"Incoherent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyebrows of doubt, her mother, heedless of what she was saying, was suddenly overcome by her appealing look and drew her close with a rush of little incoherent tender cries choked with tears. It was as though she were seeing her for the first time. Judge Emery twice tried to speak before his husky voice was under control. He patted his wife on the shoulder. "There, there, Mother," ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and the woman of the house sat in a corner looking upon him with dread. I addressed him, but he would scarcely return an answer. At last he commenced discoursing with great volubility in Gypsy and Latin. I did not understand much of what he said. His words were wild and incoherent, but he repeatedly threatened some person. The last bottle was now exhausted: he demanded more. I told him in a gentle manner that he had drunk enough. He looked on the ground for some time, then slowly, and somewhat hesitatingly, drew his sword and laid it ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... might), and delights in the neologisms and the exotic novelty of Apuleius. His curiosity extends to the later Christian poets—from the coloured verse of Claudian down to the verse which is scarcely verse of the incoherent ninth century. He is, of course, an amateur of exquisite printing, of beautiful bindings, and possesses an incomparable Baudelaire (edition tiree a un exemplaire), a unique Mallarme. Catholicism being ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... who remarked that, "if the olive-crown of the Hippodrome had fallen to the lot of Cambridge, none would deny her sister's claim to the parsley of the caestus." The second time was very late in the evening, by M'Diarmid. It must be confessed that gallant chieftain was somewhat incoherent, and amid protestations of admiration and eternal friendship, much to our astonishment, wept profusely. Still later, he got very maudlin indeed, and was heard to murmur, looking at his scarred knuckles, that "he was afraid he must have hurt some one ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... enthusiasts of our party, who had been so light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so anxious were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety grew and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until my fears were aroused and I began to have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... apart, albeit in his agony of grief and remorse he accused himself wildly as answerable for the tragedy, and gave clear proof that the charge of madness was well founded, if strange looks and desperate, incoherent words ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... reply. She had turned very pale on hearing this straightforward question, and now withdrew, muttering some incoherent words. ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... perfectly sensible of the defect of my plan, or rather absence of plan. By attacking as I do, one by one, so many incoherent Sophisms, which clash, and then again often mingle with each other, I am conscious that I condemn myself to a disorderly and capricious struggle, and am ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... cast her arms around her disinterested friend and remained weeping—how could she accept this great sacrifice? She in her turn pleaded for the life and liberty of the Mohawk, but the chief turned a cold ear to her passionate and incoherent pleading. He was weary—he was impatient of further excitement—he coldly motioned to them to withdraw; and the friends in sadness retired to talk over all that had taken place since that sad day when Catharine was taken from her home. While her heart was ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... gentleness, controlling her with a kind look. She shivered and hesitated; her eyes wavered. Then she began to say a number of rapid, incoherent things, in an under-voice. Manisty drew ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to reveal his mistress (i.e., his picture) on condition that Poussin persuades his mistress to sit to him for an hour, for he would compare her loveliness with his art. These conditions having been complied with, he draws aside the curtain; but the two painters see only confused colour and incoherent form, and in one corner "a delicious foot, a living foot escaped by a miracle from a slow ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... without warning, they had come into a strange house, and found their son standing before them. As I think of it now, I wonder that the shock did not do them serious harm, and I can quite understand the incoherent, almost meaningless ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... recovered from her astonishment at this incoherent speech, sufficiently to make any sort of reply, the rest of the party were seen returning from St. Austin's, and Winifred and Edward hastened towards the two sisters, to tell them all ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not know George Sand unless we feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole.' With this spirit, however, M. Caro has no sympathy. Madame Sand's doctrines are antediluvian, he tells us, her philosophy is quite dead and her ideas of social regeneration are Utopian, incoherent and absurd. The best thing for us to do is to forget these silly dreams and to read Teverino and Le Secretaire Intime. Poor M. Caro! This spirit, which he treats with such airy flippancy, is the very leaven of modern life. It is remoulding the world for us and fashioning our age anew. If it is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... bunting on the walls waved and fluttered with the gyrations of those religious dervishes. Nobody knew—nobody cared how long this frenzy lasted—it ceased only with the collapse of the musicians. Then, with much vague bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and incoherent partings, everybody went dazedly home; there was no other dancing after that—the waltz was the one event of the festival and of the history of Santa Ana. And later that night, when the timid Mrs. Wade, in the seclusion of her own room and the disrobing of her ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... woman, a penitent woman!...' wailed the Countess, her arms about her husband's damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing; vague, incoherent sounds broke from ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... my workroom I could hear Joe in his delirium. Now he was busily writing letters, now in a harsh excited voice he was talking to a crowd of men, again he was furiously shoveling coal. All this was incoherent, only mutterings most of the time. But when the voice rose suddenly it was so full of a stern pain, so quivering with revolt against life, and it poured out such a torrent of commonplace minute details that showed this was Joe's daily life and the deepest part of his being—that ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... with a vacant expression. It was evident that he did not quite understand the question, but he began again to mutter in a partly incoherent manner. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... former opinion upon this subject, and no courtship will be practised; for the chief object in the visit is to show him the King, who has been worse the two last days than ever: this morning he made an effort to jump out of the window, and is now very turbulent and incoherent. Sir G. Baker went yesterday to give Pitt a little specimen of his loquacity, in his discovery of some material state-secrets, at which he looked astonished. The Physicians wish him to be removed to Kew; on which we shall proceed as we settled. Have you heard any thing of the Foreign ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of Painting and Poetry may admit. There may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine its limits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and, I ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... this League. Journalists have to be aware of such things. He in no way resented the League; he brushed it aside as of no account. And, indeed, it was not aimed at him personally, nor at his wife personally, but at the great mass of thought—or of incoherent, muddled emotion that passed for thought—which the Anti-Potters had agreed, for brevity's sake, to call 'Potterism.' Potterism had very certainly not been created by the Potters, and was indeed no better represented by the goods with ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... licking at the air. The tension of her thought relaxed. She remembered that when he walked in streets he was always making pictures. She thought of his words.... "It's a part of me that love hasn't changed, except to increase. A pestiferous sanity keeps demanding of me that I translate incoherent things into words. The city keeps handing itself to me like a blank piece of paper to write ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office, and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery to have been committed by another boy, not in custody; and that the prosecutor had carried him away, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... coat; yet the relief obtained did not correspond to the hopes we had formed, and during the night the fever became stronger than it had been hitherto. The restlessness and agitation increased, and the patient spoke several times in an incoherent manner." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... government did present these two phases, so different and inharmonious. By his policy at home Louis XII. deserved and obtained the name of Father of the People; by his enterprises and wars abroad he involved France still more deeply than Charles VIII. had in that mad course of distant, reckless, and incoherent conquests for which his successor, Francis I., was destined to pay by capture at Pavia and by the lamentable treaty of Madrid, in 1526, as the price of his release. Let us follow these two portions of Louis XII.'s reign, each ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "Cabin." An incoherent flood of dream-stuff welled up and up till her head was dizzy and her heart seemed bursting. Shadows, and looming bulks of things, and unintelligible associations fluttered and whirled about, and she strove vainly with her consciousness to grasp and hold them. For she felt that there, in that ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... droppings than he himself brought home;—nay, made stately corn-ricks therewith, while the reaper himself was still seen only with a strutting armful of newly-cut sheaves. But I should misinform you grossly if I left you to infer that his collections were a heap of incoherent 'miscellanea'. No! the very contrary. Their variety, conjoined with the too great coherency, the too great both desire and power of referring them in systematic, nay, genetic subordination, was that which rendered his schemes gigantic and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... something into her ear—wild, incoherent words that seemed to have the power to quiet the storm. And she was responding—she knew that eager words were falling from her lips, but she never knew what they were—responding with a fervor that ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... With this incoherent expression of a resolution unknown to me, he unlocked a shabby trunk hidden in a corner, and took from it a ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... first time in my life I heard a woman give abandoned, incoherent utterance to an agony of passion; and it sounded horrible, like the cry of an animal ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... let the liquor run through as fast as it was filled, and always drain an empty cup. Helgi had adopted a different device. His head lay on his arms, and in reply to all calls to drink he merely uttered incoherent shouts, while every now and then Estein could see that he ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... necessary to satisfy human needs and everything necessary to realise such will and purpose as existed then in human hearts was already at hand, one has still to tell of hardship, famine, anger, confusion, conflict, and incoherent suffering. There was no scheme for the distribution of this vast new wealth that had come at last within the reach of men; there was no clear conception that any such distribution was possible. As one attempts ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... six weeks. An incoherent note heralded his return. "News! great news!" he wrote. "The Nilghai knows, and so does the Keneu. We're all back on Thursday. Get lunch ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and raw creed of her sire. But one evening, when she was goaded by more than usual restlessness, Sleeny asked her if she would go with him to a "sperritual lectur." To escape from her own society, she accepted, and the wild, incoherent, and amazingly fluent address she heard excited her interest and admiration. After that, she often asked him to take her, and in the long walk to and from the Harmony Hall, where the long-haired ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... spoken with a sort of passion, as though it meant much to him. She liked him better now than when he walked up and down, giving her incoherent advice. Whatever he might mean, it was something which had power ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... evidence; but the earl pleaded insanity of mind; and, in order to establish this plea, called many witnesses to attest his lunacy in a variety of instances, which seemed too plainly to indicate a disordered imagination: unfounded jealousy of plots and conspiracies, unconnected ravings, fits of musing, incoherent ejaculations, sudden starts of fury, denunciations of unprovoked revenge, frantic gesticulations, and a strange caprice of temper, were proved to have distinguished his conduct and deportment. It appeared that lunacy had been a family taint, and affected divers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... which was which—and educated beyond anything Australians could dream about. There was one man—poor chap, Anstruther said he was drowned in the Lusitania—who had a team of four black cobs. I think Anstruther used to dream about them at night; he got poetical and incoherent when he ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... trembling white-gloved fingers, while the other hand was boldly put forward to shake hands with the country lass. Singing Sal was greatly taken aback; but she took Nan's hand for the briefest second, and managed to say something quite incoherent about 'long life and happiness, Miss—I beg your pardon, Miss—Ma'am;' and then the ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... a flood of incoherent questions that were put by all the blacks in a body, accompanied by divers looks ominous of the most serious disasters, blended with bursts of laughter that broke out of their risible natures in a way to render the medley of sensations as ludicrous as it was strange. Mike soon found answering ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... rapid and incoherent expressions, he approached the hermit, who stood unmoved, apparently the only unconcerned spectator in the rising tumult. The seneschal's guards were already in motion, but Adam was the first who attempted ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she hung on ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... very near to where the secretary, Sir John, and Mr Haredale stood, Lord George turned round and, making a few remarks of a sufficiently violent and incoherent kind, concluded with the usual sentiment, and called for three cheers to back it. While these were in the act of being given with great energy, he extricated himself from the press, and stepped up to Gashford's side. Both he and Sir John being well known to the populace, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... personality from the eyes that might overlook that sisterly barrier, but could not overleap it. If his eyes had said less, or if she could have compelled her lips to say more! But her usually active tongue seemed to lack for words and she found herself talking in a reckless and somewhat incoherent manner upon all sorts of topics, which she dragged forward in order to keep in check the words which the look in his eyes ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and he was evidently disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of his mind, expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... was too great for her already overstrained intellect. A giddiness seized upon her; every thing seemed to whirl before her eyes; she gasped some incoherent words, and sunk senseless upon ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... gradually proceeds to mix up brain-pictures with realities, and after a while he speaks and acts like a very crazy man. He is in a kind of dream; his imaginations are wild and disconnected, his language is incoherent. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... at Clarendon Park—make it as short as his heart could desire,—she would never be the cause of any disagreement—poor, dear, kind Cecilia! She would write directly to Mrs. Collingwood." At the close of these last incoherent sentences, Helen was awe-struck by the absolute composed immovability and silence of Lady Davenant. Helen stood ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... keep them myself, since the Armenian had wished me to do so. The old man got angry; but whilst he was quarrelling with me I noticed a disagreeable dirty yellow colour spreading over his face, and that he was mixing up all sorts of incoherent nonsense in his talk. When we reached the Square he reeled about like a drunken man, until he fell to the ground in front of the Ducal Palace—dead. With a loud wail I threw myself upon the corpse. The people came running round us, but as soon as the dreaded ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... with additional apologies, somewhat incoherent, and explanatory details as to effects that had ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... to be released. He did release me, and, in an agony of emotion, besought my pardon for the misery I had endured. 'Now, Therese,' cried he, 'all is as it ought to be! you are my only hope. Consent to be mine, or the world has no hold on me!' His voice was hurried and incoherent. Raising my eyes to his, I beheld them wild and bloodshot. Terrified at his look, and overcome by my own distracted thoughts, my head sunk on the marble. With increased violence he exclaimed, 'Have I deceived myself here too? Therese, did you ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and only spoke a few incoherent words in German. The accident happened about a quarter before twelve, and at four he was ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... "You are incoherent, dear lad," said I; "and yet you tell me one thing plainly enough; which is that in place of loving this one or that one, or the cordwainer's strapping daughter, you are in love with being ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... only pour out incoherent thanks and glance enviously at Emile Blondet. There was as great a difference between a great lady like Mme. de Montcornet and Coralie as between Coralie and a girl out of the streets. The Countess was young and witty and beautiful, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... that afternoon, and long before the appointed hour she was ringing furiously for the elevator. From her incoherent chatter on the way down, Angelo gathered that he was literally to fly to her the very minute he was off duty, and then she was clambering blindly into the car and rushing around for ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... had been caused to descend to the bottom, to which she was at once secured by her four grip-anchors; immediately after which the professor, with a somewhat hurried and incoherent apology, left his companions and ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sleep is easily produced, and that while holding a conversation with a subject who talks in his sleep one may readily hypnotize him. Without doubt he need not fear this from Phillis; but it was possible that some night when incoherent words escaped him she would not be able to resist the temptation to enter into a conversation with him, and to lead him to confess what she wished to know—what the love that she felt for her brother would drive her to ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... began timidly, and then continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, "he will be simply delighted that you've really come, because he said you were the only person he would consent to see at all—the only doctor, I mean. But, of course, he doesn't know how frightened I am, or how much I have noticed. He pretends ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... at me searchingly and his eyes cleared. He swallowed a mass of incoherent words in an effort to master himself; then ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... ingenious or successful. Arcading is a very beautiful decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. But where it is used to fill up an irregularly-shaped mass of wall which there is no need to decorate, it looks incoherent and confused. Had the wall been left bare it would have afforded an excellent contrast to the elaborate pattern of the central window. As it is, this decoration seems to be conceived in a spirit, of which there are further evidences in the decoration of ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... must own her behaviour has warranted them—has it not been in this particular incoherent ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Hamilton, "just as I was going to bed, and knocked me up." He was almost incoherent in his joy. "He offered me three thousand five hundred pounds for my shares, and I took ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... into which he had been so unexpectedly cast had passed away without danger, began to rise so exuberantly that his conversation became quite loquacious and mirthful, if not actually, to a certain extent, incoherent. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... all-night's search, and he was in his bedroom in the bitter sleep of utter exhaustion and despair. Suddenly his heart had failed him and his brain had reeled. He had begun to feel dazed, to forget for a minute what he was looking for. He had made incoherent replies to the men with him, and finally one, after a whispered consultation with the others, had said: "Look at here, Andrew, old fellow; you'd better go home and rest a bit. We'll look all the harder while you're ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... told him in language which at least would have been forcible and dignified? Instead of that, she had begun with mawkish compliments, unable in her excitement to think of anything else, and ended with an incoherent jumble that barely escaped being hysterical He would think that she was as lacking in sense as in womanly self-respect. At last she turned up the gas, for very shame avoiding a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she did so, and bathed ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... remained unchanged, and in the eyes of the moralist as perverse as ever. If, however, the latter be true—that is, if the social mechanism be false—then there is a chance for a better future; for our incoherent and absurd societies are changing more or less with every century. They are at the mercy or whim of a tyrant, or of a revolution of the mass; they may therefore be reformed or done ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... an answer came a loud and insulting laugh, followed by an incoherent mouthing of words. Eva looked startled, blanched. It was so unlike her father. For the moment Locke was piqued. But he tried not to show it as he turned away from ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... to the door of the house and dismounted, after he had with some difficulty found a man to hold their horses. From the heavy brick porch they looked across the superb river to the raw and incoherent ugliness of the city, idealised into dreamy beauty by the atmosphere, and the soft background of purple hills behind. Opposite them, with its crude "thus saith the law" stamped on white dome and fortress-like walls, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the slim girl in black before him, something now, before she was forever lost in the gabble of her relatives; but he could think of nothing appropriate, expressive of the tumult within him. His misery deepened with every step, grew into a bitterness of rebellion that almost forced an incoherent reckless speech. Rosemary Roselle didn't turn, she didn't linger, there were a great many things that she might say. The colored woman was positively hurrying forward. A great loneliness swept over him. He had not, he thought drearily, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... This was my broad-browed, frank-faced, golden-haired, bright, smiling, incoherent, inconsistent, inconsequential, light-hearted, hilarious Jack—the Jack who was once the joy of every company, rollicking, reckless, and without a care. To this complexion had he come at last. Oh, what a moral ruin was here, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... into her very neck, just because it was the most hateful thing that could happen? And he saw it. She knew he did so, for he dropped his eyes at once, and there was an absolute silence, which she broke in desperation, by an incoherent attempt to say something, and that ended by blundering into the tender subject—the children; she found she had been talking about the place to which she thought of taking them, a quiet spot on the northern coast ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passion—like one throwing herself on his breast. The letter was long and incoherent, written at night beside Carrie's bed—and borrowing much, unconsciously, from the phraseology of the novels she still got from Bowness. Alack! it is to be feared that John Fenwick—already at another point ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which is manifestly seated in the central organs of the body (i.e. in the stomach and the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot but lead to perpetual suffering and distraction of thought; and there the patient will be often tedious and incoherent. People who have not suffered from any great disturbance in those organs are little aware how indispensable to the process of thinking are the momentary influxes of pleasurable feeling from the regular goings on of life in its ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... from a long dream of night and fear, of passion, pain, and death, and opened eyes whose vision seemed curiously clear, to realise a new world, very unlike that in which the incoherent action of his dream had moved—a world of light and lively air, as sweet and wholesome as glistening white paint, sunshine, and an abundance of pure, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... These incoherent words threw the first glimpse of light on the meaning of her distress and penitence. I doubt if the best woman in Christendom would so reproach and abase herself, if convicted of even a worse sin than the secret use of those stimulants ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... is a stormier conflict of emotions. Certainly his passion transcends the vivacious sentiment of poor Gallus. I tell you, my wary critic, I am almost willing to believe that through this silly young dandy we are getting a new voice in our literature. Who knows? who knows? It is un-Roman, yes, incoherent and moody and subversive of law and order, but is it false to human life? A man may choose to dwell apart with his own heart rather than with Lucretius's science or Virgil's nature, or your own practical philosophy. Certain lines that this boy has written haunt ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... has been going on of late in a way that would justify his friends putting him in an asylum. His business affairs are, I fear, in a bad way, and he not only comes with excessive punctuality for Miss Tippet's rent, but he asks her for loans of money in a wild incoherent fashion, and favours her with cautions and warnings of a kind that are utterly incomprehensible. Only the other night he came to her and asked if she did not intend soon to visit some of her friends; and on being informed that she did not, he went further and advised ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... something of the world, after leading the student's monotonous and secluded life. Enclosed in this letter were bills of a large amount, contracted at college, of whose existence the father was perfectly unconscious. No reference was made to these, save in the postscript, most incoherent in expression, and written evidently with an unsteady hand. He begged his father to forgive him for having forgotten—the word forgotten was partially erased, and neglected substituted in its place—ah! Louis, Louis, you ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed him from her memory like a fly, had that been all. But the rage of despair and failure was in her soul when she raved like a caged lion from door to window, imprisoned, trapped, and betrayed, expressing her incoherent transport of pain to the mob which would have had her blood, but which, overcome by the spectacle of that supreme and awful passion, became silent with awe or hushed by a spasm of pity ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... not a breath of air; Nature sleeps so calmly that she dares not even breathe for fear of waking; the very river has hushed his flow. Without, the starlit calm of a summer's night in a great wilderness; within, a hurricane of wild and incoherent thoughts battling with one another in their fury to fall upon him and rend him—and on the other side the great wall of mountain, thousands of children praying at their mother's knee to this poor dazed thing. I suppose this half delirious wretch must have been myself. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... preservation of the forces of spiritual life: that is, a period of "spiritual concentration," which opens up the possibility of acquiring "moral powers." It is from methodical "meditation" that moral personality must draw its powers of solidification, without which the "inner man," incoherent and unbalanced, fails to possess itself and dispose of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... other, and they lifted her, without her connivance, to her feet and kept her on them. Then they walked her down the steps. On the level below she showed taller than either of them; she was bundled up in different incoherent wraps; her head was muffled, and she wore a battered ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... who put it into the Proceedings of the Psychological Society laid more store by it than he did by the scraps and incoherent bits of jargon which pictured the old man's lonely grief. They are not preserved for us, but in the Proceedings, on page 1125, we have this from ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... there were low incoherent cries and simple foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared to think that he was back in prison, and made a little ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Chinese, who had probably been settled in Ho Nan just as long as the Western ruling races had been in Assyria and Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the incoherent tribes rushing aimlessly from all sides to attack them, were the ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Julia's mother and Nell, in the light carriage; and kisses, and tears, and little laughy sobs, and words that ran out with little freshets of tears, and unanswered questions, and unasked answers, broken and incoherent; yet all were happy, and all thankful and grateful to their Father in Heaven; and blessings and thanks—many of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... looks ill, and sometimes quite wretchedly. He came twice lately to my room, I think to speak to me on some matter of importance; but he said only a sentence or two, and even these broken and incoherent. He seemed unable to command spirits for the interview; and, indeed, he grew so agitated and strange, that I was alarmed, and felt greatly relieved ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... being like a hotch-potch. It's incoherent, but I can't help it. Sitting in an hotel room one can't write better. Excuse its being long, It's not my fault. My pen ran away with me—besides, I wanted to go on talking to you. It's three o'clock in the night. My hand is tired. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... announced the return of 'the boys,' among whom Lady Merrifield still classed her colonel brother. They were muddy up to the eyes, but they had seen a great deal more than was easy to understand in their incoherent accounts. Wilfed had rolled into a wet ditch, and been picked out by his uncle and hung up to dry at a little village inn, where—this seemed to have been the supreme glory—they had made a meal on pigs'-liver and bread-and-cheese ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stood her ground even when some of the maskers, encouraged by her attitude, climbed down from the rail and surrounded her, dancing, hallooing, leaping. The snake-headed one was the wildest in his antics and shrieked and shouted loudest of them all. But mixed up with incoherent cries and sounds she caught ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... gain, Mazzini!—Yes, but first Set down thy people's faults; set down the want Of soul-conviction; set down aims dispersed, And incoherent means, and valour scant Because of scanty faith, and schisms accursed That wrench these brother-hearts from covenant With freedom and each other. Set down this, And this, and see to overcome it when The seasons bring the fruits thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... and chilling hour before dawn, was described by Napoleon as a most rare quality among soldiers, and such being the case it is hardly to be looked for among women. With chattering teeth and random motions, half-distraught with incoherent terrors, Desire made a hasty, incomplete toilet in the dark of her freezing bedroom, and ran downstairs. In the living-room she found her mother and the smaller children with the negro servants and Keziah Pixley, the white domestic. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... flickered, and went out. There was a vast, muffled stillness in the snow-filled air. The first night of the New Year was nearly dead. As the light in her room grew ghostlier, Princess Sophia's voice became gradually incoherent, dropped to a vague whisper, and finally ceased. She slid gently from her knees to a sitting posture, her head resting against the wall, under the little shrine. And then her ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... not being within hearing distance, they could only express their welcome by frantic wavings of hands, handkerchiefs, and flags. But at last the gangplank was put in place, and at last the Fairfields crossed it, and then an enthusiastic and somewhat incoherent scene of reunion followed. ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... risk your life? In God's name, what manner of woman are you, and where did you learn to use the sword? Had you no thought of me?" I was somewhat incoherent. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... and what was of more force, that she believed and felt in her own heart that every word of her recital was heard by her Creator. Albert had heard prayers and religious exhortations without number; prayers that were incoherent, pointless, vague, or uttered to the hearers instead of God; prayers that contained advice to the Deity galore, but of supplication and thankfulness not a vestige; but never before one that reached his heart and touched his feelings as the strange and piteous supplication uttered by ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... carriage,—a magnificent state-carriage. He had invited some twenty people, former friends of his, to a great wedding- breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them. And once in his carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he broke forth in incoherent imprecations and absurd threatenings. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... P. Smith, "O.T. History," p. 278, n. 2; while Duhm, Giesebrecht, Davidson, Driver, Gillies, Peake and Skinner all take vii. 1-15 and xxvi. to refer to the same occasion early in Jehoiakim's reign. Duhm and Skinner remark on an apparently incoherent association of Place ( Holy Place) and Land in vii. 3-7. The clause about the Land may be a later addition. Yet in verses 13-15 (the substance of which Skinner admits to be genuine) the destruction of the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... seems to offer no bar to their rapid solution, and answers in which long lines of figures are reeled off come with perfect ease. In watching the effort put forth in reaching an answer, there would seem to be some process going on in the mind, and an incoherent mumbling is often indulged in, but it is highly probable that Fields does not himself know how he derives his answers. Certain it is that he is unable to explain the process, nor has any one ever been ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... not knowing whether he was touched the more by the kindness of the injunction, or by the delicacy with which it had been expressed, murmured incoherent thanks, and promised speedy ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... him not, and when Pablo's babbling became incoherent, the aged master of Palomar controlled his twitching hands sufficiently to roll and light a cigarette. Then he reread ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... was so overcome by his unexpected release that he began to stammer out incoherent expressions of gratitude to the judge, such as "Oh, thank you, your Honor! God bless your Honor! Thank you, your Honor! I am an innocent man, your Honor!" until Gottlieb, grasping him by the arm, dragged him away from the rail and pushed him ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... to settle again: "I told the cashier it was a present I was going to make," she chuckled to herself; "said he'd like to get a present like that. I reckon he would. Reckon anybody would." Her voice lapsed into incoherent murmurings, and Nannie had to speak to her twice before her eyes were intelligent again; then she took the pen and wrote, her lips faintly mumbling: "Pay to the order of—what's the date?" she said, dully, her eyes almost shut. "Never mind; I don't have to date it. But ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... consciousness) her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the sad change that had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength returned, his appetite was something enormous, but his eyes wandered continually; his regard could not be arrested; his speech became slow, impeded, and incoherent. People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in being a "natural," as they call ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the brushes on the colours. He stood before his easel, on which rested a half-finished canvas. And he painted—painted as true and as sure as if awake, blending the colours, picking out his work, working with all his old artistic touch and finish. All this time his lips were moving, muttering incoherent words I could not hear. At last he laid aside his tools with a sigh that almost raised compassion in my heart. Then walking towards the window at the far end of the room, he appeared to look out upon the sea. He was now talking ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Judge SWEENEY has cultivated that gentleman's acquaintance, and been received at his lodgings several times with considerable cordiality and lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in his musical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge SWEENEY'S ear as to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, to the effect that Saint PETER'S of Rome, with pontifical dome, would by ballot Infallible be; but for making Call sure, and Election secure, Saint Repeater's of Rum beats the See. With finger in ear to allay the tickling sensation, JUDGE SWEENEY ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... hum of the engine and the sighing of the trees, which bent down at the approach, he murmured incoherent words. The recollection of the two lovers clasped in each other's arms made him cry aloud with jealousy. He wanted to be revenged. For the first time in his life, the longing, the feverish craving to kill set ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh succors, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just been given him, required that all the physicians in the place should be sent for. A scene so strange and so melancholy; the incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make, that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of gendarmes: that officer gave ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marquis grew high;—that he upbraided her with her past conduct, and threatened her with a formal separation. When the marquis quitted her, she was heard walking quick through the room, in a passion of tears; she often suddenly stopped in vehement but incoherent exclamation; and at last threw herself on the floor, and was for some time entirely still. Here her woman found her, upon whose entrance she arose hastily, and reproved her for appearing uncalled. After this she remained silent ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... typical paper as the British Labour Leader, for example, may be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere constructive proposal. It is a prolonged scream of extreme individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoherent discontent with authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort. It wants to do nothing. It just wants effort to stop—even at the price of German victory. If the whole fabric of society in western Europe were to be handed over to those pseudo-socialists ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... When he was gone, he felt more sad and downcast than he cared to own—far sadder than the boy himself, who was happy enough to enter a new career and find companions of his own age. Becky burst out laughing once or twice when the Colonel, in his clumsy, incoherent way, tried to express his sentimental sorrows at the boy's departure. The poor fellow felt that his dearest pleasure and closest friend was taken from him. He looked often and wistfully at the little ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a life insured. This man has a simple and pleading face, and there is something genial in his great, incoherent countenance. He is said to have cleared the stage for Booth's escape, but this is indifferently testified to. He had often been asked by Booth to take a drink at the nearest bar. Persons who drink assure me that the greatest mark of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... ever more knave than fool, and the trapper who was wily enough to ensnare him had achieved something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete comprehension, to the incoherent babble concerning pigs and heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those rare fellows ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... have omitted to give an exact account of them, because they are well known by all, and they are described by a great number of Greek and Roman authors; yet for the sake of the connexion of matters, and that my history may not be incoherent, I have just touched upon every thing briefly. Wherefore Vespasian put off at first his expedition against Jerusalem, and stood waiting whither the empire would be transferred after the death of Nero. Moreover, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... were opened to utter words which would have instantly turned the wedding into a tragedy; but the rush of thoughts which came surging into her brain was too much for her. The swift revelation of an almost unbelievable life-tragedy struck her like a lightning-stroke; she uttered a few incoherent sounds, and then dropped ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... already gone. With staring black eyes, imploringly trying to pierce the gloom, with hands and feet that sought to batter and break down the thick darkness, with incoherent cries and supplications following the moving of ignis fatuus lights ahead, she ran, and ran swiftly!—ran over treacherous foundations, ran by yawning gulfs, ran past branching galleries and arches, ran wildly, ran despairingly, ran blindly, and at last ran into ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... remark that Mr. James has always maintained that Mark Twain was capable of amusing only very primitive persons; and Whistler, with his acid diablerie, was wholly alien in spirit to the boisterous humour of Mark Twain. That other brilliant but incoherent interpreter of American life, Mr. Charles Whibley, bound to the presupposed paradox of America's pathetic senescence and total deficiency in humour, blithely gives away his case in the vehement assertion that America's ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... and vehement gestures betrayed a painful uneasiness; he quitted, resumed, and again as suddenly abandoned an urgent occupation, to hasten to the windows and watch the progress of the flames. Short and incoherent exclamations burst from his laboring bosom! "What a tremendous spectacle! It is their own work! So many palaces! What extraordinary resolution! What men! These are ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... meanwhile were roaming in wild excitement along the shore; their torches were seen glimmering in evident commotion about the scene of the calamity, where some were wading into the water in search of the body, and others were shouting incoherent questions and replies. At the rumour of Agrippina's escape they rushed off in a body to her villa to express their congratulations, where they were dispersed by the soldiers of Anicetus, who had already token possession of it. Scattering ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Dick, with his heart beating, and a strange suspicion making its way into his breast. For in an incoherent vague manner he found himself thinking of Farmer Tallington stealing out of his house in the middle of the night. He had a boat, as most of the fen farmers had, for gunning, fishing, and cutting reeds. What was he doing on the water at night? For it must have been he ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... the act of opening the case of his field-glass, when from where the wounded lay came another angry burst of exclamations from Roby, incoherent for the most part, but Dickenson heard plainly, "Coward—cowardly hound! To leave a man ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... sexes, and with those in which, though hermaphrodites, the pollen does not spontaneously fall on the stigma, some aid is necessary for their fertilisation. With several kinds this is effected by the pollen-grains, which are light and incoherent, being blown by the wind through mere chance on to the stigma; and this is the simplest plan which can well be conceived. An almost equally simple, though very different plan occurs in many plants in which a symmetrical flower secretes a few drops of nectar, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... said it was a lark. Then he corrected himself and said it wasn't a lark, then he corrected himself again and became incoherent. Meantime the skipper eyed him stonily, while the mate released the cat and good-naturedly helped ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... his appearance, when undergoing the examination of the Captain of the Watch, was anything but clerical. His face was covered with blood, his clothes soiled and disordered, his hat crushed, and his manner wild and incoherent. It is more than probable that, had the Captain known who he was, he would have ordered his ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... saying that Mrs. Macfadyen did not take nervous little notes during the sermon—all writing on Sabbath, in kirk or outside, was strictly forbidden in Drumtochty—or mark her Bible, or practise any other profane device of feeble-minded hearers. It did not matter how elaborate or how incoherent a sermon might be, it could not ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... sank back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office of consoler. She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and put it round her neck: she called him her John—her dear John—her old man—her kind old man; she poured out a hundred words of incoherent love and tenderness; her faithful voice and simple caresses wrought this sad heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered and solaced ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... past two years, and in the last of them, in which she had changed most, he had not seen her at all. It was with a slight shock, then, that he realized how completely she had grown up. He remembered her in so many phases of childhood and little girlhood, ranging up from a time when her speech was incoherent, and she had sat on his knee and played with his watch, to the more recent occasions when he had met her riding in the Park with her brother; and she had waved her little whip to him, looking particularly slim and pretty in the very trying costume ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... herself on the grass beside Marty, who forthwith began showing her the magazine and telling her in a rather incoherent way about mission work in general and their band in particular. She told how many belonged to the band, what they did at the meetings, how much money they had, and what they were going to do with it; how this ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... not blenched when brought face to face with death that menaced themselves, bowed to the earth, weeping like women, as mortal weakness stole upon the strong right arm of the Confederacy. Without the tent "the whole army was praying for him," while incoherent sentences of command and inarticulate murmurings fell from his lips—fainter with each utterance. The watchers thought speech and consciousness gone forever, when the voice that had pealed like the blast of Roland in charge and rally, sounded through the hushed chamber, sweet, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... to find it standing stiff within the charmed circle which even in her sleep was deliciously grasping it with its nervous folds. I passed my hand down to her clitoris, and began fucking her. She heaved her bottom up and down, and murmured some incoherent words, being evidently still under the influence of sleep, and probably dreaming of some former events, for in her half expressed murmurings, I could ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... about. He walked as fast as he could, but even so he could not travel the six miles to the ranch very quickly. He could see that the girl was burning up with fever, and he could hear her voice growing husky,—could hear, too, the painful laboring of her breath. When she was not mumbling incoherent nonsense she was laughing hoarsely at the plight she was in, and after that she would hold both hands to her chest and moan in a way that made Lone ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... with joy, and this time woke Dolly, who thought it was a calamity, and wept. Fully five minutes of incoherent rejoicing followed, and then details might be rounded off. The fireman had to stand by his engine on the night-shift in an hour's time, but he saw his way to a pipe, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... wife. But Henry replied that the council had forbidden that he should see the queen. This exasperated the king more than ever. He walked to and fro across the apartment, wringing his hands, and uttering wild and incoherent expressions ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... nervous restlessness now rapidly grew upon him, and he eagerly drank up one or two small portions of wine, with which I supplied him. His fate was now evidently brought one degree nearer to him. He kept his gaze intently and unceasingly turned to the window of the dungeon. His muttered replies were incoherent, or unintelligible, and his sunk and weakened eye strained painfully on the grated window, as if he momentarily expected to see the first streak of the dawn of that morning, which to him was to be night. His nervous agitation gradually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... minute, before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had that incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers are apt to have, and are indolently willing to encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens |
