"Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did you come here?" she questioned, a falter in her voice; and he noticed that her eyes were dark and large, yielding a marked impress of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd.... Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... they protected themselves as 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
... timidity and despondency; I pledge you my word I will meet the future with a strong heart. Only remain with me, my dearest Louisa; look at me with your cheering eyes, and inspire my heart with hope. Whenever I falter, remind me of this hour in which I vowed to you to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and—nay, start not, my Adelaide—and Woman. I fling away all these things as the Toys of Boyhood. Life is the Soul's Nursery. I am a Man, and pine for the Illimitable! Mark you me! Has the Morrow any terrors for me, think ye? Did Socrates falter at his poison? Did Seneca blench in his bath? Did Brutus shirk the sword when his great stake was lost? Did even weak Cleopatra shrink from the Serpent's fatal nip? And why should I? My great Hazard hath been played, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... 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 the baronet's fairy ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beguiled, if possible, until the fire again fall. But life is a 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 ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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
... me; and that with a premeditation and contrivance worthy only of that single heart which now, base as well as ungrateful as thou art, seems to quake within thee.—And well may'st thou quake; well may'st thou tremble, and falter, and hesitate, as thou dost, when thou reflectest upon what I have suffered for thy sake, and upon the returns ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... speckled sky is dim with snow, The light flakes falter and fall slow; Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale, Silently drops a silvery veil; The far-off mountain's misty form Is entering now a tent of storm; And all the valley is shut in By flickering curtains ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... be built; and I predict the future greatness of our beloved state, in those historical qualities that outlast the ages, from the fact that she is not tempted by her extent of territory, salubrity of climate, fertility of soil, or by the presence and promise of any natural source of wealth, to falter in her devotion to learning and liberty. And I anticipate for Massachusetts a career of influence beneficial to all, whether disputed or accepted, when I reflect that, with less good fortune in the presence and combination of learning and liberty, Greece, Rome, Venice, Holland, and England, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... gratitude, but neither had they expected any such rudeness as this, so Sindri determined to give Loki a lesson. Going to one corner of the smithy he picked up a pig-skin and taking the hammer in his hands, told his brother to blow steadily, neither to falter nor to fail until he passed the word that the work was done. Then with strength and gentleness he wrought with his tools, having cast nothing into the heat but the pig-skin; with mighty blows and delicate touches he brought thickness and substance into it, until a board looked at him from the flames. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... into a section of luxuriant tropical nature, where we see the cactus in great variety, flowering trees, and ever-graceful palms, with occasional trees of the ceba family grown to vast size. Vegetation here, unlike human beings, seems never to grow old, never to falter in productiveness; crop succeeds crop, harvest follows harvest; it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles of the bright, golden sugar-cane lie in all directions; among the plantations here and there is seen the little cluster ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... 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 ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... at the brave corner column which unconcernedly assumes a responsibility that can hardly be surpassed in the world. For if it were to falter all would go. Down would topple two of the loveliest facades that man ever constructed or the centuries ever caressed into greater beauty. This corner of the palace has an ever-increasing fascination for me, and at all hours of the day and night this strong ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... falter, not to shun the driving attacks of the pursuing horse or grappling foot, to watch his battle-flag glittering in the van, to lead, cheer, hope, inspire, and madly head his men, is the second nature of Valois. He has sworn not to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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
... his place at the table, still laughing in apparent enjoyment of the jest he had just heard. He saw McKeever's ferretlike glance of interrogation and distrust—a thief's distrust of an honest man—but Ronicky's good nature did not falter in outward seeming for an instant. He swept up his hand, bet a hundred, with apparently foolish recklessness, on three sevens, and then had to buy fresh ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... Angus repeated the above story, not once did he falter or trip. He showed me the letter from his uncle, he pointed out the condition of his eyes and the scars on his face; with some demur he accepted my half-crown, saying that he did not ask for anything, and that all he wanted was ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... belongings, stole sorrowfully away from their home. They knew not what was before them, scarcely anything of the country whither they were bound; but such was their faith in the dead woman's word, that they did not falter in their resolution to fulfill ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... hour 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 of the light in the westward Heaven, as eastward quicken the ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Yes, Mrs. Staines received few visitors; but she was at home to HIM. He even began to falter excuses. "Nonsense," said Falcon, and slipped a sovereign into his hand; "you are a good ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... ignorant of much which others know, and may appear to disadvantage when they are talking together; though you appear behind the rest of the world; though you be called a coward, or a child, or narrow-minded, or superstitious; whatever insulting words be applied to you, fear not, falter not, fail not; stand firm, quit you like men; be strong. They think that in the devil's service there are secrets worthy our inquiry, which you share not: yes, there are secrets, and such that it is a shame ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... valiant trenchermen of the Bronx, and spreading from man to man, accompanied with certain mutinous looks and discontented murmurs. For once in his life, and only for once, did the great Peter turn pale; for he verily thought his warriors were going to falter in this hour of perilous trial, and thus to tarnish forever the fame of the province of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 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 Confederates ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... people, they so uniformly favor education? Why, if they must err, do they err so pertinaciously in one direction? How does it happen, that, summon as many witnesses as you please, and cross-question them as severely as you can, they never falter in this testimony, that, where intelligence abounds, there physical vigor does much more abound? that, where education is broad and generous, there the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... will not ail nor autumn falter; Nothing will know that you are gone, Saving alone some sullen plough-land None ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... sure of the young lady," said the Count sententiously. "The opposition may falter a bit there, and half of his battle ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... years, his 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. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... candle, and I was glad indeed when the light burned up bright enough to show that no one, at any rate, was standing by my side. But then there was the passage, and who could say what might be lurking there? Yet I did not falter, but set out on this adventurous journey, walking very slowly indeed—but that was from fear of pitfalls—and nerving myself with the thought of the great diamond which surely would be found at the end of the passage. What should I not be able to do with such wealth? ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... senate-house, to imagine that you are listening to me within the very walls of the senate-house; if my words reveal learning, I beg you to regard them as though you were reading them in the public library. Would that I could find words enough to do justice to the magnitude of this assembly and did not falter just when I would be most eloquent. But the old saying is true, that heaven never blesses any man with unmixed and flawless prosperity; even in the keenest joys there is ever some slight undertone of grief, some blend of gall and honey; there is no rose without a thorn. I ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... dreadful. The young girl felt her strength give way. Her hands fell powerless, her face became fearfully pale, all her limbs trembled, and sinking upon her knees, and casting a terrified glance at the strait waistcoat she was just able to falter in a feeble voice, "Oh, no:—not that—for pity's sake, madame. I will do—whatever you wish." And, her strength quite failing, she would have fallen upon the ground if the two women had not run towards her, and received her ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "Nay, never falter; no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'T is that compels the elements and wrings A human music from the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... it out, Uncle Em!" said Gloria, in a voice that was not Gloria's. "Found out about Pleasant Street and No. 80." Not a jot did her voice falter. She was looking straight into her guardian's eyes. "I don't suppose you could have helped it. It was my property and you kept it in trust. But—" There was a little wail, and the girl buried her face in her hands and burst ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... fireside and for home, For heritage, for altar; And, by the God of yon blue dome, Not one of us shall falter! ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... pictures in them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing justify a divorce ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to Providence, stifling these antic misgivings as he might, and without allowing himself time to falter from his intent, he set out to find Mrs. Vervain's house. He knew the street and the number, for she had often given him the address in her invitations against the time when he should return to America. As he drew near the house a tender ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... 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, and reached out over the rail: in another instant he had tossed the child from ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... ye've sworn At holy Becket's altar— Remember all the ills ye've borne, And scorn'd to shrink or falter— Remember every laurel'd field, Which saw the Crescent waving— Remember when compell'd to yield, Uncounted numbers braving: Remember these, remember too The cause ye strive for, ever; The Cross! the Holy Sepulchre! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... the faithful Krishna, "arduous is thy cruel quest, But thy foaming coursers falter and they need a ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... quickening pace, And those who falter fall behind, Then enter for the mental race, Where mind ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... back?" (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then.) "I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first." (It certainly was.) "You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... if I could!' thought Jehane, and sighed. There were tears in her eyes, also, as she remembered what generosity in him must be frozen up, and what glory of her own. But she did not falter in what she had to do, while he, too exalted to be pitied, began ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... gauze seemed to be floating in the air, falling to earth thread by thread. Not a breath stirred as the dream-like shower sleepily and rhythmically descended from the atmosphere. As they neared the roofs the flakes seemed to falter in their flight; in myriads they ceaselessly pillowed themselves on one another, in such intense silence that even blossoms shedding their petals make more noise; and from this moving mass, whose descent through space ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... pledged His daughter to this brave, and now the village Made preparations for the marriage. There By the warm sea the maidens paid their court To Taka, who so soon would leave their gay Indifferent frolic lives to wed the grave Stern chief. She did not falter at the choice. Love which the maidens sang was but a word; She wished no better fate than to be mated To a strong warrior whom her heart held dear As friend to kind Akau. So she waited. In her slim hands she ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... fair start along a new line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... never been dearer to her than at that moment, when his brilliant eyes seemed to search her soul and magnetize her; yet she did not falter and the aching of her heart was a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a woman of wonderful resource—she tried hard to keep her dignity, not to fail or falter before him, the cold emissary of that cruel mother; but unutterable woe looked out of her eyes at him, her white face had on it the passion of despair, her voice the ring of anguish, the small white hands on ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... December five suits had been commenced, and more were under consideration. A little later, if contemporary newspaper reports can be trusted, the number had swelled to seven. The editor began to appreciate the difficulty and danger of the situation. His courage, however, did not falter. In fact he looked upon himself as manfully standing in the gap for freedom of speech. "These suits," he said "will determine whether an Independent Press is to be protected in the free exercise of honest opinion, or whether it is to be overawed ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... varlet could escape coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got the king's navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, good leftenant, eh?" ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... a voice that made them falter—presenting, as he spoke, a gun. 'Let an old man do that. You can ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that town over yonder is not taken; if my brave captains fall, and my brave soldiers falter at that stone wall; and if our flag shall not soon wave over those ramparts, France may ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth—far too deep down for a few like myself ever to reach them. I was like one, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... strength of the seat, and how easily it might be got from the bishopric, suddenly over and over came his horse, that his very face (which was then thought a very good one) ploughed up the earth where he fell. This fall was ominous, and no question he was apt to consider it so." But Raleigh did not falter, notwithstanding the omen. He begged and obtained the grant of the castle from Queen Elizabeth, and then married Elizabeth Throgmorton and returned there, building himself a new house surrounded by ornamental gardens ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... it thus, O falsest of the saints, Thou hearest our complaints? Tell me, did ever my attachment falter To serve thy altar? Was not thy name, ere ever I did sleep, The last upon my lip? Was not thy name the very first that broke From me when I awoke? Have I not tried with fasting, flogging, penance, And ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter—it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the beaten track! thought Spurlock. A forgotten island beyond the ship lanes, where that grim Hand would falter and move blindly in its search for him! From what he had read, there wouldn't be much to do; and in the idle ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... without excitement, I come with an immovable determination to be joined to the Roman Catholic Church. There is a conviction which lies deeper than all thought or speech, which moves me with an irresistible influence to take this step, which arguments cannot reach, nor any visible power make to falter. Words are powerless against it and inexpressive of it; to attempt to explain, or give to the intellectual mind the reasons why and wherefore, would be as impossible as to paint the heavens or to utter the eternal Word, the centre of all existence. It would be like asking, 'Wherefore ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... 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 World should join hands with the avengers of outraged law. Well, a purblind Germany settled that ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... square and they led [-them-] {him} to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, [-their-] {theirs} was the calmest and [-the-] ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... beat from a thousand drums, the call of the buglers rang over the valley—and then the strange, solemn silence that comes before the shock—the moment when cowards collapse and the brave falter. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... unburied, and cut off From all his race, even as I cut this curl. There, hold him, child, and guard him; let no hand Stir thee, but lean to the calm breast and cling. (To CHORUS) And ye, be not like women in this scene, Nor let your manhoods falter; stand true men To this defence, till I return prepared, Though all cry No, to give him ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... long-delayed honeymoon. Honeymoon! God help her! Her soul recoiled in horror from the hideous prospect. Only two days more, she thought, pressing her lips tightly together. Oh, the horror of it! She dared not think of it, or she would go mad! But she would not falter. She had told herself that she was now resigned. She was going to defeat Fate ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... wife and mother, The maid with sweetheart dear, Lest those they love should falter Hold ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... began to falter and to get self-conscious. And when he came to the verse, "A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow because her hour is come", he missed it out. Miriam had felt him growing uncomfortable. She shrank when the well-known words ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense of the city ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... marry a woman and she shares his desire, or if on her becoming pregnant he desires to marry her, he speaks with her parents and with his. If either of her parents objects, no marriage occurs; but he does not usually falter, even though his parents do object. They say the advent of a babe seldom fails to win the good will of the young man's parents. In the case of the girl's pregnancy, marriage is more assured, and her father builds or gives her a house. The olag is no longer ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... 