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Quavering   /kwˈeɪvərɪŋ/   Listen
Quavering

adjective
1.
(of the voice) quivering as from weakness or fear.  Synonym: tremulous.  "Spoke timidly in a tremulous voice"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Quavering" Quotes from Famous Books



... came out of the sheep, bedded on the hillside in contentment, secure in their trust of men and dogs. All day as they grazed there rose a murmur out of them, as of discontent, complaint, or pain. Now their quavering, pathetic voices were as still as the wind. There was not a shuffle of hoof, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... to his ears through the forest behind. It began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... The quavering shriek of the Fliupthecreek Was fitfully wafted afar To the Queen of the Wunks as she powdered her cheek With the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... Mr George Gurney, both for your information and your advice," answered Grace, with a little quavering laugh, that testified to the extent of the alarm from which the poor girl had been suffering. "As to the latter, however," she continued, "I shall not follow it, for the simple reason that it would ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... sir," said this old man, in a very quavering voice, as the burly Judge came up with him, and he extended his ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... exclaimed, and strolled to the door. The hansom was disappearing round the corner. "That's all right," he repeated in more quavering tones as he returned to the drawing-room and saw that it was littered with sweet-peas. Their colour got on his nerves—magenta, crimson; magenta, crimson. He tried to pick them up, and they escaped. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... me to die in exile," said Julie, with a quavering smile, as she drew off her gloves. Then she looked at her friends. "Oh, how good of you all to come! Lord Lackington!" She went up to him impetuously, and he, taken by surprise, yielded his hands, which she took in ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not to hear him speak; The old voice whistled as through a leak (Out it came in a quavering squeak): "Work for wage is a bargain fit: If there's aught of mine that you seek You ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... how they get these things up nowadays," he said in a quavering voice; "there was nothing like that when you an' ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs

... little afraid, for I know I should fall heavy!" said the Goat-father, in a quavering voice; but he did as he was told, and shutting his eyes firmly, he slipped from the window-sill and fell with a heavy flop into the arms waiting ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... westward. Suddenly both halted in their tracks and glanced into each other's faces. From far behind them, seemingly from the crest of the hill they had left, sounded a cry: "Y-i-i-e-e-o-o-o!" Long-drawn, thin, quavering, it cut the keen air with startling distinctness. Then, as abruptly as it had started, it ceased, and the two stood staring. Swiftly Connie's glance sought the bald crest of the hill that showed distinctly above the topmost ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... nodded and waited. A long cry, quavering at first, and then rising to a fierce top note to die away later in a ferocious, wolfish whine came through the fog. It was uttered by many throats, and in the uncanny, whitish gloom it seemed to be on all sides of them. Then shouts and shots both ceased ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... matter with sister?" ejaculated Miss Jerusha, going to the window just in time to see the fat boy tumble off the post as the tall lad came to the rescue, while the cripple went hopping across the street in answer to a kindly quavering voice that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... at last and kindled a red band along the east. The gray light at length grew more clear. A coyote on the bluff raised a long and quavering cry, like some soul in torture. As if it were his own voice, Meriwether Lewis stirred, rose, drew back the blanket from his shoulders, and ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... ham and eggs of an earlier evening, the syllables of Paliser's name had awakened echoes of old Academy nights and Mapleson's "grand revivals" of the Trovatore, echoes thin and quavering, yet still repeating hymns in glory of the man's angelic papa. On the way from ham and eggs to Harlem, she had, in consequence, conjured, for Cassy's benefit, with performing fleas. But when, on this afternoon, M. P. Jr., had come and waved cheques at her, she had felt that her worst ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... was so nervous that she felt as though her throat had suddenly closed up, and only a faint, quavering note issued from her lips, breaking off abruptly in a ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... to the Bishop's cottage Naab did not speak once; the transformation which had begun with the appearance of his drunken son had reached a climax of gloomy silence after the clash with Holderness. Naab went directly to the Bishop, and presently the quavering voice of the old minister rose ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... was practicable to-night. He grew sulky and ferocious under the thought. He seized the imp that hung on the door, and set it down summarily with a certain moral violence, unable to refrain from an admonitory shake, which startled its sudden scream into a quavering echo of alarm. "Do you want to break your neck, sir?" cried the wrathful uncle. Dr Rider, however, had to spring aside almost before the words were uttered to escape the encounter of a hearth-brush levelled at him by his sweet little niece. "How is this, Mrs ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... which are a study in themselves, there is very little in this interior to hold the mind; one is lost in a pleasant sense of general symmetry. As the traveller was sitting in the nave, a few priests filed into the choir, and began, in quavering voices, to intone their prayers, and in the peacefulness of the church, in the trembling monotony of the weak, old voices, his thoughts wandered to the stirring history which had been lived about the Cathedral, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... moment he regained control of himself, and he lifted his head and listened. Glory's voice, which had been quavering at first, gathered strength. She was singing Mylecharaine, and the wild, plaintive harmony of the old Manx ballad was floating in the air like the sound of the sea. After her first lines a murmur of approval went round, the people sat up and leaned forward, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... they sat outside the lodge in the quiet summer evenings, they and their father would sing together, 'Mother's favourite hymn,' and dear old grandmother would come to the door, and join in a quavering voice ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton

... dear young friends," said Celestina, "that old hymn has been my comfort and the inspiration of my prayers through all the years since I heard it sung so long ago in Paris where I lived when I was young. Here it is"; and as those quavering notes sounded we seemed lifted toward that heavenly ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... gazed absently at the men exchanging the bags of mail. All at once a sound of singing was heard in the distance. It was a woman's voice, old and quavering, and the song was a weird, almost unearthly, chant or dirge in a minor key. Slowly the singer approached the station, and reaching it, mounted the steps of the platform and seated herself on a bench, keeping on, without pause, her monotonous singing. The woman was a Mexican, very poorly dressed, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... upon by Mrs. Pearson, her next-door neighbor and arch-enemy. In fact, the whole corridor was alive with the news of her defeat. At the lunch-table it was the sole topic of conversation, and in the library old Colonel Rockwell—in the pauses of a quavering rendition of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—bet Mr. Patterson three of the cigars his nephew always sent him on Fridays that Mrs. Walker, being a woman of spirit, would not yield even though ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... cards, eating the black bread, olives and garlic which they had brought with them, smoking a peculiarly strong and villainous tobacco, and torturing native musical instruments of various kinds. At night a young Turk sang plaintive, quavering laments to the accompaniment of a sort of guitar, some of the others occasionally joining in the mournful chorus. I found my chief recreation, when it grew too dark to read, in watching an Orthodox priest, who was ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... you to spare me. This is no time for quavering," said the guest. "However, I am proud of your approbation, my old friend; for this young lady do I intend to take to wife. What ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... its shabby meanness! But that is our prison-cell In the jail of weary London. Therein for us must dwell The hope of the world that shall be, that rose a glimmering spark As the last thin flame of our pleasure sank quavering in the dark. ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris

... death.... It was the Revolution if we had accepted it." But it was not accepted. The local leaders were unworthy of the people. They persuaded O'Brien to go elsewhere. It was a cardinal and egregious mistake which he regretted within twenty-four hours. Had he brushed the quavering local leaders aside and given the word to the imploring people of Carrick the insurrection of 1848 would have become respectable. O'Mahony's followers to the number of 12,000 were on the march to Carrick when the news reached them of O'Brien's departure. Disheartened they broke up and returned ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... I distinguish easily a tune that is sung. But by placing my hand on another's throat and cheek, I enjoy the changes of the voice. I know when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... put and carried—uproariously. Then poor old Richards got up, and his wife rose and stood at his side. Her head was bent down, so that none might see that she was crying. Her husband gave her his arm, and so supporting her, he began to speak in a quavering voice: ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... was something in the quavering tones of the old fisherman, of the lonely, bereaved old man, that saddened her loving heart. She went to him and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... opened, and then a voice she had never thought to hear again cried in weak and quavering accents: "Let me pass. I claim my right of admission ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... He went quavering down the road, and Dorcas ran back to the house, elated afresh. An unregarded old man could give him the poor treasure of his affection, quite unasked. Why should ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... roared Leroux, but in a quavering voice that did not sound like his own. "Get out of the way or I'll ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... what you mean," said Mr. Milburgh in a quavering voice. "All I know is that you are ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... three when the first ewe got up, bleated for her lamb, and moved off slowly. Others rose, stood a moment as though to get the sleep out of their eyes, and followed her example. Ewes bleated for their lambs, lambs for their mothers, until quavering calls in many keys made a din to awaken any sleeper, while the whole mass of dingy, rounded woolly backs started ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... warning to the rest! God help that poor wretch, whoever he may be! What a fearful, awful sound it is! This is getting dreadful," he went on, as another shrill and blood-curdling scream broke on their ears, quavering as it was with the extremity of fearful agony, yet not quite so loud as before, as though the unfortunate individual were ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... boys" was given with vast emphasis by the party; Mr. Moffat growling it in a rich bass, and Mrs. Briggs in a soaring treble. As to the notes, when quavering up to the skies, they excited various emotions among the people in the gardens. "Silence them blackguards!" shouted a barber, who was taking a pint of small beer along with his lady. "Stop that there infernal screeching!" said a couple of ladies, who were ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cried in a quavering voice. 'The Cardinal, M. de Berault! The last man you killed is not forgotten yet. This time he ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... the faintest of quavering smiles, "Please do not reassure me. I have the courage of endurance, at least. And—I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... with difficulty adjusted their stiff knees to kneeling, and, as Aunt Jane lifted her quavering voice in a few sentences of simple prayer, she laid a trembling hand ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... night the weather has another revulsion of feeling. In the morning it is hysterical, laughing and crying by turns. We come down-stairs booted and spurred for the ascent, and make directly for the barometer in the doorway. Alas, it tells but a quavering and uncertain tale, itself evidently undecided, and holding out to others neither discouragement nor hope. An hour brings no change. The guide looks sagely toward the clouds, as who should know all weather lore, and candidly admits ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... believe I love you well enough, Margaret, to hope that you get the man who will make you happiest. I don't know," he went on rather gloomily, "that I'm exactly calculated to make anybody happy, but," he concluded, with a quavering smile, "I'd like to try." They shook hands like the two ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... "God help us all! She will not float till the turning tide!" Said his wife, "My darling will hear MY call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide;" And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... came a high, quavering old voice from around the corner of the house, and Squire Tutt hove in sight. He was panting for breath and trembling with rage as he ascended the steps and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... your Sunday's quavering, Sir Clerk," said Lambourne fiercely; "cudgel you, my worshipful dealer in flimsy sarsenets, into ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... an aged woman, obeyed with tottering steps, and, reaching the massive portal, undid the guichet, or lattice, and asked with a quavering voice: ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... awake, aglow; The tumult of the heart to hear Through pureness filtered crystal-clear, And know the pleasure sprinkled bright By simple singing of delight; Shrill, irreflective, unrestrained, Rapt, ringing, on the jet sustained Without a break, without a fall, Sweet-silvery, sheer lyrical, Perennial, quavering up the chord Like myriad dews of sunny sward That trembling into fulness shine, And sparkle dropping argentine; Such wooing as the ear receives From zephyr caught in choric leaves Of aspens when their chattering net Is flushed to white with shivers wet; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... at the thought that they, even they, were in the country where such adventures had taken place—and perhaps some day would be met with by themselves. And at night, when they lay out on their swags under the cool sky, which looked so much farther away than it did in cities, and heard the high quavering hunting-call of the dingo, their thoughts would go, not towards the scenes where they had spent their boyhood, ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he has made up his mind to speak. A certain something, I believe a vague molluscous form of conscience, made him wriggle and shift uneasily upon ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the negro "spiritual" which I heard him sing with such fervor, when those wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way northward. 'Go Down, Daniel', was one in which I can hear his quavering tenor now. He was a lover of the things he liked, and full of a passion for them which satisfied itself in reading them matchlessly aloud. No one could read 'Uncle Remus' like him; his voice echoed the voices of the negro nurses ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... agonizing cries, Pille-Miche saw that the fire did not yet scorch the skin; he drew the sticks cleverly together so as to make a slight flame. On this d'Orgemont called out in a quavering voice: "My friends, unbind me! How much do you want? A hundred crowns—a thousand crowns—ten thousand crowns—a hundred thousand crowns—I offer you ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... angel is dead!" he murmured in a thin, quavering voice. "Dead! Ay, that is a pity, a pity! But MY master is not dead—no, no! I am not such an old ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... was home, he would call down and say in his quavering old voice, "Who's there?" and we'd answer, and right away we'd hear his trap door in the floor of his house open, and hear his steps coming down his stairway and hear him lift the big wooden latch that held the door shut, and then when ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... wishes to appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect tuning fork, and her eyes were sharp as ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... fully enters into the spirit of our predilection. He has just returned from a concert of fashionable music, where he 'tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn't know how to do it,' and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen to 'sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,' for two long hours. When he gets home, however, he 'feeds fat his grudge' against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... refused the gold piece which was offered him. Some asked the soldiers for their embroidered waist-belts as souvenirs of the day. They will for generations remain as the most precious ornaments of some colonial farmhouse. Then the victors gathered together and sang psalms, not jubilant but sad and quavering. The prisoners, in a downcast column, weary, spent, and unkempt, filed off to the Boer laager at Waschbank, there to take train for Pretoria. And at Ladysmith a bugler of Fusiliers, his arm bound, the marks of battle on his dress and person, burst in upon the camp with the news ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... darkened parlor; neither was it accomplished without some echo of the confusion reaching the sick-room, despite all efforts of concealment. Jim, perspiring, redfaced, and palpably nervous, was passing on tiptoe through the sitting-room when a quavering voice from the bedroom brought him to ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... been taken on the Belle Julie; and on the morning of the second day out from New Orleans, Miss Gilman was so far from being travel-sick that she was able to sit with Charlotte in the shade of the hurricane-deck aft, and to enjoy, with what quavering enthusiasm there was in her, the matchless scenery of the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... overturned canoe. The rheumatic old man who had come up with the team towed it ashore, in the wake of its sister bark. As if in a dreadful dream, the girls heard the quavering tones of the old voice, his ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... amens rolled out with a new fervor from the listeners. There seemed nothing comic now in the way old Ben Reitman, with his slower eyes, always came out five words behind the rest who tumbled upon the responses and scurried briskly through them, so that his fine old voice, somewhat hoarse and quavering now, rolled out its "Amen!" in solitary majesty. They came to that gem of humility, the mourners' prayer; the ancient and ever-solemn Kaddish prayer. There is nothing in the written language that, for sheer drama and magnificence, can equal it as it ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... sat apparently attentive, and nodding at the name of O'Brien. Then Carlos would talk against O'Brien from amongst his pillows as if inspired, till the old man, striking the floor with his gold-headed cane, would exclaim, in a quavering voice, that he, alone, had made him, had raised him up from the dust, and could abase him to the dust again. He would instantly go to Havana; orders would be given to Cesar for the journey this very ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... whirled across the Place de Greve, to the 'Lanterne,' Lamp-iron which there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people. (Deux Amis de la Liberte, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Oakwich tried to assume a grave aspect, but was inwardly at her wits' end. "The Red-coats are coming." All the ancient men and women, great-great-great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers, whose childhood lay wellnigh lost in the infinite past of April days, said it over to each other with thin, quavering voices; but all their experience gave them no key to the mysterious message. Then the post-riders were brought into requisition. The whole corporation of Gale, Breeze, Zephyr, & Co., Express Company, all their clerks, agents, and errand-boys, were sent to and fro through the Commonwealth, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... shouted: "Now, boys, sing!" and everyone not too weak broke into song with "Row for the shore, boys." Tears came to the eyes of all as they realized that safety was at hand. The song was sung, but it was a very poor imitation of the real thing, for quavering voices make poor songs. A cheer was given next, and that was better—you can keep in tune ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... uttered a quavering moan, and his hand, as he took the mashie from his bag, was trembling ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... into a cry of quavering passion. The children stared at him in amazement. But as Davy, aggrieved, was defending himself, the old man laid a violent hand on his arm and silenced him. His eyes, which were black and keen still in the blanched face, were riveted on the gleaming pool. His features worked ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "Goramercy!" said a quavering voice. It was the speech of the old Negro track-walker, taking two days to get to his dying daughter because he could not afford the railroad ticket that would have brought him to her in two hours. Donny recognized the high, ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... artistic sense, but sang fashionably. She sang dramatically, and cast languishing glances at the unresponsive backs of the congregation, blinking over her notes as though invisible footlights dazzled her eyes. It was not easy to find the sentiment sung in the midst of the quavering notes, so the poor worshipers below could scarcely offer "amens" in their hearts; but they might perhaps consider thankfully that some sort of noise, "joyful" or otherwise, had been made unto the Lord by their ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... from the middle of the bog, with voice still more quavering than the maiden's, and lips rapidly changing from Spanish-brown to clayey-yellow; "heard him, massa! Reckon it's ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... the building near by came the twanging of a string, like a banjo string being tuned in fantastic quarter tones. A few sharp notes were struck, at random it seemed, followed by a few bars of a quavering song and then a burst of clownish laughter. Young bloods of Nagasaki had called in geisha to amuse them ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... Russell was submitted to the Queen; and the Prince perceived that, if it was sent off unaltered, war would be the almost inevitable consequence. At seven o'clock on the morning of December 1, he rose from his bed, and with a quavering hand wrote a series of suggestions for the alteration of the draft, by which its language might be softened, and a way left open for a peaceful solution of the question. These changes were accepted by the Government, and war was averted. It was the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... in a quavering whisper, and for a moment Myles felt the chill of goose-flesh creep up and down his spine. But the next moment ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... permitted to eventuate with such abruptness and with so little consideration for visiting noncombatants. To those about me I made no secret of my desire in this regard, speaking with such intensity as to produce a quavering of ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... to the door; standing himself with a hand on the lock; his back is to the room. He speaks in a strange, far-off, quavering voice) ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... it came—a later cablegram,—giving the story of the wreck and the names of the captain, first officer, boatswain, seven sailors, and one lady passenger as those of the saved, a feeble old gentleman had raised his voice in a quavering scream, high above the sobbing of women, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... which makes every heart thrill with praise and happiness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world,—coronations, Parisian splendors, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their processions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani,—but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's day. Non Anglei, sed angeli. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents; as the first note strikes; indeed one may almost fancy that ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... Kaku, in a quavering voice. "It would seem that the gods deny to us that knowledge of the future which you sought. Be content with the ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... eerie barring of shadow and ruddy light. But the place was a dry, dead shell; no pulse of life seemed ever to have beaten within those ravaged walls. She summoned her energies to call, send out her voice in a cry for them, then stood—the quavering sound ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... exercise he had so richly lived. And yet now he stumbled, the master passion, fear, betraying him. He was pressed; he became incoherent; and then from the jolting litter came a groan. In the instant hubbub and the gathering of the crowd as to a natural signal, the clear-eyed quavering Chancellor heard the catch of the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he forgot himself. This shall atone for many sins. He plucked a bearer by the sleeve. 'Bid the Princess flee. All is lost,' he whispered. And the next moment he was babbling for his life ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... ask you and Fred and Charley," she said in a quavering voice. "That 's what I called you in for—to ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London

... nose, either from cologne inhalings or sunburn, grew suddenly scarlet. However she still regarded the far-off horizons and repeated the last stanza of her hymn, which stanza, sung with much quavering and sighing was a statement to the effect that Mrs. Tinneray would "cling to the old rugged cross." Suddenly, however, she remarked to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the quavering denunciation. Some grinned broadly at one another; others placed their thumbs in their ears and wiggled their fingers. But the old man continued. Finally, two of the foremost spectators, sensing the tiny body ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... my young Midas here Will never learn to bow (The dancing-masters do not teach That gracious reverence now); With voices quavering just a bit, They play their old parts through, They talk of folk who used to woo, Of hearts that broke in 'fifty-two— Now none ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... the analysis of motive are remarkable. The author has a real gift for portraiture. In particular he touches in his minor folk with extraordinarily deft defining lines. Perhaps in general there is a little hesitancy in craftsmanship, a slight quavering between the fashionable modern realism and an older romanticism. But the seriousness of his artistic intention, the solidity of his work (which is by no means to say stodginess, quite the contrary) will commend Mr. AUMONIER to all who care to listen to people who have the one thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... gone, but we can stear with an oar," he said, in a weak-quavering voice—the thin high-pitched treble of age. "I will take charge, if you want me to, but my voice is gone. I can tell you what to do, but you will have to shout the orders. They won't listen ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... boatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way of letting it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until it dominates everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an original force, as the northwest wind or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he is pottering about the camp-fire, trying to light his pipe with a twig held in the flame, he is apt to begin ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... suggested carrying him off the field; asked if he thought it was broken; asked him how he felt now; asked him all manner of things, none of which Peter felt competent to answer. His only remark, delivered in a rather weak and quavering voice, was to the effect that he would walk directly, only he would like to stay where he was a little longer, please. He said it very politely. It was characteristic of Peter Margerison that misfortune always made him very polite and pleasant in his ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... very high key, singing some old Scotch song. Thinking this rather a strange method of composing the nervous system of a delirious patient, she stood and listened. Up, far up, into the loftiest regions of sound, went Aunt Patty's cracked and quavering voice, and then it came down with a heavy, precipitous fall into a loud grumble and tumble below. She repeated again and again, in a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... around them the indescribable solitude of a desert night filled with mystery, its vague, haunting, whispering voice burdened with its age-old secrets. Trevison had an arm around the Judge's shoulder. Their voices mingled—the Judge's low, quavering; ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Then—gentler—gentler—as the dusk sheds dew, It fell, by velvety, staccatoed halts, Swooning away in old "Von Weber's Waltz." Then the young ladies sang "Isle of the Sea"— In ebb and flow and wave so billowy,— Only with quavering breath and folded eyes The listeners heard, buoyed on the fall and rise Of its insistent and exceeding stress Of sweetness and ecstatic tenderness ... With lifted finger yet, Remembrance—List!— "Beautiful isle of the sea!" wells in a mist Of ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... something to add. But whatever it was, it remained unspoken. The horses started, and receded into the sapphire starlit night, leaving him standing there before Colonel Bishop's door. The last he heard of them was Mary Traill's childlike voice calling back on a quavering note— ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... not as the half-breed, but as the African sings,—commencing with a low long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone, and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:— ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... better die of it than break his promise!" The crowd gave way as the broken man they had seen a few days before so jovial and healthful was brought up in a chair to the poll, and said, with his tremulous quavering voice, "I 'm a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... decided that Simon was headed for another part of the woods, for his quavering cry grew fainter and fainter. So Dickie promptly forgot his fright and scampered on again faster than before, to make up ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey

... was fiery stuff, and even at the first increased rather than allayed our thirst. Most of the crew were lying down now; but one had climbed to the roof of the forecastle, and stood there singing in a weak, quavering voice. Jose spoke to him soothingly; but he only laughed, and continued his weird song. His face haunted me; even when darkness closed like a pall around us I could still see it. He sang on and on in the gloom, and it appeared to me that he was wailing our death-chant. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... aged man in Court attire appears with a tall, gilded stick in his hand. "The King gave me this," says he in a quavering voice. And then an aged dame appears. They will not explain themselves to the young man, for he cannot understand. How can youth understand those who ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... the hood. He kept it up for a long time with intense enjoyment. Obviously he had preserved intact the innocence of mind which is easily amused. But when his hilarity had exhausted itself, he made a professional remark in a self-assertive but quavering voice: ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... worn, tortured out of all semblance of calm or cheer. He came falteringly toward them, and stood for a moment uncertain. Then—for the scope of his cultivation did not include the civility of lifting his hat—he said, "Which of ye two wimin hev los' a child?" His voice was quavering, even sympathetic, and very gentle as he looked ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... too: he was only looking round before locking up for the night. Then these things came—combined in the person of an old man, Antony Bartle, who opened the door, pushed in a queer, wrinkled face, and asked in a quavering voice ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... other, and then at us on the platform, to see whence came this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... first, lightly with the tips of her fingers, calling softly to him in a quavering voice. Becoming more bold, she took hold of him by the left shoulder and shook him slightly, and her heart seemed to leap within her when a faint moan escaped his lips. Her fear fled instantly as she realized ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer



Words linked to "Quavering" :   unsteady



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