"Doddering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glad you ain't doddering. Let's never git doddering and brag about our diseases. It seems that that's all some men have to brag about when they git old, how much rheumatiz they can hold, as if it's a thing to ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... bed and coaxed him and comforted him. Never had I seen such tenderness. It was like a vision of a classic hereafter. In a second I would have exchanged my youth for the position of this doddering old nobleman who spat blood ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... so clean. Peace is so dirty. There are so many foul diseases in peace times. They drag on over so many years, too. No, war's clean! I'd rather see a man die in prime of life, in war time, than see him doddering along in peace time, broken hearted, broken spirited, life broken, and very weary, having suffered many things,—to die at last, at a good, ripe age! How they have suffered, those who drive up to our city ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... interior of an Empire block I came upon an old, old negro woman, parchment-skinned and doddering, living alone in a stoop-shouldered shanty of boxes and tin cans. "Ah don' know how ol' ah is, mahster," was one of her replies, "but ah born six years befo' ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... human nature which, more than love of money, are at the root of all evil. If you prefer to leave things as they are we shall probably fail you again. Do not be too sure that we have learned our lesson, and are not at this very moment doddering down some ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... asked questions enough while you were out seeing to his supper. He seems to know the place almost as well as if he had been here before, though he said he hadn't. But, by gad, I wish you and I were snug in a little hotel on the banks of the Seine to-night and not bothering our heads about a doddering old marquis who hadn't sense enough ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... only says it to tease us," he cried, shaking Lilly's shoulder. "He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don't try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds," said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... himself from onslaughts too long. Upon the lake the Emperor constructed two fine house-boats, devoted to the habits that house-boats generally induce (you may still fish up bits of their splendour from the bottom, if you have luck), and very likely it was annoying to watch the old man still doddering round his tree with drawn sword. One would like to ask whether the crazy tyrant was aware how well he was fulfilling the ancient rite by ordaining the slaughter of decrepitude. And one would like to ask also whether the stalwart ruffian himself took up the line of consecrated and ghastly ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... up and doing, but the Ol' Chief seemed galvanised into unwonted activity. He was doddering about between his bed and the fire, laying out the most imposing parkis and fox-skins, fur blankets, and a pair of seal-skin mittens, all of which, apparently, he had had secreted under his bed, or ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of that enormous complex of crooked politics and crookeder finance, Cowperwood himself stands out in the round, comprehensible and alive. And all the others, in their lesser measures, are done almost as well—Cowperwood's pale wife, whimpering in her empty house; Aileen Butler, his mistress; his doddering and eternally amazed old father; his old-fashioned, stupid, sentimental mother; Stener, the City Treasurer, a dish-rag in the face of danger; old Edward Malia Butler, that barbarian in a boiled shirt, with his Homeric hatred and his broken heart. Particularly old Butler. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... shouldn't go up to Ballymoy House and propose this afternoon. Then I must see O'Donoghue and make arrangements about to-morrow. I shall also, thanks to your churlishness, have to borrow a bicycle for myself. Then I must look up that doddering old ass Callaghan, and tell him to precipitate matters a bit if I succeed in hunting Simpkins up to Ballymoy House. If I fail to head off the judge—I don't expect to fail, but if by any chance I do—we shall have no time to spare, and must have ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... I thought I could fight against the centuries. As the years went on I found I couldn't. The grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated me into them. When I die—for I hope I shan't have to resign through doddering senility—my body will be buried there"—he jerked his head slightly towards the cathedral—"and my dust will become part and parcel of the fabric—like that ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... an' her lambs thegither, [together] Was ae day nibbling on the tether, [one] Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, [hoof, looped] An' owre she warsled in the ditch; [over, floundered] There, groaning, dying, she did lie, When Hughoc he cam doytin by. [doddering] Wi glowrin' een, an' lifted han's, [staring] Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's; He saw her days were near-hand ended, But wae's my heart! he could na mend it! He gaped wide, but naething spak; At ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... do you two doddering old idiots, you and John Calhoun, with life outworn and the blood dried in your veins, send me, since you doubt me so much, on an errand of this kind? You see what it has done for me. I am done with John Calhoun. He may get some ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... the table and paced back and forth restlessly across the library. "I'm a fool," he growled; "a doddering old fool. No, that's not ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... Claire. He had thought her straight. And all the time that she had been saying those things to him that night of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money. Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in Bill's position ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... German sword being sanctified by God. But the old German Adam remained, and when, two days before the declaration of war with France, the German soldiers were flying to the Belgian frontier there was no thought of the Archduke Ferdinand or of the doddering old man on the Austrian throne, whose paternal heart had been sorely wounded. Germany was out to rob France of her colonies—to rob her, and ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... his chair. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know what the deuce there is I can do. Certainly father's idea of my going back to college and then to medical school afterward, is just plain, rank nonsense. I'd be a doddering old man before I got through—thirty years old. I should think that even he would see that. It will have to be business, I suppose, but if any kind friend comes around and suggests that I begin at the bottom somewhere—Mr. Whitney, for instance, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... original estate is a dramatic dance; it is, indeed, the frankest example of terpsichorean symbolism within the whole range of the pantomimic dance. The conditions under which Wilde and Strauss introduce it in their drama spare one all need of thought; there is sufficient commentary in the. doddering debility of the pleading Herod and the lustful attitude of his protruding eyes. There are fantastical persons who like to talk about religious symbolism in connection with this dance, and of forms of worship of vast antiquity. The dance is old. It was probably danced ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... on the big veranda. The mail was delivered, as a rule, just before dusk, one of the cow-punchers riding down for it. Grave fears about the loss of that all- important missive to Terry haunted him, for the postmaster was a doddering old fellow who was quite apt to forget his head. Consequently he was vastly relieved when the mail arrived and Elizabeth brought the familiar big envelope out to him, with its ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... would remain the little dark-haired sister. She would marry him; she would do it to save her father and sister. Then the filigree basket heaped with rubies and pearls and emeralds and sapphires! As for the other, what cared he if he rotted? It gave him the whip hand over the doddering council. Master he would be; he would blot out all things which stood in his path. A king, till he had gathered what fortune he needed. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... upon my word, and one to bring a man's heart into his mouth—the doddering old man tottering to the gate; the stranger running like a prize-winner; Lord Crossborough himself, doubled up in the bottom of the landaulette, and me sitting there with my foot on the clutch, my hand on the throttle, and my pulse going like ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... batch of fourpenny loaves. This was not the reason why the little South London side-street was called Baker's Terrace, though it might well seem so; for Baker was the name of the builder, a worthy gentleman whose years and virtues may still be deciphered on a doddering, round-shouldered stone in a deceased cemetery not far from ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... facing the families of four thousand martyrs to principle. When men are driven to desperation, when women turn to shame in order to maintain life, when children are heard crying in our streets for bread, to whom shall we point as the author of it all? To Peter Rathbawne, a poor, doddering old man, barely responsible now, if rumor is to be believed, for what he does? No! To John Hamilton Barclay, Lieutenant-Governor ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... that detail.... So perhaps, after all, it was real life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by that doddering old stage-hand, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... of the phrases, long decayed, Of paleologic pedigree, Musty, moldy, frazzled, and frayed— A doddering, dusty company? What shall be done with them? say we; And east and west the people bawl, Dump them into the Cannery!— Into the brine go ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... the great secret known to the people, and the doddering old man thought if he would do this in an unusual way, his subjects would have no doubts. He did not make a proclamation commanding everybody to believe in him as a god; he whispered the secret first ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... everything go as I wanted it to go. Now I'm like a leaf in the wind—Pauvre feuille desechee, don't you know. And I hate it. And I hate her being here without anyone to look after her. A hundred times I've had it on the tip of my pen to send that doddering old Underwood an anonymous letter, telling him all ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... of the studio, waiting for her doom. It seemed to her to matter very little what that doom should be. Perfect ruin had come upon her. The porter came in presently with a doctor—a little old grey-headed man, who wore spectacles, and had an ancient doddering manner not calculated to inspire beholders with any great ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the notion of speeding you up a bit," he said, "because I felt plumb sure that there wasn't a live man in the place, nothing but a crowd of doddering hop-toads." ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... diseased and I am a coward, an infamous, doddering old coward, sir. Good God! to live for years in darkness, bumping against the sharp corners of conscience. I have never told Henry, but I don't mind telling you that at times I am almost mad. For years I have sought to read myself out of it, but to an unsettled mind a book is a sly poison—the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... back to his chair, dropped into it and began to laugh. "Old Pryor! Doddering old Pryor! Doddering old ass of a Pryor! So he did! Blood of an angel! what a stew, what a stew!" He rose again, mirthless. "Well, what did ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... give that message," said he. And I think he probably did give it, or something like it; for Nell had a telegram from him, while we were still doddering about in Friesland, asking if he might bring the ladies on a visit ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... to think that that quivering old mass of perambulating jealousy—that living incarnation of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness—should be able to make you uncomfortable for a single moment, mother darling, with her petty, dribbling, doddering venom, why, it's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... with his clenched fist. "Bosh! You're hipped on this heredity subject. Crazy! Why, you doddering old fool—" With an effort he calmed himself, realizing that he had shouted his last words. He turned away and made a circuit of the room before returning to face his friend. "I didn't mean to speak to you like that, Judge. You pulled this on me too suddenly, and I'm—upset. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... theatre no chorus, and when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them alone ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... with the gait of a doddering grandsire, would be a boy in his teens, bent double and clutching his middle with both hands. Here would be a man whose hand had been smashed, and from beyond the rude swathings of cotton his fingers protruded stiffly and were so congested ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the temperamental Clerget motor with its malfunctioning wind driven gasoline pump. The sport had been repeatedly forbidden by all the allied air commands, but these commands had to deal with irrepressible youth, which has slight regard for doddering old mossbacks who think that a plane should be handled as a ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... studied the subject. If I can put over my experiment, I shall add to the potential wealth of this country as no single individual has ever done. I'm going to get some one's ear at Washington, some day, if it's not till I'm a doddering old man. We ought to have Mexico, you know, because when the inland empire begins to grow, we'll overflow into Mexico. But we never can have her, of course. We can only hope that she'll grow into a real nation we ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... beetle it was a nodding of necessity, a doddering of desire, the drawing of the bow across the strings in a hymn of hope which had begun in past time with the first stridulation of ancient insects. To-day the fiddling vibrations, the Song of the Beetle, reached out in all directions. To the majority of jungle ears it was only another note in the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... doddering old fellow, sobered by this awful announcement, looked helplessly at the window. It was too small. And slender active Carol, with the buggy whip, stood between ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... he should have a new grandfather thrust upon him. And such a grandfather! Perhaps the Bube was, indeed, losing her reason. Or was it he himself who was losing his reason, taking seriously this parochial scandal, and believing that because a doddering hunchback of seventy-five had borrowed an ethical treatise from an octogenarian a marriage must be on the tapis? Yet, on more than one occasion, he came upon circumstances which seemed to justify the popular supposition. There could be no doubt, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... loves these little peoples and knows how to make us love them. How tenderly he speaks of them; with what solicitude he observes them; with what love he follows the progress of their nurslings; the young grubs wriggling in his test-tubes, with doddering heads, are happy; and he himself is happy to see them "well-fed and shining with health." He pities the bee stabbed by the Philanthus "in the holy joys of labour." He sympathizes with the sufferings of these little creatures and their hard labours. If, in his search for ideas, he has to overturn ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... and stiff and held to the earth by the ball and chain of a hundred years; yet he seemed scarcely more solid, scarcely less light, than an embodied wind. He should have been (for the atmosphere of the home in which you have dwelt for a century is not so easily dissipated) a doddering old corporeality, yet he felt he was now all thought and glorious essence of life. He should have seen on the step that old wife who had stood so uncannily by while he sweat over his wood-splitting; ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... instance, Ling was not malicious about being displaced, as Shanklin had been. Too, there was much more real mutual helpfulness, if not so much talk about it. When one of the horde found a new crop of berries or roots or nuts, he set up a yell for his friends to come and share. A couple of oldsters, doddering and incompetent gargoyles, were fed and cared for by the younger beast-men. And all stood ready to obey Parr's slightest word ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... art a something, an organism capable of "growing up" into maturity? If it is, by the same token it can grow old, can become a doddering, senile thing, and finally die and be buried with all the honors due its long, useful life. It was Henrik Ibsen who said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted into error. Now, isn't all this ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Archon and his great-aunt were rowing out in the little boat a few doddering old men and superstitious females slunk off to consult the bronze tablets, and there found under Schedule XII these words: "If an enemy threaten the State, you shall arm and repel him." In their superstition the poor old ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... and Alexander Armstrong—and the old chaplain who had been Michael's father's tutor and was now an almost doddering old nonentity also stood waiting in his white ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... he stood there, staring across the level bit of valley lying quiet at the foot of the jagged-rimmed bluff standing boldly up against the star-flecked sky. Then he shook himself impatiently, muttered something which had to do with a "doddering fool," and retraced his steps quickly through the orchard, the currant bushes, and the strawberry patch, jumped the ditch, and so entered the grove ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... sweeter than the echo of a flute. At early morning there came a rapping on the stairway, to summon him to breakfast. Old Jasper, with his hot hands in his pockets and with a sick expression of countenance was doddering about ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... the meadow, and wait under the trees till Zoe came to him. Vizard's advertisements alarmed him, and he used to see the coast clear before he entered the shrubbery, and also before he left it. He was so particular in this that, observing one day an old man doddering about with a basket, he would not go in till he had taken a look at him. He found it was an ancient white-haired villager gathering mushrooms. The old fellow was so stiff, and his hand so trembling, that it took him about a minute to gather ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Tooting, tearing out a paragraph, "there's the best campaign material we've had yet. Say, I'll bet Flint taken that doddering idiot's pass away for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... whimsicalities gnawing at his brain like worms. But these excursions out of the real were of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called him back. He was jerked back abruptly once from such an excursion by a sight that caused him nearly to faint. He reeled and swayed, doddering like a drunken man to keep from falling. Before him stood a horse. A horse! He could not believe his eyes. A thick mist was in them, intershot with sparkling points of light. He rubbed his eyes savagely to clear his vision, and beheld, not a horse, but a great brown bear. The animal was ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... we'll be doddering idiots some day, too. No one will keep us. No one can expect to be carried ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... as if he were very cold; while General Bullwigg swung his spoon and made another fine shot. He had a perfect four for the first hole, to Major Jennings's imperfect and doddering seven. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... just coming down to see what was the matter. I hear from the Brigade that some doddering idiot has cut our wire. Who in the ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the silly, stupid, fatuous, fungus-grown, doddering, drivelling dolts anywhere, past or future, I alone am far and away ahead of the whole lot of 'em in silliness and absurd behaviour! Damnation! I'm ashamed! The idea of my being made a fool of twice at my time of life in this ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the doddering old fool who had given his youth to Sunday schools when Sunday schools were not patronised by princes, archbishops, and lord mayors, when Sunday schools were the scorn of the intelligent, and had sometimes to be held in public-houses for lack of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of me, if I live long enough," groaned O'Dowd. "It beats the deuce how childer as young as they are can have discovered what a doddering fool their uncle is. Bedad, the smallest of them knows it. The very instant I pretend to be a sensible, provident, middle-aged gentleman he shows me up most shamelessly. 'Twas only a couple of months ago that his confounded blandishments wiggled a sixty-five dollar fire engine out of me. He squirted ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... to try and soothe my conscience, but it is useless. I see my position too clearly. Think of it, Comrade Brown! Thousands of poor, doddering, half-witted creatures in Brooklyn and Flatbush, who ought not really to have control of their own money at all, are getting buncoed out of whatever it is per annum in exchange for—how shall I put it in a forcible yet refined and gentlemanly manner?—for cat's meat of this description. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... made her a quaint, old-fashioned bow, turned, and peeped across the walk at Carden. And Carden, looking straight into his face, did not know the old man, who turned to Dr. Hollis again with many mysterious nods of his doddering head. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... it, the third time old Joe Wilkings shouted "Get up" in that voice of his, a-staring straight at Worble all the time, old Worble did slowly get up and stood, doddering, but without support. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said the man with the thin face, "any old doddering Colonel Newcome, is preferred to you in ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... us-all. Lately, as I pass by or turn in yere I get a call back to something what he spoke. To-day it came to me right sharp how he said 'greater love' and then went on to explanify. I'm right old in years, ma'am, and I'm doddering, I expect, but I reckon I knows as much as that po' moon chile o' Hope's. You know Crothers has got him, too, 'mong the wheels, and the po' lil' boy he comes home all wild and sicklike, and mornings Hope has to lick him down The Way—he hates that-er-much to go. Come to-morrow, I'm going ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... I found you when I got here at dawn. But you'll be all right now, I fancy, if you keep quiet and don't think about things that never happened. You're at Waroona Downs in bed, and Mrs. Burke and that old idiot of a doddering Irishman are looking after you. That's ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... a figure. Say what you can think of," retorted Mr. May, rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering provincial, and by his own sudden ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... mile back in the sand, certain phrases flung at him had been barbed and had bitten deep into Casey Ryan's self-esteem. They stung and rankled there. He had squirmed at the picture his new friend had so ruthlessly drawn with crude words, but bold, of doddering old age. Casey resented the implication that he might one day fill ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... use the correct phrase," said Billy, after having refreshed himself with sufficient champagne to proceed; "were two retired merchants, a venerable logician, a doddering banker, and a half-blind college professor. Of course, I had to make some excuse for Mrs. Fermnore's absence. For the life of me I cannot now remember what yarn I told them; but they were too anxious to be presented to the gay, young women not to swallow it—whole. The old ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Prepolji introduced itself by six Turks lying by the roadside, then there were three Turkish families, afterwards an assorted dozen of small girls in trousers, finally, an old man doddering along in a turban and a veiled beggar woman, who demanded backsheesh. "Where are ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... more. The poem is full of such individualities. It were well, as one example, to read the whole account of the people who come to see the murdered bodies laid out in the Church of Lorenzo. The old, curious, doddering gossip of the Roman street is not less alive than the Cardinal, and the clever pushing Curato; and around them are heard the buzz of talk, the movement of the crowd. The church, the square ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... some argument with her father that had grown heated, and striking the glass smartly with his fist had put them to flight, shouting as they fled, "Och, ye deaf devils! Och, ye lucky deaf devils! Ye can't hear anything of the blasted, blethering, doddering, glaikit fool-stuff yer maister talks, can ye?" Or words to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... laughed Dacre. "What harm do you imagine a doddering old fool like this could do to any one? If I were Monck, I should invite him to join the party. Not being Monck, I propose to hear what he has to say and then kick him out. You run along to bed, ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... pride to two doddering ancients hobbling painfully down the village street, and informed ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... obstinate; cutting. Dow, dowe, am (is or are) able, can. Dow, a dove. Dowf, dowff, dull. Dowie, drooping, mournful. Dowilie, drooping. Downa, can not. Downa-do (can not do), lack of power. Doylt, stupid, stupefied. Doytin, doddering., Dozen'd, torpid. Dozin, torpid. Draigl't, draggled. Drant, prosing. Drap, drop. Draunting, tedious. Dree, endure, suffer. Dreigh, v. dreight. Dribble, drizzle. Driddle, to toddle. Dreigh, tedious, dull. Droddum, the breech. Drone, part ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... every movement, and he meant to see that they missed nothing. He received his ticket for the box, and slowly and ostentatiously stowed it away in his pack. Swinging the said pack on his arm, he sauntered through the entrance hall to the row of waiting taxi-cabs, and selected the oldest and most doddering driver. He deposited the pack inside on the seat, and then stood still as if struck ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... desperate state of health, and can't live very long at the best. I believe she's decided to leave her money to Elizabeth, or she never would have invited the child to visit her. Do you want to fly in the face of Providence, you doddering old imbecile?" ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... latter one day. "She's had four different talks with the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I'll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that you want to go rampaging along, trampling on people's feelings and goring every one who sticks up a head in your path. But there's no use shilly-shallying and doddering with people who ask questions and favors they have no right to ask. Don't hurt any one if you can help it, but if you must, a clean, ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... government can't stay blind forever. They'll see what they've done, and within a few months they'll go back to the old policy.' Months? I stuck to that job and waited five years—and still no news from Washington. 'My boy,' said a doddering Brooklynite, 'the nation has turned ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... I disapprove of myself violently. I'm a doddering lunatic, incapable of thinking of anything but you. I can't work. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I'm no use to the world. I'm not a man, I'm a mess. I'm about to do something silly because I ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... darkened. When I was young, I liked to hear the whaups Calling to one another down the slacks: And I could whistle, too, like any curlew. 'Twas an ancient bird wouldn't answer my call: and now I'm ancient myself—an old, blind, doddering heron, Dozing his day out in a syke, while minnows Play tiggy round his shanks and nibble his toes; And the hawk hangs overhead. But then the blood Was hot, and I'd a relish—such a relish! Keen as a ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs ...
— Options • O. Henry
... entered was narrow and stifling—stale odors of thousands of dead-and-gone boiled dinners mingled there, and a stairway with a greasy handrail invited him. The key bore a number. He hunted till he found a room, far up, flight after flight. Through open doors he saw here and there aged women or doddering old men who were guardians of dirty babes who tumbled about on ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... I wanted something to drink!" he thundered, "but don't stand there all night doddering. I've ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... sun of the motor ride, the constant anxiety lest they might run over some doddering old woman or some heedless child, had given her a headache. As soon as Geoffrey returned from his dip, she announced that she would go ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... "Oh, the fool—the silly, doddering, abject old fool!" I exclaimed aloud as I flung the open letter down on to the table and began to pace the room in a fury of indignation. "'No fool like an old fool'—oh, those words of wisdom—the man who first uttered them should have a monument erected to his memory," I continued ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... my eyes she is nothing to me. She is not a mere sense delight, a toy for the debauchery of my intellect and the enthronement of emotion. She is not the woman to make my pulse go fevered and me go mad. Nor is she the woman to make me forget my manhood and pride, to tumble me down doddering at her feet and gibbering like an ape. She is not the woman to put my thoughts out of joint and the world out of gear, and so to befuddle and make me drunk with the beast that is in me, that I am ready to sacrifice truth, honesty, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... Will Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London. The matter was urgent. Already the warden of A, and the master of B, and the Regius Professor of C had meekly "sat." Dignified and doddering old men who had never consented to sit to any one could not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm |