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, Joy, Empire, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... obliged to exercise all her powers of self-control to restrain an exclamation of dismay. It was indeed more than dismay; she was absolutely terrified by the Marquis de Valorsay's unexpected declaration, and she could only falter: "Monsieur! monsieur!" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Martha, I didn't—I don't—" I was beginning to falter a denial to what had suddenly struck me as a truth when we were interrupted by the advent of Martha's child, the Stray, as I afterwards found was the only name he possessed, one cruelly indicative of his relation to the social structure of the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... I have laid my heart upon Thy altar, But can not get the wood to burn; It hardly flares ere it begins to falter, And to the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... blows with tenfold keenness, and the crust of want seems peculiarly unpalatable. They are reluctant, not to say "ashamed, to beg." The blushes of an instinctive sensibility suffuse their countenances, and petitions for assistance falter on their tongues. They have to contend not only with the afflictions of poverty, but with all the timidity which a consciousness of degradation superinduces. In many cases of this description, persons of eminent worth have been found, who could not overcome their scruples, till absolute want forced ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... have always kept your end up In the hardships we've gone through. If we'd stayed, and I had never Seen her face or touched her hand, We should still have been contented, On our little piece of land. This strange spell won't let me falter, Though the chasing never ends; Seems that nothing ever'll stop it, Sickness, death, or loss of friends. Where this love will drive a fellow, I ain't wise enough to tell; Sometimes think it leads to heaven By a trail that runs ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... of the best of fathers! will ye falter With all they left ye perilled and at stake? Ho! once again on Freedom's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... another part of 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 ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... happened that when Mr. Hastings mail had been delivered as usual, the boy hesitated, and finally asked with an unusual falter ...
— Three People • Pansy
... has this loyalty dominant in his nature never pronounces anything false which subsequent investigation, or the investigation by others, proves true. He never becomes an obstacle to the spread of any truth. He is always the first to welcome a new truth and the last to falter in sustaining it. He is always ready to recognize the same sincerity and fidelity in others, and to give a kindly welcome to the labors and discoveries of other followers of truth. As brave men readily recognize and honor each other, so do the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... not the insight and the courage to make use of them at the right moment. If the supreme question should arise of submitting to rebellion or of crushing it in a common ruin with the wrong that engendered it, we believe neither the Government nor the people would falter. The time for answering that question may be nearer than we dream; but meanwhile we would not hasten what would at best be a terrible necessity, and justifiable only as such. We believe this war is to prepare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... men who chase the roe, Whose footsteps never falter, Who bring with them, where'er they go, A smack of old SIR WALTER. Of such as he, the men sublime Who lead their troops victorious, Whose deeds go down to after-time, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... Shooter's Hill. Granted his choice of a mount, he straightway took the finest in the stable, with that keen perception of horse-flesh which never deserted him, and he confronted his first victim in the liveliest of humours. There was no falter in his voice, no hint of inexperience in his manner, when he shouted the battle-cry: 'Stand and deliver!' The horseman, fearful of his life, instantly surrendered a purse of ten sovereigns, as to the most practised assailant ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... magic from the land below, for there is never one with the barest minute to spare that does not pause and try to be clever over Higgins Farm. You may see one industriously climbing the clouds over the Enchanted Forest, evidently trying hard to be intent on its destination. You may see it falter, struggling with its sense of duty, and then break weakly into a mild figure eight. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the air to show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit of frivolous competition ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... sit together in her garden amid the flowers, and she, busied with her broidering needle, would question him of his doings, and betimes her breast would heave and her dexterous hand tremble and falter to hear of dangers past; or, talking of the future, her gracious head would droop with cheeks that flushed most maidenly, until Beltane, kneeling to her loveliness, would clasp her in his arms, while she, soft-voiced, would bid ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... eyes were full of weeping, He falter'd in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onwards he did stalk, As pompous, black, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... falter in my speech, O cruel Ligurine? Why do I chase from place to place In weather wet and shiny? Why down my nose forever flows The tear that's ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... of Ave Maria! the uncertainty as to whether our heavy carriage could be dragged across, the horses struggling and splashing in the boiling torrent, and the horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Senora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which a coach had been dashed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wet and cold, with several of the children sick, some of their feet bare and worn, and one of the mothers with an infant in her arms, incapable of partaking of the diet,—it is impossible to imagine the ordeal they were passing. It was enough to cause the bravest hearts to falter. But not for a moment did they allow themselves to look back. It was exceedingly agreeable to hear even the little children testify that in the most trying hour on the road, not for a moment did they want to go back. The following advertisement, taken from The Cambridge Democrat of November 4, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... window-panes of their boudoirs; but never did their sons become world compellers. Despite the pretty theory of Dr. Maxwell, the same fiery cross is laid upon the daughters as upon the sons of men, and thousands falter and fall beneath it and are swept downwards to their doom. Were it otherwise, were women the passionless creatures some doctors delight to paint them, all our encomiums of female virtue were idle mockery. It is because we realize that in the veins of the vestal virgin runs the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was being called upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the South in ruins—he has been arming the negroes—it—it is incredible that you should all know this—to ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... kept Pete Noel going. But as the brief northern day began to wane, and a shadow to darken behind the thick, white gloom of the storm, his forces, his tough, corded muscles and his tempered nerves, again began to falter. He caught himself stumbling, and seeking excuse for delay in getting up. In spite of every effort of his will, he saw visions—thick, protecting woods close at one side or the other, or a snug log camp, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... her eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and—I think I will go in now. It must be ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... who had lagged slowly came back. His face was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted society in which he lived. We punish our criminals, and when they escape and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... on and on, and its step has exalted freedom and humanity. We are undergoing the same ordeal as did our predecessors nearly a century ago. We are following the course they blazed. They triumphed. Will their successors falter and plead organic impotency in the nation? Surely after 125 years of achievement for mankind we will not now surrender our equality with other powers on matters fundamental and essential to nationality. With no such purpose was the nation created. In no such ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... a dozen fares with a steady hand. The temptation was over. Six more strokes—then nine without a falter. He even imagined the bell rang more distinctly than usual, even encouragingly. The car stopped. Jim flung the door open with a triumphant sweep of his arm. He felt ready to face the world. But the baby—his arm ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the soul. Every word which really inspires is spoken as if the Golden Age had never passed. The great teachers ignore the personal identity and speak to the eternal pilgrim. Too often the form or surface far removed from beauty makes us falter, and we speak to that form and the soul is not stirred. But an equal temper arouses it. To whoever hails in it the lover, the hero, the magician, it will respond, but not to him who accosts it in the name and style of its outer self. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... sinister glance of his grey eyes—he had a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the man—that was overpowering—that made the great falter and the poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had been ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... me this way and that, hanging on my arms, slobbering over me, howling with his mouth up in the air. And so at last I lost my temper, and I snatched up my gun and struck him with the butt-end of it. My poor Rolf!" said Uncle Pick, all at once, with a falter in his voice; and he stopped abruptly, and stooped down and laid his hand on ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... to witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!' And I saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals sharpened to a point of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right; it was his duty, but he was not going to carry it out. He began to see what this meant, but his resolution did not falter. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... lucky chance her senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from nervous ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... turned themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight was done; many would lose heart in the face of such great odds before the green blessing of alfalfa should rise out of the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Did she falter for a moment? There flashed over her the remembrance of Maurice's anger, of his continued absence, of the probability that he would never come back to her; and the dream of a tender love that could envelop the rest of her ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... grace 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 ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... 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
... strength of desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself at the library door with ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... his buff-coat over his heart, while another came between his arm and his side, drawing blood a little from both; while a third and worse went into his horse between the fore shoulders. Brian felt the poor beast falter shudderingly, and pause; then the O'Donnells shouted greatly and closed about him, thinking to slay him before his men could ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... assured that 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 ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong young arms round ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... his mind, some of them familiar, some of them strange and terrible, held in check by a little monitor, who sat aloft somewhere and looked on. The thing that worried him was that the monitor was sick, and holding out with difficulty. Should he give up, should he falter for a moment, out would rush these intolerable things—only Anthony could know what a state of blackness there would be if the worst of him could roam his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... man merely wants me as a desirable addition to his furniture—and I, why sometimes I think I hate him. But, oh! my dear, if you'd seen my Father's face; seen the dawning of a wonderful hope. . . . I just couldn't think of anything except him—and so I went on lying, and I didn't falter. Gradually he straightened up; twenty years seemed to slip from him ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... dare I, ask the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... time to have abandoned his iron-works and followed entirely the fortunes of the king. He was sworn surveyor of the Mews or Armoury in 1640, but being unable to pay for the patent, another was sworn in in his place. Yet his loyalty did not falter, for in the beginning of 1642, when Charles set out from London, shortly after the fall of Strafford and Laud, Dud went with him.[8] He was present before Hull when Sir John Hotham shut its gates in the king's face; at ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... I'm thine wi' a passion sincerest, And thou hast plighted me love o' the dearest! And thou'rt the angel that never can alter— Sooner the sun in his motion would falter. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... when they feel in themselves as if death was coming as a tempest, to steal them away from their enjoyments, and lusts, and delights; then the bed shakes on which they lie, then the proud tongue doth falter in their mouth, and their knees knock one against another; then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears, and arraigns them before God's judgment-seat, or threatens to follow them down to hell, and there to wreck its fury on them, for all the abuses and affronts this wicked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the greatest of artists. It was an opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive look about—"who is there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... day the world will need a man! I stand beside his cot at night And wonder if I'm teaching him, as best I can, to know the right. I am the father of a boy—his life is mine to make or mar— And he no better can become than what my daily teachings are; There will be need for someone great—I dare not falter from the line— The man that is to serve the world may be ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... discovery was made that afternoon, which, for the moment, made the boisterous gentleman from Lloyd's falter in his denunciations, and hushed the menaces of the indignant and well-dressed personage who protected the revenue, and saddened the few hearts amongst us not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... well. But now, yea, even while I reel And falter, one poor hope, as hope now is, I clutch at in this coil of miseries; To save some honour for my children's sake; Yea, for myself some fragment, though things break In ruin around me. Nay, I will ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... Madame Mantalini, looking at Ralph, and prudently abstaining from the slightest glance at her husband, lest his many graces should induce her to falter in her resolution, 'to put him upon a fixed allowance; and I say that if he has a hundred and twenty pounds a year for his clothes and pocket-money, he may consider himself a very ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... war-wand's forgers wrought never better steel Since first the burg of heaven uprose for man-folk's weal. Now let the man among you whose heart and hand may shift To pluck it from the oakwood e'en take it for my gift. Then ne'er, but his own heart falter, its point and edge shall fail Until the night's beginning and the ending of the tale. Be merry Earls of the Goth-folk, O Volsung Sons be wise, And reap the battle-acre that ripening for you lies: For they told me in the wild wood, I heard on the mountain side, That the shining house of heaven ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... he vanished as a purer brighter presence gained my side — 'Heed him not! there's truth and friendship in this wondrous world,' she cried, And of those who cleave to virtue in their climbing for renown, Only they who faint or falter from the height are shaken down. At a cynic's baneful teaching let your lip in scorn be curled! 'Brotherhood and Love and Honour!' is ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... car took no risks. He promptly dropped into second gear, with the result that the gap between them increased to nearly a hundred yards. Then the motor-cycle began to falter. Perhaps Ramblethorne was not thoroughly acquainted with the mechanism of the two-speed. By the time he got the friction-clutch into action the car had more than regained the lost distance—and the fugitive had not yet reached the stiffest ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the minstrel. But I am not at liberty to make this comparison. If a youth were to begin his career in such an assemblage, with such examples to guide and to animate, it will be pleaded, there would be no cause for apprehension; he could not falter, he could not be misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which they who perform them, in their ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Mrs. Tweksbury saw resemblance to no one she remembered, so she concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her eyes to ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock |
