"Stumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his head. "Not so," he said. "I do not follow the path, and your feet would stumble. I shall find a way without sinking in the snow. I must go alone. But there is a better way for you. I leave my dove with you: she will keep you warm until help comes. Farewell, friend of the Lord's friends." Stooping ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... promise from God's mouth for that; nor is grace or strength ministered to mankind by the covenant that thou art under. So that still thou standest bound to thy good behaviour; and in the day that thou dost give the first, though ever so little a trip, or stumble in thy obedience, thou forfeitest thine interest in paradise (and in justice), ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... the critical epochs of a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains things in a breath; they tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that should steel your friend against the truth; and then they have a higher authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisticating brain. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... followed, the wild cheer and onward dash, the race over blood-stained snow-patches, the stumble over falling forms (some friend, some foe), the ripping and slashing at fire-spitting lodges, in which some of the band had sought refuge, the agonized screaming of children, the appalling shrieks of the squaws—of all this it was difficult later to give clear account. Geordie ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... counted themselves the greatest sinners! Neither can I forget that other saying of our Lord, a stumbling-block to many—our Lord was not so careful as perhaps some would have had him, lest men should stumble at the truth—The first shall be last and the last first. While our Lord spoke the words: The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, even then was Saul of Tarsus at the feet of Gamaliel, preparing ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... way into the river, Theaetetus, said 'The experiment will show;' and perhaps if we go forward in the search, we may stumble upon the thing which we are looking for; but if we stay where we are, nothing will ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... constant course of continual labor as the road to fame are left alone in their schools, deserted by their scholars. Nature herself has begotten for us allurements, seduced by which Virtue herself will occasionally become drowsy. Nature herself leads the young into slippery paths, in which not to stumble now and again is hardly possible. Nature has produced for us a variety of pleasures, to which not only youth, but even middle-age, occasionally yields itself. If, therefore, you shall find one who can avert ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... in seemingly well disguised uneasiness, inform her that they were lost in the wilderness! and as the day wore away, that it might be possible they would have to remain in the forest all night, if they did not happen to stumble on some settlement or lone cabin. In this way he could gain the time desired; and he well knew what solitary cabin he ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... her beauty. But Don Quixote was determined that they were intolerant blasphemers who simply had to be thrashed. So he suddenly charged with such vehemence and fury that, if luck had not interfered and made his gentle steed stumble, the trader might have been killed. As Rocinante went down, our gallant hero went over his head, and after he had struck the ground he rolled for some distance. But when he tried to rise he could not: he ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eat it with the lake behind him. He did not walk in a straight line. He was too near exhaustion to forge ahead as was his custom. Now he was picking his way carefully so as to shun the washes out of which he must climb, and the rock patches where he would stumble, and the thick brush that would claw at him. He would have given five dollars for a drink of water, but there would be water at the car, he told himself. People were rather particular about carrying plenty of water ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... they bring shame on the name of Christ by their own evil lives, by their worldliness and profligacy, or by their bitterness and quarrelsomeness; who make religious profession a by-word and a mockery in the mouths of the ungodly, and cause Christ's little ones to stumble. Let them be afraid, if they will; for it were better for them that a millstone were hanged about their neck, and they were drowned in the midst of the sea. But those who hate their sins, and long to leave their sins behind; those who distrust themselves—let them not ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... A stumble of the horse threw him, and as he lay on the ground, unable to move, one of the servants of the company came up and broke the lance across Don Quixote's ribs. It was not until a countryman came by that the Don was extricated, and then he had to ride back to his own village ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the day of his lucky jump. He wandered on, his eyes fixed on the sands, so that he did not see the bailiff drive his boat behind a rock, while he changed himself into a heap of wreckage which floated in on the waves. A stumble over a stone recalled Andras to himself, and looking up he beheld the mass of wreckage. 'Dear me! I may find some use for that,' he said; and hastened down to the sea, waiting till he could lay hold of some stray rope which ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... glistening Pacific, with the blue outlines of Catalina and more distant islands etched upon the western sky. This picture is sometimes so distinct that you find yourself trying to recognize acquaintances on the streets of Pasadena. Again everything is dreamy with haze. Another morning you may stumble out trying to rub yesterday's sunburn from your eyes, and find everything below curtained by a bank of snowy fog. As for myself, I enjoy the prospect most when I cannot see it at all—that is, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... unnaturally, in a life and death struggle, with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing mouths. They attack and kill one another and try to mangle each other. I leap to my feet. I race out into the night and tread on quaking flesh, step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets. Something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at his heels—and ever over more bodies—breathless... out of one field into another. Horror is crooning over my ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... remember one time when we were without food, and moving into a portion of the country which we knew to be but thinly stocked with game. The hunters all went out, though the weather was thick with snow, and the only probability of seeing reindeer was that they might stumble upon them unobserved by the accident of approaching them against the wind. The others came in about noon, discouraged, having seen no game. Toolooah, on the contrary, did not get in until about five ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... devoted axemen. Even here, Fate, or Destiny, or whatever power it be that wills the nature of the end of man, turned aside the death with which he already seemed to grapple. At the very moment when the flash rose from the havoc-dealing gun, he chanced to stumble over the dead body of a soldier, and fell flat upon his face. Scarcely had he touched the ground when he was again upon his feet; but even in that short space of time he alone, of those who had entered the ditch, had been left unscathed. Before ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... you expected to stumble over a mine with the men all at work. You expected to find a shaft and mules and men on every ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... at will. And all this, to be able to instruct a half-civilized brood of children, of both sexes, in the rudiments of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, with enough of grammar to enable them to stammer and stumble through a simple sentence, and arrive safely at the end without any material ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... flat hand edgewise before the breast, pointing to the right; hold the right hand flat pointing down nearer the body; move it forward toward the left, so that the right-hand fingers strike the left palm and fall downward beyond the left. (Kaiowa I.) "Bear, and stumble ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... properly, and a diabolical mistake, page 67., which must be corrected with the pen, if no other way remains; it is the omission of "not" before "disagreeable" in the note on the amber rosary. This is really horrible, and nearly as bad as the stumble of mine at the Threshold—I mean the misnomer of bride. Pray do not let a copy go without the "not;" it is nonsense, and worse than nonsense, as it now stands. I wish the printer was saddled with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... monotony of the long march across the sun-baked plain brought on all the agonies consequent to a long-denied sleep. On and on we stumbled beneath that hateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded with a sharp point. Our companions in chains did not stumble. They strode along proudly erect. Occasionally they would exchange words with one another in a monosyllabic language. They were a noble-appearing race with well-formed heads and perfect physiques. The men were heavily bearded, tall and muscular; the women, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... powers of mental vision quickened and cleared by the magic dew of sad experience—experience which alone can give sympathy worth having, ere we can understand the queer bits of pathos we constantly stumble upon in life, ere we can begin to judge our fellows with the large-hearted charity that alone can illumine the glass through which for so long we see ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... my lips and my lungs; Walk'd in many a far land, regretting my own; In many a language groaned many a groan; And have often had reason to curse those wild fellows Who built the high house at which Heaven turn'd jealous, Making human audacity stumble and stammer When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Grammar. But the language of languages dearest to me Is that in which once, O ma toute cherie, When, together, we bent o'er your nosegay for hours, You explain'd what was silently said by the flowers, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... allowing the animal to quench its thirst, I applied spurs and urged it into the stream; it being averse from some cause to take the water. The stream was, however, deeper than I anticipated, and the horse immediately began to stumble and flounder in an alarming manner, showing that the river bed was uneven and rocky. About half-way across was a small island, that divided the stream, which after much difficulty he reached; resting here about a minute, I again urged him forward, but the animal seemed very reluctant ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... right, he loses the power of seeing what is prudent and safe. He who persists in such a course will inevitably be drawn into signal lapses of judgment, however richly nature may have endowed him with that faculty: he will stumble over his own self-love; his very assurance will be tripping him when he least expects it. And so Falstaff's conceit and egotism, working together, as they do, with his greed and lust, have the effect of stuffing him with the most ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and the other two behind. To prevent the men from straggling in the night the four regiments were packed into a mass of quarter column as densely as was possible, and the left guides held a rope in order to preserve the formation. With many a trip and stumble the ill-fated detachment wandered on, uncertain where they were going and what it was that they were meant to do. Not only among the rank and file, but among the principal officers also, there was the same absolute ignorance. Brigadier Wauchope knew, no doubt, but his ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... our lucky morning," remarked Garry. "Here we might have been days and days before we ever found the slightest bit of evidence on which to base our search for the band of smugglers, but in less than an hour after the starting of our mission, we stumble upon this very important ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... were more easily obtained than the ratifications. Execution was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties which in negotiation had been lightly skipped over at the stroke of a pen. At the very first step, that of military evacuation, there was a stumble. Maurice and Spinola were expected to withdraw their forces, and to undertake to bring in no troops in the future, and to make no invasion of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the day is not bright, but overclouded; because it is but too like the night, and too many use it as the night for all works of darkness; let us take the more heed that we do not ourselves so mistake it; let us watch each of us the light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble; let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I have dwelt on this; how often I have tried to show that Christ is all in all to us; that to put on Christ, is a truer and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been told to put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... a week this terrible journey went on. It was a frightful experience. Now and then one of them would stumble and fall, and come up dripping. All day long they tramped dismally on through that endless waste of icy water. Here and there were islands of dry land over which they were glad enough to trudge, but at night they often had trouble to find a dry spot to build their fires ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as from pulpit and platform, but by earnest, self-denying, sympathizing Christian men and women standing face to face with the poor repentant brother, and holding him tightly by the hand lest he stumble and fall in his first weak efforts to walk in a better way. And this is just the work that is now being done in our city by a Heaven-inspired institution not a year old, but with accomplished results that are ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... chase at once; out of the rickety old back door of the feed store we sped, nearly breaking our necks in our stumble down the uneven steps that led to a weedy yard. There was a gate in the picket fence surrounding the yard, and through this we dashed madly after the swiftly retreating Demetrius, who led us down a narrow lane back ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily, the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually. On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... "Theology," one orthodox and Evangelical divine justly complains, "has done no sort of justice to the Ethics of Jesus."[1] But in our endeavour to rectify one error on the one side, let us see to it that we do not stumble into another and worse on the other side. The doctrines of Paul are not so much theological baggage, of which the Church would do well straightway to disencumber itself. After all that the young science ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... are heathen folk and will often come to the Christian life fettered by old heathen ideas, and some may stumble and fall; they did in St. Paul's time; but I can say that some of the noblest instances of the power of religion I have ever known have been among these poor red men. I can recall death-beds where an Indian looked up in my face and said, "The Great Spirit has called me to go on the last journey. ...
— The American Missionary Vol. XLIV. No. 2. • Various
... "You can stumble along, working at your trade of farming, and only half knowing it all your life; that's what most farmers do, in fact. They are too lazy to take up the scientific side of it ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Men that stumble at the threshold, Are well foretold that danger lurks within. 2027 SHAKS.: 3 Henry ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... ran before me, bending between thick hazel bushes, now enveloped in darkness; I advanced with difficulty. The droshky jumped up and down over the hard roots of the ancient oaks and limes, which were continually intersected by deep ruts—the tracks of cart wheels; my horse began to stumble. A violent wind suddenly began to roar overhead; the trees blustered; big drops of rain fell with slow tap and splash on the leaves; there came a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. The rain fell in torrents. I went on a step or so, and soon was forced ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... figures swung down High School Street together, talking and laughing in low voices. The smallest of the six appeared to stumble over her feet, and once tumbled in the road. Her friends gayly helped her up, when it was disclosed that she wore a pair of boy's shoes much too large ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... brave stallion put forth his utmost efforts to carry his rider safely away from the turmoil of battle. The wounded animal was still able to travel a considerable distance at full gallop. But suddenly he began to slacken his pace and to stumble, and Heideck perceived that his strength was exhausted. He dismounted in order to examine the injuries the horse had sustained, and at once perceived that he could not expect further exertion from the poor brute. In addition to a bayonet-thrust on the neck, it had also a bullet-hole ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... chief o' the forenoon, I was fayn to rest in the pavilion, when, entering therein, whom shoulde I stumble upon but William, layd at length on y^e floor, with his arms under his head, and his book on y^e ground. I was withdrawing brisklie enow, when he called out, "Don't goe away, since you are here," in a tone soe rough, soe unlike ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... written in various moods from the time when Sir William Temple "spoiled a fine gentleman," and Esther Johnson set running a life-long course of un-smooth love, would be more welcome still. They would no doubt be stumbling-blocks to those apt to stumble, just as the existing epistles are: but they would be stepping-stones for the wise. As it is, we have to do without them and perhaps, like most things that are, it is better. For the stumblers are saved the sin of stumbling, and the wise men the nuisance ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... approaching horse could be made out. It was approaching slowly, seeming to stumble now and then. There was an uneasy movement among the cattle, and the boys peered eagerly forward, their hands on the butts of their ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... particularly the rather heavy double wave to his hair causing Lilly to grope with a vague sense of having seen him before. It was merely a rather remote resemblance to the remote Horace Lindsley, but not for days did she stumble across ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... said Josie, nodding. "I called at the police station before I came here, on leaving the train. The detective is Al Howard, and he's a nice fellow but rather stupid. You mustn't expect any results from that source. To be sure, the department might stumble on a clew, but the chances are they wouldn't recognize ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... had begun he asked those who were near him how it was going on. "'My lord,' they said, 'the Genoese are discomfited, and the king has given orders to slay them all; and all the while between our folk and them there is so great disorder that they stumble one over another and hinder us greatly.' 'Ha!' said the king, 'that is an ill sign for us; where is Sir Charles, my son?' 'My lord, we know not; we have reason to believe that he is elsewhere in the fight.' 'Sirs,' replied the old king, 'ye are my liegemen, my friends, and my comrades; I pray you ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... paramount idea of beneficence becomes a national conviction, we may stumble and err, we may at times sin, or be betrayed by unworthy representatives; but we shall advance unfailingly. I have been asked to contribute to the discussion of this matter something from my own usual point of view; ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... pushed along the back trail. One would go ahead to lead the way, and so avoid any unusually rough places as much as possible. Every boy looked well to his footing, since any sort of jolt, such as would accompany a stumble, was apt to ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... as soon as possible. He therefore sought an opportunity to propose. But it was hard to find. For though Mrs. Holmes was tolerably ingenious, she could not get the boys or the deacon to pay any regard to her hints. Boys are totally depraved on such questions anyhow, and always manage to stumble in where any privacy is sought. And as for the deacon, it really seemed as though he had some design in intruding at the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... of memory and not of the understanding, she had the book at great advantage, and soon subdued every question and answer in it. As much as possible, the doctor was kept aloof on such occasions. His grave questions were not to edification, and often they caused Rose to stumble, and brought down sorely the exultation with which she rolled forth, "They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was not the most distant relationship existing between them. This one is very handsome, quiet, and what Dickens calls "in a high-shouldered state of deportment." He looks like a moss-covered stone wall, a slumbering volcano, a—what you please, so it suggests anything unexpected and dangerous to stumble over. A man of indomitable will and intense feeling, I am sure. I should not like to rouse his temper, or give him cause to hate me. A trip to the sugar-house followed, as a matter of course, and we showed him around, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... breaks down. Every art which had its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who pats his nose to the flute, and, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... least wonders effected by the locomotive that a short hour can transport us from the midst of the busiest centres of manufactures to a solitude as complete as is to be found in the prairies of America or Australia, unless we by chance stumble upon a prying gamekeeper or an idle rustic ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... much more than the rest of us," Mollie admitted to herself. "He never forgets the least little thing that Uncle Bernard says or does, or likes or dislikes, while I—silly, blundering thing!—always try to help him out of his chair at the wrong side, or stumble ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hath caused my poore pen, any where, to stumble: You will, (I am sure) in part of recompence, (for my earnest and sincere good will to pleasure you), Consider the rockish huge mountaines, and the perilous vnbeaten wayes, which (both night and day, for the while) it hath toyled and labored through, to bryng you this ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... to lead, and very little load for those we have, still the load is all such poor weak fellows ought to bear. Old Crump was not thus favored by a gradually lightened load. He bore the same four children every day, faithfully, carefully, with never a stumble nor fall, as though fully aware of the ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... none of them cared much for this man. He was not a man to make close friends. But death had given him a new dignity among them, and the rough hands lifted him, and bore him to the boat as tenderly as though a jar or a stumble might add ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... said Rollo, completely out of breath. "Indeed, I stumble as much as Old Trumpeter, our horse, going over a rough spot ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... of a blind man who sat by the wayside with a lantern near him. When he was asked what he had a lantern for, as he could not see the light, he said it was that people should not stumble ever him. I believe more people stumble over the inconsistencies of professed Christians than from any other cause. What is doing more harm to the cause of Christ than all the scepticism in the world is this cold, dead formalism, this conformity to the world, this ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... off her hands. "Don't come any of that, Mary. It won't do any good. He made me what I was, he would have prostituted you. I was just bad enough to fall, you were too good to even stumble. Then he landed me in the pen. Maybe you won't believe it, Mary, but I'd stopped drinking and was earning fair wages—well, I was tending bar in Chicago. Barkeepers have to be sober men, you see. I had not touched a drop for nearly three months. The temptation was too strong there, so I got ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... goal, when thou alightest from thy horse: precisely on thy HEIGHT, thou higher man,—then wilt thou stumble! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of God. But as this one reply is sufficient to repress their temerity, so, on the other hand, we must meet the weakness of some persons, who are frequently disturbed with such offences, and become unsettled and wavering in their minds. Now, that they may not stumble and fall amidst this agitation and perplexity, let them know that the apostles in their day experienced the same things that now befall us. There were "unlearned and unstable" men, Peter says, who "wrested" the inspired writings of Paul "to their own destruction."[49] ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... exercise. Don't let her set foot in a carriage. We are animals, and nature has provided that animals shall walk to keep in health. Walking and things like that are the only sane modes of getting about. Everything aristocratic is silly. As soon as we begin to rear and strut we stumble into our graves—But it's no use to talk to you about that. I came ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... day and ask my old husband would he vote how she told him if she carried him to the polls. He said yes and she carried him. When he got there they told him no colored was allowed to vote in that election. Poor old man, she didn't offer to get him home, but left him to stumble along best he could. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... you are a stranger here, so you had better go back to see what Pattmore is doing. You can stumble into his room, as if you had mistaken it for your own. Be quick!" I added, as he started, "for we must keep watch of him every minute until the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... not to. A horse that isn't tired and is paying attention to business should never stumble on a road. It's the slouchy horse that breaks his kind owner's neck some day. Now I'm going ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... subjects: namely, if I stumble on any general remark, and if I find it confirmed in any other very distinct class, then I try to find out whether it is true,—if it has any bearing on my work. The following, perhaps, may be important to me. Dr. Wight remarks that Cucurbitaceae (55/1. Wight, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... book now in the editing way. Even the humble satisfaction of adding a glossary and index has been denied to me, as there are already very good ones. I have merely added some half-dozen words to the glossary, at which I thought that English readers might perhaps stumble. When the proposal was first made to me, indeed, I thought of trying my hand at a sketch of American politics of thirteen years ago, the date of the Mexican war and of the first appearance of the "Biglow Papers." ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... low over the prostrate form he lifted her very carefully and holding her in a position the least painful for her, began again to battle with the storm, walking more carefully now and groping his way through the stony field lest he should stumble and fall and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... hear her stumble in the hall but he did not hear her exclaim hurriedly when a door across the way opened: "Oh, Mrs. Rawson, will you take Jenny Lind for a minute? I'll be right back for her." She pushed the hook of the cage ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Revolution; if, in one word, Louis XVI., KING, appeared to the nation a living conspiracy against her liberty; if the nation suspected him of regretting in his soul too much the loss of supreme power—of causing the new constitution to stumble, in order to profit by its fall—of conducting liberty into snares to rejoice in anarchy—of disarming the country because he secretly wished it to be defeated—then the nation had a right to make him descend from the throne, and to call him to her bar, and to depose him in the name of her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... was just as thrilling to Art, because he must stumble through the rough land of "little sticks" in the dark with the constant apprehension of meeting some unwelcome Alaska brown bear, which were thick there, and also the extremely unpleasant experience of running into dead trees, tripping ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Under my footsteps the gravel felt soft, but, once I had got outside the iron gate, I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a maze of furrows and inequalities which made me stumble again and again. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... generation to generation—of the perpetual immolation of age on the flowery altars of youth. Like most customs in which we are nurtured, it had seemed natural and pleasant enough until she had watched the hollows deepen in her mother's temples and the tireless knotted hands stumble at their work. Then a pang had seized her and she had pleaded earnestly to be permitted ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... continued Mr. Lind, in nowise disconcerted, "we stumble on the secrets of others. Our association has innumerable feelers: and we make it our business to know what we can of everything that is going on. For example, I could tell you of an odd little incident that occurred last year in Constantinople. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... lantern against a tree some time before, and broken it, and there was nothing to do but stumble blindly along in the darkness, hoping against hope. Howard Gray had gone north, Thomas east, and Austin south; before starting out, they had endeavored to telephone, but the storm had destroyed the wires in ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... Romans. Yet, though there seemed no reasonable hope of flight, where all paths were so difficult, and where there were deep marshes and steep rocks, which looked as if they were ready to receive those who should stumble, the fugitives, nevertheless, crowding and pressing together. In the narrow passages, destroyed even one another in their terror of the swords and blows of the enemy. Cato (as it plainly appears) was never oversparing of his own praises, and seldom shunned boasting ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... greeted me, grinning. "Got a present for you." He gave his prisoner a shove, making him stumble a couple steps toward me. The telepath was a stoop-shouldered balding gent with large feet. He certainly didn't look like a walking bubonic plague, but then, they never do. Instinctively I ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... concealed it with the cover. This was a great relief. I almost began to feel like the injured party—more like a captive than a robber; and I groped my way through the room, with a sort of vague idea that I might perhaps stumble upon some trap-door, or sliding-panel, which would lead into the open air, or, at worst, into a secret chamber, where I should be safe for any given number of years from my persecutors. But there was nothing of the kind in this stern, prosaic place: nothing but a few cabinets and tables, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Father of light. More crimes are committed through ignorance than through the influence of bad and malignant passions. An ignorant man is incapable of judging correctly, however anxious he may be to do so. He gropes in the dark, like a blind man; and if he should happen to stumble on the right path, it is more by accident than from any correct idea which has been formed ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... upstairs I made a resolution to avoid the kitchen in future: I might at any moment stumble upon Mr. Hamilton. I had forgotten that he gave Nathaniel lessons sometimes in the evening. What a ubiquitous mortal this man appeared, here, there, and everywhere! It had given me rather a shock to see him so comfortably domiciled in Mrs. Barton's cosy kitchen; he looked as much at home ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... around young maples, and ferny groups—it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things—then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... for your model; give him office, if he will accept it; give him your hearts, if he refuses your votes. The Christian politician! one of the noblest specimens of humanity; who can tread dark and perilous ways, and not stumble; can serve his fellow-men without degrading himself or offending his Maker. The Christian citizen! who asks God's blessing upon his discharge of the functions that belong to him as the inhabitant of a free country; who appreciates the worth of his privileges, and feels the solemnity of his ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... noticeable in the case of some of our very commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day, late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving back the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while, an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now that all the prosaic activities of middle ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... makes a man stumble along if he's in the right road, makes him race along if he's in the wrong ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... truth;"[1] and when he declares emphatically, "I will not stain speech with a lie."[2] So, again, when his appeal to a divinity is: "Thou that art the beginning of lofty virtue, Lady Truth, forbid thou that my poem [or composition] should stumble against a lie, harsh rock of offense."[3] In his tragedy of the Philoctetes, Sophocles makes the whole play pivot on the remorse of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, over his having lied to Philoctetes (who is for the time being an enemy of the Greeks), in order to secure ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... water he was carrying. I was in the porch. The beautiful girl who formerly made my affliction so bitter to me was passing at the moment, with her arm drawn affectionately through her father's. She saw the stumble, and sprang forward with a cry of alarm. It looked, certainly, as if my defenceless feet must receive the crash, and I attempted instinctively to withdraw them,—partially succeeding! I saw this at the same time that I heard the sweetest words that ever fell into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... his behauiours doe make their retire, To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire. His hart like an Agot with your print impressed, Proud with his forme, in his eie pride expressed. His tongue all impatient to speake and not see, Did stumble with haste in his eie-sight to be, All sences to that sence did make their repaire, To feele onely looking on fairest of faire: Me thought all his sences were lockt in his eye, As Iewels in Christall for some Prince to Buy. Who tendring their own worth from whence they were glast, Did ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the mountains on our right assume the form of artificial parapets of almost white rock, outlined against the bluest of blue skies. There is one gray peak ahead, tinged with green. The trail is all washed away and our horses stumble and slide, slip and almost fall over the barren and rough rocks, and the scattered bowlders, a devastating cloud-burst ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... finding a brown thrasher's nest; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon in your walk; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich and triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look for ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... effectiveness of oratory as the sense that the man who is addressing you, is thinking at the very moment he is speaking. You have the sense of watching the visible working of his inner mind; and you are far more deeply impressed than by the glib facility which does not pause, does not stumble, does not hesitate, because he does not stop to think. Many people, reading so much about Mr. Sexton's oratory, will be under the impression that he is a very rapid and fluent speaker. He is nothing of the kind. He speaks with a great slowness, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Christians, denied the possibility of their being so, as they were ignorant of Christ and His commandments, and placed their hope of salvation on outward forms and superstitious observances, which were the invention of Satan, who wished to keep them in darkness that at last they might stumble into the pit which he had dug for them. I said repeatedly that the Pope, whom they revered, was an arch deceiver, and the head minister of Satan here on earth, and that the monks and friars, whose absence they so deplored, and to whom they had been accustomed to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... another word, but sat upright with a set face on her, as the old horse picked his way down after ours, and except when he put his foot on a rolling stone, never made a slip or a stumble all the way down, though it was like going down the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... give ear, be not proud, For the Lord hath spoken! Give glory to the Lord your God Before it grows dark, And before your feet stumble— On the mountains of dusk. While ye look for light, He turns it to gloom And sets it ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... are," whispered the guide; "pass the word back for 'em to look out they don't stumble, for things are rough ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... automatically his mood underwent a change, violent and complete. "I'll teach the old lady to drop notes all over the place," he said to himself. "I'll just teach her!" And he pictured his triumph as a wise male when, during the course of the feast, his great-aunt should stumble on her loss and yield to senile feminine agitation, and he should remark superiorly, with elaborate calm: "Here is your precious money, auntie. A good thing it was I and not burglars who discovered it. Let this be a lesson to you!... Where was it? It was on the landing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... go too fast, Allin, or you will stumble over a decided no. Primrose has no more idea of love than a two-year-old baby who answers everybody that smiles ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the other girl; the image of a poor, ill-treated little creature who should work through to your heart by way of your compassion. I knew you, Peter, I knew you. And then I did a meaner thing still. I pretended to stumble in the dark. I meant you to catch me and hold me, ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. The trumpet! ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... been torn from thy brow, come and recall thy wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered upon the mountain—these sheep, what have they done! Gather them, gather them, O good shepherd, for their feet stumble upon ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach |
