"Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in silence, his face grim and sardonic; and when from very weariness the flow of her inspired oratory began to falter, he would deliver ever the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... a fare. Take it, keep it for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river—I will homologate your action. Save me from that part of myself which I disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if necessary, wreck the train! I speak, of course, by a parable. Any extremity were better than for me ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to delay. Here on the bar of the 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 ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have a Rock on which to build our confidence, let us see that the confidence which we build upon it is rocklike too. If we have a God that cannot lie, let us grasp His faithful word with an affiance that cannot falter. If we have a Truth in the heavens, absolute and immutable, on which to anchor our hopes, let us see to it that our hopes, anchored thereon, are sure and steadfast. What a shame it would be that we should bring ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... come—I stand with your head on my breast— I have fought as I might—I have gained you, beloved ... to God's mercy the rest! Tho' the heavens darken above me and the sky be shrunk as a scroll, In the wreck and ruin of riven worlds, should I falter, O Soul of my soul? Tho' the demon Despair, where he vanquished lies, still utter his shibboleth— I fling my glove in the face of Fate and smile in the eyes ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... I understand," replied the woman who had known happiness. And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and the smile that accompanied it did not please me. I therefore hesitated to reply. Perhaps my former answer had implied too much: he had heard my voice falter, and might have seen me brush away ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the count's body seemed rushing to his heart. He trembled. The ingenuous smile on his friend's countenance, and his features so sweetly marked with frankness, made his resolution falter. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... national hero, Wallace, came to mind, and his struggles against fearful odds, not for selfish ends, but for his country's independence. Did Wallace give up the fight, or ever think of giving up? Never! It was death or victory. Bruce and the spider! Did Bruce falter? Never! Neither would he. "Scots wa hae," "Let us do or die," implanted before his teens, has pulled many a Scottish boy through the crises of life when all was dark, as it will pull others yet to come. Altho ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... lie at her feet and gaze into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping that some spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times he lent himself to an illusion; he would imagine that he saw the hard, changeless light in them falter, that there was a new life and softness in them, and he would cry, "Stephanie! oh, Stephanie! you hear me, you see me, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... regimentals, but with a look of savage dignity upon him that keeps every one from laughing. The murmur of admiration that passed along the thronged gallery leaped up into a shout in the bosom of Palmyre. Oh, Bras-Coupe—heroic soul! She would not falter. She would let the silly priest say his say—then her cunning should help her not to be his wife, yet to show his mighty arm how ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... much as possible from the fearful fire of the Spaniards, the troopers, some of them stripped to the waist, watching the base of the hill, and when any part of a Spaniard became visible, they fired. Never for an instant did they falter. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... number of Samsaptakas by means of his celestial weapons, proceeded towards his tent, mounted on that victorious car of his. And as he was proceeding, he asked Govinda, with voice choked with tears, "Why is my heart afraid, O Kesava, and why both my speech falter? Evil omens encounter me, and my limbs are weak. Thoughts of disaster possess my mind without living it. On earth, on all sides, various omens strike me with fear. Of many kinds are those omens and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I think of maist these days—that it would be a sair thing and a tragic thing if the spirit that filled the world during the war should falter the noo. We've suffered sae much—we've given sae much of our best. We maun gain a' that we can in return. And the way has been pointed tae us. It is but for ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... and abstracted as she was, and went on with his glances, till he once found her, poor thing, looking at him to see if he was looking at her; and then he knew his prey was safe, and asked her, with his eyes, "Do you forgive me?" and saw her stop dead in her talk to her next neighbor, and falter, and drop her eyes, and raise them again after a minute in search of his, that he might repeat the pleasant question. And then what could she do but answer with all her face and every bend of her pretty neck, "And do you forgive ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... is right, as God is God; And right the day will win. To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... made. Staff's agitated voice seemed drawn thin by an immense distance. By a supreme effort she managed to spur her flagging faculties and began to falter her incredible story, but had barely swung into the second sentence when her voice died in her throat and her tongue clave to ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... silence, as the child went steadily on with the work. M. Simon was breathless with excitement, and her father hardly knew where he was. In his haste, he turned two leaves of the music-book at once. What a dreadful disaster! It was all over now. She would break down at once, if the accompaniment should falter. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... the room, he threw his arm around her slender form, and pressed a kiss upon her fair cheek. "Laura, my darling, do you remember your oath? Will you be true and firm? Will my mother's threats and commands find you strong and brave? You will not falter? You will not accept the hand of Count Voss? You will let no earthly power tear you from me? They can kill me, Laura, but I cannot be untrue to myself or to you!" Augustus laid his hand upon her beautiful head; the whole ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... remained motionless on the spot where she had just renounced her last hope of earthly happiness. Her eyes followed Philip in his frenzied flight, and, when he disappeared, she stretched out her hands with a gesture of mingled longing and despair. But the weakness that had made this courageous soul falter for an instant soon vanished. She lifted her eyes toward Heaven as if imploring strength from on high and then walked slowly in the direction of the chateau. Suddenly, at a turn in the path, she met Coursegol. She had not time to conceal her face and ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... cold statue, thus he drapes with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like a sepulchre of stones. Italian lovers love not ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... shall with rites of reverent piety Approach this strong Sad soul of sovereign Song, Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; If such there be, These, these are only they Have trod the self-same way; The never-twice-revolving portals heard Behind them clang infernal, and that word Abhorr-ed sighed of kind mortality, As he— ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... began a butchery.... Some fifty men, women, and children were cooped together in that narrow space.... And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith which she was vowed to re-establish. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... information. He can observe events which happen at the same time in places widely separated. Darkness cannot dim his eyes; locked doors cannot shut him out. He can be with a character when that character is most alone. He can make clear to us the thoughts that do not tremble into speech, the emotions that falter and subside into inaction. He can know, and can convey to us, how much of a person's real thought is expressed, and how much is concealed, by the language that he uses. And the reader seeks no motive to account for the narrator's revelation of the personal ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... wandering about with a girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his purpose should falter. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of gifts," said he to Brok. "Ply the bellows as before, and do not, for your life, stop or falter until the work ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... of the signal cannon, France calls her sons their aid to lend; "Let us go," the soldier cries, "to battle! 'Tis our mother we defend!" To die on Freedom's Altar—to die on Freedom's Altar! 'Tis the noblest of fates; who to meet it would falter! ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... mother, The maid with sweetheart dear, Lest those they love should falter Hold back the ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... Any other rule of construction would abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it, and it must not falter in the path ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the barest falter in her voice, and something glistened on her eyelashes. . . . Ah! why could not the veil have remained before my eyes and let me gone in darkness? Suddenly I was looking across the chasm of years. There was a young girl in white, a table upon which stood ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 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, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... father's shieling on the hill Is dowie now and sad; The breezes whisper round me still, I 've lost my Highland lad. Upon Culloden's fatal heath, He spake o' me, they said, And falter'd, wi' his dying breath, "Adieu, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... across the court and in at the door he had sworn never again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there, but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without a falter. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... they are dead, they are out of the way? And the ghost is a whim of an ailing mind? Then why did ye whiten with fear to-day When ye heard a voice in the calling wind? Why did ye falter and look behind? At the creeping mists when the hour grew late? Ye would see my face were ye stricken blind! And here in the shadows ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... sometimes they fall— The words that burn and falter; And is it true they too must ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... for Thomas Sandys," says the paper that quotes it, "if we could not find a better. Mr. Sandys was from first to last a man of character, but why when others falter was he always so sure-footed? It is in the answer to this question that we find the key to the books, and to the man who was greater than the books. He was the Perfect Lover. As he died seeking flowers for her who had the high honour to be his wife, so he had always lived. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... desk. She had made up her mind to confront Thane with this official communication. It was an ordeal she dreaded. Her true reason for refusing to see him was clear to her if to no one else: she hated the thought of hurting him! Moreover, she was strangely oppressed by the fear that she would falter at the crucial moment and that her half-guarded defences would go down before the assault. She knew his strength far better than she knew his weakness. She had had an illuminating example of his power. Was she any stronger now than ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... you will not fail. You could not speak as you did last night and yet allow yourself to falter in purpose when the task was once begun. What success may await you we cannot say; the work will certainly be very difficult. Will it not ask ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible—it is your ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... I cannot think that observation just. Apart from the moral inspiration which appears throughout his philosophy, which is indeed a passionate attempt to exalt (or debase) values into powers, it offers, I should say, two starting-points for ethics. In the first place, the elan vital ought not to falter, although it can do so: therefore to persevere, labour, experiment, propagate, must be duties, and the opposite must be sins. In the second place, freedom, in adding uncaused increments to life, ought to do so in continuation of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did not cast ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... trying circumstances, it is also true that the child must put his trust wholly in God and live obediently. The Christian can go through any dark place and endure any hardness if he keeps a firm trust in God and, his purpose strong and true, but he will falter in the smallest trials ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... opportunity of detecting him in the midst of his fancied security. Do you know this, Sir, this pocket-book?'—'Yes, Sir,' returned he, with a face of impenetrable assurance, 'that pocket-book is mine, and I am glad you have found it.'—'And do you know,' cried I, 'this letter? Nay, never falter man; but look me full in the face: I say, do you know this letter?'—'That letter,' returned he, 'yes, it was I that wrote that letter.'—'And how could you,' said I, 'so basely, so ungratefully presume to write this letter?'—'And how came ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... encounter? His heart was high, his voice rang clear and exultant, his eyes flashed joy and fire and defiance in the face of a thousand deaths two weeks ago. But here in the presence of a slender girl he can do naught but falter and ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead, Lead me aright— Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed— Through Peace ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... like this one, he has an unformed prayer deep in his heart, though he may not realize to whom he prays. There was never more occasion for one than to-night, Rose. I know that the Great Healer is nearer to you than to me. Ask Him that my hand may not falter." ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... wealth and influence, and with a brilliant commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once. Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger—the management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured, and the very ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... falter? let him turn To some brave maiden's eyes, And catch the holy fires that burn In those sublunar skies. Oh! could you like your women feel, And in their spirit march, A day might see your lines of steel Beneath the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... policy of non-interference in European disputes was submitted so unexpectedly to the fierce test of Right versus Expediency. And how splendidly did President, Senator, Congress and the People respond to the test! Never for one instant did America's clear judgment falter. The Hun was guilty, and must be punished. The only issue to be solved was whether France, Britain, Italy and Russia should convict and brand the felon unaided, or the mighty power of the Western ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... truth and reality of the teaching and experience I have recorded in this volume. All these years, with their months, weeks, and days have passed by, and have found me continually rejoicing in the work of the Lord—often wearied in it, but never of it—often tempted to falter, but al ways enabled to persevere. I have seen many rise and start well, who have collapsed or retired; many who have blazed like a meteor for a short time, and ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... the quake messages were stacked yards high in all the telegraph offices waiting to be sent throughout the world. Conditions warranted utter despair and panic, but through it all the people were trying to be brave and falter not. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... forth where the elusive cigar-butt lurks in the gutter and scraps of paper litter the pavement. As an exponent of this particular brand of discipline you will see that no small item escapes you. Should you be so remiss, or should you falter in doing your full duty, you will be returned at once to this room, where retribution waits with heavy hands. Ho, Worthy Buddies! Invest the candidate with the sacred insignia of the empty ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... would unhesitatingly do myself were I in your predicament, what I would even join you in doing were I younger by thirty years than I happen to be, and had no wife or family to think about and make me falter and lose courage on the brink of every extra hazardous adventure; and it is this. I would recommend you to draw the whole of your money out of the bank, buy a good wagon and a team of salted oxen, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... fern he had prepared within the hut; and, all the night through, the slightest moan from me found him alert to give me drink or shift me to an easier posture. Our total solitude seemed from the first to breed a certain good-fellowship between us: neither next day nor for many days did he remit or falter in his care for me. But his manner, though not ungentle, was taciturn. He seemed to carry about a weight on his mind; his brow wore a constant frown, vexed and unhappy. Once or twice I caught him talking ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... so winning in his grace, in his dignity, in his tenderness, that Evander felt his heart in his mouth and he tried not to falter in his words. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... also falter here, as to the stating of the proposition; for in the beginning of your book, you state it thus: That the enduing men with inward real righteousness, or true holiness, was the ultimate end of our Saviour's coming into the world, still meaning the holiness ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... me! But he shall have reason no longer. He will come back, and find me worthy of you; and all will be forgotten. Again I say it, I accept your quest, for life and death. So help me God above, as I will not fail or falter, till I have won justice for you and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs heavy round ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... captive Martyrs shed; By each pale Orphan's feeble cry for bread; 30 By ravag'd Belgium's corse-impeded Flood, And Vendee steaming still with brothers' blood!' And if amid the strong impassion'd Tale, Thy Tongue should falter and thy Lips turn pale; If transient Darkness film thy aweful Eye, 35 And thy tir'd Bosom struggle with a sigh: Science and Freedom shall demand to hear Who practis'd on a Life so doubly dear; Infus'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter?" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... interest and of fortune which involves the welfare, happiness and progress of many millions of people. The history of civilization in Europe has reached a new page, one which must be written by those who have in keeping the Divine destiny of the Germanic race. It is not a time to falter before the graveness of our responsibility and the magnitude of our undertakings. I spoke of these things at Eckartsau. I think ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt to restore lustre to the unclean thing dulled ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... think not of me. Do not fear or falter; I shall not. I would rather die a hundred deaths than see you the wife of such a ruffian. Let ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... been taught by the misfortune at Bull Run, which has broken no power nor any spirit, which bowed no State nor made any heart falter, which was felt as a humiliation that has brought ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... not falter. She even comforted the sailors with her cheerful talk, and all of them became warmly attached to her. Andre Vasling showed himself more attentive than ever, and seized every occasion to be in her company; but the young girl, with a sort of presentiment, accepted his services with some coldness. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... returning 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 as the ribs of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... frame thrill with rapture? did she bound to his caress? did her lip falter from her grateful emotion?—did she bury his cheek ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... were in sight now, I had been told, but there were many of ours. And sometimes one came swooping down, its occupants curious, no doubt, as to what might be going on, and the hum of its huge propeller would make me falter a bit in my song. And once or twice one flew so low and so close that I was almost afraid it would strike me, and I would dodge in what I think was mock alarm, much to the ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... said: I came here with no desire and no intention to speak; but my heart is full, my country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on! go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted. I could not say this if we were now where we stood two years ago. I could not say thus when it was proclaimed in the Northern States that the Union was all that we sought. No, my friends, such a Union as we had then, God be praised ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the License should be granted in order to show its efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only the maimed and battered conscripts that remain. Besides, it is better to see vice as it really is, than as it sometimes appears. ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... Enid heard the clashing of his fall, Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms, Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound, And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drain'd her dear lord's life. Then after all was done that hand could do, She rested, and her desolation came Upon her, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... great, and burdens so crushing, that I was almost ready to falter. My greatest anxiety was to guide my dear children aright. The four older ones had resolved to follow the dear Redeemer, but the slippery paths of youth were theirs to walk in. The consideration of these multiform cares at one time seemed of ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... they came back repeating oracles Mystic, ambiguous, inscrutable, Till, at the last, an utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself and all his race to nothingness. Bowing before such utterance from the shrine Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls, Barring the gates against me: loth he was To do, as I to suffer, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the glorious past revolving, Dreams of bright days that never can return; When Athens nurst her olive bough With hands by tyrant power unchained; And braided for the muse's brow A wreath by tyrant touch unstained. When heroes trod each classic field Where coward feet now faintly falter; When every arm was Freedom's shield, And ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... larger and a nobler business than that; and one learns the lesson sooner, if one takes the suffering home to one's soul, not as a tedious interlude, but as the very melody and march of life itself, even though it crash into discords, or falter in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heavy work going through the drifts and keeping the right way over a plain that had the similarity of the sea, but the men did not falter. Jimmy Grayson was always looking into the darkness, striving to see the darker line or blur that would mark the hills, but he asked no questions. The snow ceased, and after a while low, black slopes appeared ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... his tidings to the king. We watched Ahimaaz swift on his track. We marked the king's anxious waiting, and the fixed gaze of the watchman on the city walls. We strained in the long strain of the runners. We fainted with the fears of a father's heart. We saw Ahimaaz outrun his rival yet falter in his message. And we heard the blow upon David's heart of Cushi's stroke. "And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... his last letter. He had written it upon his knees, his eyes stung with terrible tears; but his hand did not falter; the letter was sent. Then he waited for the manifestation of God in Helen's soul: he distrusted himself and his own strength, but he never doubted God; he never questioned that this plan for converting his wife was a direct ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... house of Hanover, And Protestant succession, To these I do allegiance swear While they can keep possession: For by my faith and loyalty I never more will falter, And George my lawful king shall be Until the time shall alter. And this is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... by his agreeable small talk. It is so charming to hear great names mentioned familiarly by one personally acquainted with them; to learn that Palmerston and Lord John can breakfast like ordinary mortals. By and by, with a blush and a falter (for the mere matter of his personal provision for life seemed so paltry among these world-famed characters and their great deeds, that he was almost ashamed to allude to it), Robert Wynn ventured to make his request, that the hon. member for C—— would go to the hon. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... with Brandelaar's suggestion, Edith glanced at the man whom he had indicated with a movement of his head. Externally this robust old sea-dog was certainly not attractive, but his alarming appearance did not make Edith falter in ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... do! I pity the dumb victim at the altar— But does the robed priest for his pity falter? I'd rack thee, though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine— What were ten thousand to a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... been known to falter in pronouncing that sentence. He had spoken it to white-haired men, and delicate women, ay, even to little children; but this once, every spectator looked up in amazement at his tone, and saw the judge in tears. And then, turning to the prisoner, ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the piece the flying fingers began to falter. No doubt the intense gaze he was bending on the top of her head confused her. At any rate she broke off abruptly and ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... I say!" she repeated; "I need no witnesses—there will be enough of them soon. Mr. Glasscott," she continued, closing the door, "hear me, while I am able to bear testimony, lest weakness—woman's weakness—overcome me, and I falter in the truth. In the broom-sellers' cottage, across the common, on the left side of the chimney, concealed by a large flat stone, is a hole—a den; there much of the property taken from Sir Thomas Purcel's last ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... in the direction of the river, but toward the forest beyond Kedsty's bungalow. Not for an instant did she falter in that drenched and impenetrable darkness. There was something imperative in the clasp of her fingers, even though they tightened perceptibly when the thunder crashed. They gave Kent the conviction that there was no doubt in her mind as to the point she ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, and she passed through the ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... feeble effort to get off, and then ran their boats ashore and fired them. They had but one chance, and that a desperate one, to bear down with reckless speed on the oncoming ships and ram them. Failing to do this, and beginning to falter, the ships came among them like dogs among a flock of sheep, willing enough to spare, had they understood the weakness of their foes, but thinking themselves to be in conflict with formidable iron-clad rams, an impression the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Himself was this—that "the birds have nests and the foxes holes, but the son of man hath nowhere 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 ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... both he and the King were fully aware of the importance of the step that his Majesty had taken—that this is, in fact, the Conservatives' last cast—and that he (the King) is resolved neither to flinch nor falter, but having embarked with them, to nail his flag to the mast and put forth all the constitutional authority of the Crown in support of the Government he is about to form. I am strongly inclined to think that this determination, when properly ascertained, will ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... mistake that," he declared. "Sometimes one may lose one's way, and one may even falter if the path is ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compelled to return to the field and ride both the horses back into the wood; one after the other, while the footman held them. That riding back over fences in cold blood is the work that really tries a man's nerve. And a man has to do it too when no one is looking on. How he does crane and falter and look about for an easy place at such a moment as that! But when the blood is cold, no places ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... light flickering over the scant 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 entered ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the blushing dewdrops falter; The peacock wakes and leaves the cottage thatch; A deer is rising near the hoof-marked altar, And stretching, stands, the day's ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... forbear." Her principles were good, but they were not strong enough to hold their own. O pride of the Tresilyans! that had tempted to sin so many of that haughty house, when you might have saved its fairest descendant, was it the time to falter and fail? She looked up piteously in her great extremity; there was a prayer for help in her eyes, but between them and heaven was interposed a stern bronze face, not a ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... lover. There may have been women so bloodless that their love left frost on the 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 ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner and look at her with such ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... bell-music of Malines, In this dark hour how much you mean! The dreadful night of blood and tears Sweeps down on Belgium, but she hears Deep in her heart the melody Of songs she learned when she was free. She will not falter, faint, nor fail, But fight until her rights prevail And all her ancient belfries ring "The Flemish Lion," "God ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... "thou art too weak To try the Kills and drown, or falter, The while from shore their marksmen seek My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter Be mine, I ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... all about it. You're stealing another man's wife—and, by God, I won't let you do it!" His voice shook so that he hardly uttered his sentence intelligibly. The sweat of shame broke out on his face, but he did not falter. "I've seen this coming on all summer. I ought ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... angel's birthright! think'st thou I would deign to breathe on wretched sufferance? No, no; her death is necessary to my honor and my peace. Come on! my hand may falter, but my heart's resolved; 'tis sworn, inexorably ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... The falter in the words spoke to the tenseness of his suspense. The doctor answered instantly, with more of kindliness than judgment. "Faith, no! It's not so bad as that. But ye'll have to pretend ye are for the present, or, egad, ye will be before ye've done. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... back at the hotel. Mr. Gumpus was in the doorway, amusement in every line of his ugly face. Beside him stood the slovenly servant. She was crying—the more human second thought of a heart not altogether corrupted by the sordid hardness of her lot. How can faith in the human race falter when one considers how much heart it has in spite of all it suffers in the struggle upward through the dense fogs of ignorance upward, toward the truth, toward the light of which it never ceases to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... tells us of the respect and fear they inspired. They were "The Black Devils." The guards were seasoned veterans who had participated in the fiercest fighting of the war, yet these Negro heroes of the West did not falter before them. They were brigaded with the choicest troops of France and fought by their side through the final stages of the war. By them they were given a name indicative of the respect and confidence, their soldierly bearing and actions inspired. To the French they were the "Partridges," ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... her cheeks on fire began to falter out, "I did look on Gerard as my husband—we being betrothed-and he was in so sore danger, and I thought I had killed him, and I-oh, if you were but my mother I might find courage: you would question me. But you ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... however, that the strongest characters will at times falter and fall, and so it was with Mrs. Upton and her resolution finally. There came a time when the pressure was too ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... nerveless of fingers to put the sheet back within its envelope, and so thrust it, a crumpled mass, into his pocket. It was as if her hand was at his shoulder, her voice in his ear, but he did not falter. To go back now would be but a renewal of his torture. There could not come a better time to go—to go and leave no suspicion of ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was as much of a sham as anything else about him—I don't know whether I was more incensed at him or his victim, who received it with evident pride and satisfaction. Nevertheless he ventured to falter out:— ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... thou sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in defending the Lacedaemonians? Courage, my soul, we must plunge into the midst of it. Dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped in Euripides? That's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk our head to say what we hold for truth. Courage and boldly to the front. I wonder ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself. "Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband's cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... saying or not. What his plan might have been can only be guessed; for the Fates ordained that they should be interrupted at this critical moment by the one person on earth who could make Yates' tongue falter. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... planted on an eternal foundation, that our position is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"—though our ranks be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... but creatures of the night Led forth by day, Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps Spell out our paths ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... performed this duty, the servants did nothing more; but one could not help feeling that they were just outside the door, like a group of prompters, ready to render instantaneous assistance should the amateurs falter. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... eyes! Or, whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion?—Here are sever'd lips, Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends.—Here, in her hair, The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh, t' entrap the hearts of men Falter than gnats in cobwebs.—But her eyes— How could he see to do them! having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his, And ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... it that these 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, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Kadullen did not surrender; there were devotions, Count Hamilcar appeared at breakfast, pale and weary, but his conversation with the Professor did not falter. They spoke of the yellow race, and, as if even that were not sufficiently remote, of the Bismarck Archipelago. Embarrassed silence burdened the remaining company. Egon's and Moritz's places were vacant, for at the news of Billy's disappearance ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... leaf, the barge-like open cars close up into well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in their course. But we are still far from the falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn; the ancient Pepperrell elms fling down showers of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... she hastened about the room, donning her few requirements of masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could not disguise ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... 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 of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... reached the edge of the tracks, thought of Emily and a terrible consciousness of the sorrow she would feel if anything were to happen to him compressed his heart. But he did not falter. He was aware of the jangle of a fiercely rung bell, the hiss of steam, and a blinding glare; he could feel on his cheek the breath of the iron monster. With set teeth he threw himself forward, stooped, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... began in the spirit of murmurings, "When the people, as it were, murmured, it displeased the Lord." The first break in their fellowship, the first falter in their advance, came when they began to doubt, and ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Rhode Island Regiment, as a part of the history of your own gallant state and as an emblem of the glory of your dearly loved country. Love the one flag and revere the others. Many dark hours we have already passed through, and many more are yet to be undergone. But let no man of us falter as to the success of our glorious cause. In all our work, however dangerous or arduous, we shall be followed by the prayers of loved friends at home and of the true and loyal of all our country, and of the good and true of every land. The great God ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... it aloud from beginning to end, nor did she falter much when Caleb greeted the postscript with a shout of joy. Caleb was most high-spirited those days, for the line in regard to the progress of Steve's work was in truth an under-statement if anything, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... ask the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can say ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... they enlisted under a privateer captain to cruise against the Spaniards; but the men, finding a favorable opportunity, took the vessel from the officers, and commenced their old trade. Mary was as brave as any in boarding Spanish craft, pistol in hand, to clear the decks; no peril made her falter, but she was disarmed again by love in the person of a fine young pirate of superior mind and grace. She made a friend of him, revealed her sex, and married him. Her husband had a falling-out with a comrade, and a duel impended. Torn with love and dread, she managed to pick a quarrel with his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... bar. It was sheer suicide. I saw our men get their machineguns into action, and the right side of the living bar frittered away, and then the whole line fell into the scorched grass. Another line followed. They were tall men, and did not falter as they came forward, but it seemed to me they walked like men conscious of going to death. They died. The simile is outworn, but it was exactly as though some invisible scythe ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs |
