"Tongue-tied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I would have given much to have been alone with her, but I saw no chance of this. Perhaps it was better as it was. What she herself wished I could not tell. Mrs Tarleton showed no intention of leaving the room. I longed to say a great deal, but I felt tongue-tied. Captain Douglas had but little time to spare. He looked at his watch. I saw that I could no longer delay. I bade farewell to Mrs Tarleton. Madeline came to the door of the hut. I took her hand—it ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... conscious that the girl he loves is inspecting him closely and making up her mind about him,' he proceeded, 'these unexpected meetings are very trying ordeals. You must not form your judgement of me too hastily. You see me now, nervous, embarrassed, tongue-tied. But I am not always like this. Beneath this crust of diffidence there is sterling stuff, Miss Warden. People who know me have spoken of me as a little ray of sun—But ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... in doubt. It was not the fear of death that kept us tongue-tied, though death lay in our rear, but each man wished to spend his ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... self-consciousness and shyness. They are a very irrational thing, something purely instinctive and of old inheritance. How irrational they are is best proved by the fact that shyness is caused mostly by the presence of strangers; there are many young people who are bashful, awkward, and tongue-tied in the presence of strangers, whose tremors wholly disappear in the family circle. If these were rational fears, they might be caused by the consciousness of the inspection and possible disapproval ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comes, stripping the trees of their leaves, and the fields of their greenness, white mists veil the hills and brood among the fading valleys. A shiver runs through the air, and the cold branches are starred with tears. A poignant grief is over the land, an almost desolation,—full of unspoken sorrow, tongue-tied with unuttered complaint. All the world is lost and forlorn, without hope or respite. Everything is given up to the dirges of the moaning seas, the white shrouds of weeping mist. Wander forth upon the uplands and among the lonely hills and rock-seamed sides of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... of countenances; of mutual accusation and retort took place. Some had drunk deep, and some were unshaven, so that there were suspicious faces enough in the assembly. I alone could not enter with ease and vivacity into the joke. I felt tongue-tied—embarrassed. A recollection of what I had seen and felt the preceding night ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Cerf, where a dinner was being prepared by scared servants for thirty German officers. The order was about to be signed when suddenly a cure, small and pale, but lion-brave, entered the room. How he got in no one knew! Surprise held the general tongue-tied for three seconds; and a French cure is capable of much eloquence in ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I was strangely tongue-tied, or, perhaps, not strangely; for there comes a time when the eyes say all that there is desire or need to say. Her pleadings were in answer ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... here, young feller," snapped the speaker, dropping his elaborate sarcasm and veering round to his natural ferocity, "you ain't tongue-tied, I reckon, and I want to know right quick, pronto, what you're doin' round these diggin's, anyhow. One of our men comin' in from the stables caught you spyin' through the winder. He gave yer one on the nob, and dragged ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... exactly tongue-tied, though," says I. "And you ain't startin' out on this expedition with both arms roped behind you, ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... she intended to marry him, that but for his half-distressed perturbation, she would have thought no more of the momentous "Yes" than of voicing some long-formed opinion. Now his throbbing excitement had become contagious. She found herself fluttering and tongue-tied. Though she realized suddenly that their ridiculous child's-play had turned to earnest, she could not find word or look to ease the strain. They walked on in silence, step for step, in a sort of mechanical rhythmic physical understanding. Suddenly ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the feeling that held me tongue-tied. To make me feel at my ease she started to tell of everything that had happened from the moment that The Waif had cleared Sydney Heads, and the time she spent in that recital was as precious to me as the two-minute interval between rounds is to a prize-fighter who has ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... behind him. "Take yer bones along, then, ye tongue-tied catamount!" his wife's mother apostrophized him, with all the acrimony of long repression. "Got no mo' politeness 'n a settin' hen," she muttered, as she turned back into ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... his prudence had kept him tongue-tied from day to day. It seemed to him now that it would yet have been easier to speak out in the first hour of discovery. He almost regretted not having made a row at once. But then the very monstrosity of the disclosure . . . Why! He could hardly face it himself, let alone pointing it ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... thine can charm me, Forbid it Heaven! And my discourse no less Must evermore sound noisome to thine ear. Yet where could I have found a fairer fame Than giving burial to my own true brother? All here would tell thee they approve my deed, Were they not tongue-tied to authority. But kingship hath much profit; this in chief, That it may do and ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... well, but with the girl in his arms he seemed suddenly tongue-tied. They swung round the room several times, then halted simultaneously beside an open window and went out into the garden of the hotel, sitting down on a wicker seat under a gaudy Japanese hanging lantern. The band was still playing, and for the moment ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... unreserved, became inevitably hesitant and broken. Each was bearing a burden which neither was willing to reveal to the other. Ivan, concealing from the tender woman every sign of his persecution at the hands of his companions in the Corps, felt himself constantly tongue-tied before her. And though ordinarily the mother-sense would speedily have penetrated that awkward reserve, Sophia, herself all unaccustomed to deceit, was so fully occupied in hiding every sign of her own secret, that Ivan's reticence appeared to her only the reflection of her own. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... in a community of intelligence, and whose eyes, accustomed to economize expressions, knew how to say so many things silently—these two old friends, one as noble as the other in heart, if they were unequal in fortune and birth, remained tongue-tied whilst looking at each other. By the exchange of a single glance they had just read to the bottom of each other's hearts. The old servitor bore upon his countenance the impression of a grief already old, the outward token of a grim familiarity with woe. He appeared to have no longer in use more ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that the statistics of stammering and the custom of cutting the frenum of the tongue do not stand in any sort of correlation with each other, and that this ancient custom, noted by Celsus, has no real scientific raison d'etre (205. 9). We say that a child is "tongue-tied," and that one "makes too free with his tongue"; in French we find: Il a le filet bien coupe, "he is a great talker," and in the eighteenth century Il n'a pas de filet was in use; a curious German expression for "tongue-tied" is ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Meow, and the other Maltie Beeswax. We called him that, because he sticks so. If he gets in our laps, there is no getting rid of him. He will jump through my hands held three feet high. The parrot does not talk much, because it is tongue-tied. She calls "papa," and screams when she wants to get out of her cage. The dog Spry is the cunningest of all. His body and color are like a black and tan; but his nose is shaggy, like a Scotch terrier, which makes him look very funny. He will ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... He felt tongue-tied, more than usually awkward, terribly and shamefully nervous. Yet the grey eyes were on his face, and he knew that he must speak, must put all to the hazard. And he knew also that if to-day he lost her, it would be the ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... humanities; and scores more who are only ladies. A lady and a woman are two very different things. One is made at the hands of fashion; the other is the handiwork of God through the instrumentality of useful Employment. A lady is a parlor ornament, a walking show-gallery, a mistress of tongue-tied etiquette. A woman is a consecrated intelligence—a love baptized—a hand employed in the work of good. To be a woman requires exertion and prudence. Women are not born; neither do they grow up of themselves; they are made. Their virtues blossom in the garden of industry. Their fruits ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... or two," remarked his son Chester, "but dolts aren't uncommon anywhere, even when not tongue-tied. And I did run up against some chaps I liked jolly well. One of them invited me up for a week-end; I nearly fell over when he did it. I didn't know country people ever talked about week-ends. I thought they called it ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... head of old Bagley, your tongue-tied driver. Now, take it from me, Tavia, it was simply the brilliancy of ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... thyself, unhappy one, thine errand; For large discourse may send a thrill of joy, Or stir a chord of wrath or tenderness, And to the tongue-tied ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Tongue-tied and doubly embarrassed by his calm scrutiny, the young lady stood with flushed cheeks, and with long black lashes dropped to hide a pair of very shamed eyes, the personification, in ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... to go where he pleases. It isn't fair, but it's the world's way, and always will be lessen women learn some things they ought to know. They wouldn't stand for some of the things that go on if they understood them, but they don't understand. They've been tongue-tied and hand-tied so long, they haven't taken in yet they've got to do ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... office was too lowly to exact homage from the quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by acquiring ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the room. His hostess, who had subsided into an easy-chair and was holding a screen between her face and the fire, motioned him to, seat himself opposite. He did so without words. He felt curiously and ridiculously tongue-tied. He fell to studying the woman instead of attempting the banality of pointless speech. From the smooth gloss of her burnished hair, to the daintiness of her low, black brocaded shoes, she represented, so far as ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... same poet elsewhere tells us of old men that sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of flourish and elegance. And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo children, who are pretty forward in a softly, innocent prattle, but otherwise are too much tongue-tied, and want the other's most acceptable embellishment of a perpetual talkativeness. Add to this, that old men love to be playing with children, and children delight as much in them, to verify the proverb, that Birds of a feather flock together. And indeed what difference can be discerned between ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... upon the white cloth or were placed upon knees motionless as the knees of statues. And all eyes were turned towards the giver of the feast, mutely demanding of him a signal of conduct to guide his inquiring guests. But Maurice, too, felt for the moment tongue-tied. He was very sensitive to influences, and his present position, between Maddalena and her father, created within him a certain confusion of feelings, an odd sensation of being between two conflicting elements. He was conscious of affection ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... looked smilingly at Alice, that young woman, usually mistress of herself in all emergencies, did not lift her eyes to meet his. Indeed, he thought her strangely embarrassed. She was as flushed and tongue-tied as a country girl in unaccustomed company. She seemed another woman than the self-possessed young beauty he had met a month before on the Limited, but he found her ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... for action, fiery and panting with that wolfish thirst, to quench which blood must flow. But all the rest seemed dumb, and tongue-tied, and crest-fallen. The sullenness of fear brooded on every other face. The torpor of despairing crime, already in its own fancy baffled and detected, had fallen on every other heart. For, at the farther end of the room, whispering to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn't be used to such grand people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it. Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly, 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thought left her tongue-tied and miserable; and after the table-dispersal she sought out the captain ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... daily in the presence of Ella, the little man's heart ached with sweet anguish and helpless worship and desire. Yet before her he was tongue-tied, incapable of uttering a consecutive sentence. With her sister, Lady Alice Santerre, who had been the intended bride of the deceased heir to the Gallowbay Estate, Kimberley felt on a different footing. He had hardly ever ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... her face; they were both smiling, both on the brink of laughter, all was so innocent and playful; and the Prince, when their lips encountered, was dumbfoundered by the sudden convulsion of his being. Both drew instantly apart, and for an appreciable time sat tongue-tied. Otto was indistinctly conscious of a peril in the silence, but could find no words to utter. Suddenly the Countess seemed to awake. 'As for your wife - ' she began in a clear ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... words were, "It was very strange! very horrible." He afterwards told her he had all at once felt very queer, and as if unable to articulate; he then went upstairs in hopes of getting rid of the sensation by movement; but it would not do, he felt perfectly tongue-tied, or rather chained, till overcome by witnessing her distress. This took place, I think, on the 15th, and on the 18th I was invited to dine with him, and found him without any trace of illness, but as cheerful and ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... halted, and the soldiers saluted, tongue-tied and embarrassed, scuffling, and prodding one another's ribs in an attempt to urge a spokesman forward, while General Washington gazed down at them as if ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... yet: I must sit down. Attend, young Bruce, and listen to the queen; She'll not be tongue-tied: we shall have a stir Anon, I fear, would ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... school, where he took the civil engineering degree, and had gone forth to lay track in Montana. He laid it well; but this job finished, there seemed no permanent place for him. He was heavy and rather tongue-tied, and made no impression on his superiors except that of commonplace efficiency. He drifted into Canada, then back to the States, and finally found ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... that," he agreed. "Words are poor things when one really feels. Providence seems to have arranged that we should be more or less tongue-tied when ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... listen to none of those half sentences. You cannot possibly speak out, I see; in fact, you are tongue-tied by the cord of your evil fate. Upon no subject can you speak until ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... not paralyzed. "I've promised the neighborhood that I would give a Christmas tree and entertainment—and when a school-teacher promises anything to a neighborhood, nothing short of death or smallpox will be accepted as an excuse for failing to keep the promise; and I've seven tongue-tied kids to work with!" (The schoolma'am was only spasmodically given to irreproachable English.) "Of course, I relied upon my friends to help me out. But when I come to calling the roll, I—I don't seem to have ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... You will get tongue-tied if you keep on," warned Hippy Wingate. "We have something more serious on hand ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... open palm she smote the insensate clods with a gesture of despair. Then she went on in a rising tide of tumultuous emotion. "I love ye! Oh, I always loved ye! I never keered fur nobody else! an' I war tongue-tied, an' full of fool pride, an' faultin' ye fur yer ways; an' I wouldn't gin ye the word I knowed ye war wantin' ter hear. But now I kin tell the pore ghost of ye—I kin tell ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... without being tongue-tied, and unable to wink, still thought. And what did the doctor propose to do with him in case he was not to be stung to death by insects, sand-flies, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... to tell her that he would defend her against a host of savages if he were endowed with many lives, but he was perforce tongue-tied. He even reviled himself for having spoken, but she saw the anguish in his face, and her woman's heart acknowledged him as her ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Truth the world denies, Not tongue-tied for its gilded sin; Not always right in all men's eyes, But faithful ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he was like an aeroplane in flight, and when in an ill-advised moment he lit to gather himself, they fell upon him tooth and nail—to use a phrase. Dora's hand closed over the grasshopper, and Ralston's closed over Dora's, holding it tight in one confused moment of delicious, tongue-tied silence. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... him on his first night at Number 4. Then he would resolve to sit still and not say a word till Arthur began; but he was always beat at that game, and had presently to begin talking in despair, fearing lest Arthur might think he was vexed at something if he didn't, and dog-tired of sitting tongue-tied. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... zenith. They seem to be straining away from the spot to which they are rooted. It is a Laocoon grouping, a wordless concentrated struggle for the sunlight, and disagreeably impressive. The trippers longed to talk and were tongue-tied; they looked now and then over their shoulders. They were glad when the eerie influence was passed, though they traversed a morass ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... ribbon—earned at Zeebrugge. He seemed to know every one, and once or twice he left his seat to speak to a friend—during which absence Bob's friends shot him amazed glances, with eyebrows raised in astonishment that he should be lunching with a real Major-General. Bob was somewhat tongue-tied with bewilderment over the fact himself. But when their cold beef came, General Harran soon put him at his ease, leading him to talk of himself and his plans with quiet tact. Before Bob fairly realized it he had unfolded all his little story—even to Tommy and her hardships. The General listened ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... so in theory! I saw her as distinctly as I ever saw a marble statue in the Vatican Gallery by the light of noon. Although I had recalled the Jephson story so circumstantially, it never struck me that it might be interesting to attempt any conversation, and see whether I also were tongue-tied. I did not want to speak—there seemed no special reason for speaking. It was quite enough to lie there with this blissful feeling of protection and love folding me round like a cloud with golden lining. And as this consciousness held me in its loving grasp, to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... winter Vassily Ivanovitch arrived. Rogatchov was presented to him; he received him coldly and contemptuously, and as time went on, he, so alarmed him by his haughty behaviour that poor Rogatchov trembled like a leaf at the very sight of him, was tongue-tied and smiled nervously. Vassily once almost annihilated him altogether—by making him a bet, that he, Rogatchov, was not able to stop smiling. Poor Pavel Afanasievitch almost cried with, embarrassment, but—actually!—a smile, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... her again. Why did she not speak plainly, he was wondering. In the subtler matters of life, women have a clearer comprehension and a plainer speech than men. When they are tongue-tied—the reason ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... with you, Sol?" asked Mr. Phinney. "You're as glum as a tongue-tied parrot. Ain't you satisfied with the way I'm doin' your movin'? The white horse can go back again if ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... counter-compliments that we exchanged, all in the most approved manner. Occasions like this, when tongues wagged smoothly and speech flowed free, were always especially pleasing to me, who am naturally inclined to be tongue-tied with women. But at last ceremony was over, and we sat on the table and swung our legs and agreed to be fast friends. And I showed her my latest knife—one-bladed, horn-handled, terrific, hung round my neck with string; and she showed me the chiefest treasures the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... conduct her case herself, her parents and all her ill-wishers rejoiced, and looked upon her as already defeated. And that was natural enough; for who would expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be otherwise than frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first time in presence of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded by the cold solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken. They flocked to Toul to see and enjoy this fright and embarrassment ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... roar of laughter and acclaim from all who heard, only Sir Palamon scowled, and, for once mute and tongue-tied, was led ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... pride had been plucking at her heartstrings, burning her with the remembrance that he, when he gave her everything that a man could give, had done it in a manner perfect and without flaw. And now she, with her infinitely smaller offering, sat tongue-tied and ineffectual, unable to give with a show of the purple, too poor-spirited even to yield him the truth for his truth which alone made the gift worth ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... basest metal be not mov'd! They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness. Go you down that way towards the Capitol; 65 This way will I: disrobe the images, If you do find them ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... tongue-tied; not as a rule," said Betty apologetically to the children; "but she hasn't been much used to presents, and it's a ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... was like rushing out into the world. I was almost dazed by the change. At first I was nervous, timid, awkward, and, especially, tongue-tied. The habit of silence had taken such a hold upon me that I could not throw it off. I dreaded the coming of visitors. I did not know how to receive them, what to say to them. Fortunately, as I thought, the tourist season was over, the summer was approaching. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... mouthpiece of the humble instrument that linked us together. Yet I was quite incapable of answering her simple question! I can't imagine what I expected her to say, for upon reflection her remark was a very ordinary one, and indeed under the circumstances quite natural, but, as I say, in actual fact I was tongue-tied. ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... We are a tongue-tied brood at the best. The bands can declare on our behalf without shame and without shyness something of what we all feel and help us to reach a hand toward the men who have risen up to save us. In the beginning the more ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Miss," responded Creede, fumbling for his hat, and as Miss Lucy took his hand the man who had put the fear of God into the hearts of so many sheep-herders became dumb and tongue-tied with bashfulness. There was not a man in the Four Peaks country that could best him, in anger or in jest, when it called for the ready word; but Kitty Bonnair had so stolen his wits that he could only stand and sweat like a trick-broken horse. As for Hardy he ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... asked me just out of pity because I was not invited to the picnic. But even so it was sweet of her. I've always thought I would like those Wallace girls if I could get really acquainted with them. They've always been nice to me, too—I don't know why I am always so tongue-tied and stupid with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... And Phoebe bends towards him crescented. 440 O state perplexing! On the pinion bed, Too well awake, he feels the panting side Of his delicious lady. He who died For soaring too audacious in the sun, Where that same treacherous wax began to run, Felt not more tongue-tied than Endymion. His heart leapt up as to its rightful throne, To that fair shadow'd passion puls'd its way— Ah, what perplexity! Ah, well a day! So fond, so beauteous was his bed-fellow, 450 He could not ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... picturesque instances of his contention, he sketched several lively and amusing portraits of the one or two business men he had succeeded in running down; their tongue-tied stupefaction before the ordinary topics of civilization, their scorn of all aesthetic considerations; their incapacity to conceive of an intellectual life as worthy a grown man; the Stone-age simplicity with which they referred ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... not say what more might then be done, And how, by moonlight or beneath the sun, We might be happy. In a reckless mood I've talk'd of this; and dreams and many a brood Of tongue-tied fancies have my soul beset. I will not hint at fealty or the fret Of lips untrue, or anger thee therein, Or call to mind one ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... listening to him now, tongue-tied and terror-stricken, while little Charlot kept piping in ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to have become tongue-tied. What could it be that Coverly was concealing? The idea of complicity in the crime I scouted; nothing could have induced me to believe it. Only one explanation presented itself to my mind, as evidently it had presented itself to ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... was in love with her. The instant, however, that I arrived at that result my careless, happy mood vanished, a mist seemed to arise before me which concealed even her eyes and smile, and, blushing hotly, I became tongue-tied ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... upon several others, with a similar result. Everyone loved to listen to him, for his graceful diction was like music in their ears, but when called upon to express their own opinions they were all, with a few exceptions, literally tongue-tied. Two or three of the more thoughtful ones made an attempt to define Deity, but their definitions, for the most part, were the hackneyed ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... roared. "An unprotected female, eh? 'Cordin' to my notion it's the male that needs protection when Melissa's around. I've seen Lute Small standin' in the teller's cage, tongue-tied and with the sweat standin' on his forehead, while Melissa gave him her candid opinion of anybody that would vote to allow alcohol to be sold by doctors in this town. And 'twas ten minutes of twelve Saturday mornin', ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... were perfectly dumfoundered at hearing the tongue-tied wife speaking as good English as themselves; and could not help stopping to look after her for a long way on the road, as every now and then she stuck one of her arms a-kimbo in her side, and gave ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... came out to see nothing at all. And then one young man more forward than the rest in a fit of madness would dare to go near to a maiden in blue. But, as he drew near, speech would forsake him. He would stand there tongue-tied and foolish, and the ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... fetching pupils out of the very heart of one or other of the divisions to take their music-lessons in the oratory, the great or little saloon, the salle-a- manger, or some other piano-station—she would, upon her second or third attempt, frequently become almost tongue-tied from excess of consternation—a sentiment inspired by the unspeakable looks levelled at her through a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and on she talked, while I sat amazed and tongue-tied, but, oh, so happy! I tell you all this, dear Mrs. Chilton, so you can see for yourself how interested she is, how eagerly she is going to watch this boy's growth and development, and how, in spite of herself, it is all going to change her attitude ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... stopped short; and the stopping was effective, if the speech was not. Where was the tongue of his passion? He almost asked it of himself. Where was Hippogriff? He who had burned to see her, he saw her now, fair as a vision, and yet in the flesh! Why was he as good as tongue-tied in her presence when he had such fires to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... assembly; why, we knew but too well, and many wives and mothers had come there to hide their grief. Our curate was a very old man, and the news had given him such a shock that he was unable to say a word after reaching the pulpit and stood there, tongue-tied, with the tears streaming down his face for nearly five minutes—finally retiring without uttering a sound. Not exactly the most fortunate thing that could have happened, for his attitude encouraged others to ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... press it tenderly to them. They were now finely furnished, and raised in flesh, so that, panting with desire, they rose and fell, in quick heaves, under his touch: at this, the boy's eyes began to lighten with all the fires of inflamed nature, and his cheeks flushed with a deep scarlet: tongue-tied with joy, rapture, and bashfulness, he could not speak, but then his looks, his emotion, sufficiently satisfied me that my train had taken, and that I had no ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... then stopped, with all her old agitation and embarrassment. But, to his own surprise, he was also embarrassed and even tongue-tied. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Memory, like the sun, paints to me bright pictures of the golden summer time of lotus; I can see them, but how shall I fix them for you? By no process can that be accomplished. It is like a story that cannot be told because he who knows it is tongue-tied and dumb. Motions of hands, wavings and gestures, rudely convey the framework, but the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught troubles, upsets and rends poor old Tithonus, who, crushed with age, stands tongue-tied; sentenced to a fine,[223] he weeps, he sobs and says to his friend, "This fine robs me of the last trifle that was ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... of this surprising Change which has been produced in me, and which I look upon to be as remarkable an Accident as any recorded in History, since that which happened to the Son of Croesus, after having been many Years as much Tongue-tied as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... tongue-tied, embarrassed and overawed by the well-dressed and prosperous-looking. His sense of inferiority was in no way compensated for, and to avoid pain he became a sort of recluse, doing his work and returning to his shell, so ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... moonshiner, impatiently, eying the tremulous and tongue-tied Yerby, "hev ye fund ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied, she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and bid her go, when she lifted a wee white hand and motioned me back. I obeyed because I could not help myself—her action was accompanied by a peculiar,—an unpleasantly peculiar, expression that held me spellbound; and without exactly knowing why, I stood staring at her, tongue-tied and trembling. As her face was turned towards the patient, and she wore, moreover, a very wide-brimmed hat, I could see nothing of her features; but from her graceful little figure and dainty limbs, I gathered that she was probably both ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... dismissal. She stopped him with a grave face and a solemn word. At last his jubilant spirit was conquered; he realized that something was amiss. Then she told him what happened at the Ghyll on Monday night. He turned white, and at first stood tongue-tied. Next he tried to laugh it off, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... and she hid her face again. Paul could only wait beside her tongue-tied, half-sitting on the edge of the writing-table, wondering what dear, unfathomable impulse had led her to admit him to the sanctuary of her sorrow; realising, so far as a masculine brain can realise, something of the struggle involved in woman's ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... them, had yielded to her entreaty, packed their trunks, and stoically set out for the unknown. Neither Mr. Spragg nor his wife had ever before been out of their country; and Undine had not understood, till they stood beside her tongue-tied and helpless on the dock at Cherbourg, the task she had undertaken in uprooting them. Mr. Spragg had never been physically active, but on foreign shores he was seized by a strange restlessness, and a helpless dependence on his daughter. Mrs. Spragg's long ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... her head. She seemed tongue-tied. Only when Mr. Newton took her hand to say good-by she burst out, "You will send ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... else better than that she should think of him as a fortune-hunter. Her wealth loomed between them as a wall which it were dishonorable even to attempt to scale. His brain was busy phrasing things which he longed to say to her, words seemed to seethe in his head, yet he found himself strangely tongue-tied and awkward. When most of all he desired to appear at his ease, he was most completely ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... so he can't tell me how he loves me, an' he's all love, every last hair of 'm. An' actions speakin' louder 'n' words, he tells me how he loves me by doin' these things for me. Tricks? Sure. But they make human speeches of eloquence cheaper 'n dirt. Sure it's speech. Dog-talk that's tongue-tied. Don't I know? Sure as I'm a livin' man born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, just as sure am I that it makes 'm happy to do tricks for me . . . just as it makes a man happy to lend a hand to a ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... to make the most of my good fortune, but the thought of young Torode, and of Carette riding back with him, kept coming upon me like an east wind on a sunny day, and I found myself more tongue-tied than ever I had been with her before, even ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... for I could not speak. I wanted to say a great deal, but there was a swelling in my throat—a hot feeling of indignation and misery combined kept me tongue-tied, and above all there was a guilty feeling that ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... my son is coming home to-day or to-morrow! You'll find him a man you can talk to, for the boy's not tongue-tied, from all ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... on my right has risen, and in shockingly bald and barren verbiage has stated the issues which are to be tried, and, being evidently no Heaven-born orator, sits abruptly down, completely gravelled for lack of a more copious vocabulary. A poor tongue-tied devil of a chap whom ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... could be tongue-tied for a few weeks, he might git out o' this mess in some way," Walky Dexter said. "He talks more useless than th' city feller that was a-sparkin' one of our country gals. He talked mighty high-falutin'—lots dif'rent from what the boys she'd ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... signalled to her beloved the three mystic letters that should make her his forever. With the faint, blinking flashes, the weight of years fell away from Jack Nickerson. No longer was he a trembling, tongue-tied captive, scorning himself for his want of will. He was a free man, the affianced husband of the most wonderful creature in the world. In his exultation he raised his lantern aloft and swung it round and round with the abandon of a boy who tosses his cap in the air. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... black-skinned girl is "tawny like the honey"; The filthy and the fetid's "negligee"; The cat-eyed she's "a little Pallas," she; The sinewy and wizened's "a gazelle"; The pudgy and the pigmy is "piquant, One of the Graces sure"; the big and bulky O she's "an Admiration, imposante"; The stuttering and tongue-tied "sweetly lisps"; The mute girl's "modest"; and the garrulous, The spiteful spit-fire, is "a sparkling wit"; And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness Becomes "a slender darling"; "delicate" Is she who's nearly dead of coughing-fit; The pursy female with protuberant breasts ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... "a bit impressive till a fellow knew him," and tried to help matters by talking nonsense that amazed Win and evidently amused the Colonel. Gradually, as he saw that Max was not in the least afraid of the dignified owner of the Manor, Win began to feel less tongue-tied. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... angels, whether they be the girlish, long-haired creatures, robed in orange and green, of Carpaccio; or the naked babies, with dimpled little legs and arms, and filetted silky curls of Gian Bellini, seem to concentrate into music all the many things which that strong pious Venice, tongue-tied by dialect, had no other way of saying; and we feel to this day that it sounds in our hearts and attunes them to worship or love or gentle contemplation. The sound of those lutes and pipes, of those childish voices, heard and felt by the other holy persons in those pictures—Roman knight Sebastian, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... buck an' belongs to the war clan of his tribe. He's been eddicated East an' can read in books, an' pow-wows American mighty near as flooent as I does myse'f. An' on that last p'int I'll take a chance that I ain't tongue-tied neither. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... smoking-room, lord it among the ladies like a very lion; and I have seen the hero of a hundred fights, the master of men, the essence of intrepid resolution, stand quaking outside a drawing-room door. The debut of Robin, then, I awaited with considerable interest. I expected on the whole to see him tongue-tied, especially before Dolly and Dilly. On the other hand he might ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... was a pause. Lesley was still tongue-tied, and Mr. Brooke did not seem to know what to do or say. He walked away from the fire and began to finger some papers on a table, although it was quite too dark to see any of these. Inwardly he was wondering how much or how little he ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... do you say?" she asked. "You'm 'mazin' quiet an' tongue-tied for you. I s'pose you'm thinkin' of the time when Joe Noy comes home. I lay you'll have a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... perplexity, had been informed that the Duke of Monmouth was in the house, but had shown neither excitement at the news nor surprise, nor, to the host's great scandal, the least desire for a sight of his Grace. His men-servants, of whom he had two, seemed tongue-tied, so that the host doubted if they had more than a few phrases of English, and set the whole ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... such a fool of himself—for henceforth, whatever she chose to do, he could not reasonably complain without running the risk of being laughed at. So now the number and variety of her lovers is notorious in the particular social circle where she moves—while he, poor wretch, is perforce tongue-tied, and dare not consider himself wronged. There is no more pitiable object in the world than such a man—secretly derided and jeered at by his fellows, he occupies an almost worse position than that of a galley slave, while in his own esteem he has sunk so low that he dare not, even in secret, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... have fed him well, and his food has done him good. He is a hundred per cent better than when he came; but he is still surly and tongue-tied. He says nothing. He is not known in the neighbourhood. I have directed hand-bills to be circulated, and placards to be posted in the villages. If he is not owned within a week, he must be given to the parish-officers. I can't help thinking that he is a runaway lunatic, and a gentleman ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... ashamed of her feeling,—as when Clive Reinhard came in on them one evening without warning. Reinhard glanced at the squat figure of the Laundryman, and tried to make her talk. Fortunately for Milly's feelings, Ernestine sat bolt upright and tongue-tied in the novelist's presence and thus did not betray her ungrammatical self. But she stayed on relentlessly until the ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... place but the glittering flakes which the lightning had ploughed up, as it became extinguished in them; nothing was—heard but the rolling of the thunder and the dash of the water against the rocks, for the men in the half-ruined cabin, grouped round a corpse and a villain, were silent, tongue-tied with horror, and fearing lest God himself should ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... establish Juan in a good social position. She is constantly advising her son, when there is any occasion to preach, to be on the lookout for a virtuous wife. She tells him that, since she is an old and experienced woman, he must follow her advice. Her advice is that a good wife is always quiet and tongue-tied, and does not go noisily about the house. As Juan is an obedient son, he soon determines to get him a good wife. After a short time Juan comes home to his mother, and says to her, "Mother, I have found the girl you will like,—the one who shall be my wife. She is speechless and motionless. Her ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... about all, for I was never certain when to ring the bell or move the missal. I was all of a tremble when we gathered two on this side and two on that, with genuflection's, in the middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine, salvum fac regern at the end of mass. Let me make a confession: tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave it to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... merely clear and searching, and the Knight sat tongue-tied. But presently there flicked into them a look so human, so tender, so completely understanding, that straightway the tongue of ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... as a huge blunder. But all such feelings are poor and weak when compared with the sinking of the heart, and the trembling of the knees, which, seize upon the unhappy lecturer as he advances towards his first audience, and as before his eyes rises a ghastly vision of a tongue-tied would-be speaker facing rows of listening faces, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... conscious of a feeling of awkwardness. To tell a woman he loves her has been the simplest thing in the world hitherto, but now, when at last he is in earnest—when poverty has driven him to seek marriage with an heiress as a cure for all his ills—he finds himself tongue-tied; and not only by the importance of the situation, so far as money goes, but by the clear, calm, waiting ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... your pardon if I've said the wrong thing. I meant no harm," he apologized warmly. "But I get left-handed and tongue-tied, I guess, when it comes to being civilized—where there's a lady in the case. It must have been I said it the wrong way, for, I do know the thing itself would be right. You want to go. You've lost your money. And I expect your bank wouldn't send it on a telegram. They mostly ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... on him sadly, and his many thoughts tongue-tied him a while; but at last he said: "Must thou verily go on this quest?" "Ah," she said, "now since I have seen thee and spoken with thee again, all need there is that I ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... party over to the Government side. From this course, which would have placed country above party, the Duke shrank; and his followers were left to sort themselves at will. There was a general expectation that Portland would publicly declare against Fox; but friendship or timidity held him tongue-tied. Malmesbury sought to waken him from his "trance," but in vain.[144] He lay under "the wand of the magician" (Pitt's phrase for the witchery that Fox exerted), even when so staunch a Whig as Sir Gilbert Elliot saw that the wizard's enchantments ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... consider Jim Wolf, I am almost persuaded that he was. He was our long slim apprentice in my brother's printing-office in Hannibal. He was seventeen, and yet he was as much as four times as bashful as I was, though I was only fourteen. He boarded and slept in the house, but he was always tongue-tied in the presence of my sister, and when even my gentle mother spoke to him he could not answer save in frightened monosyllables. He would not enter a room where a girl was; nothing could persuade him to do such a thing. Once when he was in our small ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Nigel felt himself curiously tongue-tied. There was something in the other's measured speech, so fateful, so assured, that it seemed almost as though he were speaking of pre-ordained things. Much that had seemed to him impossible and unnatural in such an ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied. He longed to tell her about Marthe. For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to make. He ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... relieved to see that when at last the garden gate opened Blanche was alone. She rushed downstairs and through the garden, eager to welcome her visitor; but when she reached Blanche she felt almost tongue-tied, and all she could say was, "How do you do?" which sounded very stiff and formal, compared with ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... in about 10:30 tomorrow, as we bury them all at that hour, and I guess he'll croak by that time." I tried to speak and tell them that I was alive, and that I was going to get well, but it, wasn't any use. I was tongue-tied. Again I would hear the sweet rustle of a dress, and feel a warm hand on my head, and I knew that the rebel angel had rode her mule to town to see me. Then I would try hard to tell her that I was going to write a letter ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs. Nor should you hate a man who has a weakness for telling falsehoods. This, too, is an affliction, like stuttering or being lame. Say to yourself, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... spelled jaundice, neurasthenia, and tongue-tied. They tried all the occupations and professions, and went through the stores and spelled all sorts of hardware, china and dry goods. Each side kept cheering its own and urging them to do their best, and every few minutes some man in the back of the house said something that ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... They walked in silence down a path through the fragrant trees, but Dave turned from time to time to catch a glimpse of her face, white and fine as ivory in the soft light. He had much to say; he felt that the ages could not utter all he had to say to-night, but he was tongue-tied under the ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... is still tongue-tied. "One thing I must do and that is see that a certain insecticide manufacturer gets a plug on Interplanetary TV," I continue. "Ha, we took the bugs out of this planet. It should work quite smooth from ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward. Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance... people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c'est de rigueur, but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another, I don't know. What do you think? Do put down your cap, it looks as if you were just going, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... too, for those whose help they seek, to work with them. In the cricket-club committee, on which I served for a year or two, it was noticeable that the members, eager for proper arrangements to be made, often sat tongue-tied and glum, incapable of urging their views, so that only after the meeting had broken up and they had begun talking with one another did one learn that the resolutions which had been passed were not to their mind. Formalities puzzled them—seemed to strike them ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... difficult to respond; even when Mrs. Sefton had established her in the corner of the couch, and was questioning her with polite interest about her journey, she found herself answering in almost monosyllabic replies, as though she were tongue-tied. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey |
