"Doddering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should have been heavy and stiff and held to the earth by the ball and chain of a hundred years; yet he seemed scarcely more solid, scarcely less light, than an embodied wind. He should have been (for the atmosphere of the home in which you have dwelt for a century is not so easily dissipated) a doddering old corporeality, yet he felt he was now all thought and glorious essence of life. He should have seen on the step that old wife who had stood so uncannily by while he sweat over his wood-splitting; yet the presence that moved toward ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a bit. There's no reason in the world that I can see why he shouldn't go up to Ballymoy House and propose this afternoon. Then I must see O'Donoghue and make arrangements about to-morrow. I shall also, thanks to your churlishness, have to borrow a bicycle for myself. Then I must look up that doddering old ass Callaghan, and tell him to precipitate matters a bit if I succeed in hunting Simpkins up to Ballymoy House. If I fail to head off the judge—I don't expect to fail, but if by any chance I do—we shall have no time ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... continued the woman wrathfully. "Will you hold your old doddering tongue, Caleb, and let the gentlefolk speak!" But there was no cessation of the dreary, dirge-like sounds. They found out afterwards that Caleb always worked with cotton-wool in his ears, so his wife's remonstrance failed to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ready, we sat down at table and were silently eating, when the door was pushed open and an old woman, dressed in rags, leaning on a stick, her head doddering, her white hair hanging loosely over her wrinkled forehead, appeared on ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... her doom. It seemed to her to matter very little what that doom should be. Perfect ruin had come upon her. The porter came in presently with a doctor—a little old grey-headed man, who wore spectacles, and had an ancient doddering manner not calculated to inspire beholders with any ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... my nerve is diseased and I am a coward, an infamous, doddering old coward, sir. Good God! to live for years in darkness, bumping against the sharp corners of conscience. I have never told Henry, but I don't mind telling you that at times I am almost mad. For years I have sought to read myself out of it, but to an unsettled ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... old man turned and walked, stiff and military, from the place. Near the end of the broad walk he met the usual doddering but amiable oldest inhabitant. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... clothes, an overcoat is thrown across his left arm, under his right he carries waggishly a cane. His white tie and hat of sober silk are in respectable contrast with his air of fatuousness—the Marquis of Steyne en route; the doddering hero of Mansfield in A Parisian Romance, or Baron Hulot. The alert expression of the girls, who appear to be loitering, tells us more at a glance than a chapter of Flaubert, Zola, or De Maupassant. Is it necessary to add that the handling takes your breath away because of its ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the ancient Aryans were just doddering—the old duffers: or babbling, the babes. But as for me, I have some respect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleeve than just the marvel of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... to see that they missed nothing. He received his ticket for the box, and slowly and ostentatiously stowed it away in his pack. Swinging the said pack on his arm, he sauntered through the entrance hall to the row of waiting taxi-cabs, and selected the oldest and most doddering driver. He deposited the pack inside on the seat, and then stood still as if struck ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... introduced itself by six Turks lying by the roadside, then there were three Turkish families, afterwards an assorted dozen of small girls in trousers, finally, an old man doddering along in a turban and a veiled beggar woman, who demanded backsheesh. "Where ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... logical, although you generally pretend to be so. Why have you pranked yourself out, spent an hour I dare say in making yourself pretty to-day? For what possible reason except to attract the eyes of a crowd of men, young fools or doddering old ones—" ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... art improve? Is art a something, an organism capable of "growing up" into maturity? If it is, by the same token it can grow old, can become a doddering, senile thing, and finally die and be buried with all the honors due its long, useful life. It was Henrik Ibsen who said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted into error. Now, isn't all this talk of artistic improvement as fallacious ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker |
