"Blear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and blear-eyed, Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four, With old lame bones, that rattled by his side; His scalp all piled, and he with eld forelore, His wither'd fist still knocking at Deaths door; Fumbling ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool!" he said without taking breath. "You great silly, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... stood snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the Kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi], ('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill. Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that, Ask the Schoolmaster, Take Schoolmaster first. He saw a gentleman purchase of a lad A stone, and pay for it rite on the square, And carry it off per saltum, jauntily Propria quae maribus, gentleman's ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... this calm, the blinds were pulled down, and in this state they reached Glenfern Castle. But there the friendly veil was necessarily with drawn, and the first object that presented itself to the highbred Englishwoman was an old man clad in a short tartan coat and striped woollen night-cap, with blear eyes and shaking hands, who vainly strove to open the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the air of a landlady accustomed to dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs. Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could be brought round ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... grandmother's chair, leaning back, and yawning wearily. Lord Mergwain looked muddled, and his daughter cast on him now and then a look that had in it more of annoyance than affection. He was not now a very pleasant lord to look on, whatever he might once have been. He was red-faced and blear-eyed, and his nose, partly from the snuff which he took in large quantity, was much injured in shape and colour: a closer description the historical muse declines. His eyes had once been blue, but tobacco, potations, revellings day and night—everything but tears, had washed ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... had not been scrapping with third- and fourth-rate heavies, and sparring with real, live ones for nothing. The mate's fist whistled through empty air; the blear-eyed hunk of clay that had seemed such easy prey to him was metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlike bundle of steel sinews, and Billy Byrne swung that awful right with the pile-driver weight, that even The Big Smoke himself ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the sentiments, let him look into Salmasius's Responsio. There he will see the first scholar of his age not thinking it unbecoming to taunt Milton with his blindness, in such language as this: "a puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blindling; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... sharp-nosed, and without your refined expression of keenness without cunning. And after these canine noblemen of the old regime, whither has vanished the countless rabble of mongrels, curs, and pariah dogs; and last of all—being more degenerate—the corpulent, blear-eyed, wheezy pet dogs of a hundred breeds? They are all dead, no doubt: they have been dead so long that I daresay nature extracted all the valuable salts that were contained in their flesh and bones thousands of years ago, and used ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... blear-eyed man demanded, thrusting his whiskey-reeking mouth up close to Reynolds' face. "Where ish ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... aristocratic society gave additional point to the story that one day a blear-eyed old cabman in capes and muffler descended from the box of a disreputable-looking growler, and inquired at the stage-door for ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... attended to, the travellers entered the house, where they found Pierre, the proprietor, dozing on his bar; a bloated, blear-eyed creature, who evidently would have much preferred making them drunk with his vile whisky to preparing them any pretence for a dinner. But they firmly declined his liquor, so muttering unintelligibly to himself he ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... board walks, the low rookeries, the unshaven, blear-eyed men sitting on the thresholds of the saloons, the slattern squaws wandering abroad like bedraggled hens, made the girl stare with wonder and dismay. She had remembered the town street as a highway filled ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... all the rooms, until in the last he found the King's daughter. But how shocked he was when he saw her. She had an ashen-gray face full of wrinkles, blear eyes, and red hair. "Are you the King's daughter, whose beauty the whole world praises?" cried he. "Ah," she answered, "this is not my form; human eyes can only see me in this state of ugliness, but that thou mayst ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Country, from a little window, Before I slept, across the haggard wastes Of dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shafts Like shadowy columns of wan-hope arise To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers. Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces, Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turned All that sad region to a City of Dis, Where naked, sweating giants all night long Bowed their strong necks, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sure (For so I can distinguish by mine Art) Benighted in these Woods. Now to my charms, 150 And to my wily trains, I shall e're long Be well stock't with as fair a herd as graz'd About my Mother Circe. Thus I hurl My dazling Spells into the spungy ayr, Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion, And give it false presentments, lest the place And my quaint habits breed astonishment, And put the Damsel to suspicious flight, Which must not be, for that's against my course; I under fair pretence of friendly ends, 160 And well plac't words ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... She was blear-eyed, and her skin, which seemed drawn tight over her forehead and cheek-bones, was of the colour of parchment. I asked her how ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... inn-yard of some large coachmaster; but few words were said, and I was consigned to the coachman of one of the country stages, with as little remorse and as little ceremony as if I had been an ugly blear-eyed pug, forwarded in a basket, labelled "this side uppermost," to an old maiden aunt, or a ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... boys hold out before they strike it, somethin' awful pretty in the face o' rocks, an' clay an' alkali. Oh, Lord, what a life it is anyway! They eat dirt, they sleep in dirt, they breathe dirt 'til their backs are bent, their hands twisted an' warped. They're all wind-swept an' blear-eyed I tell you, an' some o' them jest lie down in their sweat beside the sluices, an' they don't never rise up again. I've seen 'em there!" She paused reminiscently; then, pointing to the keg, she went on haltingly: "I got some money there of Ol' Brownie's. He was lyin' out in the sun on a pile ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... they can win, and when by the fall of the little ball their gold piece is doubled, they try again and again, until the habit is fixed, and their faces are as well known in the saloons as those of the old men with the blear eyes, which find time between the plays to scan these young girls curiously, and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... port that was very expressive of his condition. As he staggered up and tried to balance himself, he blurted out some unmeaning twaddle in his native language which I took to be a species of greeting. His expression was absolutely inspiring—the great blear eyes rolling foolishly in his head; his tongue lolling helplessly from his mouth; his under jaw hanging down; his greasy cap hung on one side on a tuft of dirty hair—all so familiar, so characteristic of something I had seen before! Where ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a sudden sound of uneven footsteps made the poor widow start to her feet, and Sally to cry out. The next moment the door was rudely shaken, and then Jim staggered into the room, haggard, blear-eyed, muttering to himself savagely. The sight of his mother and sister seemed partially to sober him, for the spirit within him bowed instinctively before the beauty of holiness, which neither poverty nor terror could obliterate from the face of those whom he used to love so dearly. But the ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... this old man, bent and blear-eyed, was swept along the gangway like a chip on the tide. In pure lightness of heart a sailor, posted at the head of the plank, expedited him with a kick. "That'll do for good-bye ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... besides the housekeeper, of a tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired personage, with a low brow, a blear eye, and a sneaking look—the overseer of the plantation; and of a well-mannered, intelligent lad—with the peculiarly erect carriage and uncommon blending of good-natured ease and dignity which distinguished my host—who was introduced to me as ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... flame of your soul play all about me, That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, The life and joy of tongues of flame, And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, I may rouse the blear-eyed world, And pour into it the beauty ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... others; and he had added that Dan Meldrum had the murderer's dread lest vengeance overtake him unexpectedly. Roy knew now that his partner had spoken the true word. At that last stinging sentence, alarm had jumped to the blear eyes ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... whose ennobled name Is woven with his country's fame, Triumphant over all, I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear; His province seemed to be, to leer At ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... one for you to wrestle with, Asa Thor," said the King. Thor looked round and saw an old woman hobbling toward him. She was blear-eyed and toothless. "This is Ellie, my ancient nurse," said the Giant King. "She is the one we would have you ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... me shelter, whence in the morning, equipped with purchases, I set out to find their shepherd. And there he was on the edge of Mallington Moor standing motionless, gazing stupidly at his sheep; his hands trembled continually and his eyes had a blear look, but he was quite sober, wherein all Lingwold ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... Of conq'ring Alexander, wrath o'ercame And made him for the while than Philip less? Wrath to such fury valiant Tydeus drove That dying he devour'd his slaughter'd foe; Wrath made not Sylla merely blear of eye, But blind to all, and kill'd him in the end. Well Valentinian knew that to such pain Wrath leads, and Ajax, he whose death it wrought. Strong against many, 'gainst himself at last. Wrath is brief madness, and, when unrestrain'd, Long madness, which its master often ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... my extremities, being giddy, and doubtful what to do, at least it was put into my labouring thoughts, to make happy use of this paper; and to blear their unlettered eyes, I told them there was a Device for a Mask drawn int', and that (but for their interception,) I was going to a Gentleman to receive my reward for't: they, greedy at this word, and hoping to make purchase of me, offered their attendance, to go along with me. My ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... returned from the Cowgate with a motley assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... uncomfortable situation, and conducting us into another apartment, which had fire in the chimney, called for chocolate — Then, withdrawing, he returned with a compliment from his wife, and, in the mean time, presented his son Harry, a shambling, blear-eyed boy, in the habit of a hussar; very rude, forward, and impertinent. His father would have sent him to a boarding-school, but his mamma and aunt would not hear of his lying out of the house; so that there was a clergyman engaged as his tutor ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... paupers tried to dodge round to the cauldrons by the semi-divine entrance; the tropical humming-birds fluttered among the crows; there was a splashing of ladles and a gurgling of cascades of soup into the cans, and a hubbub of voices; a toothless, white-haired, blear-eyed hag lamented in excellent English that soup was refused her, owing to her case not having yet been investigated, and her tears moistened the one loaf she received. In like hard case a Russian threw himself on the stones and howled. But at last Esther was running through the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Tyro is a person of singularly equable temperament. But to have an offer which he had made only with self-sacrificing effort thus cavalierly received by a red-nosed, blear-eyed, impudent little chittermouse (thus, I must reluctantly admit, did he mentally characterize his new acquaintance), was ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... A' the house are sleeping, I think on my bonnie lad, An' I blear my een wi' greetin'! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... shaking off their oppression, 'If there come not soon a famine to wipe out this hideous tribe, we shall be eaten by beggars within four days! To the merry bridal pair, what hast thou to say, old scullion?' And they continue to taunt him cruelly. The outraged peasant holds his peace. 'With his blear eyes, his white pate, his limping leg, whither comes he trudging? Pelican, bird of ill omen, go to thy hole and hide thy sorry face.' The stranger swallows their insults, and casts toward the bridegroom a ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... have coolly informed me, many girls of respectable parentage, belonging to the middle class, are not much better. The men, of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed—and yet, where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would be scandalised at the idea ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... out, sir,' said old Milsom, wistfully looking up at Elsmere with blear eyes, 'there'll be nothing left but the House for us old 'uns. Why, lor' bless you, sir, it's not so bad ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to my story. I went aft, and mounted the small poop, and looked towards the aforesaid moon, a glorious resplendent tropical moon, and not the paper lantern affair hanging in an atmosphere of fog and smoke, about which your blear—eyed poets haven't so much. By the by, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun—were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be—to them, in place of writing much wearisome poetry regarding her blighting propensities. But I have lost the end of my yarn ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... ye once were mine, and, till I forget, Ye are mine forever and aye, Mine, wherever your wild wings go, While shrill winds whistle across the snow And the skies are blear and grey. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... drink. In front of the Grand Stand the betting-men from Melbourne are pointed out to me,—a sharp, rough-looking set they are, dressed in Tweed suits and flash ties, wearing diamond rings. One of them, a blear-eyed, tall, strong man, with bushy brown whiskers, bawling out his "two to one" on such and such a horse—an ugly-looking customer—was described to me as "the second biggest blackguard in Victoria; give him a wide berth." Another of the betting-men ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... case the passengers will have to sit, entertained by howling blasts, till a fresh engine comes up from Blair Atholl. Such an experience was once mine, and I always think of it when I read the ninth ode of Horace's first book. Outside were the great snow-sheeted mountains, and the moon was gazing in blear-eyed compassion through a screen of haze. From end to end of the train resounded the rhythmic beat of cold-footed passengers striving to bring some warmth of blood to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... The blear-eyed sorcerers of the north, Their vile enchantments sung and wove, And in the night they issued forth, A direful people-eating drove. Feasting on our loved one, With gore-dripping teeth and tongue, The wretches ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... For she is barbarian still, and many men tower above her. The commonplace life still supplies her with weapons, which today are old-fashioned and crude. Her mode of attack, in exterior life, is as it always has been, as it was in Oedipus' days. She shoots like a blear-eyed bow-man, aiming straight ahead of her; but if the target be raised somewhat higher than usual, her ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... alone with his blear-eyed wife, but a glance sufficed to tell Mackenzie that the news was already told. So he plunged at once into the business, shifting the beaded sheath prominently to the fore ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... cunning skill. Here Geth, who to the Slaves cried "Onward go," And Mundiaque and Ottocar—Plato And Ladislaeus Kunne; and Welf who bore These words upon his shield his foes before; "Nothing there is I fear." Otho blear-eyed, Zultan and Nazamustus, and beside The later Spignus, e'en to Spartibor Of triple vision, and yet more and more As if a pause at every age were made, And Antaeus' fearful ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... these quack oculists were very numerous, and Galen inveighs against them. Martial satirized them: "Now you are a gladiator who once were an ophthalmist; you did as a doctor what you do as a gladiator." "The blear-eyed Hylas would have paid you sixpence, O Quintus; one eye is gone, he will still pay threepence; make haste and take it, brief is your chance; when he is blind, he will pay you nothing." The oculists of Alexandria were very proficient, and some of their followers, at various times throughout ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... falls,"—but, for all that, we glide over those threatened catastrophes in a very commonplace manner, and are aware of what we have been passing only upon looking back at them. So no one sees the great light shining from Heaven,—for the people are blear-eyed, and Saul is blinded. But as I left Cairo in the greatening distance, floating onward to the heart of the mysterious river, I floated also into the twin current of thought, that, flowing full and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and rings up the janitor of the flat buildin'. He's a wrinkled, blear-eyed old pirate, just on his way to the ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the most painful description. Oh, my reader! may you never behold such a sight as that which presented itself: eighty-three men and women in ball-dresses; the former with their lank powdered locks streaming over their faces; the latter with faded flowers, uncurled wigs, smudged rouge, blear eyes, draggling feathers, rumpled satins—each more desperately melancholy and hideous than the other—each, except my beloved Belinda Bulcher, whose raven ringlets never having been in curl, could of course never go OUT of curl; whose cheek, pale as the lily, could, as it may ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blear-eyed and ill, Her battered bonnet nodding on her head, From a dark arch she clutched my sleeve and said: 'I've sold no bunch to-day, nor touched a bite ... Son, buy six-pennorth; and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... questions were couched in whispers. The men around him were blear-eyed and haggard-faced, their skins dry and bluish, and not a one was clad in more than undershirt and trousers. Alive and breathing, they were—but breathing grotesquely, horribly. They made awful noises at it; they panted, in quick, shallow sucks. Some lay on the deck at his ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... could hardly have taxed the costs. It was really suicide for an attorney to throw away business so excellent as this. And now it had gone to Bearside whom Nickem remembered as a junior to himself when they were both young hobbledehoys at Norrington,—a dirty, blear-eyed, pimply-faced boy who was suspected of purloining halfpence out of coat-pockets. The thing was very trying to Nat Nickem. But suddenly, before that Wednesday was over, another idea had occurred to him, and he was almost content. He knew Goarly, and he had ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... were it but a few lines, just to tell me how that good, sagacious man your father is,—that kind, dainty body your mother,— that strapping chiel your brother Douglas-and my friend Rachel, who is as far before Rachel of old, as she was before her blear-eyed ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... eyes Ralph caught the vague hum of a lingo of switch pidgin, smut-faced, blear-eyed men near by, himself stretched at full length on sleeping car cushions on the floor of the doghouse. He sat up promptly. There was a momentary blur to his sight, but this quickly ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... blear, and hoar, Their breasts in anguish beat - They've seen him seventy times before, How well they ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... designed to promote the Cause of Virtue, and to expose some of the most glaring Evils, as well public as private, which at present infest this Country". The statement seems somewhat needless when prefacing pages which enshrine Amelia; and where also are displayed Blear Eyed Moll in the prison yard of Newgate, as Newgate was twenty years before the prison reforms of Howard were heard of; Justice Thrasher and his iniquities; the 'diabolisms' of My Lord and of his tool Trent; the ruinous miseries of excessive gambling; and the abuses of duelling. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... find them joyous indeed, sometimes loud in song or conversation, and taking generally a sort of pride in a dash of rudeness, calling it independence, but you will never find them sottish; nowhere cumbering the footway with their prostrate carcases; nowhere reeling zigzag, blear-eyed and stupid, to ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the gate. I recognise my friends, my enemies, in countless cages. I entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou stork yesterday at dinner; and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... evening at Sainte-Enimie, I spent a worse morning. There was a change of weather in the night, and when the day came again, it was a blear-eyed, weeping day, with that uniform gray sky with steam-like clouds hiding half the hills which, when seen in a mountainous region by a person bent on movement, is enough to give him 'goose flesh.' I now felt a longing to leave the Cevennes ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... ragged, blear-eyed vagabond—older, more serious, the laugh gone out of his eyes, the cheeks pale as if from long confinement. Dressed in dark clothes, his face cleanshaven; linen neat, a plain black tie—the hat worn straight, not slouched over his eyes with ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... constitution that is to be a basis of their laws—are we not provided with a mirror that reflects every lineament with the true disposition of light and shade? If it is a stern, it is yet a truthful, mirror. It flatters neither those who made it nor those blear-eyed maskers, who, forgetful of their own distorted visages, look in askance, and are able to see nothing to admire in the sober, bright-eyed faces of their fathers who gaze down upon them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... he read in his slippered morning gown, he read at meals, he read by his evening lamp; probably, if Mrs. Bower would have confessed it, he kept a volume under his pillow. No wonder he was a blear-eyed, poking, muttering old man, for he was much more interested in Hannibal than in Bonaparte, and regarded Leslie, like the house, the yearly income, the rector, the students, the janitors, as one of many abstract facts with which he troubled ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... presented a demoralised and disorganised rout, travelling in a long single file, for it was quite impossible to keep the tail up with the leaders. I shall try to give my reader some slight idea of them, if description is sufficiently palpable to do so. The real leader was an old black mare, blear-eyed from fly-wounds, for ever dropping tears of salt rheum, fat, large, strong, having carried her 180 pounds at starting, and now desperately thirsty and determined, knowing to an inch where ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... acuteness, and clearness of head. What part he had in the brilliant effusions of Mirabeau, and in the French Revolution, may be seen by his posthumous work, just published at Paris, entitled Souvenirs de Mirabeau. He was a short, thick man, of coarse features, blear eyed, and slovenly in his dress; but of mild manners, hospitable, an excellent story-teller, and much beloved. I think he had been at one time librarian to old Lord Lansdowne. He died at Milan, in 1829, aged about 70. The French cannot contain their rage at the exposure that he was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... here, mother," replied Cynthia, choking; and Christopher, glancing round, saw several decrepit Negroes leaning against the wall—Uncle Boaz, Docia (pressing her weak heart), and blear-eyed Aunt Polly, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the pavement with their blood and brains. I will begin by disguising you so that no human being shall know you; I will cover your body with wrinkles; you shall lose all your yellow hair; I will clothe you in a garment that shall fill all who see it with loathing; I will blear your fine eyes for you, and make you an unseemly object in the sight of the suitors, of your wife, and of the son whom you left behind you. Then go at once to the swineherd who is in charge of your pigs; he has ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... These he solaced first, With healing touch, with simples from his pouch, Warming and lulling, best with promises Of constant service till their ills were cured. And some, gray-bearded, bald, and curved with age, Blear-eyed from poring over lines obscure And knotty riddles of the Talmud, brought Their problems to this youth, who cleared and solved, Yielding prompt answer to a lifetime's search. Then, followed, pushed by his obsequious ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... morning, with a grey, cold, choppy sea on, the spray from which dashed over the boat, wetting me thoroughly, and making me feel pinched, blear-eyed, and miserable. I even envied the seals I saw cosily asleep in dry, sandy caves, at the foot of the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... loudly repeated twice or thrice at the room-door, brought into the apartment a short, thin, weasen, blear-eyed old woman, palsy-stricken and hideously ugly, who, wiping her shrivelled face upon her dirty apron, inquired, in that subdued tone in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... than to open the gates to him; dost thou think that these men are there upon their own account? No; peradventure in the behalf of one whom they never saw and who never concerns himself for their pains and danger, but lies wallowing the while in sloth and pleasure: this other slavering, blear-eyed, slovenly fellow, that thou seest come out of his study after midnight, dost thou think he has been tumbling over books to learn how to become a better man, wiser, and more content? No such matter; he will ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a keen sight for many reasons. To begin with, its eyes are set too prominently on the skull, and the eyelids are clipped and blear, (41) and afford no protection to the pupils. (42) Naturally the sight is indistinct and purblind. (43) Along with which, although asleep, for the most part it does not enjoy visual repose. (44) Again, its very fleetness of foot contributes largely towards ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... witch!" cried a merry girl, As they rounded the point where Goody Cole Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. "Oho!" she muttered, "ye're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it's one to go, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise—maire or no maire—not. I asked whether they meant half a bed; but they said no, that would not be necessary at present; ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... in old days at a coffee-house, he would shout and laugh louder than anybody there, and have all the waiters skipping round him; it was quite painful to see how humble and civil he was to John of the Tapioca, a blear-eyed old attendant in dingy stockings and cracked pumps, whose business it was to serve glasses of wafers, and bumpers of ink in pewter, and slices of paper to the frequenters of this dreary house of entertainment, where nothing ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a very decent chap, though rather low-spirited. Hugh thought that if Mr. George Loftus had been alive he might have consulted him. In an amicable silence, broken occasionally by whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed and asthmatic out of rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, after following the path through the wood, came suddenly upon the little lake locked in the heart of the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... one shut his eyes, one turned away, And all among themselves began to say: "Detested creature! he pollutes the earth and air!" "His eyes are blear!" "His ears are foul!" "His ribs are bare!" "In his torn hide there's not a decent shoestring left, No doubt the execrable cur was hung for theft." Then Jesus spake, and dropped on him the saving wreath: "Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... white locks and beard hung down upon his splendid garments and he supported himself upon his royal staff that was headed by a great emerald. His fine-cut face also, though still kingly, was weak with age and his eyes were blear. At the sight of him all rose and Huaracha descended from his throne, saying in ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... lady would care to find herself alone, even in the cheery daylight. If she came at all, she would be attended by a trusty escort. She would not get too close to people on the doorsteps, and she would shrink away in disgust and fear from a blear-eyed creature careering down the sidewalk on many-jointed legs. The delicate damsel would hasten home to wash and purify and perfume herself till the foul contact of Wheeler Street was utterly eradicated, and her wonted purity restored. And I do not blame her. I only wish that she would ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... and blinked at them. He shaded his eyes with one hand. The other he laid flat upon the papers before him. He was old, blear-eyed, unkempt. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ineffectual fire [Hamlet]. render dim &c adj.; dim, bedim^, obscure; darken, tone down. Adj. dim, dull, lackluster, dingy, darkish, shorn of its beams, dark 421. faint, shadowed forth; glassy; cloudy; misty &c (opaque) 426; blear; muggy^, fuliginous^; nebulous, nebular; obnubilated^, overcast, crepuscular, muddy, lurid, leaden, dun, dirty; looming &c v.. pale &c (colorless) 429; confused &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of all vices. Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shall be divided after the victory between the wives of the sergents de ville!' They are beginning to understand all the insanity of their plan. Why, it is Paris that will take Versailles, that will take all those blear-eyed old men who, because they cannot look steadily at Monsieur Thiers' face, fancy that it ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the truth. He was blear-eyed with misery. Brett looked at Hume, and the latter rang a bell. He asked the waiter for a pen ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... quae scimus inertes, Sed trepidas acies et fera bella sequi.[121] You that be wise, and ever mean to thrive, O, study not these toys we sluggards use, But follow arms, and wait on barbarous wars. Young men, young boys, beware of schoolmasters; They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes: They seek to lay the curse of God on you, Namely, confusion of languages, Wherewith those that the Tower of Babel built Accursed were in the world's infancy. Latin, it was the speech of infidels; Logic hath nought ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the lives of the Virgin and saints; here are short fat burghers, with enormous blotchy, bloated faces and little eyes set in fat, their huge stomachs protruding from under their jackets; here are blear-eyed ladies, tall, thin, wrinkled though not old, with figures like hungry harpies, stalking about in high headgears and stiff gowns, or sitting by the side of lean and stunted pages, singing (with dolorous voice) to lutes; or ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... looked at it he turned very pale and sat down quickly as though his knees had failed him. Apparently the house had not been painted since his childhood, and certainly it had not been repaired. Broken, dangling shutters gave it a blear-eyed look which it made him sick to see, and swarms of untidily pin-feathered chickens wandered about over the hard-beaten earth of the yard, which was without a spear of grass, littered with old boxes and crates and unsightly rags, and hung with a flapping, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... not marry, Breed, asthore! That old man; his heart is hoar As his head is: you can see Winter gripping at his knee: His eyes and ears are blear and dim, How can you expect of him To see or hear or pleasure you Half as well ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... gild and gloss the antiquated ruin. She goes before a clergyman and promises to love, honour and obey. Yes; she loves the luxury with which she will be surrounded, the glitter of diamonds, the equipages, the great house, all the paraphanalia of wealth, but she hates the trembling, tottering, blear-eyed object ...
— Wise or Otherwise • Lydia Leavitt
... false modesty left his face, his tall form straightened itself, and he stared round with his blear, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... blear-eyed tramp, of low-toned, rowdy style, Give an interductory hiccup, an' then swaggered up the aisle. Then thro' that holy atmosphere there crep' a sense er sin, An' thro' thet air of sanctity the odor uv ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... been to sea and he tells some wonderful tales Of whales, and spice islands, And pirates off the Barbary coast. He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails. Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice, He shifts his quid of tobacco and sings: "The second in command was blear-eyed Ned: While the surgeon his limb was a-lopping, A nine-pounder came and smack went his head, Pull away, pull away, pull away! I say; Rare news for my Meg of Wapping!" Every Sunday People come in crowds (After church-time, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... embodied the lust of war; in Athene, wisdom; in Apollo, music and the arts. The pangs of guilt took shape in the conception of avenging Furies; and the very prayers of the worshipper sped from him in human form, wrinkled and blear-eyed, with halting pace, in the rear of punishment. Thus the very self of man he set outside himself; the powers, so intimate, and yet so strange, that swayed him from within he made familiar by making them distinct; converted their shapeless terror ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... consisted of grotesque dancing, beating of drums, and blowing upon a shrill fife before a rude altar, upon which incense was burning. There was also marching, by these musicians, around the altar, led by a dirty, blear-eyed priest. The scene was strongly suggestive of a powwow as performed by the Digger Indians of California. So great was the din, we were quite willing to take for granted the presence, in another part of the temple, of the tooth of Buddha, without personal ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... an apprentice from an acquaintance with the dealers of both sorts, is somewhat like Laban's usage of Jacob, namely, keeping back the beloved Rachel, whom he served his seven years' time for, and putting him off with a blear-eyed Leah in her stead; it is, indeed, a kind of robbing him, taking from him the advantage which he served his time for, and sending him into the world like a man out of a ship set on shore among savages, who, instead of feeding him, are indeed more ready ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... as he dow, Wi' his teethless gab and his auld beld pow, And the rain rains down frae his red blear'd e'e; That auld man shall never daunton me. To ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... at all, leaped upon him and flung him. For a week he saw or knew nothing but a whirling vision of the world seen through rum-crazy eyes; then at last he awoke to find himself hatless, coatless, filthy, unshaved, blear-eyed, palsied. Not a cent of money was left, and so that day and night, in spite of the deadly nausea that beset him and the trembling weakness that hung like a leaden weight upon every limb, he walked all the thirty-eight ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... stairs.... In the streets of the place to which she hurried, there were flaming lights, the laughter of men and flaunting women, the crash and rumble and clang of night-traffic, the blatant clamour of the pleasures of night; shuffling, blear-eyed derelicts of passion, creeping beldames, peevish children, youth consuming itself; rags and garish jewels, hunger, greasy content—a confusion of wretchedness, of greed and grim want, of delirious gaiety, of the sins ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... Sergeant. You never know what you may have to say to your men.—For pity's sake, try to stand up without leanin' against each other, you blear-eyed, herrin'-gutted gutter-snipes. It's no pleasure to me to comb you out. That ought to have been done before you came here, you—you ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... among equals. And yet if it should so happen that there were a mutual good will between them, it is in no wise firm nor very long lived; that is to say, among such as are morose and more circumspect than needs, as being eagle-sighted into his friends' faults, but so blear-eyed to their own that they take not the least notice of the wallet that hangs behind their own shoulders. Since then the nature of man is such that there is scarce anyone to be found that is not subject to many errors, add to this the great ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... share with him the disputed possession. But Wakefield's pride was severely hurt, and he answered disdainfully, "Take it all, man—take it all; never make two bites of a cherry. Thou canst talk over the gentry, and blear a plain man's eye. Out upon you, man. I would not kiss any man's dirty latchets for leave to bake ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... did fear[13] me, While thy pomp did blear me; Fa la la! But now I do perceive Thy art is to deceive; And every simple lover All thy falsehood can discover. Then weep, Love! and be sorry, For thou hast lost thy glory. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... is sad enough: deserted palaces, and crowded hovels scarce good enough for pigstyes. 'One day man see his dinner, and one other day none at all,' as Omar observes; and the children are shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and women under all their difficulties. The faces are all sad and rather what the Scotch call 'dour,' not mechant at all, but harsh, like their voices. All the melody is in walk and gesture; they are as graceful as cats, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... suspected—whether justly or not will be presently shown—that Henry III. "was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew." As the letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador in Paris of the tergiversations in Paris, she became the more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists, or such as know no religion, in whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see them. ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... bare end. It's nothing but 'bare end' for some of us. Yesterday morning was wet and cold—you know how cold it was. Well, Rotha had hardly gone out when a tap came to the door, and what do you think it was? A woman, a woman thin and blear-eyed. Some one must have counted her face bonnie once. She was scarce older than my own lass, but she'd a poor weak barn at her breast and a wee lad that trudged at her side. She was wet and cold, and asked for rest and shelter for herself ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine |
