But Emerson was just getting warmed up: "Their religion is a quotation; their church is a doll"; "The gospel it preaches, is, 'By taste are ye saved'"; "England accepts this ornamented national church, and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice a
stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the receivers" (CW 5:125, 126, 128).
He was scheduled to undergo an elective orchidopexy, but on the day of surgery he was noted to have
stertorous breathing.
in its liquid aspirants, is indistinguishable from breath, indistinguishable from the noisy nonsense of
stertorous breathing....That is, his "words" may not be enunciated words at all, but simply noise that Marlow hears--arbitrarily--as words.
But after a few moments,
stertorous breathing and the rattle of bangles alert me to the fact that I am not alone.
Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the river is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left, where we least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a faint,
stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot, it too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer-trail to where it earthed itself in snow and ice.