoped that Browning was a mystic they have sought to show that he was simply inarticulate. Where one had fancied that he had something to conceal, they have proved that he had but little to reveal. But I speak merely of his incoherent work. Taken as a whole the man was great. He did not belong to the Olympians, and had all the incompleteness of the Titan. He did not survey, and it was but rarely that he could sing. His work is marred by struggle, violence and effort, and he passed ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... disordered viscera fail to supply a healthy blood, as in fevers of a low type, the brain, like all other organs, is brought down to the level of the depraved blood, and shows by its utter feebleness and by the incoherent expressions of the patient that brain and soul depend upon the body for their power and all their action in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... and only spoke a few incoherent words in German. The accident happened about a quarter before twelve, and at four ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... embrace, still in ecstasy from the song of love to which they had fallen asleep. Leonora was resting a dishevelled head on Rafael's shoulder, caressing his neck with an eager, wearied breathing, whispering in his ear, random, incoherent words that still were vibrant ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... never advance the sum of human knowledge by one step;—it is the comparison of facts and their transformation into ideas that lead to a deeper insight into the significance of Nature. Stringing words together in incoherent succession does not make an intelligible sentence; facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations and recognize the thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reaction of the new social force in the case of industrial organization is fundamentally opposed to that which occurred in the political sphere. The one is working steadily towards an autocratic imperialism and the "servile state," the other towards the fluctuating, incoherent control of the making and administering of laws by the untrained, the uncultivated, and the generally unfit, the issue of which is anarchy. The industrial-commercial-financial oligarchy that dominated society for the century preceding the Great ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... as not to perceive the motives for such an incoherent system, of interpretation! The passages which represent the Messiah as a Monarch reigning at Jerusalem, and whose temporal authority should extend over all the earth, Mr. Everett would interpret to signify, (by a figure) "a preacher of righteousness, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... generation of vipers among us," he burst out in rhetorical frenzy. And then he sank back as if exhausted by the violence he had used. A moment he was still, dabbing his lips again; then he moved uneasily; once more his features were twisted by pain, and in a few snarling, almost incoherent words he dismissed the jury ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... settled in Ho Nan just as long as the Western ruling races had been in Assyria and Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the incoherent tribes rushing aimlessly from all sides to attack them, were the ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Delorier's placid face flew instantly into a paroxysm of contortions. He grinned with wrath, chattered, gesticulated, and hurled forth a volley of incoherent words in broken English at the astonished Tete Rouge. It was just possible to make out that he was accusing him of having stolen and eaten four large cakes which had been laid by for dinner. Tete Rouge, utterly confounded at this sudden attack, stared at Delorier for a moment in dumb amazement, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and rather incoherent outline of our operations, but I will forward a more minute account as soon as the official reports can be ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of Thy hand, Thy disinherited children, come before Thee with their incoherent wishes and regrets: Children we are, children we shall be, till our mother the earth hath fed upon our bones. Accept us, correct us, guide us, Thy guilty innocents. Dry our vain tears, wipe out our vain resentments, help our yet vainer efforts. If there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... What incoherent speech I made in answer I know not, but my heart was sore for this poor soul. Claire turned her eyes to me and rose, smoothing ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to herself. "Cabin." An incoherent flood of dream-stuff welled up and up till her head was dizzy and her heart seemed bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks of things, and unintelligible associations fluttered and whirled about, and she strove vainly with her consciousness to grasp and hold them. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... have not learned the elementary principles of the science of political economy, who have not mastered the definitions, as we say, in geometry, could say nothing intelligible to the finite understanding. The speeches were as "incoherent" as the New York World proved the platform to be. They all contained doctrines, however, in perpendicular antagonism to the financial doctrines of the St. Louis convention. When the inflationists learn what money is—what ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... she had been. But when Linda told her that the old tires had held, that the car ran wonderfully, that everything was perfectly safe, that she drove as unconsciously as she breathed, and that tomorrow Katy was to go for a long ride, her joy was incoherent. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the haul announced the return of 'the boys,' among whom Lady Merrifield still classed her colonel brother. They were muddy up to the eyes, but they had seen a great deal more than was easy to understand in their incoherent accounts. Wilfed had rolled into a wet ditch, and been picked out by his uncle and hung up to dry at a little village inn, where—this seemed to have been the supreme glory—they had made a meal on pigs'-liver and bread-and-cheese before ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sleep. Sometimes, as she sat alone in the arm-chair in her room, she would begin laughing and crying at the same time, with a sort of tearless grief, or else relapse into convulsions, and scream out dreadful, incoherent words in a horrible voice. It was the first dire sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then another, of bringing this misfortune ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... gambling with those that are not connected with me by blood. Winning over to-day the beauteous Damayanti of faultless features, I shall regard myself fortunate, indeed, since she it is that hath ever dwelt in my heart.' Hearing these words of that incoherent braggart, Nala in anger desired to cut off his head with a scimitar. With a smile, however, though his eyes were red in anger, king Nala said, 'Let us play. Why do you speak so now? Having vanquished me, you can say anything you like.' Then the play commenced between ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... He sat down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark, un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story very much modified and rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon's attention to the portrait now smiling conventionally above their heads from the wall over ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... handkerchief to wipe away the pearls of sweat from her forehead, and, after casting a timid and ashamed glance at her companions, resumed her work. The forewoman, who acted as my guide, having observed the direction of my gaze, took me up to the girl, who blushed, lowered her face, and murmured some incoherent words before the forewoman had opened her mouth, to advise her to sit fully on the chair, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... time Denis returned to the grotto a more exuberant and incoherent tone had been generated among the guests. He was not pleased. He felt inclined to be stern. A number of reprobates from the Club had dropped in, and Keith, whom he meant to keep straight for one night at least, was saying silly things and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... do not fall into the sophism refuted by St. Paul, when he forbids the vase to say to the potter: Why hast thou made me thus? I do not blame the author of things for having made me an inharmonious creature, an incoherent assemblage; I could exist only in such a condition. I content myself with crying out to him: Why do you deceive me? Why, by your silence, have you unchained egoism within me? Why have you submitted ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... foot of the paper was hers too. With heaving breast and tearful eyes he handed the letter to his sister, whose emotion was almost as distressing as his own as she read the following strange and almost incoherent words:— ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... considering where I was, it would be very bad taste to put any leading questions to him respecting his history. I nevertheless found a way of getting into conversation with him, and he did not need much persuasion to talk. He was rather incoherent, but I gathered from what he said that he had wandered a good deal from monastery to monastery, now in the world and now almost 'in religion,' ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... as words could tumble out of his mouth Ben answered, and then tried to free himself, but the old lady held on while she gave her directions, expressed her sympathy, and offered her hospitality with incoherent warmth. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... puzzled, human look came into his eyes. He rose slowly to his feet and stood upright, leaning against the tree. For the moment he forgot his bearskin covering and it half fell off. He stared at us, mumbling strange sounds, which presently became incoherent words of human speech. But he spoke thickly and uncertainly, like one long unused to the sound of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... even the most insignificant of lives to the general body of human existence cannot be accomplished without some disturbance; a circle has myriad points, and at any one of them the interrupted current may again begin to flow. Perchance the message falls upon indifferent ears or is too feeble and incoherent in itself to compel attention. In this event the signals must necessarily grow weaker and more infrequent until they finally cease altogether—the crime is now an accomplished fact, the chapter is finally closed. Or, again, the call may come as plangent and insistent ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... me, hiding her face in her hands. I heard her sobbing and murmuring incoherent cries to her god. I took the poor lady's hand, and bore with her as long as I could, until, being at the end of my patience with prudery and purity and chivalry, and all the rest of the highfalutin romanticism ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a host is the most heinous of social crimes. It ought never to be pardoned. It disjoints a party, often defeats the combinations which might affect the results of a season, and generally renders the society incoherent and unsatisfactory. If the outrage could ever be condoned, it might be in the instance of a young man very inexperienced, the victim of some unexpected condition of nervous feelings over which the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... loss of the actual scenes cut out. Suppose that two or three of a writer's "strong" scenes are cut when his picture is shown—in Detroit, for instance—the result on the screen is more likely to become an illogical and incoherent jumble than the powerful "drama with a punch" he had intended it to be. But "Censorship realizes," says Mr. A.W. Thomas, in the Photoplay Magazine, "as does every editor and author, that morality is to be desired, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... for a glass of water, while I held it to his lips, he murmured, 'Thanks, dearest!' I could not help distinctly observing, 'You would not say so if you knew me,' intending to follow that up with another declaration of my identity; but he merely muttered an incoherent reply, so I dropped it again, till some time after, when, as I was bathing his forehead and temples with vinegar and water to relieve the heat and pain in his head, he observed, after looking earnestly upon me for some minutes, 'I have such strange fancies—I can't get rid of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... expression among our undergraduates is patent, and its effects are by no means limited to America, as complaints from France and from England prove. The mob—the many-headed, the many-mouthed, figured in the past by poets as dumb, or, at best, an incoherent thing of brutish noises signifying speech—is acquiring education and learning how to express it. Hundreds of thousands whose ancestors never read, and seldom talked except of the simpler needs of life, are doing the talking and the writing which their large share ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... bride take the basket with her trembling white-gloved fingers, while the other hand was boldly put forward to shake hands with the country lass. Singing Sal was greatly taken aback; but she took Nan's hand for the briefest second, and managed to say something quite incoherent about 'long life and happiness, Miss—I beg your pardon, Miss—Ma'am;' and then the gleaming procession ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... so overcome by his unexpected release that he began to stammer out incoherent expressions of gratitude to the judge, such as "Oh, thank you, your Honor! God bless your Honor! Thank you, your Honor! I am an innocent man, your Honor!" until Gottlieb, grasping him by the arm, dragged him away from the rail and pushed him into the street. The complainant ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train |
