"Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... personal degradation in the mere feeling that I was thus to be repaid for a service, and recompensed for a loss. But these were not reasons I could advance; and, indeed, so for the time did Trevanion's generosity and eloquence overpower me that I could only falter out my thanks and my promise that I would ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and give him a better chance of escape. The savage passed heedlessly by it. Morgan then threw his shot pouch and coat in the way, to tempt the Indian to a momentary delay. It was equally vain,—his pursuer did not falter for an instant. He now had recourse to another expedient to save himself from captivity or death. Arriving at the summit of the hill up which he had directed his steps, he halted; and, as if some ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the drab of my daily observation, radiant now; then as I watched she stretched out her arms and bent them together like a shield so that her burning face was hidden from me, and without falter or fury launched herself into the air, and dropt slowly down ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... replied the other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so slight ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... their few simple belongings, stole sorrowfully away from their home. They knew not what was before them, scarcely anything of the country whither they were bound; but such was their faith in the dead woman's word, that they did not falter in their resolution to ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... after a few moments more of earnest conversation with Josephine, too sacred for revelation. It may be believed that she who had gone so far for the young girl's happiness and that of her "brother" Richard, would not falter now in finishing her task; and the truth is that had she had no benevolence extending further, she had the fox-hunter's anxiety to be "in at the death," and the feminine fancy for her own peculiar "reward," which could only be obtained at the end of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... convinced of the high and special spiritual powers which under such conditions are granted to it. 'I should commend to them that will successfully philosophise the belief and endeavour after a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself, and without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for it, unless I should adventure to term it Divine ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... thought, he was in his study, where he spent hours sometimes after he came home, reading official papers. She went up the stairs, at first swiftly, then more slowly, then with almost lagging feet. Why did she hesitate? Why should a woman falter in going to her husband—to her own one man of all the world? Was it not, should it not be, ever the open door between them? Confidence—confidence—could she not have it, could she not get it now at last? She had paused; but now she moved on with quicker step, purpose ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all love's maze, nor fear to lose her way; Nay, could go near the precipiee, nor dread A failing caution or a giddy head; She'd fix her eyes upon the roaring flood, And dance upon the brink where danger stood. 'Twas nature all, she judged, in one so young, To drop the eye and falter in the tongue; To be about to take, and then command His daring wish, and only view the hand: Yes! all was nature; it became a maid Of gentle soul t'encourage love afraid; - He, so unlike the confident and bold, Would fly in mute despair to ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... have great sons!" we cry. "Just look at the Pitts, the Adamses, the Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts, gamblers, ne'er-do-wells ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... was wrought He charged the young men to uplift and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth's utterance, the cries that falter, —His ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... stood—looked round the bare brick walls of the little rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word pledged ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... certainly the part is not an insignificant one. And happy the youth who is able to look into the future and see himself approximating some worthy ideal. He has caught a vision which will never allow him to lag or falter in the pursuit of the flying goal which points the direction of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... window-panes of their boudoirs; but never did their sons become world compellers. Despite the pretty theory of Dr. Maxwell, the same fiery cross is laid upon the daughters as upon the sons of men, and thousands falter and fall beneath it and are swept downwards to their doom. Were it otherwise, were women the passionless creatures some doctors delight to paint them, all our encomiums of female virtue were idle mockery. It is because we realize that in the veins of the vestal virgin runs ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... shadows, had peered into her father's gate. With the first sound of his voice, she had entered in, had knelt before a shrine whereon, wrapped in fire, a Secret lay. Ever since she had needed to guard that shrine, not, indeed, for fear that the light would falter, but rather that it might not leap up, and lay waste her being. As one guards a flame, so Ume-ko, with silence and prayer and self-enforced tranquillity, guarded the sacred spark from winds of passion. Each day at dawn, and again at twilight of each day, it flamed high and was hard ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... instinct or was it second sight, which caused Isabella's steps to falter on the threshold? She trembled as her husband held aside the arras, turned deadly pale, and, retreating for a moment, she whispered to her lady-in-waiting, Donna Lucrezia de' Frescobaldi—"Shall I enter, or shall I not?" Bracciano's ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... thy building falter Can thy God thy griefs despise? 'Mid the ruins dark, an altar Fashion'd by His ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... President and his chief military adviser lived on Johnston's battle line, Lee ready at a moment's notice to spring into the saddle and hurl his men against McClellan the moment Johnston should falter. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte can rise to the situation ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... She knew, had known at once, that she had outraged all she held most dear, in engaging herself to one man when she loved another, and she had begun to wonder—in irresistible flashes—before the news had come which sent her to the mountains, if she should falter at the last moment. But breeding has carried many a woman over the ploughshares of life, and her mind was probably strong enough to go on to the inevitable without theatric climax. At the same time the idea ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... North had always held, but the formulation of it as the platform of a party, and a party which must draw its members almost entirely from the North, was bound to raise in an acute form questions on which very few men had searched their hearts. Men who hated slavery were likely to falter and find excuses for yielding when confronted with the danger to the Union which would arise. Men who loved the Union might in the last resort be ready to sacrifice it if they could thereby be rid of complicity with slavery, or might be unwilling ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... to lay his head." The noblest thing He ever did was this—to walk from the house of Pilate to the crest of Calvary, with the cross upon His back and the railing mob behind Him and before, and never once to falter and complain. Hated and hooted by the multitudes who at one time followed Him gladly, deserted even by the twelve who had pledged to Him their lives, misunderstood, despised, condemned, spat upon—a stranger even to His mother and His brethren—what ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... increase of taxation and an increase of debt; and at the beginning of 1797 the directors of the Bank of England, in dire perplexity, told Pitt that the state, for all his expedients, was threatened with insolvency. Pitt did not falter. An order in council was issued, suspending cash payments at the bank. Thus was established a gigantic system of paper credit, giving us power to cope with no less gigantic foes. Cash payments were not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... known what caused the sharpness in his master's voice, he would not have been so grieved—or, rather, he would have been grieved for a different reason. As it was he could only falter miserably: ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... though fearful her resolution would falter, Teresa drew her writing-desk towards her, and wrote a note so rapidly, and with so unsteady a hand, that there was little resemblance to her usual writing, and then sought for sleep-but in vain-and at the earliest ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... splintered timbers, Peterkin and the judge's son and their comrades clambered. When they moved they were as a myriad-legged creature, brain numbed, without any sensation except that of rapids going over a fall. Those in front could not falter, being pushed on by the pressure of those in the rear. For a few steps they were under no fire. The scream of their own shells breaking in infernal pandemonium in front seemed to be a power as irresistible as the rear of the wedge in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... touch; our glances meet, And falter; falls your golden hair Against my cheek; your bosom sweet Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen Rides slow, her soldiery all ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... understand you, Miss Warren. Unconsciously you have fully explained your mood and feeling. It's in truth your nature, your sensitive, delicate organism, that shrinks from this wild tumult that is coming. In the higher moral tests of courage, when the strongest man might falter and fail, you would ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... run wherever it pleased, ran to the coffin, ducked under the pole and started with the others on the jog-trot, while the man whose place he had taken caught his horse. Never once in a carry of 150 miles did that coffin stop, and never once did that jog-trot falter. The cortege followers ate at the various ranches they passed, nobody thinking of refusing them food. The 150 mile journey to San Luis was necessary in order to reach a priest who would bury the dead woman. All the dead were treated in the ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... climb up to the back of her neck, and her half-baked power of concentration falter at the arid ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... with an ardent mind, Which unrestrain'd still presses on for ever, And whose precipitate endeavour Earth's joys o'erleaping, leaveth them behind. Him will I drag through life's wild waste, Through scenes of vapid dulness, where at last Bewilder'd, he shall falter, and stick fast; And, still to mock his greedy haste, Viands and drink shall float his craving lips beyond— Vainly he'll seek refreshment, anguish-tost, And were he not the devil's by his bond, Yet must his ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... mistakes His free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... bring him in collision with the guardians of taste and social morality. But what of that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he assumes ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... is not merely shooting arrows promiscuously, is actually improving for all that. He must strive to remember that not only is each and every point important in itself, but that all must coordinate, must be working well together. No matter how crisp the release, it avails not an [sic] the bow arm falter or the back muscles relax. Again like golf, one day one thing will be working well, and another day another; but it is only when they are all working well that the ball screams down the fairway or the arrow consistently finds its mark. Thus the beginner, practise as thoughtfully as he may, will ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... with desperate eagerness, "let me persuade you, for to this pass it must come; then let it come at once, since each day will cause the path thereunto to grow more rugged. My father's storm of threats, my mother's deluge of tears, will make the way impassable and past repair. You falter; your silence speaks consent; you are convinced, and yield to the necessity for this ungracious consummation. Good night. To-morrow early, meet me at the church of Saint Laurent, all shall be ready,—pray offer no remonstrance;—meet me there at ten,—the priest is my fast ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... tenants of the bush. We sit up, yawning, and blinking, and stupid, the whole scene swimming before us, and the stories and music humming off into the sound of distant winds and waters. It is not time yet; we are not fatigued; we are good for another hour still, and so protesting against bed, we falter and drop into the dreamless sleep which nature assigns to fatigue ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the power of speech on the rack in Portugal, and could only falter a few unintelligible words, when greatly excited, but her hearing had remained, and her husband understood how to read the expression of her eyes. A great sorrow had drawn a deep line in the high, pure brow, and this also was eloquent; for when she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of this verse was a reproduction of Mrs. Abel's rendering, spoken in a voice not unlike hers, and with scarcely the falter of a syllable. It was followed by a few seconds of incoherent babble, at the end of which tremors again broke out over Snarley's body; he swayed to and fro, and his head fell forward on his chest. "Catch hold ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... falter, not to die.' It was under to-day's date, and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk where Father used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It was very wonderful and queer. It sort of made me ashamed ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... my heart upon Thy altar, But can not get the wood to burn; It hardly flares ere it begins to falter, And to ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... success. The Republic has marched on and on, and its step has exalted freedom and humanity. We are undergoing the same ordeal as did our predecessors nearly a century ago. We are following the course they blazed. They triumphed. Will their successors falter and plead organic impotency in the nation? Surely after 125 years of achievement for mankind we will not now surrender our equality with other powers on matters fundamental and essential to nationality. With no such ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... and not below. No wonder if your muse's bantlings halt. Again, those rags and cloak right tragical, The very garb for sketching beggars in! But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee. Give me the moving rags of some old play; I've a long speech to make before the Chorus, And if I falter, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... forward by her husband's side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were always different from other children. They ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... furniture, which consisted of a comfortable bed, a table with some books on it, three chairs, a small looking-glass on the wall, a guitar and some articles of men's clothing hanging here and there. A heap of dull embers smouldered in the fireplace. Alice did not falter at the threshold, but promptly ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... decisiveness with which our lips ring it out determines whether we shall be blessings or curses to our generation. There is a Babel of voices now preaching other messages which promise good tidings of good. Let us cleave with all our hearts to Christ alone, and let our tongues not falter in proclaiming, 'Neither is there salvation in any other.' The gospel of the Christ who died for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two feet apart. How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess; but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs. To my astonishment, he lifted a fore-leg out of the abyss of mud, put it between the logs, where I expected to hear it snap; clawed ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... good gray. His sight began to fail—his knees to falter. His teeth were entirely ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... God is God and right is right, Right the day shall win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... down that blue lane, his head erect, his eyes undimmed—as dauntless in that awful hour of surrender as when he rode before his cheering legions of fighting men. Only as he came to where I stood, and caught the look of suffering upon my face, did he once falter, and then I noted no more than the slight twitching of his lips beneath ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... of fathers, mothers, lovers and maidens—howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his heart, the gentler, falter at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... eve away; "And, thus, our former rulers stemm'd the tide, And, thus, they dealt the combat, side by side; Just in this place, the mouldering walls they scaled, Nor bolts, nor bars, against their strength avail'd; Here PROBUS came, the rising fray to quell, And, here, he falter'd forth his last farewell; And, here, one night abroad they dared to roam, While bold POMPOSUS bravely staid at home;" 180 While thus they speak, the hour must soon arrive, When names of these, like ours, alone survive: Yet a few years, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, and wound his fingers as closely as possible in the thick mane. His left arm jerked horribly against the bonds. Black night swallowed him ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense of the city ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... this speech upon Mark was stupendous. His jaw dropped and a slow fire seemed to gleam in his pale eyes. Part of his nature rose in gladness because the girl could speak in that fashion. She had no knowledge within her to cause her to falter or stand abashed. But the tired man, in the poor fellow, cried out to this strong, brave creature to aid him understandingly where his own knowledge and slowness of nature made him a coward. And so they stood ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... for clemency the short, stocky bearded man who, to so few, had the bearing of a great general, faced Lieutenant Harris and gave him a look which made the young officer's bravery falter for a ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... the Indians maneuvered their long canoes down close to the opposite shore with venturous tourists, but it was only a film of water that wound, bubbling, near the land. With the deep-throated rumble only half a mile away, Belding felt his pulse falter for a second, then pound viciously on. And in that second, with the bravado of early manhood, he threw discretion overboard, and set the slim bow of his Peterboro' for the middle span. Twenty seconds, later he knew that he was about ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the end upon remorse. I must falter alone in my self-made course. I must stagger alone with my self-made cross. For I bartered my graces for silks and laces My heart I sold for a pot of ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause of the light in the westward Heaven, as eastward quicken the ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... even by the little shake of the head which sometimes with her stood in place of words. She turned, went swiftly forward, with a straight, even, unslackening pace, which did not falter nor stop for a long, long piece of the way; how long it was by the mind's measurement it would be hard to tell. It was one breathless sense of pain and fear; of which moonlight and shadows and the points of the way all made part and were woven in together. Her ears were tingling for that sound; ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... exulting in the prospect of speedy and ample revenge, they pressed upon us with yells and cries that showed that there was no mercy for us if taken. But even at that trying moment our courage did out fail or falter. We stood together near the centre of the tree, where the branches were strong and the footing firm. Only a part of our assailants had weapons, and, perceiving the utter desperation with which we fought, they drew back a little distance until clubs could be passed up from below, and thus afforded ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... so musically low, And now first heard with any sense of pain, As it had taken life away before, Choked all the syllables that in my throat Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks, From my full heart: and ever since that hour, My voice hath somewhat falter'd—and what wonder That when hope died, part of her eloquence Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too, From his great hoard of happiness distill'd Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man, That, having always prosper'd ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... built; and I predict the future greatness of our beloved state, in those historical qualities that outlast the ages, from the fact that she is not tempted by her extent of territory, salubrity of climate, fertility of soil, or by the presence and promise of any natural source of wealth, to falter in her devotion to learning and liberty. And I anticipate for Massachusetts a career of influence beneficial to all, whether disputed or accepted, when I reflect that, with less good fortune in the presence and combination of learning and liberty, Greece, Rome, Venice, Holland, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... senate-house; if my words reveal learning, I beg you to regard them as though you were reading them in the public library. Would that I could find words enough to do justice to the magnitude of this assembly and did not falter just when I would be most eloquent. But the old saying is true, that heaven never blesses any man with unmixed and flawless prosperity; even in the keenest joys there is ever some slight undertone of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... and Deep doth call on Deep; This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, The next with silver Murmur dies away, Like Tides that falter ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... she turned triumphantly away, the color suddenly left her cheek and there was an instant's falter. As though he had heard her words, Stanley Armstrong too had suddenly turned and stood looking sternly into ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... horse, that it floats and streams out behind, like one of those curved clouds, like a comet's tail, far up in the sky; only the cloud is white, and the hair dark as night. And they say it will go on growing till the Last Day, when the horse will falter and her hair will gather in; and the horse will fall, and the hair will twist, and twine, and wreathe itself like a mist of threads about him, and blind him to everything but her. Then the body ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... that all dread and fear of punishment had lost its value with him. At last the organism which was originally begotten from decayed stock, which had been tossed and knocked about through its entire existence, and preyed upon by all the vices that modern civilization affords, began to falter and shake. He developed a psychosis. I shall not enter here into an extensive discussion as to the diagnosis of the disorder. The total absence of any indication of progression in this man's mental disorder, the pliability ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... be the gift of gifts," said he to Brok. "Ply the bellows as before, and do not, for your life, stop or falter ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, but perseverance ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the lack of fine array Best fits a sacrificial altar; Her man to-morrow joins the fray, And yet she does not falter; Simple her gown, but still we see The bride ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... that way, Miss Watkins," screamed Mitchell. "It is we that are the blind and the halt. You are ever fresh, but we falter and faint. You see it's you that go out, but it's we ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... night I was sent to cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I peered into the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... evening fireside meetings with the doctor's lovely daughter, once such unalloyed delight, were now only a keenly pleasing pain? Why did his face burn and his heart beat and his voice falter when obliged to speak to her? Why could he no longer talk of her to his mother, or write of her to his friend, Herbert Greyson? Above all, why had his favorite day dream of having his dear friends, Herbert and Clara married together, grown ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... position, was fresh and ready for the word of command. Webster having overcome the Americans of the second line in his front advanced upon the third and was received by Gunby's Maryland regiment with a most galling fire which made his troops falter. Gunby advanced, charging bayonets, when ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... laws, its lawless disregard of fair elections, both north and south, the criminal gangs that disgrace our cities, and its low tone on all questions affecting good order and morals. In my view the choice is as plain as the sunlight of heaven in favor of the Republican party. It may falter for a time in meeting new questions, it may be disturbed by passing clouds, and, like all human agents, may yield to expediency or be tarnished with the corruption and faults of individuals, yet it is the best organized guide in state and national ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... salmon to be caught in them. So he went on, day and night, where the water was deepest, stopping not to feed or loiter on the way, till at last he came to a wild gorge, where the great river became an angry torrent, rushing wildly over a huge staircase of rocks. But our hero did not falter; and summoning all his forces, he plunged into the Cascades. The current caught him and dashed him against the rocks. A whole row of silvery scales came off and glistened in the water like sparks of fire, and a place on his side became black-and-red, which, for a salmon, is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... at yearend stood at an estimated 3%-4% of Russia's 74-million-person labor force; many people, however, are working shortened weeks or are on forced leave. Moscow's financial stabilization program got off to a good start at the beginning of 1992 but began to falter by midyear. Under pressure from industrialists and the Supreme Soviet, the government loosened fiscal policies in the second half. In addition, the Russian Central Bank relaxed its tight credit policy in July at the behest of new Acting Chairman, Viktor GERASHCHENKO. ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... man, bore wrathful witness yet That storms and sins are more than suns that set; That evil everlasting, girt for strife Eternal, wars with hope as death with life. The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves, And waxed within more bitter as they bowed, Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud, Devouring fast as fire on earth devours And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers, Clothed round with fog that ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again and again. "Now, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... less will croak and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery paean pause, And the universal chime Falter out of tune ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to hear that Anthony, though he did shirk the welcome on the quay, behaved admirably, with the simplicity of a man who has no small meannesses and makes no mean reservations. His eyes did not flinch and his tongue did not falter. He was, I have it on the best authority, admirable in his earnestness, in his sincerity and also in his restraint. He was perfect. Nevertheless the vital force of his unknown individuality addressing him so familiarly was enough to fluster Mr. Smith. Flora saw ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... disposition lead him, to talk; and "That was in the year six;" "That happened before I went to sea in the year six," occurred in the course of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice did not falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any more than herself. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... commanding persuasion of his voice I saw the determination of their resistance begin to falter and relax. President Woodruff called on me to speak, and I felt that it was my duty to represent the needs, the hopes, and the opportunities of the hundreds of thousands of the undistinguished mass who would make no decision for themselves, but whose fate ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... with a lurking adder Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies. Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords. This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... whistles that he may hear Her answering whistle, soft and clear; Out of the greenwood, leafy, mute, Pipes her mimicking, silver flute, And, though her mellow measures are Always behind him half a bar, 'Tis sweet to hear her falter so; And Ted calls back, "Bravo, bravo!" "Bravo, bravo!" Comes from ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... father, and his wrongs, and his woe. There came to his memory his father's dying words summoning him to vengeance. There came to him the thought of those who yet lived and suffered in England, at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Should he falter at a superstitious fancy, he—who, if he lived, had so great ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... it? In any event, there is a venerable adage concerning the buttering of parsnips. So I content myself with asking you to remember that I have not ever faltered. I shall not falter now. You loathe me. Who forbids it? I have known from the first that you detested me, and I have always considered your verdict to err upon the side of charity. Believe me, you will never loathe Ahasuerus as I do. And yet I coddle ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... unconsciously made the short cut across the fields, which he had noticed and decided not to attempt when examining the map. He had saved five miles in distance, equal to fully an hour in time. The thought inspired him anew, and gave him further strength. With such divine encouragement, he could falter and hesitate ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... went on with less virulence, "you have, as her companion, the happy life I wish for you, Ah, your old father does not grudge you that, my liebschen! And, after all, you do not falter in your love. My poverty does not ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Colin's arm strongly but the boy had not begun to falter. He stood straighter and straighter and looked Ben Weatherstaff in ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... disclosed to Jim's horrified gaze a glittering array of instruments, the suggestiveness of the shapes of which left little doubt as to what was their ghastly use. The poor lad turned sick and faint, and the sweat began to pour off him at the mere sight of those fearful appliances. Still, he did not falter, and he swore to himself that not all their tortures should make ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... not smile. He was not the man to remind a woman of her falseness, but something in his eyes made her falter and lower her own. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... years the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... but the horrible suspicion lurking in the corner of her mind made her voice falter just a little, and some of the girls ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... last bitterness of life go by, Thou shalt not slay him; till those last dregs run dry, O thou last lord of life! thou shalt not slay. Let the lips live a little while and lie, The hand a little, and falter, and fail of strength, And the soul shudder and sicken at the sky; Yea, let him live, though God nor man would let Save for the curse' sake; then at bitter length, Lord, will we yield him to thee, ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... martyrs Thy toilsome road have trod. But fires of human passion May light the way to God. Then, though my feet should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary, Lead ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... murmured. She heard him turn quickly round and come back. He stood behind her; she could see his shadow thrown across the bar of sunlight on the carpet; but he did not speak. Clarice became anxious that he should, and yet afraid too. The music began to falter again; once she stopped completely, and let her fingers rest upon the keys, as though she had no power to lift them and continue. Then she struck a chord with a loud defiance. If only he would move, she thought—if only he would come round and stand in front of her! It would be so much easier ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the news of Mistress Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Paine did not falter from the first page to the last. He gives you his candid thought, and candid thoughts are ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... which I fear falls short of doing its subject justice, I will only add, that in the remarkably fine achievements he has made under circumstances and against difficulties that would have caused many to falter, indeed, to yield in despair,—chief among these difficulties being the hateful, terrible spirit of color-prejudice, that foul spirit, the full measure of whose influence in crushing out the genius often born in children of his race it is difficult to estimate,—in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow A pathos like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... fortune prospers, or it falls. Change harbors not in those eternal halls And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies. But through his window there the eastern skies Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end. There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend, The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er Falter and turn where they can sail no more. There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow — Cedars and silver poplars, row on row, Through whose black boughs on her appointed night, Flooding his chamber with enchanted ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... fair-weather friends, bereft of her looks, poverty-stricken, and ravaged by an insidious illness, the situation of Lola Montez was, during that winter of 1860, one to excite pity among the most severe of judges. Under duress, even her new found trust in Providence began to falter. Was prayer, she wondered forlornly, to fail her like everything else? Suddenly, however, and when things were at their darkest, a helping hand was offered. One bitter evening, as she sat brooding in ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... a critical year in the defense effort of the whole free world. If we falter we can lose all the gains we have made. If we drive ahead, with courage and vigor and determination, we can by the end of 1952 be in a position of much greater security. The way will be dangerous for the years ahead, but if we put forth our best efforts this year—and next year—we can be "over ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of the mansion. She will probably present herself before me, and demand the reason of my visit. What shall I say to her? The truth. To falter, or equivocate, or dissemble to this woman would be wicked. Perhaps her character has been misunderstood and maligned. Can I render her a greater service than to apprize her of the aspersions that have rested on it, and afford ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... love is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, though it be true that in the one its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter—it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved undimmed—ever present in sharp and radiant outline to the mental ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... came as a miracle—it was an answer to his prayer. And it found him ready. The chance was offered him, and he would not fail—not he! He did not falter for a second. He knew just what he had to do, and he was ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... determined to keep his eyes and heart as close shut as his pocket, without bringing back something to remember to the end of his days—something to make his eyes grow dim when he meditates on it, his lips tremble when he speaks of it, his hand falter when he writes of it. For in this system of traveling he is forced, while in a mood of mind highly susceptible of impressions, into contact with all sorts of characters and incidents; and if he has a spark of nature in him, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... forth, a pistol was fired, and Caleb Morton still clinging to a corner of the rock with both his arms was seen to falter. "He is wounded," said one of the voices from below; and then they all expected to see him fall into the sea. But he did not fall, and after a moment or two, he proceeded carefully to pick his steps along the ledge. The ball had touched him, grazing ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes, Shaken with happiness: The gates ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... on yon sea-bird's track. Beyond the beacon's crystal dome; They will not falter, nor come back, Until they ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... to me, sweet Marie, sweet Marie, come to me! Not because your face is fair, love, to see; But your soul, so pure and sweet, Makes my happiness complete, Makes me falter ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... obeyed her summons, and brought me with him. And she was here only last night—and where has she gone? This must be the 'notorious,' the 'handsome.' Ah, Lucian Davlin, this is well; this nerves me for the worst! I shall not falter now. This is the first link in the chain that shall yet make your life ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Her tone made him falter in his purpose, and when at last they reached Indian Head, she was so resolutely impersonal in her talk, and had so much to say about the history and the legends of the region of which she had read, that he felt that she was in no mood for what he intended to say. As the time ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... falter. Her humble and faithful admirer, Ned, appeared at the attic door, when summoned by Goody Pearse, to help her downstairs. Ned made short work of it; he lifted Mary in his arms, and trudged down the creaking steps with her without a single halt, and placed her by her desire on the settle, where her ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... cold increased, and although we were spurred on to almost superhuman efforts by sheer desperation to thwart the fate we knew would be ours should we falter by the way, gradually our strength failed us, and although we tried to encourage each other to quicker progress, it took every vestige of our will power to drag our benumbed feet from step to step ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... his arm over the crossing, she did not like to refuse. On gaining the side of the way on which her house was situated, she had recovered sufficiently to blush for having accepted such familiar assistance from a perfect stranger, and somewhat to falter in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... late from a lodge meeting which had wound up with a little supper in the banquet hall, felt a queer stir through his members to see the Higgins place alter its usually placid countenance, falter, turn half round, and get down on its knees with an apparently disastrous collapse of its four walls and of everything within them. The short wide windows narrowed and lengthened with an effect of bodily agony ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... here this evening to tell you something that will alter your opinion of me so effectually that nothing hereafter can reinstate me in your mind." He spoke slowly and deliberately, without tremor or falter. Whatever of struggle lay behind his words, it lay with the past. It was evident as he stood there in the pretty, luxurious room, that he possessed a purpose, and that he held to it without thought of ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... friend went to the front at the start and led nearly all the way, and "Contractor!" was on every one's lips as the big horse sailed along in front of his field. He came at the log-fence full of running, and it looked certain that he would get over. But at the last stride he seemed to falter, then plunged right into the fence, striking it with his chest, and, turning right over, landed on his ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Spirit of Truth, that I may behold things earthly as they are, without veil and without mask, without human trappings and empty adornment, and that in the silent peace of truth I may feel and recognize Thee. Let me not falter, nor slide away from the great end of knowing Thee. Let not the joys, or honors, or vanities of the world enfeeble and darken my spirit; let me ever feel that I can only perceive and know Thee in so far as mine is a living soul, and lives, and moves, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... name's sounding, what succeeds Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,— Act follows word, the speaker knows full well; Nor tampers with its magic more than needs. Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads With his soul only: if from lips it fell, Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... at last, and Franklin came on the early train. With his coming, mother regained some part of her lost courage. She grew rapidly stronger before night came again, and was able to falter a few words in greeting ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland |
