"Sputter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... giving up the chase, this only spurred them on. They gathered a bundle of wood, piled it up at the foot of the pine, and set fire to it. In a twinkling the tree began to sputter and burn like a candle blown by the wind. Pinocchio saw the flames climb higher and higher. Not wishing to end his days as a roasted Marionette, he jumped quickly to the ground and off he went, the Assassins close to him, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... they Clam, the harsh sound spoils the sport, And 'tis like Women keeping Dover Court For when all talk, there's none can lend an ear The others story, and her own to hear; But pull and hall, straining for to sputter What they can hardly afford time to utter. Like as a valiant Captain in the Field, By his Conduct, doth make the Foe to yield; Ev'n so, the leading Bell keeping true time, The rest do follow, none commits a Crime: But if one Souldier runs, perhaps a Troop Seeing ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman
... leap along the lines, Leap up and hang and swoop and sputter out; A bullet hits a wiring-post and whines; I wish to Heaven that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... sob, a sputter and a shriek he shut himself out again. Harry was never deep but in a shallow way, and never shallow without a certain treacherous depth. When Ned Ferry the next day summoned me to his bedside I went with a choking throat, not ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... leave the outer limits of the aura, while others are projected to great distances. Some sputter out as they travel, and are disintegrated, while others continue to glow like a piece of heated iron, for many hours. Others persist for a long time, with a faint phosphorescent glow. A careful ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... stacks of hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of Asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say: "Fuimus panes, fuit quartern-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which were obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... seemed very glad of it, and liked it very well; but that which was strangest to him was to see me eat salt with it. He made a sign to me that the salt was not good to eat; and putting a little into his own mouth, he seemed to nauseate it, and would spit and sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it: on the other hand, I took some meat into my mouth without salt, and I pretended to spit and sputter for want of salt, as much as he had done at the salt; but it would not do; he would never care ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... we haven't talked any business after all. I reckon it's that stove matter you've come about. It's like those two fool trustees to start up a stove sputter in spring. It's a wonder they didn't leave it till ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... drawing the strange-looking but cleverly constructed drosky, or cart, bucking into his collar under the yoke and pulling with all his sturdy will, not minding the American "whoa" but obedient enough when the doughboy learned to sputter the Russki ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... again," says I. "And let's pipe the aforesaid fires clean down into the tailin's." So there we sat, thinking better of each other and all creation. The fires of animosity went out with a sputter and we talked large and fine. I don't care; I like to once in a while. I don't travel on stilts much, yet it does a man good to play pretty now and then; besides, you can say things in the Spanish that are all right, but would sound simple-minded in English. ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... new cry against "women in education." Here is Mr. Barrett Wendell, of Harvard, solemnly claiming that teaching women weakens the intellect of the teacher, and every now and then bursts out a frantic sputter of alarm over the "feminization" of our schools. It is true that the majority of teachers are now women. It is true that they do have an influence on growing children. It would even seem to be true that that is largely what ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the plop of liquid in a pitcher. So if I spill my milk, I have not the excuse of ignorance. I am also familiar with the pop of a cork, the sputter of a flame, the tick-tack of the clock, the metallic swing of the windmill, the laboured rise and fall of the pump, the voluminous spurt of the hose, the deceptive tap of the breeze at door and window, and many other ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... said Lysander, hastily executing his own order, as the blue sputter kindled up into a flame that lighted the room. "It ain't quite time for me ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... in your tilting your nose at their ways and ideas, and insisting upon your own. That rouses the sense of individuality in them and they then fight for their ways and ideas—then there's boil and bubble and sputter ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... Galbraith assured her wouldn't be audible three rows back. And when they came to one of the lines she'd been allowed to change, in her panic over the thing, she mixed the two versions impartially together into a sputter of words that meant nothing at all, whereupon the author, out at the back of the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... him; but there is a satisfied note in the mother's whistle which tells me that she sees him, and that he is doing well. In a moment he is out again with a great rush and sputter, gripping his fish and pip-pipping his exultation. Away he goes in low heavy flight to the nest. The mother circles over him a moment to be sure he is not overloaded; then she goes back with the other neophyte and ranges back and forth over ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... the steady breeze, the privateersman rolled ominously towards the lolling Delft. A crash, a sputter of pistols, a crushing of timber, and grappling hooks had pinioned the two war-dogs in a sinister embrace. And—with a wild yell—the Frenchmen plunged upon the reddened decking of the flagship of the courageous Van Wassenaer, who cried, "Never give in, Lads! What will they think ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... of his own book will not set matters right. If injustice be done him, let him bear it. To do so is consonant with the dignity of the position which he ought to assume. To shriek, and scream, and sputter, to threaten actions, and to swear about the town that he has been belied and defamed in that he has been accused of bad grammar or a false metaphor, of a dull chapter, or even of a borrowed heroine, will leave ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... finished the breezy article when, with an all pervading blast of a sweet-toned, but unnecessarily loud Gabriel horn, a big green touring car came dashing up to the gate of the little hotel, and with a final roar and sputter, and agonized shriek of rudely applied brakes, came to a sudden stop. From it there emerged, like a monster crab crawling from a mossy shell, a huge form in a bright green coat—a heavy man with a fat, ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... To-day, or to-morrow, Or, maybe, after the death of himself and time; And stand at the ultimate curbstone by the stars, Above dead matches, and smears of paper, and slime; Would the secret of his desire Blossom out of the dark with a burst of fire? Or would he hear the eternal arc-lamps sputter, Only that; and see old shadows crawl; And find the stars were street lamps ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge; a slight sputter—which has kindled the too combustible chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos. Bursts forth insurrection at sight of its own blood, (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire,) into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... woods, and cried loudly, "Be calm! I will save her!" And, flinging his coat off, he sprang into the water before anyone could say Jack Robinson. He swam out to the form bobbing in the current, her arm thrown up as if for help; grasped that arm and then uttered a long, choking sputter, shoved Eeny-Meeny violently away from him and swam back to shore. They made valiant attempts not to laugh when he crawled out on the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... the office, the dark files streamed forth from their toil. Within fifteen minutes the lights were turned out, the watchman was making his first round. Instead of the sounds of a vast industry, nothing was heard but the sz-szz-szzz of the vanishing trams, the sputter of an arc-light, the barking of a dog. The gray twilight of a bleak March day shut down rapidly over frozen field and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... scent fountings a-play— 'Taint oder colong, though, by hodds; sulphur strong seems the local bokay. They call this the "Needle Bath," CHARLIE. It give me the needle fust off; 'Cos the spray would git into my eyes, and the squelch made me sputter and cough. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... straight, black bonnets, tight sleeves to the elbow, long silk gloves, and great fans, big enough for a windmill; and of a hot day it was a great amusement to me to watch the bobbing of the little black bonnets, which showed that sleep had got the better of their owners' attention, and the sputter and rustling of the fans, when a more profound nod than common would suddenly waken them, and set them to fanning and listening with redoubled devotion. There was Deacon Dundas, a great wagon load of an old gentleman, whose ample pockets looked as if they might ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... him off my system and sent him down here as soon as I got Kirk's idiotic, impudent letter—" The old man began to sputter with indignation. "What d'you think he wrote me, Mrs. Cortlandt? He had the impudence to turn down a good job I offered him because 'his wife might not like our climate!' Imagine! And I had positively begged him to come back—on any terms. Of course, it gave me an awful scare, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the bacon sputter on the fork, And heard his mother's step across the floor. Where did you get that song?—'tis ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ordered him to get some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed a spaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. As he dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, the slow sputter of small-arms-fire, punctuated by the occasional whump-whump-whump of 40-mm. auto-cannon or the hammering of ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... commotion that a weary slumberer on the opposite side of the thicket was rudely startled out of his nap, thinking some great catastrophe had overtaken him. As he sat up and rubbed his eyes, looking around him in bewilderment for the cause of his sudden awakening, he heard an angry voice sputter shrilly, "Well, Peace ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... swerved sharply to the left and made a little chamber for himself just under some snow-packed spruce tips, with a foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I fell forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had time to wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out with a great whirr and sputter between my left hand and my head, scattering snow all over me, and thundered off through the startled woods, flicking a branch here and there with his wings, and shaking down a great white shower as he rushed away for deeper ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... bits I'd have let go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White |
