"Stutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have never heard a Chinaman stutter you have something to live for, and although we discovered that our cook was a shameless rascal he was worth all he extracted in "squeeze," for whenever he attempted to utter a word we became almost hysterical. He sounded exactly like a worn-out phonograph record ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... an old subaltern for a superior officer, bound him to Ferragut. The books that filled the captain's stateroom recalled his agonies upon being examined in Cartagena for his license as a pilot. The grave gentlemen of the tribunal had made him turn pale and stutter like a child before the logarithms and formulas of trigonometry. But just let them consult him on practical matters and his skill as master of a bark habituated to all the dangers of the sea, and he would reply with ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... might justly retort on him that, though he openly professes the study of eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied. Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you have found to frame a charge, which is as suited to ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... a man of genius. But money was still scarce, so as a means of making some, he gave several courses of lectures. But he hated it. "O heaven!" he cries, "I cannot speak. I can only gasp and write and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money." One course of these lectures—the last—was on Heroes and Her Worship. This may be one of the first of Carlyle's book that you ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the modern public school. Who will conduct you to the land of culture, if your leaders are blind and assume the position of seers notwithstanding? Which of you will ever attain to a true feeling for the sacred seriousness of art, if you are systematically spoiled, and taught to stutter independently instead of being taught to speak; to aestheticise on your own account, when you ought to be taught to approach works of art almost piously; to philosophise without assistance, while you ought to be compelled to listen to great thinkers. All this with the result ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower, and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... big-bellied, but he was well and strongly knit. His hair was yellow or sandy; his face red, which got him the name of Rufus; his forehead flat; his eyes were spotted, and appeared of different colours; he was apt to stutter in speaking, especially when he was angry; he was vigorous and active, and very hardy to endure fatigues, which he owed to a good constitution of health, and the frequent exercise of hunting; in his dress he affected gaiety and expense, which ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... of things falling and the immediate roar of the explosions. In reply, rifle fire began to break out along the German first trenches, whilst, overhead, a star-shell burst into blossom; then the stutter of machine-guns joined in the chorus. The sentry flattened himself like a poultice against the side of the trench. Fosse 19 had, among other disadvantages, the reputation of being open to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... have experienced here this time, is the manner in which I am stopped in the streets by working men, who want to shake hands with me, and tell me they know my books. I never go out but this happens. Down at the docks just now, a cooper with a fearful stutter presented himself in this way. His modesty, combined with a conviction that if he were in earnest I would see it and wouldn't repel him, made up as true a piece of natural politeness as ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... self-revealing in a quite unusual and always charming way, and the recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson. His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a character ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... They asked him if he knew the "Five Vowels." He held down his head; he could not recollect it; all the songs of the good old days were mixed up in his head. As they made up their minds to leave him alone, he seemed to remember, and began to stutter in a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... to stutter and stammer, and to grow red in the face, as is his wont when at all excited. 'W—what do you mean ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... The stutter of the auto-rifle cut him off. The President Elect's knuckles were white as he clutched the piece's forearm and grip; the torrent of slugs continued to hack and plow the general's body until the magazine was empty. "Burn that," he said curtly, turning his ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... from inability to express the concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or two, made a ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... utterance notably superior to his well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult manner which had hitherto been their way of working through others, but in an open manner, which compelled ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... town would never fail to support him. But, as it is, the only hope we have is a new theatre, a subscription for which, it is reported, is now on foot. John Hogg, a very good actor has been for twelve months unemployed here, whilst ten-dollars-per-week men are engaged to stutter and stammer in parts as far above their conception as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me—now the job is done and gone, And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, leavin' Cutter there with Sutter—that mebbee just a stutter On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... repeated Eben to himself, unconsciously imitating Jethro's stutter. "Godfrey, I'll hev to git that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... April Fool's child. But then, the joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator— the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... heard the words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutter in my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,—at my father's gesture he had turned toward me,—but there was none in his walking. He came straight on toward our fire and through it. Three strides beyond it he drank at the creek ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Lewis) mother and father came from Berlin. Father teaches stuttering people not to stutter. One day he was busily beating time for a pupil to talk to, when the bell rang; he went to the door and a boy handed in a ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... desirous of improving her education. She relates her success as a Sunday School teacher. She thinks at times she is very nervous, and especially when she was in the high school she showed signs of it. Then she used to stutter much, but of late she has ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... and answered the call. He sprawled in his chair, his elbow on the table, and listened for a few moments. "But don't stutter so, Joe!" he adjured. "Take your time, now, boy! ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... had all the attention of the chief, and having thought out in advance his answers to certain pertinent questions, he did not stutter when they were asked. Yes, he had been hired to drive the ear south, and he had overheard enough to make him suspicious on the way. He knew that they had stolen the car. He was not absolutely sure that they were the diamond thieves but it would be easy enough to find out, because officers sent ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... whole gale is coming, and the woods are beside themselves. The thrash of a million branches, the hoarse booming of the wind, lend to the tiny chamber an air of comfort such as no carpets nor arras could induce. The rain, too, is hastening to add its insolence to the stew. That stutter upon ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering bons mots with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... experience that conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and, after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of plaits, high of gloss, but ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... rod the man of power."—For that purpose, and in expectation of that perilous and supreme day, it lavishes wealth upon him, and clothes him in purple and ermine. That day arrives, that hour, unique, pitiless, and solemn, that supreme hour of duty; the man in the red gown begins to stutter the words of the law; suddenly he perceives that it is not the cause of justice that prevails, but that treason carries the day. Whereupon he, the man who has passed his life in imbuing himself with the pure and holy light of the law, that man who is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... it, now, I tell you," warned the other, forgetting to even stutter in his indignation. "I'm going to tell you about it just when I'm good and ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Things, from the most familiar objects to those rarer and farther off, so that the vocabulary might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. A kind of common grammar may ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... a moment, her countenance swollen by grief, and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: "Look at him, madame. It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his poor chin, his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... prodigies of travel, all the more appreciated because unexpected. A stone-quarry for which we were searching was not found, but a teamster was, who, while everything solemnly stood still and waited, and amid the agonies of an indescribable stutter, finally managed to enlighten us somewhat as to its whereabouts. These adventures served to put us in excellent humor, so that when the road was found barricaded by a barbed wire fence, it only served to give one of the party an opportunity to air his views ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various |
