"Stutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with new groups of Things, from the most familiar objects to those rarer and farther off, so that the vocabulary might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. A kind of common ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... "Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over its ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was, poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things that were not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serene good faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like a stutter ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... edition of the Revolution Book,—as specified in the other Letter: five hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about 2/7, and your Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland, shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... smile and answered the call. He sprawled in his chair, his elbow on the table, and listened for a few moments. "But don't stutter so, Joe!" he adjured. "Take your time, now, boy! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... of references or even of experience that conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and, after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... us at some of our wines. Don't we just "splice the main brace" as Emil says,' answered Dolly, the dandy, carefully spreading a napkin over the glossy expanse of shirt-front whereon a diamond stud shone like a lone star. His stutter was nearly outgrown; but he, as well as George, spoke in the tone of condescension, which, with the blase airs they assumed, made a very funny contrast to their youthful faces and foolish remarks. Good-hearted little fellows both, but top-heavy with the pride of being Sophs and the freedom that ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... so startled by this sudden thought, that he even neglected his customary stutter. Bandy-legs would have been quick to draw attention to this remarkable fact, had he been present to notice it, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Ferragut. The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot. The grave gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry. But just let them consult him on practical matters and his skill as master of a bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this lantern-jawed operator had a swift and sure sending finger, and when the answer came it was, in contrast, labored and ragged. It was as if two men talked, one in rapid and clear-clipped syllables—the other in a stutter. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... was—in those days—rather a nice fellow, rather shy— taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face "interesting," slight stutter which I had caught in my early life from a schoolfellow. Engaged to a very nice girl, named Delia. Fairly new, she was— cigarettes—liked me because I was human and original. Considered I was like Lamb—on the strength of the stutter, I believe. Father, an eminent authority ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the gayest, the most elf-like spirits. All went well until Marcey dug a hole in the ground, put a stone in it, and, burying it, said it was Laforce's heart. Then Laforce pretended to ventriloquise, and mocked Marcey's slight stutter. That was the beginning of the trouble, and Lucille, like any lady of the world, troubled at Laforce's unkindness, tried to smooth things over—tried very gravely. But the playful rivalry of many months changed its composition ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evinced that the inward and universal master, at all times, and in all places, speaks the same truths. We are not that master: though it is true we often speak without, and higher than him. But then we mistake, stutter, and do not so much as understand ourselves. We are even afraid of being made sensible of our mistakes, and we shut up our ears, lest we should be humbled by his corrections. Certainly the man who is apprehensive of being ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... melancholy; so doth leanness, hirsuteness, broad veins, much hair on the brows," saith [1294]Gratanarolus, cap. 7, and a little head, out of Aristotle, high sanguine, red colour, shows head melancholy; they that stutter and are bald, will be soonest melancholy, (as Avicenna supposeth,) by reason of the dryness of their brains; but he that will know more of the several signs of humour and wits out of physiognomy, let him consult with old Adamantus and Polemus, that comment, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing at the pitch of his voice. He paid no attention to the stutter of laughter round him as he retrieved his mud-encrusted rifle, and looked about him for his cap. The laughter rose as he groped in the thin mud for it, still cursing wildly; and then the sergeant noticed that the man who had lost his cap a minute ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... that way," explained Cynthia, contritely. "But you don't know how this remembering not to speak of it has got on my nerves! I catch myself a dozen times a day just going to make some innocent remark about the B. U. H., generally at the table, and then I stutter and blush, and they all ask what's the matter, and I don't know what in the world to answer! Now I have an idea. Perhaps it isn't worth anything; mine generally aren't! But it's this: why wouldn't it be a good scheme ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... into silence for a moment, her countenance swollen by grief, and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: "Look at him, madame. It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... deprecatory and automatic movement. They took their glasses, clinked them, nodded to their entertainer, muttered incoherent toasts and drank his health. The delighted landlord, feeling it incumbent upon him to break the silence, offered the friendly observation: "S-s-see you s-s-stutter. S-s-stutter a little m-m-my ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... other hand, regards a knowledge of French as immoral and only knows enough of it to order himself a drink. He is also gifted with a slight stutter, which under the stress of a foreign language becomes chronic. So when we evacuate a billet William furnishes the Babe with enough money to compensate the farmer for all damages we have not committed, and then effaces himself. Donning a bright smile the Babe approaches the farmer and presses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... summer winds is sniffin' round the bloomin' locus' trees; And the clover in the pastur is a big day fer the bees, And they been a-swiggin' honey, above board and on the sly, Tel they stutter in theyr buzzin' and stagger as they fly. The flicker on the fence-rail 'pears to jest spit on his wings And roll up his feathers, by the sassy way he sings; And the hoss-fly is a-whettin'-up his forelegs fer biz, And the off-mare is a-switchin' all ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... cassock, with woolly hair and a petulant expression on his face, had already raised his hand. He said, with a stutter, that his name was Ducretot, priest and agriculturist, and that he was the author of a work entitled "Manures." He was told to send it to a ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... done for him. Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of justice Shallow. It was nonsense—effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I think it over the more unnatural and inhuman it seems. Yet to hunt for help, in this busy land, is like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. Already, in the clear morning air, one can hear the stutter and skip and cough of the tractors along the opalescent sky-line, accosting the morning sun with their rattle and tattle of harvests to be. And I intend to be in ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... white horse, relieved of the kegs of nails, really performed prodigies of travel, all the more appreciated because unexpected. A stone-quarry for which we were searching was not found, but a teamster was, who, while everything solemnly stood still and waited, and amid the agonies of an indescribable stutter, finally managed to enlighten us somewhat as to its whereabouts. These adventures served to put us in excellent humor, so that when the road was found barricaded by a barbed wire fence, it only served to give one of the party an opportunity to air his views upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... affair. The two had trotted about their adopted city for perhaps two years before Bert brought Nancy the enormous diamond that his mother had given him years ago for just this wonderful time. Circumstances had helped them to know each other well. Nancy knew the sort of play that made Bert stutter with enthusiasm as they walked home, and Bert knew that Nancy made adorable little faces when she tried on hats, and that her salary was fifteen dollars a week. At this time, and for some years later, Bert was only one of several renting agents employed by the firm of Pearsall ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson. His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Moreover, poor Emmett would be so dreadfully mortified if he found out. No, he must complete his papers, do them as badly as he possibly could, and leave the result to the wisdom of God. If God wished Emmett to stammer forth His praises and stutter His precepts from the pulpit, God would know how to manage that seemingly so intractable Principal. Or God might hear his prayers and cure poor Emmett of his impediment. Mark wondered to what saint was entrusted the patronage of stammerers; ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... The stutter of the auto-rifle cut him off. The President Elect's knuckles were white as he clutched the piece's forearm and grip; the torrent of slugs continued to hack and plow the general's body until the magazine was empty. "Burn ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... English poetry is more thoroughly informed with thought than Milton's. Did he find big thoughts hustling within him for utterance? And did he at an early age stutter in numbers till his oppressed soul found relief? And was it thus that he attained the glorious ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its chin, and I'm ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... in the same language by the candidate. His former fellow-students, and any one present that wishes, stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly, with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Doctor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... grew stronger as the latter weakened. Thus, in Like Will to Like a certain Hance enters half-intoxicated, roaring out a drinking song until the sudden collapse of his voice compels him to recite the rest in the thick stutter of a drunken man. He carries a pot of ale in his hand, from which he drinks to the health of Tom Tosspot, giving the toast with a 'Ca-ca-carouse to-to-to thee, go-go-good Tom'—which is but an indifferent hexameter. At the suggestion of Newfangle 'he danceth as evil-favoured ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the manner in which I am stopped in the streets by working men, who want to shake hands with me, and tell me they know my books. I never go out but this happens. Down at the docks just now, a cooper with a fearful stutter presented himself in this way. His modesty, combined with a conviction that if he were in earnest I would see it and wouldn't repel him, made up as true a piece of natural politeness as I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... market-woman. I pluckily went up to him, saying, "Monsieur Courajod, I know you very well; you have a picture in the Luxembourg Gallery which is a masterpiece. Allow a painter to shake hands with you as he would with his master." And then you should have seen him take fright, draw back and stutter, as if I were going to strike him. A regular flight! However, I followed him, and gradually he recovered his composure, and showed me his hens, his ducks, his rabbits and dogs—an extraordinary collection of birds and beasts; there was even a ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... again, sir," said Puss, creeping nearer and nearer. "That piece of yours, where you whistle first, and then make that sweet repetition, which sounds like somebody saying 'stutter' a great many times over very quickly. Now, do, now; you folks that can sing ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... good, and he called for another. Some soldiers entering, with a girl or two, and finding a clergyman seated with his glass in this not over-reputable den, began to chaff. He answered gently and good-naturedly, but with a slight stutter—enough to hint at fun ahead; and they improved upon the hint. By nine o'clock Parson Jack was silly drunk; at eleven, when the premises were closed, the police found him speechless; and the rest of the night he spent in ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dost teach man's tongue to stutter; He goes reeling in the gutter Who hath deigned to kiss thy lips; Hears men speak without discerning, Sees a hundred tapers burning When there ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to be sure, for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times; but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any office-boy who did not stutter could have ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... in politics, should transfer his activities to the City and become in a short four years its most commanding figure is unheard of. And Mr. McKenna had the misfortune to enter public life with the handicap of a stutter. He set himself to cure it by reading Burke aloud to his family, and he cured it. He was then told by his political friends that he spoke too quickly to be effective. He cured himself of this defect too, by ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... There was no conversation. Rick was so excited it was hard to sit still. As they began the crossing of the Little Choptank River, Steve gave them instructions. "When we get opposite the creek mouth, the engine is going to stutter and kick up a lot of smoke. The boat will drift into the smoke and out again. You'll have a few seconds to go over. I'll pretend to work on the motor, and finally get it started, but running rough. Then I'll take off and pretend I'm heading ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of a million branches, the hoarse booming of the wind, lend to the tiny chamber an air of comfort such as no carpets nor arras could induce. The rain, too, is hastening to add its insolence to the stew. That stutter upon ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... caused her to fear. If they were sick of the whole thing—well, what about it? What were they to do? They were in it, weren't they, up to their necks? Of two people who mutually recognised the plight, only one must foam and rage and stutter out unpalatable truths about it; it was for the other to pour on the oil, to deceive and pretend and propitiate and cajole, to try to keep things running and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... know what he's at; I could pity him, if it were madness: I never yet knew him to play a tune through, And it gives me more anger than sadness To hear his horn stutter and stammer to utter Its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... speak his mind upon—he answered, with conciliatory lightness, "Madam, will you have me speak the truth? Licentia omnes deteriores sumus." In court he used to say, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner." But notwithstanding his deliberation and the stutter that hindered his utterances, he could be quicker than the quickest, and sharper than the most acrid, as the loquacious barrister discovered who was suddenly checked in a course of pert talkativeness by this tart remark from the stammering Lord Keeper: "There is a difference between you and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... as the local Bluebeard. Oh, I was as frank as George Washington. And I told him also that there isn't a man inside the U.S.A. that would treat a black as he treats his wife. I think that surprised him some, for he began to stutter, and then of course I had the advantage. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... to see her every night For thirteen days, and had a sneaking notion To pop the question, thinking all was right, And once or twice had make an awkward motion To take her hand, and stammer'd, cough'd, and stutter'd, But, somehow, nothing to the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... callow and obtuse I was at that time, full of vague and tremulous aspirations and awakenings, but undisciplined, uninformed, with many inherited incapacities and obstacles to weigh me down. I was extremely bashful, had no social aptitude, and was likely to stutter when anxious or embarrassed, yet I seem to have made a good impression. I was much liked in school and out, and was fairly happy. I seem to see sunshine over all when I look back there. But it was a long ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... feller tried to git my carpet bag and another tried to git my umbreller, and I jest told 'em to stand back or durned if I wouldn't take a wrestle out of one or two of them, then I asked one of 'em if he could haul me up to the Sturtevessant hotel, and by gosh I never heered a feller stutter like that feller did in all my life, he said ye-ye-ye-yes sir, and I said wall how much air you a goin' to charge me, and he said f-f-f-fif-fif-fifty c-c-cents, and I sed wall I guess I'll ride with you, but don't ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... when you like!" I answer heartily, and I neither mumble nor stutter, nor do I feel any disposition to drop my eyes. I like to look at him. For the rest of dinner I am absolutely mute, I make only one other remark, and that is a request to one of the footmen to give me some water. The evening passes. It is but a short ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... extricated himself and the show people, with no assistance from them save encouragement. He towed them to dry land, untied and put away his rope and then discovered that he had not the heart to drive on at his usual hurtling pace and leave them to follow. There was an ominous stutter in their motor, for one thing, and Casey knew of a stiffish hill a few miles this side of Rhyolite, so he forced himself to set a slow pace ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... panic-stricken by the thought that "perhaps this is merely the result of my own imagination or fancy, instead of spirit power," and the result will be that he will begin to halt and stumble, stammer and stutter, instead of allowing the message to flow through him uninterrupted. This is particularly true when the message is of the nature of a test of identity, and where the vocal organs of the medium are being employed ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... face became distorted, his anger was so violent that he could scarcely stutter. When he heard, however, of the mission with which his wife had intrusted Mathieu, he at last exploded: "She is mad! I tell you that she is raving mad! Were such fancies ever seen? Every morning she invents something fresh to ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... That ought to make you stutter an' choke! Eunice sent your grandma a pair o' pullets no ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... mighty stride off the porch. His last words had been cold. His rage appeared to have been transferred to Hawe. The sheriff had begun to stutter and shake a lanky red hand at the cattleman when ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... was vaingloriously justifying the younger man's analogy of a gigantic Spanish omelette. Meanwhile, the younger man declaimed in a high-pitched pleasant voice, wherein there was, as always, the elusive suggestion of a stutter. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... chatter, prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... than above the middle size; his countenance was swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an ever-degrading habit; he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... "'Didn't—didn't'—don't stammer and stutter like that! Confound you! What do you mean by dragging me out of bed in this way? You must have been ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... being well acquainted with Mr. Charles H. Webb, a truly funny "funny man," who had homes in New York and Nantucket. His slight stutter only added to the effect of his humorous talk. His letters to the New York Tribune from Long Branch, Saratoga, etc., were widely read. He knew that he wrote absolute nonsense at times, but nonsense is greatly needed in this world, and exquisitely droll nonsensical ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... compulsion, you think yourself so happy, and do so hug yourself, that you are obliged to drink out nowhere. Should Maecenas lay his commands on you to come late, at the first lighting up of the lamps, as his guest; 'Will nobody bring the oil with more expedition? Does any body hear?' You stutter with a mighty bellowing, and storm with rage. Milvius, and the buffoons [who expected to sup with you], depart, after having uttered curses not proper to be repeated. Any one may say, for I own [the truth], that I am easy to be seduced by my appetite; I snuff up my nose ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... really desert you; You've nuts, but not crack ones, Half empty and black ones; With oranges, sallow— They can't be called yellow— Some pippins well-wrinkled, And plums almond-sprinkled; Some rout cakes, and so on, Then with business to go on: Long speeches are stutter'd, And toasts are well butter'd, While dames in the gallery, All dressed in fallallery, Look on at the mummery, And listen to flummery. Hip, hip! and huzzaing, And singing and saying, Glees, catches, orations, And lists of donations, Hush! a song, Mr. Tinney— "Mr. Benbow, one guinea; ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... getting ready to land on us. Our Faculty had thirty-two profs and thirty-three pairs of spectacles. It also had two good average heads of hair and considerable whiskers. It could figure out a perihelion or a Latin bill-of-fare in a minute, but you ought to hear it stutter when it tried to map out the daily relaxations of a college full of husky young hurricanes, who had come to school to learn what life looks like from the inside. Fairy tales in the German and tea and wafers with quotations looked like a jolly good time to the ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... this while the sturdy motor was humming its song of force triumphant. Subsequently it stuttered faintly in expressing itself. Triumph was there, but it was not so joyously sure of itself. Bland glided, cocking an anxious ear to listen while he slowed the motor. It was there, the stutter—more pronounced than before; and once that pulsing power begins to flag a little and grow uncertain, there is but one ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the fresh honey, grow Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter With earnest willingness the truth they know; But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter 750 All plausible delusions;—these to you I give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter; Delight your own soul with them:—any man You would instruct may profit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... their smoke was not all converted into flame, while Browning was a man whose radically prim and conventional ideas, heavily overladen with emotion, acquired the semblance of profundity because they struggled into expression through the medium of a congenital stutter—a stutter which was no doubt one of the great assets of his fame. But neither Chapman's obscurity nor Browning's obscurity seems to be intrinsically admirable. There was too much pedantry in both of them and too little artistry. It is the function of genius to ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied. Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you have found to frame a charge, which is as suited ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... real reason is that the English actor works for less money—he is the cheaper article. Certainly no one will accuse the average English actor of speaking English. The hemming and hawing, the aristocratic stutter, the dropping of h's and picking them up at the wrong time, have never been popular in the United States, except by way of caricature. Nothing is more absurd than to take the ground that the English actors are ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... heels instead, I scarce can tell, for Cupid's arrows Have made my brain like any sparrow's. When you come near, my foolish heart Goes pit-a-pat with throb and start, And when I try my love to utter, My fairest speech is but a stutter. How to propose is all my task, Whether to write or just to ask, And ere I solve the problem knotty I really fear I shall go dotty. Oh, lady fair, in pity stop And list while I the question pop. 'Tis here on paper; think it over, And let me ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... din; Whilst every tuneless knave doth rend the soul Of harmony, the more he hath refus'd To sing; ere Bacchus set him by the ears With common sense, his dull and morning guide; And stutterers speak fast, and quick men stutter, And gleams of fitful mirth shine on the brow Of moody souls, and careless gay men look Fierce melodrama on their friends around; While talk obscene and loyalty mark all; Then good or bad emotions meet the eye, Like a mosaic floor, whose black and white Glistens more keenly, moisten'd by the ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... the English tongue. It is a curious fact that Great Britain takes the lead in Europe in the prevalence of stuttering; the language is probably a factor in this evil pre-eminence, for it appears that the Chinese, whose language is powerfully rhythmic, never stutter. One authority has declared that "no nation in the civilized world speaks its language so abominably as the English." We can scarcely admit that this English difficulty of speech is the result of some organic defect in English ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and big-bellied, but he was well and strongly knit. His hair was yellow or sandy; his face red, which got him the name of Rufus; his forehead flat; his eyes were spotted, and appeared of different colours; he was apt to stutter in speaking, especially when he was angry; he was vigorous and active, and very hardy to endure fatigues, which he owed to a good constitution of health, and the frequent exercise of hunting; in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... cried several voices, and the author in question had got so far as to make an allusion to a solitary horseman who was approaching, when he was interrupted by a tall gentleman a little farther down with a slight stutter and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the minister spread it on too thick, he would raise up in the coffin and protest. He was not what you would call a good Christian, as the world goes, but I would trust him to argue with St. Peter about getting inside the gate, because, if his stutter ever got St. Peter to laughing, my friend would surely get in. Well, he died, and I was one of the bearers at the funeral, with seven others of his old friends; and when the minister was picturing the ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... you meddle with that lamp! And mind the pavement, for it's damp!" Such was the Peeler's last good-night A faint voice stutter'd ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... had the misfortune to stutter, and in his eagerness to make himself understood he would support himself, stork-like, on one leg, and pump the other up and down with frantic jerks. Mr. Beaver's services were invaluable in such cases as this when gossip was to be repeated, for his stuttering compelled him to leave just ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... should rather say, to limp, errands—for he had risen from the fever that ruined him to run no more—with great fidelity and success. He was fond of church-going, of reading good little books, and, notwithstanding his sad stutter, of singing. During the day, he might be heard, as he hobbled along the streets on business, "singing in into himself," as the children used to say, in a low unvaried under-tone, somewhat resembling the humming of a bee; but when night fell, the whole town heard him. He was no ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... not better felt than told, Then first in all its bright array, Did I thy "frozen form" survey; And, goodness! what a great big steeple! What sights of houses! and such people!! And then I thought, did I not stutter, But verse could, like some poets, utter, How much I'd ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... bad. If anyone looked, a most minute angular dot could be seen to be fighting to get back over the land from where it had first appeared, far out at sea. There were moments when the stuttering ceased, and the engine ran with a smooth hum. Then another stutter. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with the sentence forty nations are trying to stutter out now, is that there is no predicate, no verb, no spinal column ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the attention of the chief, and having thought out in advance his answers to certain pertinent questions, he did not stutter when they were asked. Yes, he had been hired to drive the ear south, and he had overheard enough to make him suspicious on the way. He knew that they had stolen the car. He was not absolutely sure that they were the diamond thieves ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... remarkable one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering bons mots with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... very moment to them all, sitting round the table, over their wine. 'Maria,' says I, 'a poor fellow wants to redeem his promise which he made when he fancied he was rich. Will you take him?' I found I had plenty of words, and didn't hem and stutter as I'm doing now. I spoke ever so long, and I ended by saying I would do my best and my duty by her, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anything in the nature of a speech, and he was but little impressed with Smith's powers as a public speaker. His voice was harsh, and his enunciation thick, approaching even to stammering.[81] Of course many excellent speakers often stutter much in making a simple business explanation which they are composing as they go along, and Smith always stuttered and hesitated a deal for the first quarter of an hour, even in his class lectures, though his elocution grew free and ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... two-wheeled carriage.] Yet, despite this flourishing position of affairs, he still preserved the stoical tendencies in which, to tell the truth, he took a certain vague pride before his family and strangers, since he would frequently say with a stutter: "Any one who REALLY wishes to see me will be glad to see me even in my dressing-gown, and to eat nothing but shtchi [Cabbage-soup.] and kasha [Buckwheat gruel.] at my table." "That is what I eat myself," he would add. In his ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... was burst open, and, to our alarm, some one tumbled in upon the floor in an agony of terror, as we soon discovered, pale as a ghost and scarcely able to speak. As soon as he recovered some degree of self-possession, he could barely stutter out,—"When Jack got out of sight—I turned to get down—and there sat another one, on the other ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... no power belongs To pitchfork me to Heaven upon the prongs Of a bad pen, whose disobedient sputter, With less of ink than incoherence fraught Befits the folly that it tries to utter. Brains, I observe, as well as tongues, can stutter: You suffer from ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... with the operator to occasionally sound the three dots that make up the letter S in the Morse alphabet—unconsciously, you know, and just as another man, in speaking, might stutter or continually introduce a hesitating 'er' ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished. At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes, and with servants carrying ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the man of power."—For that purpose, and in expectation of that perilous and supreme day, it lavishes wealth upon him, and clothes him in purple and ermine. That day arrives, that hour, unique, pitiless, and solemn, that supreme hour of duty; the man in the red gown begins to stutter the words of the law; suddenly he perceives that it is not the cause of justice that prevails, but that treason carries the day. Whereupon he, the man who has passed his life in imbuing himself with the pure and holy light ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... I said 'Hear, hear!' to every stutter," said Monck, bowing slightly as he took the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the vein,' Sir David went on. 'It's a natural peculiarity—as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his friends usually understand it and don't haul him up—for the sake of ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... while he vented his fury on his victim, striking him with his clenched fist, slapping him and kicking him, I do not know, but the religious man fell at the feet of his furious executioner who, being now the prey of the most stupendous rage, could scarcely get his tongue to stutter and continued to kick the priest, without seeing where he kicked him. Getting deeper and deeper in the abyss and perhaps not knowing what he was about, this petty chief made straight for a sabre lying on a table to continue his bloody work. In the meantime the priest had risen to his feet ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... murders and ghastly suicides, of gruesome deeds and bloody affrays of hunters and hunted until the landlady gasped and, calling the maid for company, went off to bed, while the men turned to stare uneasily behind them and I myself felt my flesh creep. But as the great bowl emptied, tongues began to stutter, and in the midst of a somewhat incoherent reminiscence of Tom's, the man Vokes snored loudly, whereupon Tom blinked and pillowing his bullet head on the table, promptly snored also; and glancing drowsily ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... characters stutter soon," said Millaud. "We had better pay him by the line." Of course this is a story faite a plaisir, as is also the one that as soon as Dumas made his first contract by the line, enchanted with the arrangement, he invented dear old Grimaud, who only opened his mouth to utter ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... "Oh, it's as good a route as the Trust's. I worked on the two surveys. Personally I think both outfits are crazy to try to build in from here. I had to tell Gordon that, too. You see I'm a volunteer talker. I should have been born with a stutter—it would have saved me ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... difficult and prolonged conduction of the motor-impulse. I knew a boy (feeble-minded, to be sure) who took from three to eight seconds for answering even the simplest question; then came a regular explosion of utterance. Yet he did not stutter or stammer. When he had only yes or no to answer, the interval between ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... the shelter of the river-bank, the cavalry dismounted; we watered our horses, waited, and wondered what was happening. And every moment the tumult grew louder and more intense, until even the flickering stutter of the Maxims could scarcely be heard above the continuous din. Eighty yards away, and perhaps twenty feet above us, the 32nd Field Battery was in action. The nimble figures of the gunners darted about as they ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... "Stutter?" Malone said. "You said you didn't know what it was. What the hell it was. And I wanted to know ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... understand. They asked him if he knew the "Five Vowels." He held down his head; he could not recollect it; all the songs of the good old days were mixed up in his head. As they made up their minds to leave him alone, he seemed to remember, and began to stutter ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... to him at table, on one hand, while a lady (Mrs. McLane) was on his other hand, and the French minister next to her; and as Mr. Izard got on with his communication, his voice kept rising, and his stutter bolting the words out loudly at intervals, so that the minister might hear if he would. He said he had a great mind at one time to have got up, in order to put a stop ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... who got back to the umpire first won—at least his partner did. Do you understand? Well, as you know, I haven't much ear for music, and I hoped I would get an easy tune; but when my partner, a long, thin, earnest man, with a stutter, burst on me and whistled wildly in my face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... is an April Fool's child. But then, the joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator— the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" on ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... rather a sly lad, who was sent to this school, because it was cheap. Many men would have thought him a smart boy, but Mr. Bhaer did not like his way of illustrating that Yankee word, and thought his unboyish keenness and money-loving as much of an affliction as Dolly's stutter, or ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... and utterance notably superior to his well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ugliness by a pair of magnificent eyes, leap to a table outside the Cafe de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And then upon the silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young man poured a flood of inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred at moments by a stutter. He told the people that the Germans on the Champ de Mars would enter Paris that night to butcher the inhabitants. "Let us mount a cockade!" he cried, and tore a leaf from a tree to serve his purpose—the green cockade ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me—now the job is done and gone, And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, leavin' Cutter there with Sutter—that mebbee just a stutter On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... turned almost livid for a moment, and I really thought he was frightened; but after an ineffectual effort or two to steady his voice, he managed to stutter out passionately: ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... claims our attention. In mould of plebeian he never was cast (His caste was of gentlemen, wealthy and 'fast'). Not noted for morals, nor even sobriety, He always had moved in the 'highest society.' I had seen him so 'high' as to hiccough and stutter, And once I had noticed him low in the gutter; Yet he was a 'very respectable' man; And into whatever excesses he ran, His riches and impudence safely would carry him, And plenty of ladies were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... had heard the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutter in my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,—at my father's gesture he had turned toward me,—but there was none in his walking. He came straight on toward our fire and through it. Three strides beyond it he drank at the creek as though that ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... in all. The carpenter, seizing the hook of the cargo-chain, flung himself on the top of them. A very satisfactory petty officer, too, but he stuttered. Have you ever heard a light-yellow, lean, sad, earnest Chinaman stutter in Pidgin-English? It's very weird, indeed. He made the eighteenth. I could not see the pony at all; but from the swaying and heaving of that heap of men I knew that there was something ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... that time Carlyle took his place in the world as a man of genius. But money was still scarce, so as a means of making some, he gave several courses of lectures. But he hated it. "O heaven!" he cries, "I cannot speak. I can only gasp and write and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money." One course of these lectures—the last—was on Heroes and Her Worship. This may be one of the first of Carlyle's book that you will care to read, and you may now like to hear what he has to say of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more gash than another, and those three in the centre ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Before he could even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her most ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... up 'ere once in the last week to, know whether the Silvia is up she's been four or five times," he growled. "He's forty-seven if he's a day; 'is left leg is shorter than 'is right, and he talks with a stutter. When she's with 'im you'd think as butter wouldn't melt in 'er mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you'd think I was paid a-purpose to wait on her. I asked 'er at last wot she thought ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... While Toby was certainly agile enough when it came to acrobatic stunts, and such things as boys are fond of indulging in, his vocal cords often loved to play sad pranks with his manner of speech. As the reader has already discovered, Toby was fain to stutter in the most agonizing fashion. When one of these fits came upon him he would get red in the face, and show the greatest difficulty in framing certain words. Then all of a sudden, as though taking a grip on himself, Toby would stop short, draw in a long breath, give a sharp ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... along, and I decides to arsk him all about it. The language question didn't worry me any. I can pitch the cuffer in any bat from Tamil to Arabic, an' the only chap I couldn't compree was a deaf-an'-dumb man who suffered from St. Vitus' Dance, which made 'im stutter with his fingers. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... in his easy chair, and had wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, when he had made two or three journeys to the door to see that his terrible hosts of the Rue des Bons Enfants had not followed him home, he began to stutter out his adventure. He told how he had been stopped in the Rue des Bons Enfants by a band of robbers, whose lieutenant, a ferocious-looking man nearly six feet high, had wanted to kill him, when the captain had come and saved his life. Bathilde listened with rapt attention, first, because she ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... He told the lawyer to go hang or something equivalent. The lawyer knocked him down. By George, I'd like to have seen it! From the way Bowles tells it, he must have knocked him down so incessantly in the next five minutes that Von Blitz's attempts to stand up were nothing short of a stutter. Moreover, he wouldn't let Von Blitz stab him worth a cent. Bowles says he's got Von Blitz cowed, and the whole town is walking in circles, it's so dizzy. Von Blitz's wives threaten to kill the lawyer, but I guess they won't. Bowles says that all the Persian ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... try it, now, I tell you," warned the other, forgetting to even stutter in his indignation. "I'm going to tell you about it just when I'm good and ready. G-get ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... he could only stutter and point at the sack with 'is finger, and Henery Walker, as was getting curious, lifted up the other end of it and out rolled a score of as fine cabbages as ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... streetlights. Broken beggars grumble when they sense people. On some corners powerful streetcars stutter. And plush cabs drop into the stars. Among rough houses whores hobble back and forth, Sadly swinging their ripe behinds. Much sky lies broken in these dried-out things... Whiny cats painfully shriek ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... he admonished the captain. "You said 'steamed.' M'lissy ain't cooked. An' you stutter yet when you come to that word right after painful. Can't you say ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... bell had sounded. Its summonses became fast and furious. There were modest tintinnabulations which seemed to stutter and tremble like a first avowal; there were bold rings which vibrated under some rough touch and hasty rings which sounded through the house with shivering rapidity. It was a regular peal, as Zoe said, a peal loud enough to upset the neighborhood, seeing that a whole mob of men were ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... and destruction on every hand; There wis havoc and horror on Naebuddy's Land. And the shells bickered doun wi' a crump and a glare, And the hameless wee bullets were dingin' the air. Yet on they went staggerin', cooryin' doun When the stutter and cluck o' a Maxim crept roun'. And the legs o' McPhun they were sturdy and stoot, And McPhee on his back kept a bonnie look-oot. "On, on, ma brave lad! We're no faur frae the goal; I can hear the braw sweerin' ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... with mingled satisfaction, astonishment, and irritation that he can write when he pleases in a style of the purest and noblest simplicity; that he can make his characters converse in a language worthy of Sophocles when he does not prefer to make them stutter in a dialect worthy of Lycophron. And in the tragedy of "Sophonisba" the display of this happy capacity is happily reserved for the crowning scene of the poem. It would be difficult to find anywhere a more preposterous or disjointed ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the rest of the speech. A cold fury had gripped him. He pointed at Gerald, began to speak, found that he was stuttering, and gulped back the words. In this supreme moment he was not going to have his dignity impaired by a stutter. He gulped and found a sentence which, while brief enough to insure against this disaster, was sufficiently long to express ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... in a passion when couldn't have his own way; have heard him stutter; always in some scrape or other after first went to college; eyes blue; hair brown; sharp enough when he pleased, but always heard he hated books; short for his age when first went to sea, and thin; ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... one heard him, though Johnny did not know that. Horses and men tilted heads comically and stared up at the great, swooping thing that came buzzing like a monstrous bumblebee that has learned to stutter. Then the horses squatted cowering away from it, and scattered like drops of water when a stone is thrown ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... most striking figures in the French Revolution, born at Guise, in Picardy; studied for the bar in the same college with Robespierre, but never practised, owing to a stutter in his speech; was early seized with the revolutionary fever, and was the first to excite the same fever in the Parisian mob, by his famous call "To arms, and, for some rallying sign, cockades—green ones—the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... almost instantaneous; therefore taking the cup, began to discharge my bottle into it, telling him he was now qualified to drink with the Cham of Tartary. I had no sooner pronounced these words than he took umbrage at them, and after several attempts to spit, made shift to stutter, "A f—t for your Chams of T—Tartary! I am a f—f—freeborn Englishman, worth th—three thousand a-year, and v—value no man, d—me." Then, dropping his jaw, and fixing his eyes, he hiccuped aloud, and fell upon the floor as mute as n flounder. Mr. Freeman, heartily glad at his defeat, assisted ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... hurt?" the doctor managed to stutter in an almost inaudible voice, so overcome with surprise was he at the ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... admit them to their nightly banquet. The stage struck always copy the traits of the leading actor of the hour, whoever he may be, and grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter a la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an opera glass. There you may see the knit brows, the high shirt collars, the folded arms, the pursed-up ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage |
