"Stutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "You needn't stutter. I'm not really stupid. You don't like me any better than I like you. I can see that. We're to be as decent as possible to each other—you from 'common humanity,' and I ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... most striking figures in the French Revolution, born at Guise, in Picardy; studied for the bar in the same college with Robespierre, but never practised, owing to a stutter in his speech; was early seized with the revolutionary fever, and was the first to excite the same fever in the Parisian mob, by his famous call "To arms, and, for some rallying sign, cockades—green ones—the colour of Hope, when," as we read in Carlyle, "as with the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and, after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday half-holiday, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are purely her own. She is a creature of contrasts, and suggests at once all that ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... the doctor managed to stutter in an almost inaudible voice, so overcome with surprise was he at the avalanche ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... one—remarkable for its singular beauty. Like Coleridge, the poet, he was "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," and one had but to look into them to perceive at once the light of genius.... He was one of the best talkers I have ever met. Like Charles Lamb, he had a stutter which seemed to emphasise and add point to his witticisms. As in his writings, he had the knack of saying brilliant things, and scattering bons mots with apparent ease, so that in listening to him one felt the pleasure that is derived ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... make all his characters stutter soon," said Millaud. "We had better pay him by the line." Of course this is a story faite a plaisir, as is also the one that as soon as Dumas made his first contract by the line, enchanted with the arrangement, he invented dear old Grimaud, who only ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... like it. He didn't begin to know how to talk. He had about a bushel of notes from which he read, and when he let go of them he fell into one prolonged stutter. Every now and then he remembered a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving, and the next moment he was bent double and crooning over his papers. It was the most appalling rot, too. He talked about the 'German menace', ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... some reason; Delano-Smith gives him a peculiar look and says what does he know about it? and Lennie starts to stutter. ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... question didn't worry me any. I can pitch the cuffer in any bat from Tamil to Arabic, an' the only chap I couldn't compree was a deaf-an'-dumb man who suffered from St. Vitus' Dance, which made 'im stutter with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... was, poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things that were not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serene good faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like a stutter or a faux pas. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... element, it grew stronger as the latter weakened. Thus, in Like Will to Like a certain Hance enters half-intoxicated, roaring out a drinking song until the sudden collapse of his voice compels him to recite the rest in the thick stutter of a drunken man. He carries a pot of ale in his hand, from which he drinks to the health of Tom Tosspot, giving the toast with a 'Ca-ca-carouse to-to-to thee, go-go-good Tom'—which is but an indifferent hexameter. At the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... I have experienced here this time, is the manner in which I am stopped in the streets by working men, who want to shake hands with me, and tell me they know my books. I never go out but this happens. Down at the docks just now, a cooper with a fearful stutter presented himself in this way. His modesty, combined with a conviction that if he were in earnest I would see it and wouldn't repel him, made up as true a piece of natural politeness ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... his good luck in not marrying her. In spite of this, Captain Tiago highly respected her husband, on account of his title of "specialist in all kinds of diseases," and he listened with close attention to the few phrases that he managed to stutter out. In fact, it was on account of this title and the fact that the doctor did not attend everybody, that the Captain chose ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... his story Belding began to stutter, and finally he exploded. His mighty utterances were incoherent. But plainly the wrath he had felt toward the wilful girl was forgotten. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... words or not, the young Lenape saw me stutter in my invitation. There might have been a quiver in his face,—at my father's gesture he had turned toward me,—but there was none in his walking. He came straight on toward our fire and through it. Three strides beyond it he drank at the creek as though that had been his only ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... actor does not. The real reason is that the English actor works for less money—he is the cheaper article. Certainly no one will accuse the average English actor of speaking English. The hemming and hawing, the aristocratic stutter, the dropping of h's and picking them up at the wrong time, have never been popular in the United States, except by way of caricature. Nothing is more absurd than to take the ground that the English actors are superior to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower, and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right with my ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a cassock, with woolly hair and a petulant expression on his face, had already raised his hand. He said, with a stutter, that his name was Ducretot, priest and agriculturist, and that he was the author of a work entitled "Manures." He was told to send ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... come on this day two weeks. O heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland? shall it be Scotland? nay, shall ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... vaingloriously justifying the younger man's analogy of a gigantic Spanish omelette. Meanwhile, the younger man declaimed in a high-pitched pleasant voice, wherein there was, as always, the elusive suggestion of a stutter. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Jove! wish he could see us at some of our wines. Don't we just "splice the main brace" as Emil says,' answered Dolly, the dandy, carefully spreading a napkin over the glossy expanse of shirt-front whereon a diamond stud shone like a lone star. His stutter was nearly outgrown; but he, as well as George, spoke in the tone of condescension, which, with the blase airs they assumed, made a very funny contrast to their youthful faces and foolish remarks. Good-hearted little fellows both, but top-heavy with the pride ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... his manner of speech. There were the same unfinished phrases, ended by "ps, ps, ps," muttered between the teeth, expressions like "What's its name?" "Who was it?" constantly thrown into what he was saying, a kind of aristocratic stutter, fatigued, listless, wherein you might perceive a profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the society of which the duke was the centre, every one sought to imitate that accent, those disdainful intonations with ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... power."—For that purpose, and in expectation of that perilous and supreme day, it lavishes wealth upon him, and clothes him in purple and ermine. That day arrives, that hour, unique, pitiless, and solemn, that supreme hour of duty; the man in the red gown begins to stutter the words of the law; suddenly he perceives that it is not the cause of justice that prevails, but that treason carries the day. Whereupon he, the man who has passed his life in imbuing himself with the pure and holy light of the law, that man who is nothing unless ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... instead, I scarce can tell, for Cupid's arrows Have made my brain like any sparrow's. When you come near, my foolish heart Goes pit-a-pat with throb and start, And when I try my love to utter, My fairest speech is but a stutter. How to propose is all my task, Whether to write or just to ask, And ere I solve the problem knotty I really fear I shall go dotty. Oh, lady fair, in pity stop And list while I the question pop. 'Tis here on paper; think it over, And let me be your ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... The stutter which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... "Stutter," suggested Willard, with solicitous helpfulness. The girl broke into a little trill of mirth, too liquid for laughter; being rather the sound of a brooklet chuckling musically over ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... its banks and cellars fill. Last Thursday morn, so very cold, A morn not better felt than told, Then first in all its bright array, Did I thy "frozen form" survey; And, goodness! what a great big steeple! What sights of houses! and such people!! And then I thought, did I not stutter, But verse could, like some poets, utter, How much ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... a moment, her countenance swollen by grief, and her poor eyes so scorched by watching that no tears could come from them. Then she began to stutter disjointed words: "Look at him, madame. It fills one with pity. Ah! my God, his poor cheeks, his poor ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was so startled by this sudden thought, that he even neglected his customary stutter. Bandy-legs would have been quick to draw attention to this remarkable fact, had he been present to notice it, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... which my frequent absence from town would not allow me to accept. I ought to call on him; and, as I feel ashamed not to have done so before, I wish you would accompany me to his house. One happy word from you would save me a relapse into stutter. When I want ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did not stutter. Without the slightest difficulty he leaped that pitfall of the drunken, the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... momentary stutter of two machine guns. Ah! McGee testing and warming his guns as he climbed. Oh, the fool! ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing at the pitch of his voice. He paid no attention to the stutter of laughter round him as he retrieved his mud-encrusted rifle, and looked about him for his cap. The laughter rose as he groped in the thin mud for it, still cursing wildly; and then the sergeant noticed that the man who had lost his cap a ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... you sing again, sir," said Puss, creeping nearer and nearer. "That piece of yours, where you whistle first, and then make that sweet repetition, which sounds like somebody saying 'stutter' a great many times over very quickly. Now, do, now; you folks that can sing always want so ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... Half empty and black ones; With oranges, sallow— They can't be called yellow— Some pippins well-wrinkled, And plums almond-sprinkled; Some rout cakes, and so on, Then with business to go on: Long speeches are stutter'd, And toasts are well butter'd, While dames in the gallery, All dressed in fallallery, Look on at the mummery, And listen to flummery. Hip, hip! and huzzaing, And singing and saying, Glees, catches, orations, And lists of donations, Hush! a song, Mr. Tinney— "Mr. Benbow, one guinea; Mr. Frederick ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... with the operator to occasionally sound the three dots that make up the letter S in the Morse alphabet—unconsciously, you know, and just as another man, in speaking, might stutter or continually introduce a hesitating ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... one present that wishes, stand as opponents. This disputation, whatever may have been its merits in former days, has degenerated in the present into a mere piece of acted mummery, where the partakers not only stutter and stammer over bad Latin, but even help themselves, when their memory fails utterly, with the previously written notes of their extempore objections and answers. The principal requisite for the attainment of the Doctor's degree, when the necessary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... hath opened the eyes of the blind, He hath unstopped the ears of the deaf. He hath loosed the tongue of the dumb, He hath healed the sick," but—"He hath done all things well." The eyes do not become dull again, nor the ears again lose their power of hearing, nor the tongue stutter once more, nor the sick relapse into their sickness—what He hath done He ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... let us utter To our most glorious King! It fairly makes you stutter To see him start his swing! Success attend his putter! And luck be with his drive! And may he do each hole in two, Although the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... that she might gad and shop for a half-day at a time. But the more I think it over the more unnatural and inhuman it seems. Yet to hunt for help, in this busy land, is like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. Already, in the clear morning air, one can hear the stutter and skip and cough of the tractors along the opalescent sky-line, accosting the morning sun with their rattle and tattle of harvests to be. And I intend to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... mingled satisfaction, astonishment, and irritation that he can write when he pleases in a style of the purest and noblest simplicity; that he can make his characters converse in a language worthy of Sophocles when he does not prefer to make them stutter in a dialect worthy of Lycophron. And in the tragedy of "Sophonisba" the display of this happy capacity is happily reserved for the crowning scene of the poem. It would be difficult to find anywhere a more preposterous or disjointed piece of jargon than the speech of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cried several voices, and the author in question had got so far as to make an allusion to a solitary horseman who was approaching, when he was interrupted by a tall gentleman a little farther down with a slight stutter and a ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is an April Fool's child. But then, the joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator— the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" on ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... aren't many people who stutter so badly," said Bob. "And in the second place, Miss Berwick told us that she saw some radio apparatus on his desk when she was in ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... and obtuse I was at that time, full of vague and tremulous aspirations and awakenings, but undisciplined, uninformed, with many inherited incapacities and obstacles to weigh me down. I was extremely bashful, had no social aptitude, and was likely to stutter when anxious or embarrassed, yet I seem to have made a good impression. I was much liked in school and out, and was fairly happy. I seem to see sunshine over all when I look back there. But it was a long summer to me. I had never been from home more ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... name on a piece of paper and hand it back, and the man who got back to the umpire first won—at least his partner did. Do you understand? Well, as you know, I haven't much ear for music, and I hoped I would get an easy tune; but when my partner, a long, thin, earnest man, with a stutter, burst on me and whistled wildly in my face, I had the hopeless feeling that I had never heard the tune before. In his earnestness he came nearer and nearer, his contortions every moment becoming more extraordinary, his whistling more piercing; and I, by this time convulsed by awful, helpless ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... fail to support him. But, as it is, the only hope we have is a new theatre, a subscription for which, it is reported, is now on foot. John Hogg, a very good actor has been for twelve months unemployed here, whilst ten-dollars-per-week men are engaged to stutter and stammer in parts as far above ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... was going to crumple up in his chair. He seemed to get loose and baggy in some extraordinary fashion, and his gaping jaw worked. 'But the footprints,' he said, 'the naked footprints?' His voice was a sort of stutter-the sort of shaken stutter of a man who has come a' ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... school, because it was cheap. Many men would have thought him a smart boy, but Mr. Bhaer did not like his way of illustrating that Yankee word, and thought his unboyish keenness and money-loving as much of an affliction as Dolly's stutter, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... The stutter of the auto-rifle cut him off. The President Elect's knuckles were white as he clutched the piece's forearm and grip; the torrent of slugs continued to hack and plow the general's body until the magazine was empty. ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... shelter of the river-bank, the cavalry dismounted; we watered our horses, waited, and wondered what was happening. And every moment the tumult grew louder and more intense, until even the flickering stutter of the Maxims could scarcely be heard above the continuous din. Eighty yards away, and perhaps twenty feet above us, the 32nd Field Battery was in action. The nimble figures of the gunners darted about as they busied themselves in their complicated process of destruction. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... new degree; as if it were derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited at play; stock, stem, sting, to sting, stink, stitch, stud, stuncheon, stub, stubble, to stub up, stump, whence stumble, stalk, to stalk, step, to stamp ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... staring, began to stutter unintelligibly, his lips moving while no words came. Emma McChesney held up ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... know what he's at; I could pity him, if it were madness: I never yet knew him to play a tune through, And it gives me more anger than sadness To hear his horn stutter and stammer to utter Its various ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Ray and Doe and Pennybet. And here is a dear little master in charge. It is Mr. Fillet, the housemaster of Bramhall House, where, as you know, we were paying guests—a fat little man with a bald pate, a soft red face, a pretty little chestnut beard, and an ugly little stutter in his speech. Bless him, the dear little man, we called him Carpet Slippers. This was because one of his two chief attributes was to be always in carpet slippers. The other attribute was to be always round ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... self-revealing in a quite unusual and always charming way, and the recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson. His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a character ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... tone made a deep and proper impression on the intoxicated gentleman's agricultural mind, so he replied promptly, though with a stutter: ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... that the inward and universal master, at all times, and in all places, speaks the same truths. We are not that master: though it is true we often speak without, and higher than him. But then we mistake, stutter, and do not so much as understand ourselves. We are even afraid of being made sensible of our mistakes, and we shut up our ears, lest we should be humbled by his corrections. Certainly the man who is apprehensive of being corrected and reproved by that uncorruptible reason, and ever goes astray ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... speak his mind upon—he answered, with conciliatory lightness, "Madam, will you have me speak the truth? Licentia omnes deteriores sumus." In court he used to say, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner." But notwithstanding his deliberation and the stutter that hindered his utterances, he could be quicker than the quickest, and sharper than the most acrid, as the loquacious barrister discovered who was suddenly checked in a course of pert talkativeness by this tart remark from ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... lady'" he admonished the captain. "You said 'steamed.' M'lissy ain't cooked. An' you stutter yet when you come to that word right after painful. Can't ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... Daughtry broke down from inability to express the concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or two, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... sitting next to him at table, on one hand, while a lady (Mrs. McLane) was on his other hand, and the French minister next to her; and as Mr. Izard got on with his communication, his voice kept rising, and his stutter bolting the words out loudly at intervals, so that the minister might hear if he would. He said he had a great mind at one time to have got up, in order to put a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all, sitting round the table, over their wine. 'Maria,' says I, 'a poor fellow wants to redeem his promise which he made when he fancied he was rich. Will you take him?' I found I had plenty of words, and didn't hem and stutter as I'm doing now. I spoke ever so long, and I ended by saying I would do my best and my duty by her, so ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... winds is sniffin' round the bloomin' locus' trees; And the clover in the pastur is a big day fer the bees, And they been a-swiggin' honey, above board and on the sly, Tel they stutter in theyr buzzin' and stagger as they fly. The flicker on the fence-rail 'pears to jest spit on his wings And roll up his feathers, by the sassy way he sings; And the hoss-fly is a-whettin'-up his forelegs fer biz, And the off-mare is a-switchin' all ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... but a colossal conceit that prompts me to offer this volume to those who stutter and stammer as I did. Yet, I cannot but believe that almost twenty years' personal experience as a stammerer plus more than twenty-eight years' experience in curing speech disorders has supplied me with an intensely practical, valuable and worth-while ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... were capital fellows, full of good humour, cheerful, and untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an uncontrollable stutter, and, if he tried to speak quickly, spasm seized his tongue, and he had to break into a laugh. Few men in China, I think, could be more curiously constructed than this coolie. He was all neck; his chin was simply an ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Then bow to him, look him in the face, and answer sensibly, not staring about or laughing, but audibly and distinctly, your words in due order, or you'll straggle off, or stutter, or stammer, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... with a smile and answered the call. He sprawled in his chair, his elbow on the table, and listened for a few moments. "But don't stutter so, Joe!" he adjured. "Take your time, now, boy! Say ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me—now the job is done and gone, And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, leavin' Cutter there with Sutter—that mebbee just a stutter On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... eye. He tottered in and asked for a glass of brandy. It did him good, and he called for another. Some soldiers entering, with a girl or two, and finding a clergyman seated with his glass in this not over-reputable den, began to chaff. He answered gently and good-naturedly, but with a slight stutter—enough to hint at fun ahead; and they improved upon the hint. By nine o'clock Parson Jack was silly drunk; at eleven, when the premises were closed, the police found him speechless; and the rest of the night he spent ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though he openly professes the study of eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, he begins to stutter or even becomes utterly tongue-tied. Come now! Suppose I had said nothing about the statue of Venus, nor used the phrase which was of such service to you, what words would you have found to frame a charge, which is as suited to your stupidity as to your powers of speech? ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... never went about together—as such boys as he always lived the life of hermits in the midst of the crowd. I well remember one other boy, made eccentric by his peculiar face and an unfortunate impediment of speech. No such boy should have been sent to an English public school as it was in my day. His stutter was no ordinary one, for it consisted, not in repeating the first letter or syllable, but in blowing out both cheeks like a balloon, and making noises which resembled a back-firing motor engine. It was the custom of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... have bought myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its chin, and I'm ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... alarm, some one tumbled in upon the floor in an agony of terror, as we soon discovered, pale as a ghost and scarcely able to speak. As soon as he recovered some degree of self-possession, he could barely stutter out,—"When Jack got out of sight—I turned to get down—and there sat another one, on the other ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... utterance notably superior to his well-known halting periods, scarcely saved by long training and use from being a stutter. The female population eagerly listened, while she painted in vivid colours the aim of education, in raising the status of women, and extending their spheres not only of influence in the occult manner which had hitherto been their way of working through others, but in an open manner, which compelled ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... coming, and the woods are beside themselves. The thrash of a million branches, the hoarse booming of the wind, lend to the tiny chamber an air of comfort such as no carpets nor arras could induce. The rain, too, is hastening to add its insolence to the stew. That stutter upon the pane is ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... No came to live with us on the lagoon, Salesa was beside herself with curiosity, and heaped presents on Billy Hindoo in order to learn about his master. But Billy Hindoo knew nothing but his own stutter, and though he took the presents and came constantly to Salesa's house, very little in the way of information was accomplished. At last, greatly daring, Salesa arrayed herself in her finest clothes, and with servants ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... should love so dearly a fresh anecdote of a literary celebrity, a new quip by Talleyrand, a new stutter of Lamb's, a new impertinence of Sheridan's, may be not hard to understand, but it is rather hard to defend, any regard being paid to our dignity. The best stories about that particular line of authors who have possessed bonhomie and become classic for it are long since told. What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... manly and moderate tone of Mr. Abbot's rebuke, and shocked at having unintentionally wounded the feelings of a person who (except as Romeo), was every way deserving of their respect. Of course they could not swallow all their foolish words, and Abbot bowed and was gone before they could stutter an apology. I have no doubt that his next appearance as Romeo was hailed with some very cordial, remorseful applause, addressed to him personally as some relief to their feelings, by my indiscreet partisans. My friend G——, not very long after this theatrical passion of his, became what ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... obliged to drink out nowhere. Should Maecenas lay his commands on you to come late, at the first lighting up of the lamps, as his guest; 'Will nobody bring the oil with more expedition? Does any body hear?' You stutter with a mighty bellowing, and storm with rage. Milvius, and the buffoons [who expected to sup with you], depart, after having uttered curses not proper to be repeated. Any one may say, for I own [the truth], that I am easy to be seduced by my appetite; I snuff up my nose at a savory smell: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... who it was that alone restrained me. I heard her name. I heard them crying to her as though she had fainted. I recognized the detested voice of my bete noir, Alick Carruthers, thick as might be expected of the dissipated dog, yet daring to stutter out her name. And then I heard, without catching, her low reply; it was in answer to the somewhat stern questioning of quite another voice; and from what followed I knew that she had never fainted ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... began to stutter and stammer, and to grow red in the face, as is his wont when at all excited. 'W—what do you ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... usual size, and big-bellied, but he was well and strongly knit. His hair was yellow or sandy; his face red, which got him the name of Rufus; his forehead flat; his eyes were spotted, and appeared of different colours; he was apt to stutter in speaking, especially when he was angry; he was vigorous and active, and very hardy to endure fatigues, which he owed to a good constitution of health, and the frequent exercise of hunting; in his dress he affected gaiety and expense, which having been first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... make you stutter an' choke! Eunice sent your grandma a pair o' pullets no longer ago ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more gash than ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... anything to that young man, because, I, too, at times, had a rather bad impediment in my speech. It asserted itself especially when I heard any one else stutter, or when the weather was going to change; the men who knew me well said they could always foretell a storm by my inability to talk. From my own experience, however, I knew that when a stammerer heard another man stammer, he imagined that he was ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... with all the dignity of office, and solemnly inquired of Mr Stutter, the Premier, whether he was aware that a new party had lately been formed in the House, consisting of Messrs. Telson, Parson, Bosher, King, and Wakefield, called the "Skyrockets," whose object was to look after ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... length to the pitchers?" In secret the children they smile, as they wait; At last, though, they stammer, and stutter, and prate, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... attachment; she alluded to it just enough to encourage constancy and rebuke despair. As she ceased, his admiring and grateful consciousness of his cousin's rare qualities changed the tide of his emotions towards her from himself, and he exclaimed with an earnestness that almost wholly subdued his stutter, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... waddle under streetlights. Broken beggars grumble when they sense people. On some corners powerful streetcars stutter. And plush cabs drop into the stars. Among rough houses whores hobble back and forth, Sadly swinging their ripe behinds. Much sky lies broken in these dried-out things... Whiny ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... have never heard a Chinaman stutter you have something to live for, and although we discovered that our cook was a shameless rascal he was worth all he extracted in "squeeze," for whenever he attempted to utter a word we became almost hysterical. He sounded exactly like a worn-out phonograph record buzzing on a single note, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... than above the middle size; his countenance was swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an ever-degrading habit; he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... took their glasses, clinked them, nodded to their entertainer, muttered incoherent toasts and drank his health. The delighted landlord, feeling it incumbent upon him to break the silence, offered the friendly observation: "S-s-see you s-s-stutter. S-s-stutter a little m-m-my ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... broke out with a hiss and a stutter; it wasn't a laugh, for I haven't laughed in years. All my laughing since 1889 has been a strictly intellectual process; but I did have an awful pain because I could not digest his statement with a bouncing laugh. All I could ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... under Sixtus IV, more was collected for him than he had lost. No teacher was more conscientious. Before daybreak he was to be seen descending the Esquiline with his lantern, and on reaching his lecture-room found it always filled to overflowing. A stutter compelled him to speak with care, but his delivery was even and effective. His few works give evidence of careful writing. No scholar treated the text of ancient authors more soberly and accurately. The remains of antiquity which surrounded him in Rome touched him so deeply ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... was more easily brought to tears, and was becoming every day more irritable. The smallest impatience with him could throw him into a violent fury. His red face and short neck would grow redder than ever. He would stutter angrily, and have to stop, choking. The family doctor, an old friend, had warned him to take care and to moderate both his anger and his appetite. But with an old man's obstinacy he plunged into acts of still greater recklessness out of bravado, and he laughed at medicine and doctors. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and farther off, so that the vocabulary might get bigger and bigger; and, all the while, the constant use of the vocabulary, such as it was, in actual talk, as well as in reading and writing. First, let the pupil stutter on anyhow, only using his stock of words; correctness would come afterwards, and in the end elegance and force. Always practice rather than rule, and leading to rule; also connexion of the tongue being learnt with that learnt last. A kind of common grammar may be supposed lying in the pupil's head, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... swiftly that their smoke was not all converted into flame, while Browning was a man whose radically prim and conventional ideas, heavily overladen with emotion, acquired the semblance of profundity because they struggled into expression through the medium of a congenital stutter—a stutter which was no doubt one of the great assets of his fame. But neither Chapman's obscurity nor Browning's obscurity seems to be intrinsically admirable. There was too much pedantry in both of them and too little artistry. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis |
