"Staggers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ragweed, is a corruption of Ragewort, as expressing its supposed stimulating effects on the sexual organs. For the same reason the pommes d'amour (Love Apples, or Tomatoes) are sometimes caned Rage apples. The Ragwort was formerly thought to cure the staggers in horses, and was hence named Stagger wort, or because, says Dr. Prior, it was applied to heal freshly cut young bulls, known as Seggs, or Staggs. So also it was called St. James's wort, either because that great warrior and saint was the patron of horses, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... there stupid, dazed, dumbfounded, too bewildered for his mind to act or thoughts to come to him; he suddenly bursts into a roar of Titanic, overwhelming laughter. He laughs, and laughs, staggers to the sofa, falls on it, rocks and roars till the tears roll down his cheeks. He sways from side to side, unable to control himself—his laughter is so colossal that the infection catches the others; ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... staggers us is his reason for doing it, his great love for God. And that is because we have not got, what we could easily get, his secret. He prayed, he kept close in thought to God always. God and heaven and our Lady were as familiar to his mind as the sun and the earth and the air are to our mind's. ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... not gainless is the loss; A glorious sunbeam gilds thy sternest frown, And while his country staggers neath the Cross, He rises ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... ammunition," Napoleon urged upon his battery commanders. "Fire incessantly." And it is that maxim which the artillerists of all the nations at war are following to-day. The expenditure of shells staggers the imagination. In a single day, near Arras, the French let loose upon the German lines $1,625,000 worth of projectiles, or almost as great a quantity as Germany used in the entire war of 1870-71. Five ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... way about. Thanks to Mister Churchouse and your own wits, you are fearfully well read, and your cleverness fairly staggers me. Just to hear you talk is all I want—at least that isn't all. Of course, it is a great score for an everyday sort of chap like me to have ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... pathetic things in music to match it. Presently the horn of the shepherd is heard again; but this time it plays a lively tune, as a signal that the ship is in sight. Tristan goes mad for joy, and tears the bandages from his wounds. As Isolda rushes in he staggers into her arms, and dies there to the phrases in which they had first spoken after drinking the love-philtre. Isolda's plaints are as touching and profound as those of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni after her father has been murdered. There is again tumult; even at the last the lovers cannot ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... suffer! For I loved you well, did I,— But like a loyal soldier will I stand Till, hurt to death, he staggers off to die, Still filled with love for ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... the compliment she was making, laughed lightly; while Diana inwardly shook, like a person who has received a sudden sharp blow, and staggers in danger of losing his footing. Did she waver visibly before her adversary's eyes, she wondered? She was sure her colour did not change. She found nothing to say, in any case; and after a moment her vision cleared and she ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... balance ahead, he must take a rest and go on a "spree." He started for the nearest town. For a couple of days he fared sumptuously, constantly drinking. He at length reached a point below zero. Half crazed, he staggers off to the fence across the way where the farmers who had come to town to do their shopping on Saturday had hitched their teams, and, untying a horse that was hitched to a buggy, Gus thought he ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... no man rules.... Not even himself.... It is because we are idle, because we keep our wits slack and our wills weak that these poor devils live in hell. These things happen here and everywhere when the hand that rules grows weak. Away in China now they are happening. Persia. Africa.... Russia staggers. And I who should serve the law, I who should keep order, wander and make love.... My God! may I never forget! May I never forget! Flies in the sunlight! That man's face. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... moment Lenox had lost his voice. Ten minutes' delay in starting, and they had been swept out of life, without a struggle or a cry. It is this significance of trifles in determining large issues that at times staggers faith and reason. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... cerebral-meningitis, but as both conditions usually occur together, and since it is practically impossible to distinguish one from the other by the symptoms shown by the diseased animal, they may as well be considered together here as varieties of the same disease. Staggers, coma, frenzy, etc., are terms that are sometimes applied to this disease in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Those loud, vague appeals of her delirium come to her recollection with a meaning in them that is only too plain; and then the tight, passionate clasp, when, strained to her bosom, relief came at last. Adele lies there unconscious of the time, until the night dews warn her away; she staggers through the gate. Where next? She fancies they must know it all at the Elderkins',—that she has no right there. Is she not an estray upon the world? Shall she not—as well first as last—wander forth, homeless as she is, into the night? And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... "a law to Himself," was submissive in all respects to the "written law," shall fallible man refuse to sit with the teachableness of a little child, and listen to the Divine message? There may be, there is, in the Bible, what reason staggers at: "we have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." But, "Thus saith the Lord," is enough. Faith does not first ask what the bread is made of, but eats it. It does not analyse the components ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the end of the war, the old story will be continued—while the soldier flounders and staggers about in that awful, sucking swamp, the pessimist at home will lean back in his arm-chair and wonder, as he watches the smoke from his cigar wind up towards the ceiling, why we do not advance at the rate of one mile an hour, why we are not ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... For with a loud shout Dr. Conrad himself, dishevelled and ashy-white of face, comes running from the door opposite. The word he has shouted so loudly he repeats twice; then turns as though to go back. But he does not reach the door, for he staggers suddenly, like a man struck by a bullet, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... good staggers, some of the minor stuff. Lots of it is good talk—only wandering. That woman may write something some day if she breaks loose and goes to ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... there is a medley of swift darts, dives, and cart-wheel turns, amid the continuous ta-ta-ta-ta-ta of machine-guns. Then a German machine sways, staggers, noses downward vertically, and rushes earthward, spinning rhythmically. The other Boches put their noses down and turn east. We follow until we find it impossible to catch them up, ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... dance (chorea) is a peculiar disorder seen in nervous children, and which usually clears up in a few weeks or months under proper treatment. It is characterized by irregular jerkings pretty much all over the body, so that the child staggers as he walks, drops his food at the table, and executes many other noticeably abnormal movements. The child should be taken out of school at once and removed from association with children who might make sport of him or otherwise annoy him and thus increase these ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... costume so inadequate that Bep's doll would have been scandalized at the idea of wearing it, posed and attitudinized as a Dewdrop. She was pronounced a "regular little love" by the Misses Bryne-Stivers, whom the Madigans had nicknamed the Misses Blind-Staggers—a resentful play upon their hyphenated name, as well as a delicate reference to their blue goggles that ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... staggers. He now turns to where he should expect to find strength. Under the pulpit next Sunday is a mind where the mists of doubt are gathering and darkening. He looks up to the "Light of the World" to have these ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... "But this—this staggers me! I was certain you were dead, and when I found a heap of bones which the vultures had picked clean I buried them for yours. This is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of. I can't understand it. Where have you been, and why didn't you let ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... first instalment of news, when a telegraph messenger taps me on the shoulder and staggers me with the information, that in consequence of a serious interruption in the line of communication with Havana, the operations of the telegraph are ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... unphilosophical mind could no more grasp it, than the gentleman mentioned by G. H. Lewes (History of Philosophy), could grasp the idea of substance without attribute as presented by Berkeley. The real Gipsy could talk about apples all day, but the sudden demand for the unconnected word, staggers him—at least, until he has had some practice in this, to him, new process. And it is so with other races. Professor Max Muller once told me in conversation, as nearly as I can recollect, that the Mohawk Indian language is extremely rich in declension, every noun having some sixteen or seventeen ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... been so accustomed to have the imperfection of man drummed into us in books, sermons, and hymns, and above all in a mistaken interpretation of the Bible, that at first the idea of his completeness altogether staggers us. Yet until we see this we must remain shut out from the highest and best that mental science has to offer, from a thorough understanding of its philosophy, and from its ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... in quick succession, which entirely split the helmet and cut the coif beneath it. The sword even reaches the skull and cuts a bone of his head, but without penetrating the brain. He stumbles and totters, and while he staggers, Erec pushes him over, so that he falls upon his right side. Erec grabs him by the helmet and forcibly drags it from his head, and unlaces the ventail, so that his head and face are completely exposed. When Erec thinks of the insult done him by the dwarf in the wood, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... will look on their children with a dark eye, and say, 'Go! a Chippewa has come hither with the name of a Huron.' Brothers, we must not forget the dead; a red-skin never ceases to remember. We will load the back of this Mohican until he staggers under our bounty, and dispatch him after my young men. They call to us for aid, though our ears are not open; they say, 'Forget us not.' When they see the spirit of this Mohican toiling after them with his burden, they will know we are of that mind. Then will they go on happy; and our children ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... They haunt a man's business, visit him in dreams, and vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim whom they will destroy. In some feverish hour, vibrating between conscience and avarice, the man staggers to a compromise. To satisfy his conscience he refuses to steal; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows the funds;—not openly—not of owners—not of men: but ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... death means, but we can and do know what imprisonment means, and so far as our mortal senses can tell us, it is worse than death. But while we may abolish the death penalty easily, the suggestion to abolish imprisonment staggers us like an earthquake. Every moral instinct in our little souls leaps up and shrieks in protest; and if that be not enough, we fall back with full conviction upon the consideration of security of property. It ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with so much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their almost unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into the homes of dialect, does but show us how the language staggers under such a stress, how it breaks down, and resigns that office. One of the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is that old manageress of the narrow things of the house ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... at the moon!" she cried. "All bowed forward with the cloud wrapped round her head. Something's calling her across the sky, but the mist holds her and the wind beats her back—look how she staggers and charges head-downward. She's fighting the wind. And ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... Nancy, has suffered from neurasthenia for several years. He has aversions, nervous fears, and disorders of the stomach and intestines. He sleeps badly, is gloomy and is haunted by ideas of suicide; he staggers when he walks like a drunken man, and can think of nothing but his trouble. All treatments have failed and he gets worse and worse; a stay in a special nursing home for such cases has no effect whatever. M. Y—— comes to see me at the beginning of October, 1910. Preliminary experiments comparatively ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... to rock. He reels from the porch, He runs and stumbles to reach the road. He yells and curses and tears his hair. He staggers and falls and rises and runs. And Widow La Rue With the eyes of Clytemnestra Stands at the window and watches him Running and tearing ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... headache and a soupcon of chill. The workingman feels these. He can not spare the time or the doctor's bill, perhaps. He poohs the matter—it will pass off—and goes to work. The delay and the sun set the disease; and he is brought home at night—or staggers to the nearest hospital—to die of the black vomit in thirty-six ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mid-day his servant Alonso Perez, happening to go to the masthead, cried out that there was land in sight; and sure enough to the westward there rose three peaks of land united at the base. Here was the kind of coincidence which staggers even the unbeliever. Columbus had promised to dedicate the first land he saw to the Trinity; and here was the land, miraculously provided when he needed it most, three peaks in one peak, in due conformity with the requirements of the blessed Saint Athanasius. The Admiral was deeply affected; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... for my pocket-handkerchief. I must have dropped it in here somewhere. (He begins to search for it, and in the ordinary course of things comes upon Isobel on the sofa. He puts his rifle down carefully on a table, with the muzzle pointing at the prompter rather than at the audience, and staggers back.) Merciful heavens! Isobel! Dead! (He falls on his knees beside the sofa.) My love, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... picture staggers the faith of the reader, he may reflect that the Peruvian mountains teemed with gold; that the natives understood the art of working the mines, to a considerable extent; that none of the ore, as we shall see hereafter, was converted into coin, and that the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... couldn't understand anybody's being interested in Davenport? Because Davenport was a poor man, who never went in for making money. Men of the Bagley sort are always puzzled when anybody doesn't jump at the chance of having their friendship. It staggers their intelligence to see impecunious Davenports—and Larchers—preferred ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... dainty head, adorned with a silver tuft, exhibits a human visage. He has four wings, a vulture's claws, and an immense peacock's tail, which he displays in a ring behind him. He seizes in his beak the Queen's parasol, staggers a little before he finds his equilibrium, then erects all his feathers, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... shrieked the Old Un. Whereupon Ravenslee sprang to the centre of the ring, and once again the air resounded with tramp of feet and pant of breath. Twice Ravenslee staggers beneath Joe's mighty left, but watchful ever and having learned much, Ravenslee keeps away, biding his time—ducks a swing, sidesteps a drive, and blocking a vicious hook—smacks home his long left to Joe's ribs, rocks him ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... professor. He uplifts his hands, and, as though in the act of tearing his hair, rushes from the room, and staggers downstairs to those other apartments where Hardinge had elected to sit, and see out the farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it may prove, to its ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... trembling at what she knows not, Dora staggers backward, and, laying a hand upon the wall beside her, tries to regain her self-possession. The others are all talking together, she is therefore unobserved. She stands, still panting and pallid, trying to ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... which wanders among the hills, climbing at prohibitive grades, Verdun is isolated from the rest of France. Consider what this means in modern war when the amount of ammunition consumed in a day almost staggers belief. Consider what it means when there are a quarter of a million men to be fed ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... 'Vine Marster in heaben, aint she? As I 'members ob de time anybody had a-breaved a s'picion ob Miss Nora, I'd jest up'd an' boxed deir years for 'em good—'deed me! But what staggers of me, honey, is dat! How de debil we gwine to 'count for dat?" questioned old Dinah, pointing in sorrowful suspicion at ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... grows the beaten Day; 'E staggers drunkenly about the ring; An owl 'oots jeerin'ly across the way, An' bats come out to mock the fallin' King. Now, wiv a jolt, Night spreads 'im on the floor, An' all the west grows ruddy wiv ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... to the pathos of the desertion of a leader by almost all he expected to follow him, and the reduction of his life, as he puts it bitterly, "to an anecdote—a thing to be told stories about." And in the end that is the fate he will meet. Time and a wife that he wronged have broken him. As he staggers off at the end of the play, a stricken man and older than his forty-five years, this ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Roland and his enemies in the Petit Roi de Galice, the hero staggers and Froila leaps forward to ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... cost of the present war to the nations engaged in the struggle is estimated at not less than $54,000,000 a day—a sum which fairly staggers the imagination. This enormous cost of the armies in the field gives a decided advantage to the nation best supplied with the "sinews of war" and may contribute to a shortening of hostilities. War is indeed a terrible drain ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... "'ERALD, third 'dition, one penny!" until the ear wearies of the constant repetition. Cabs rattle incessantly along the street; here, a fast-looking hansom, with a rakish horse, bearing some gilded youth to his Club—there, a dingy-looking vehicle, drawn by a lank quadruped, which staggers blindly down the street. Alternating with these, carriages dash along with their well-groomed horses, and within, the vision of bright eyes, white dresses, and the sparkle of diamonds. Then, further up, just on the verge of the pavement, three violins ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... that to Toby, or you'll give him the blind staggers," said Steve; "because he's set his mind on capturing the monk; and when Toby gets a thing in that head of his he's a mighty unhappy fellow if ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... snatches at the green bottle, from which he takes a copious draught. Its effect is appalling. His wry faces and agonized belchings are so heartrending that they almost upset Edstaston. When the victim at last staggers to his feet, he is a pale fragile nobleman, aged and quite sober, extremely dignified in manner and address, though shaken by his recent convulsions.] Young man, it is not better to be drunk than sober; but it is happier. Goodness is not happiness. That is an epigram. But I have overdone ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... supporting work, has misled the whole civilized world for more than half a century. The dietaries of institutions, armies, whole nations have been based upon a conception which modern science has shown to be utterly false, and the result has been an economic loss which staggers belief, and a destruction of human life and efficiency which overshadows ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... part in Australia, to interlink them in the most complicated way in all genealogical and topographical relations, demands a structural genius like that of Eugene Sue; and though Mr. Kingsley grapples stoutly with the load, he staggers under it. His descriptions of scenery are as vivid as his brother's, and he exhibits far less arrogance and no theology. There are in the book single scenes of great power, and there has never, perhaps, been a more vivid portraiture of lower-middle-class ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Americans, they are so completely covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them."[138] The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full of renegade European and American slave-traders;[139] the trade was said to be carried on "to an extent that almost staggers belief."[140] Down to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... sickened, makes his step feeble. He staggers as he passes among the prostrate forms, at times ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... sir!" says Mr. Walker, "go and get the cheque cashed, and be quick about it. Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown to pay for it." The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff, who asked him whether he would like any refreshment while his man was absent getting the amount of the cheque, and treated his prisoner with great civility during the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He staggers to the oaken table, seizes his sword, draws it from the sheath; the handle turns in his trembling hands, the blade falls to the ground; again he grasps it, while great tears rain down from his haggard eyes. The attendants cluster round ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Robert Montgomery's genius were not far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose that it is at the nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But Mr. Robert Montgomery's readers must take such grammar as they ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... easily the tables could be turned upon a man who a second time dared to fling to the winds every principle of his art. It is the last word of British sailing tactics, and surely nothing in their whole history, not even in the worst days of the old Fighting Instructions, so staggers us with its lack ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... some of the help, I had to stick around until it was all over. So I was there when she staggers towards Tessie and leans ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... experiences of their lives to have dined with Belloc in a small Paris Restaurant (Aux Vendanges de Bourgogne) and then to have walked with him the streets of that glorious city while he discoursed of its past. Imagination staggers before the picture of a Belloc in his full youth and vigour in a group fitted to strike from him his brightest fire at a moment big with ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... did look up, and he saw her face as white as morning, and her hair as black as night, and her tall figure like to a young elm-tree—ay, when she looked up, ne'er saw I a man not dead seem so like death. He drops down his arms from about them, as though smitten from behind by a sword, and he staggers and leans against th' table, and lets fall his head upon his breast, staring straight in front o' him. But she stands looking upon him. And I got me out with all speed; so ne'er knew I more o' what passed between 'em, saving that he ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... a group of people who were in his schemes with him. They are holding a council of war in the directors' room. Suddenly Parker rises, staggers toward the window, falls, and is dead before a doctor can get to him. Every effort is made to keep the thing quiet. It is given out that he committed suicide. The papers don't seem to accept the suicide theory, however. Neither do we. The coroner, who is working with us, has kept ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... father, who was killed by the wrongful heir's father, at sight of which the wrongful heir becomes apoplectic, and is literally 'struck all of a heap,' the stage not being large enough to admit of his falling down at full length. Then the good assassin staggers in, and says he was hired in conjunction with the bad assassin, by the wrongful heir, to kill the rightful heir; and he's killed a good many people in his time, but he's very sorry for it, and won't do so any more—a promise which he immediately redeems, by dying ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens |
