"Blunderer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with Grant, the General listens and—smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... For a blunderer, the souvenir he had evoked was a very skillfully-contrived piece of baseness; for by the remembrance of his own fete he, for the first time, perceived its inferiority compared with that of Fouquet. Colbert received ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Some very pleasant blunderer is said to have declared Moore's Life of Sheridan to be the best piece of Autobiography he had ever read; and with little more propriety can the concluding volume of Vidocq's Memoirs be said to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... awful blunderer,' Dick said, adding, mentally, 'and liar, too, though I didn't say anybody would be happy to see them. Poor Billy, he is well enough, and so is Ann Eliza, if she wouldn't pile that red hair so high on the top of her head and wear so much jewelry. Well, I am in for it, and Nina can't ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... arise in the country, which the besotted blunderer little expected. He first found it out in the University of Cambridge. Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford without any opposition, he tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge: which attempt the University resisted, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... at present. But when relations have been definitely and permanently smoothed over between the United States and Mexico, it won't so much matter except for March himself. In any case, I shan't let the cat out of the bag. I'm not such a blunderer! But I tell you frankly, I can influence others to keep the secret after the time limit's up—or I can refrain from using influence. Which shall it be? Is it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Italy? Can you be in earnest? Your father, himself, told me, that I . . . well, yes . . . in portrait-painting, he too thinks I am no blunderer. Where do the Netherlanders go to learn anything new? To Italy, always to Italy! What do they create in Flanders? Portraits, portraits, nothing more. Moor is great, very great in this department, but I take a very different view ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Upon his sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... seen half so quickly as Hannah and Little Sister's who the blunderer was. In the whole drill there had been but one figure for them, and that was Bud, Bud, and it was he who had dropped his bayonet. Anxious, nervous with the desire to please them, perhaps with a shade too much of thought of them looking on with their hearts in ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... all she has to do is to snap up the young man, while her mother and that illustrious cook of yours stand by and clap their hands. But I do not give you much credit. You are merely an inconsiderate blunderer, to say no more. You did not plan anything; I did that, and when my plans don't work one way, they do in another. This one was like a boomerang that did not hit what it was aimed at, but came banging and clattering ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... might insinuate, but a barefaced putting into words outraged his feelings. His eyes sent out flashes of lightning at the innocent little blunderer, but Marie's eyes shone; her face was ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... all diverging arms and currents ultimately meet in the main stream. What an idea, Raphael, I form of the Great Artist, who, differently travestied in a thousand copies, still retains identical features in all this diversity, from which even the depreciating hand of a blunderer ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... deal of pains with that part of her subject, for she was determined to do justice to it. She was aware that it was open to her to take the ordinary practical view of Rickman as a culpable blunderer, who, by holding his tongue when he should have spoken, had involved her in the loss of much valuable property. To an ordinary practical woman the fact that this blunder had entailed such serious consequences to herself would have made any other theory impossible. But Lucia was not a woman ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... pause. "Yes," said the prisoner, moodily. "I'm sitting here because one of us blundered." He cursed the blunderer. "Lighting his fool fire queered the whole deal," he added. As he again heavily cursed the blunderer, the others murmured to each other various ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... with much presence of mind, "you're both of you public characters, you know. He's such an old blunderer, he probably couldn't find the right people, and thought you would ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, "Fix the furnace so you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's sake take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your nice brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind hurrying? Here it is almost ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... by Humphrey Wanley, and were given to the printer by Lord Chief-Justice Parker. But these types were very indifferently cut. Wanley himself said 'when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... and, with an active interest that hovered between jeering and applause, his neighbours followed him up and down the dam. As I might not go on, I wandered up and down the bank too, and occasionally joined in a murmured cheer when he deftly evaded some intentional blunderer, or cut a figure at the request of his particular friends. I got tired at last, and went down to the pond, where I ploughed about for a time on my skates in solitude, for the pond was empty. Then I ran up to the house to see if Jem had come ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... lecture on abstract points of science, subject to cross-examination by two acute students. Bernie does not cross-examine much; but if any one gets discomfited, he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle giggle, which is trying to the unhappy blunderer." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was going to be terribly difficult, and his heart was heavy with evil presages. He had seen Celeste. He understood the amusing if mysterious comedy now. Nora had recognized him and had sent her friend to follow him and learn where he went. And he, poor fool of a blunderer, with the best intentions in the world, he had gone at once to the Calabrian's apartment! It was damnable of fate. He had righted nothing. In truth, he was deeper than ever in the quicksands of misunderstanding. He shut his teeth with a ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... expected; for he calls Dr. Latham's English Language "unquestionably the most valuable work on English philology and grammar—which has yet appeared," (p. xxx., note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second edition of his work, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... The same kind of qualities are wanted in either case. The difference is that if the business man makes a mistake, he commonly has to suffer for it, whereas it is rarely that scientific blundering, so long as it is confined to theory, entails loss on the blunderer. On the contrary it very often brings him fame, money and a pension. Hence the business man, if he is a good one, will take greater care not to overdo or underdo things than the scientific man can reasonably ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the peril that the new master will abandon the blunderer for the insult, and there is the peril that the old one will destroy ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... gave another of his subtle smiles—those peculiar smiles of the Oriental which make the keenest-witted man of the West feel that he is little better than a blunderer. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... is just, Palmer. I am rather a blunderer, I admit. I see you are traveling under a ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... busy telling over his blunders. He had served French instead of German champagne at a banquet for Prince Henry, and he had allowed the Kaiser's yacht to be christened in French champagne. How could such a blunderer satisfy the diplomatic requirements of the vain and petty Kaiser? And yet! Holleben was utterly devoted and willing to grovel in the mud. He even suggested to President Roosevelt that at the State Banquet at the White House, Prince Henry, as a Hohenzollern, and the representative ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... episodes writ large in a notable Parliamentary career. Their range shows that Mr. Lewis was a man of high, if ill-directed, capacity. No mere blunderer could have stirred the depths of the House of Commons as from time to time he did. He was, in truth—and here is the pity of it—a man of great ability, an admirable speaker. If his instincts had ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dear, foolish blunderer to dream you could fright me with tales of hardship, or dangers, or solitude when you were by, to think I must break my heart for home and England when you are both to me. England or home without you were a desert; with you the desert shall be my ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the stables; Mamercus from the garden. Drusus faced his two subordinates, and in an eye's twinkling had taken in the situation. Mamercus, who felt within himself that he, by his oversight, had been the chief blunderer, to vent his vexation smote Falto so sound a cuff that the under villicus sprawled his ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... the blunderer a grave, brief, now-you-have-done-it glance and looked down. "Well, I know," she measuredly said, "that a man who can tell a woman that, isn't capable of loving her half enough." She turned to go back, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... real Europe of his time was to him a closed book; and while Napoleon was well served in every other function of state, because he himself could assist and supervise, he was wretchedly betrayed in the matter of permanent gains by diplomacy, in which he was personally a blunderer and a tyro. Talleyrand was a distinguished and typical aristocrat of the old French school, elegant, adroit, smooth-spoken, and sharp. He was an unequaled courtier, influential by his moderation in word, gesture, and expression, but a feeble adviser, and utterly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the article or book you praise. It is not very pleasant to be told, "Well, there, now! I always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as this last piece," and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last piece is n't yours, but t' other man's. Take care that the phrase or sentence you commend is not one that is in quotation-marks. "The best thing in your piece, I think, is a line I do not remember meeting before; it struck me as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... kind, now that your anger has had time to cool during these ten years, to accord to me the merit of being possibly sincere. Now I was more Christian in my conclusions; I set you down as an honest blunderer. That I have had occasion since to change my opinion is nothing to the purpose but it would be pleasanter for both of us if apologies could restore our ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... M. Dubois Thainville, and begged him to send them to France by the first opportunity. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit, might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... if you like to put it so, it was kindness and generosity and universal compassion that ruined him; but it would be nearer the truth to call him a fool and a simpleton and a blunderer; he did not realize that his proteges were carrion crows and wolves; vultures were feeding on his unfortunate liver, and he took them for friends and good comrades, showing a fine appetite just to please him. So they gnawed his bones perfectly ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... practical world has found to be best in practice. Fables simply give us the "rules of the road," and these rules contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous and satirical note ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... if there is 'danger nigh'—because we are pleased with the beautiful foam, need we steer straight for the breakers? Not every tempting morsel is the enemy's bait, though we should be careful how we nibble;—he is no blunderer (a proof positive that he is not Irish), never leaves his trap ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be impossible, without either using or threatening violence, to make so weak a man uneasy about his personal safety. He would soon be eager to fly. All facilities for flight must then be placed within his reach; and care must be taken that he should not again be stopped by any officious blunderer. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of a peep-hole in himself, the hedgehog waited for an opening. It was no blunderer's game, this. Death was the price of a slip. He knew, however, and accepted the risks deliberately—a plucky enough act, when you come to think of it, for a beast no more than a foot long and one and a half ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Esmond's heart always created a sort of rage of pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he loved best, the young blunderer sank down on his knees, and besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a speech, he who had caused her malady, and Doctor Tusher told him that a bear he was indeed, and a bear he would remain, at which speech poor ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he had been credited (to his ingenuous delight) by reviewers of "The Greater Glory" with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's nature, I have never met a more dunder-headed blunderer in his dealings with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on Liosha's part, but seems to have ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... simplicity. So, so. Here it comes out at last! It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted! O impudence! And then the exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer! ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. Being so well warned beforehand, it is a very stupid animal, or a very bold one, that cannot keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... blunderers manage to hit upon something which is rather comic. Thus an ignorant reader coming upon a reference to an angle of forty-five degrees was puzzled, and astonished his hearers by giving it out as angel of forty-five degrees. This blunderer, however, was outdone by the speaker who described a distinguished personage "as a very indefatgable young man,'' adding, "but even he must succmb'' (suck ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... order to acquire distinction. The thing I do really well—better than any living human being—is to blunder. I defy competition. There are champion tight-rope dancers, billiard players, opera singers, swindlers, base-ballists, candidates for the Presidency. I am the champion blunderer. You remember the man who asked of another, "Who is that coarse, homely creature across the room?" and received for answer, "That creature is my wife!" Well, I ought to have been that man, although in that case I did not happen to be. My compliments ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... your servant is lazy, with which you get angry once for all, and have done with it? If your servant makes twenty blunders a day, do not regard them as twenty separate facts at which to get angry twenty several times: regard them just as twenty proofs of the one fact that your servant is a blunderer; and be angry just once, and no more. Or if some one you know gives twenty indications in a day that he or she (let us say she) is of a petted temper, regard these merely as twenty proofs of one lamentable fact, and not as twenty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... feeling that he was a blunderer. The fact was that he was a neophyte and, it was true, did not possess the qualities which make a successful lobbyist. Mr. Stamps had wheedled or forced his way into the great man's apartment and had persisted ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beside me? You have told me much ancient history!—but all that truly concerns me this morning lies in the dark. The last time I saw you, you were standing at the garden-door, with a look which made me say to myself that I was the same blunderer I had always been, and had far best keep away. Bridge me the gap, please, between that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that statement. Garratt Skinner and his friend would make many expeditions from which both men would return in safety. Garratt Skinner was no blunderer. And when at the last he returned alone with some flawless story of an accident in which his friend had lost his life, no one would believe but that here was another mishap, and another name to be added to ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... identity and so believed that it had already existed as a Challon before re-birth as a dog. Its brain received instantly all 'my' training, so that it became at once 'mature.' What I have endured in these eight years—the isolation of mind and inadequacy of body—have been a blunderer's reward visited upon his victim as a further injury. Now that Homer lies near death—and 'I' with him, of course—I welcome 'our' approaching release ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hallooed, "Finaut! Finaut!" I again with pleasure discovered the track of the deer by a mole-hill, and blew away at my leisure. A few dogs ran back to me, when, as ill-luck would have it, the young stag came over to our country bumpkin. My blunderer began blowing like mad, and bellowed aloud, "Tallyho! tallyho! tallyho!" All my dogs left me, and made for my booby. I hastened there, and found the track again on the highroad. But, my dear fellow, I had ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. But what ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... me, Grizel," he begged her, earnestly. "I am so glad I was mistaken. It made me miserable. I have been a terrible blunderer, but I mean well; I ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... these on the face of the lady whom he loved best filled Esmond's heart with a soft of rage of pity, and the young blunderer sank down on his knees and besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a speech, he, who caused her malady; and Dr. Tusher told him that he was a bear indeed, and a bear he would ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... impulse smacked of the blunderer. It would put an end forever to his high plan, now boiling more strongly than ever before, in the back of his racked brain: to meet and some day put down the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and cut our line of communication. How do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... right. To speak plainly, I wish he had given us both a sound cudgelling. What was the good of showing yourself, and, like a Blunderer, coming and giving the lie to all ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... of himself; the shock, the readjustment, had been so sudden that sensation returned slowly—"to think, dear blunderer, of your coming among us all, striking your blow, and then rushing to your In-Place! But love is mightier than thou; mightier than ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... to get at us. It was sly of him to impersonate old Morley. I wonder how he got to know that you were meeting him? Someone must have betrayed Rayne. I have a suspicion who it may be. If he has, then woe betide him! Rudolph never forgives an enemy or a blunderer." ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... wretched; And happiness is still the lot of fools. Why should a wise man wish to think, when thought Still hurts his pride; in spite of all his art, Malicious fortune, by a lucky train Of accidents, shall still defeat his schemes, And set the greatest blunderer above him. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... hundred pounds: I reckon he got it by my means; and I must thank the Duke of Ormond, who I dare swear will say he did it on my account. Are they golden pippins, those seven apples? We have had much rain every day as well as you. 7 pounds, 17 shillings, 8 pence, old blunderer, not 18 shillings: I have reckoned it eighteen times. Hawkshaw's eight pounds is not reckoned and if it be secure, it may lie where it is, unless they desire to pay it: so Parvisol may let it drop till further orders; for I have put Mrs. Wesley's money into the Bank, and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind. "I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And then, doomed blunderer, she ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... understanding—the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid—but we of modern times must add a fifth, and that is the way of justice. For often a blunderer caught red-handed escapes with slight punishment, while the clever man who transgresses, yet conceals his transgression craftily, pays at the end of a devious sequence with his life. Of this fashion was the death ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass—so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... which there is (as I have said) for describing this lady, arises out of her relation to the tragic events which followed. She, by her criminal levity, was the cause of all. And I must here warn the moralizing blunderer of two errors that he is too likely to make: 1st, That he is invited to read some extract from a licentious amour, as if for its own interest; 2d, Or on account of Donna Catalina's memoirs, with a view to relieve their too ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... it's a settled thing that the organist of San Roman—that squint-eye, who is always slandering other organists—that great blunderer, who seems more like a butcher than a master of sol fa—is going to play this Christmas Eve in Maese Perez's old place. Of course, you know, for everybody knows it, and it is a public matter in all Seville, that no one dared to try it. His daughter would not, though ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... is that, speaking generally, the fathers are neither more nor less uncritical on questions which involve the historical sense, than other writers of their age. Now and then we meet with an exceptional blunderer; but for the most part Christian writers will compare not unfavourably with their heathen contemporaries. If Clement of Rome believes in the story of the phoenix, so do several classical writers of repute. If Justin Martyr affirms that Simon Magus received divine honours at Rome, heathen ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard, the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... My Dear Godfather,—What a blunderer I am! What deplorable want of tact! If I wanted your opinion on classical education or my scheme I surely might have found a better opportunity for requesting it. It is always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and out it comes at the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... feeling he had sometimes suspected he possessed in rare, exalted moments, were now shown vain ideas born from his own conceit; and the event had proved him no more subtle, clever, or far-seeing than other men. Indeed, he rated himself as an abject blunderer and thought he saw how a great overwhelming fear, at the bottom of his worship of Chris, had been the only true note in all that past war of emotions. But he had refused to listen and pushed forward; and now he stood thus. Looking back in the light of his defeat, his previous temerity ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... where he intended, making no effort to seat himself. Skinny Thompson, his hand on his gun, seemed paralyzed; his mouth was open to frame a reply that never was uttered and he stared through narrowed eyelids at the blunderer. The sole movement in the room was the slow rising of Hopalong and the markedly innocent shuffling of the cards by Elkins, who appeared to be entirely ignorant of the weight and effect of his words. He dropped the pack for the cut and then looked up and around as if ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... lordship that "ce livre est la premiere traduction de l'Anglois jamais imprimee en aucun vulgaire"—the first translation from the English ever printed in any modern language! Whether the translator is a bold liar, or an ignorant blunderer, remains to be ascertained; at all events it is a humiliating demonstration of the small progress which our home literature had made abroad ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... friend? Who is he? If he resist you, you must slay him, so as you get it back. If it fall into the hands of an enemy, you and I, ay and your master, and all that belongs to you will perish. Ah, the folly of the man to trust such a missive to this thick-headed blunderer! What time lost, what labour wasted, what peril run, what ruin on our ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... considered as regards all Rommany words which resemble in sound others of the same meaning, either in Hindustani or in English. It should also be observed that the Gipsy, while he is to the last degree inaccurate and a blunderer as regards English words (a fact pointed out long ago by the Rev. Mr Crabb), has, however, retained with great persistence hundreds of Hindu terms. Not being very familiar with peasant English, I have generally found Gipsies more intelligible ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... little more the nature of the circumstances that had to do with the evolution of "Dodd" while he went to school to Amos Waughops, in "deestrick four." As the plot unfolds, and it shall appear what kind of a pupil-carpenter Amos really was, you may wonder how it happened that such a blunderer ever got into that workshop, the school room, and had a chance to try his tools on "Dodd." Wait a minute, and verily you ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... to his proud spirit to see you struggling along in cheap lodgings. We can't wonder if he explodes occasionally. It's wonderful that he is as civil to me as he is; he has put me down as a hopeless blunderer!" ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unaccountable way, seemed less attractive to him, the songs of the birds, who were all awake, fell on inattentive ears; he was haunted by her face and voice, and he was, moreover, a little out of humor with himself for having been such a blunderer as to give her offense and thus leave an unfavorable impression ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... they spoke now and then of the possible cause of the disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of miner—disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shadow. From the immortal bard of Avon down to the writers of the present day, neither play nor farce has ever been presented to Englishmen, in which, when an irishman is introduced, he is not drawn as a broad, grotesque blunderer, every sentence he speaks involving a bull, and every act the result of headlong folly, or cool but unstudied effrontery. I do not remember an instance in which he acts upon the stage any other part than that of the buffoon of the piece uttering language which, wherever ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the two strenuous Cantabs, are within the same four narrow walls—their beds nearly touch—the jeopardized cradle has just space to rock in—yet this self-elected expositor of Chaucer is either so blind as not to see how essential such allocation of the parties is to the wicked comedy, or such a blunderer as to believe that he can improve on the greatest master that ever dared, and with perfect success, to picture, without our condemnation—so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive fancy—what, but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... match for the workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... blunderer, monsieur," she said gravely; "and if you are a giant, you are one of the good kind who use their strength and their courage in rescuing distressed damsels. I hope they will not all requite you as ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... being well marked and with her scent strong upon it, she knew it could be no ignorant blunderer that drew near. It was plainly an enemy, and an arrogant enemy, since it made no attempt at stealth. The steps were not those of any hunter, white man or Indian, of that she presently assured herself. With this assurance, her anxiety ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... exception of Turgenev, the great novelists of the world, according to my own standards, have either ignored technique or have failed to understand it. What an error to suppose that the finest foreign novels show a better sense of form than the finest English novels! Balzac was a prodigious blunderer. He could not even manage a sentence, not to speak of the general form of a book. And as for a greater than Balzac—Stendhal—his scorn of technique was notorious. Stendhal was capable of writing, in a masterpiece: "By the way I ought to have told you earlier that the Duchess—!" And as for ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... which seems to shield him from shame and pain. He may be a wise man in every other relation, a shrewd man, a far-seeing and even a cunning man, but in this relation—that of his own honour, his own fame, his own safety—he is certain to be a blunderer, a bungler, and a fool. Such is the revenge of Nature, such is God's ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... friend who had betrayed him? No, he could not regard him in such a tragic light. He was angry with Geoffrey, but not indignant. He was angry with him for being a blunderer, an elephant, for being so easily amenable to Lady Cynthia's intrigues, for being so good-natured, stupid and gullible. He argued that if Geoffrey had been a wicked seducer, a bold Don Juan, he would have excused him and would ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... a fool and a blunderer," he said contritely, "is that the blunderer is always sorry for his mistakes. I will go. None has a right to refuse ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... Hierocles we have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning; the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is always called a ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and lugged into court as reluctant witnesses of the truth of Christianity, as their further attendance can be no longer necessary: and I would leave him to consider whether the liberal appellation of "dogmatical blunderer," which he has bestowed upon me, p. 114 of his work, relative to my arguments upon this prophecy, may not better apply to another ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... that this accomplished black-letterer must have been under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing in one letter ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... matters I was generally a blunderer; yet something warned me that my answer would displease her. I could, however, see no way of avoiding it, and when I said as unconcernedly as I could, "Yes, and talked to her about Canada!" Alice for no particular reason ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... nature has not changed in the least, and where man has full sway, he is as much a tyrant to-day as he was five hundred years ago. Nations have been emancipated, but the kingdom of which the small boy is a subject remains what it always was. Nature, who is a well-meaning blunderer, has tried to set things right, first by planting some natural affection for his small boy into the stony heart of the parent, and, second, by making the small boy himself an optimist. Happily, there is always a silver lining to the cloud that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... had supposed; so without troubling to strike a light to investigate it further, she reproved the cat, and returned to the room, and groped her way straight to the bed in which her husband lay asleep; but not finding the cradle there, quoth she to herself:—Alas! blunderer that I am, what was I about? God's faith! I was going straight to the guests' bed; and proceeding a little further, she found the cradle, and laid herself down by Adriano in the bed that was beside it, taking ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... you stand there in that extraordinary garment,—it's worse than nakedness, yes, worse than nakedness! For that alone I could have you punished, and I will!—and try to play the fool? Do you think I am a boy to be bamboozled by every bogey a blunderer may try to conjure up? If so, you're wrong, as whoever sent you might have had sense enough to let you know. If you tell me who you are, and who sent you here, and what it is you want, I will be merciful; if not, the police shall be sent for, and the law shall take its ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... you weren't such a blunderer, Bill," he said, and his manner had become peevishly gentle. "Can't you see I've got to play my own game in my own way? You don't know all that's back of my head. You don't know a thing. All you know is that ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... fine frigid mansion—the proper view of it is from the court within—is one of the masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior age. That had been a part of Gaston's plan—he was a blunderer born, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... soldiers commonly think more of their dinner at a halt than of their wisdom and danger. No, no; let the boy pile on his logs, and smoke them well too; it will all be laid to the stupidity of some Scotch or Irish blunderer, who is thinking more of his oatmeal or his potatoes than of Indian sarcumventions or ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... to her," he cried in despair; "where is she? gone for the water? O dear! Here, Ben, you try. Dear, dear, what a blunderer I am." ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... however gross, on any subject, were made in his presence, he never took willing notice of it; or if circumstances obliged him to touch upon it, it was always done with a politeness and tact that afforded the blunderer the means of retreat. If some gross historical error, for instance, happened to be committed in a conversation with himself (and then only), he would set the mistake right, as a matter of conscience, but he would do so by saying there was a great similarity ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... be added, by his own weak violence, thoughtless conduct, and general imbecility. All this is developed at enormous length, and it ends in a general massacre, Louise's uncle being killed in a duel which Daniel ought to have fought (he is no coward, but a hopeless blunderer), the girl herself dying of aneurism, and Daniel putting an end to himself in her grave, much more messily and to quite infinitely less tragic effect than Romeo. There is one scene in which he is represented as gathering all his enemies ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... blossomed out. She's really lots of fun now. But I had an awful time with her for a while," and she related the story of Helen's winter of discontent. "I suppose that was my fault too," she finished. "I seem to be a regular blunderer." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Domenico," said Macchiavelli, smiling, and laying his hand on the elder's shoulder. "Satan was a blunderer, an introducer of novita, who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... remained for Great Britain to attempt to keep the French out of Holland. The defence of the Dutch, after everything south of the river Waal had been lost, Pitt determined to entrust to abler hands than those of the Duke of York; but the presence of one high-born blunderer more or less made little difference in a series of operations conceived in indifference and perversity. Clerfayt would not, or could not, obey the Emperor's orders and succour his ally. City after city in Holland welcomed the French. The very elements seemed to declare for the Republic. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the Dane commenced an harangue on religion, and mistaking me for un philosophe in the continental sense of the word, he talked of Deity in a declamatory style, very much resembling the devotional rants of that rude blunderer, Mr. Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, and whispered in my ear, what damned hypocrism all Jesus Christ's business was. I dare aver, that few men have less reason to charge themselves with indulging in persiflage than myself. I should hate it, if it were only that it is a ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... eyes had seen half so quickly as Hannah and "little sister's" who the blunderer was. In the whole drill there had been but one figure for them, and that was Bud,—Bud, and it was he who had dropped his bayonet. Anxious, nervous with the desire to please them, perhaps with a shade too much of thought ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... said he in calmer tones, putting his anger from him, "at the best you are a blunderer and an ass, at the worst a traitor. I will inquire no further at present; I'll not seek ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the occasion to wonder where the Boss would banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win; but even idle speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by toasting Confusion to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... religion, kept at least upon decent terms with the cause of morality. It was indeed a fatal day for Mr. Jeffrey, when he degraded both himself and his original coadjutors, by taking into pay such an unprincipled blunderer as Hazlitt. He is not a coadjutor, he is an accomplice. The day is perhaps not far distant, when the Charlatan shall be stripped to the naked skin, and made to swallow his own vile prescriptions. He ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... very impartial, and that he shall give out nothing that is not in the spelling-book. For the first half hour or so he chooses common and easy words, that the spirit of the evening may not be damped by the too early thinning of the classes. When a word is missed, the blunderer has to sit down, and be a spectator only for the rest of the evening. At certain intervals, some of the best speakers mount the platform, and "speak a piece," which is generally as ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... manner puts that out of the question. You are unwarrantably accusing me of a most ungentlemanly proceeding. Such an accusation being made by any one—what shall I say?—more responsible than you, I should take considerable notice of; as it is, it is hardly worth my consideration. You are at best a blunderer. I should pause before I replied had I the misfortune to be you, and try to recollect where you are. If you wish to quarrel there is time and ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... shall not mention it to a soul. Your words have positively made me blush, you may believe me. I cannot tell you too often how miserably weak I feel as a musician. I know, in the depth of my heart, that I am an absolute blunderer. You ought to watch me when I am at it; now thinking "it must do after all," then going to the piano to puzzle out some wretched rubbish, and giving it up again in a state of idiocy. Oh, how I feel then! how thoroughly persuaded of my musical wretchedness! And then come you, whose pores are ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?— The outward reason has the world in store, Regenerates passion with the stress of want, Regenerates knowledge with discovery, Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, Widens dependence, knits the social whole In ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... only response. Then the discomfited experimenter told herself that she was a blunderer. How could the poor fellow be expected to know what she meant? Why had she not asked the service from ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... was not hard to see. At a better moment than this blunderer had chosen, some one was to provoke the actor to an assault which the twins would make their pretext for a combined attack on that political "suspect" and common pest, using the canes as canes ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion. Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in regard to the amount of 9 ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... expected him to speak. It was his turn. But he said nothing. She felt sure that he had seen through her last lie, and that he was secretly resenting it as a heavy-footed approach to sacred ground. What a blunderer she was to-night! Desperation ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... particularly admires this bull, because in the confusion of the blunderer's ideas he is not clear even of his personal identity. Philosophers will not perhaps be so ready as his lordship has been to call this a blunder of the first magnitude. Those who have never been initiated into the mysteries of metaphysics may have the presumptuous ignorance to fancy that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... not, however, they cannot be meddled with by underlings. Instead they are immediately reported to the government and the two countries involved settle their dispute by arbitration. It is too delicate a matter for others to butt in on, for some blunderer might offend another country and get us into war just through being stupid. Conversely, when our ships are in foreign waters they must keep the naval rules of the nation ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... of address are so absurdly formal that Germans laugh at them themselves. Their ceremonies in connection with anniversaries and family events bristle with convention, and offer pitfalls at every step to the stranger or the blunderer. It is true that men do not dress for dinner every day, and wax indignant over the necessity of doing so for the theatre in England; but there are various occasions when they wear evening dress in broad daylight, and an Englishman considers that an uncomfortable convention. The truth is, that ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... necessity of the case which we would plead as our excuse. Mr. Mill's method of criticism has reduced the question to a very narrow compass. Either Sir W. Hamilton, instead of being a great philosopher, is the veriest blunderer that ever put pen to paper, or the blunders are Mr. Mill's own. To those who accept the first of these alternatives it must always remain a marvel how Sir W. Hamilton could ever have acquired that reputation which compels even his critic to admit that "he alone, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... perdition. He would meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all posts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor. Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whether they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... day an unexpected event threw out his calculations. Summoned to town by the arrival in England of her husband's mother, she left without giving Darrow the chance he had counted on, and he cursed himself for a dilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was tempered by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France; and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... I sent for Milligan and went for him pretty rough for having a mailing clerk so no-account as to be writing personal letters in office hours, and such a blunderer as to mix them up with the firm's correspondence. Milligan just stood there like a dumb Irishman and let me get through and go back and cuss him out all over again, with some trimmings that I had forgotten the first time, before he told me that ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... through the confused mass of arms and legs, he found the ball in Yale's possession, and Harvard's big glimmer of hope immediately vanished. Broadhurst, who but a second before had been credited with putting the driving force into Harvard's great attack, was now roundly censured as the blunderer who had blown the golden opportunity. The quarterback was a sophomore, Davies learned from the talk of some of the more recent Harvard ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... was originally occupied by a dozen Dytisci, or water beetles, whose diving performances are so curious to watch. One day, meaning no harm and for want of a better receptacle, I fling among them a couple of handfuls of caddis worms. Blunderer that I am, what have I done! The corsairs, hiding in the rugged corners of the rock work, at once perceive the windfall. They rise to the surface with great strokes of their oars; they hasten and fling themselves upon the crowd of carpenters. Each pirate grabs a sheath ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... disgrace and ruin stared me in the face. It is easy enough to be contrite with the policeman at your heels. But I was yet to discover that real repentance is made of sterner stuff, and needs a hand that is stronger to save and steadier to direct than any which I, poor blunderer that I was, had as yet ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... All these, besides other qualities, are necessary for the successful penetration of criminal mysteries; hence it is that the average amateur, who takes up the hobby without any natural instinct, is invariably a blunderer. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... precipitated into the coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open road to connubial felicity, a road which, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell |
