"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are a gentleman.' 'I am of that opinion too.' 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I know a party as has FOUND a young gent as comes werry nigh your advertisement.' 'It will be a very lucky find to that party,' I said, 'if he is on the square.' 'Oh, WE are always on the square, when the blunt is put down.' 'The blunt for the child, when you like, and where you like,' said I. 'You are the right sort,' said he. 'I am,' replied I. 'Will you come and see if it is all right?' said he. 'In a minute,' said I. Stepped into my bedroom, and loaded ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... good-humoured, because all those marks which are supposed to delineate character were in him obliterated by adipose tissue. You had to take him as you found him. But for the rest he was a merchant who owned a lucrative business and a few small blunt-nosed steamers that traded along the coasts adjacent to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... truthfully say they were walking less to gain an appetite than to find the means wherewith to satisfy it." He then described these piscatorial pedestrians as small, dark fish with little bead-like eyes in the top of their heads, and a blunt nose—he called it a nose, I am not guilty. Moreover, their ventral fins were largely developed, and by this means the fish hopped, or rather, hitched along the sand, after ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... I be blunt in discovering my affections, and use little eloquence in levelling out my loves, I appeal for pardon to your own principles, that say, shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... been Mr Warden's opinion that, if his daughter had a fault, it was a tendency towards a quite unnecessary and highly inconvenient frankness. She had not that tact which he would have liked a daughter of his to possess. She would not evade, ignore, agree not to see. She was at times painfully blunt. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... being chosen to respond to this especial toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with her brightest ray, And pour on misty doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... not perturbed by something that fell under my eye soon afterwards. At a shop door hung certain printed cards, bearing a notice that "wood hay-makers," "wood binders," and "wood mowers" were "sold here." Not in Italian this, but in plain, blunt English; and to each announcement was added the name of an English manufacturing firm, with an agency at Naples. I have often heard the remark that Englishmen of business are at a disadvantage in their export trade because they ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... large as a finch, and is not unfrequently caught in the clap-nets of London bird-catchers, having struck at their decoy-birds;" and Mr. Hewitson says—"Seeing a red-backed shrike busy in a hedge, I found, upon approaching it, a small bird, upon which it had been operating, firmly fixed upon a blunt thorn; its head was torn off, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... not so much on what he sees, but on how it reacts on himself; and his lasting impression of any object depends less on the object itself than on the point of view from which he regards it. Thus by a sparing use of examples, lessons, and pictures, you may blunt the sting of sense and delay nature while following ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private identity: this private identity Gally recognizes as important. Gally's essay thus reflects fundamental changes in the English attitude toward human nature ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... before, a fellow rough and daring, comes boldly to the Prince when the Council rose, and asked him, if he were resolved to engage? He told him, he was. 'Then,' said he, 'give me leave to shoot Philander in the head.' This blunt proposition given, without any manner of reason or circumstance, made the Prince start back a step or two, and ask him his meaning of what he said. 'Sir,' replied the Captain, 'if you will be safe, Philander must die; for however it appear to Your ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... that the first blow had been struck some distance from the place where the body had fallen, and that the stunned man had staggered nearly thirty feet before he fell. The second blow, which was immediately behind the left ear, had been dealt with the blunt end of an axe, and while he was prostrate upon ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... of the spear, one of the collies turned round sharply, and barked; then the other received a prod—from the blunt end in both cases—and the bark uttered was ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... thousand miles, but those who in the foregoing pages have followed me through the strange and varied experiences of the journey will agree with me when I say that it has proved more interesting than arduous after all. I need not here express any blunt opinions of the different people encountered; it is enough that my observations concerning them have been jotted down as I have mingled with them and their characteristics from day to day; almost without exception, they have treated me the best they knew how; it is only natural ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hand he stretched it out to be cut away—"take this poor lock in place of my whole body, this lock of that hair which thou didst tire in my despite. To it shalt thou give due burial and remember this also as my due; let no man blunt my spears with unskilful cast, nor any more drive the hounds I loved through any caverned glen. But this mine armour, whose first battle hath brought disaster, burn thou, or hang it to be a ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... calling on her dear child, quite helpless at the moment, while Mary took the moaning child. Captain Carbonel, with his own knife (finding it more effective than the blunt old knife on the table), cut off the remains of the little garments which had become tinder, and then handed his wife the flour in a sort of scoop, and as she sprinkled it over the burnt surface, the ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Liquids. They that came after proceeded yet farther in their retrenchment, and from cader form'd caer, as the Spaniards now use it, by taking away the letter d according to their ordinary custome, when it is seated in the middle of words. There are another sort of people yet more sturdy and blunt in their formes of speech, who would say Car or Ker by a contraction of the two Vowels into one, as is observable among the Peasants of France, and those of Picardy, who retain very much of Antiquity, which seems to ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... My Lord of Gloster, I have too long borne Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs: By heaven, I will acquaint his majesty Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur'd. I had rather be a country servant-maid Than a great queen with this condition,— To be so baited, scorn'd, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... ached fully, too, for Yann, his tall, handsome Yann, was his first-born, his favourite and his pride; but he did not despair yet. He comforted Gaud in his own blunt, affectionate way; to begin with, those who had last returned from Iceland spoke of the increasing dense fogs that might well have delayed the vessel; and then, too, an idea struck him; they might possibly have stopped at the distant Faroe Islands ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... being in very great straits, he complied with the solicitations of some hackney-coachmen, who advised him to learn their trade. They took some pains to instruct him, employed him often, and in about six months time he became perfect master of his business, and drove for Mr. Blunt, in Piccadilly. His behaviour here was so honest that Mr. Blunt gave him a good character, and he thereby obtained the place of a gentleman's coachmen. In a short time he saved money and began to have some relish for an honest life; and continuing industriously to hoard up what he received either ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... could win new way, lying almost broadside across the stream, the breeze held her motionless, like a tired bird on a windy day when it flies out from the shelter of the wood. It was but for a moment, and then the blunt bows glided forward towards the north bank, and another barge succeeded ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... of the General Staff's Operations Division, Lt. Gen. John E. Hull, dismissed the Gillem report with several blunt statements: black enlisted men should be assigned to black units capable of operational use within white units at the rate of one black battalion per division; a single standard of professional proficiency should be followed for white and black officers; and "no Negro officer be given ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... console him, and found, upon a further confession, that he had flown to spirits "now and then," to blunt the sharp tooth of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... with a different pencil, or with a blunt pointed pencil. A man writing with a short blunt stump naturally writes a little bigger and blacker. But look at the ts and the rs, and the capital P; in fact, look at all the letters. They are exactly ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... feeling is conscience. Laws, customs, and social conventions he regarded as ineffectual means to good. There is no virtue in one who is restrained from evil by fear. He went further: he regarded external restraints as means to bad, since they come between a man and his conscience and blunt the moral sense. "So long as I keep to the rules," says the smug citizen, "I am of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State, with its negative virtues, its mean standards, its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He was a ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... would in my situation naturally form. He saw at least one Briton devoted to his cause. I threw out many flattering ideas of future political events, imaged the British and the Corsicans strictly united both in commerce and in war, and described the blunt kindness and admiration with which the hearty, generous common people of England would ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... seated enjoying a good cigar at a table caused his heart to leap up in joy. "Jack Blunt—of all men! By God! this is luck!" he cried. When the happy Alan Hawke tapped the smoker smartly on the shoulder he first laid a finger on his own lip and then hastily said: "Get a private room, Jack, I want you at once. I've a special bit of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim, And the first smith was the first murderer's son. His art survived the waters; and ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... manner—this being considered a great honour to a guest; and no sooner had we accepted the offer than an old woman made her appearance armed with the necessary implements, and with the aid of a pair of very blunt needles, and a peculiar species of dye obtained from a tree, succeeded, after a good hour's work, in embellishing us—L. with a ring on each shoulder (the sign manual of the tribe), and myself with a bird, whose genus it would puzzle most naturalists to determine, but which was ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... supported by the vertical thrust of the jet, and while it was moving forward at the lowest possible rate of speed. When that goal was achieved, they flopped solidly flat, slid a few feet on their metal bellies, and lay still. Some hit hard and tried to dig into the earth with their blunt noses. Joe finally saw one touch with no forward speed at all. It seemed to try to settle down vertically, as a rocket takes off. That one fell over backward and wallowed with its belly plates in the air before it rolled over on its ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not a very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his intercourse with William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he could remember, to consider as the first of living ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... carelessly. "A man has to defend himself, and even with blunt swords he will get awkward cracks if he cannot protect his head. Besides, in the arena a man's life depends upon his skill, and the conquered is sure to have no mercy shown him unless he has borne himself well. Therefore, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was an affair which ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... common effect of the Famine was to harden the hearts of the people, and blunt their natural feelings. Hundreds, remarks this correspondent, are daily expiring in their cabins in the three parishes of this neighbourhood, and the people are becoming so accustomed to death that they have lost all those ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... printer of Tahiti, had given the site out of his humble savings. By the sign, in his blunt way, he struck at education which does not teach the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... blunt, pleasant creature, And slander itself must allow him good nature: 126 He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper; Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser! I answer, no, no, for he always ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... After Eagles had mounted the ladder, and been turned off a short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fair problems does not the habit of frequenting her give rise! To set them forth worthily, the marvellous art which the little printer was to acquire were not too much. One needs the pen of a Michelet; and I have but a rough, blunt pencil. Let us try, nevertheless: even when poorly clad, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... sergeant's wife was brought to bed soon after her arrival, and remained with Mrs. Gray till she recovered her strength. She was grateful for the kindness that was shown to her by Mrs. Gray; and so was her husband, the sergeant. He came one evening to the cottage, and in his blunt English fashion said, "Mr. Gray, you know I, or my wife, which is the same thing, have cause to be obliged to you, or your wife, which comes also to the same thing: now one good turn deserves another. Our colonel has ordered me, I being quarter-master, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... by the name of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny color. At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and Wilson shot two specimens of another variety. One was an old lion, whose teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were entirely destitute of mane. The lions in the country near the lake give tongue less than those further south. We scarcely ever heard them roar ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a celebrated passage ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Boone himself, on strong steady-striding horses. They came last in this crew, but among a thousand other long-riders they would have ridden first, either red-faced, good-humored, loud-voiced Garry Patterson, or Phil Branch, stout-handed, blunt of jaw, who handled men as he had once hammered red iron at ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... company was founded. Gorham's good-nature was taxed to its utmost, but he fully realized how deeply his old friend was wounded; and the knowledge that his own interest in Allen was in reality a genuine service to Sanford himself served to blunt the force of ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... blunt woman. Her consideration for me rested on my being her brother's pupil. She spoke more readily than he did. From our cove we looked over the railing at an ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... travel, one returns to England one can taste, smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral—the curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of "It'll be all right," till you have only just time. But suppose you tell him you have no time; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ears through more channels than one, you would have thought; but he's a taciturn man, asks no questions, and invites no confidences. I like him the better for it. Next week, come what may, I'll speak to him and tell him the truth, like a plain, blunt man." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... distribution of a Christmas charity at Millbrook, Southampton, the Rev. A. C. Blunt stated that one of the recipients had nearly reached her 102nd year. She was born in Hampshire, and down to a very recent period had been ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... aspect of the fable, there is, certainly, a good deal of sound criticism in the piece. It may be brief, it may be inadequate, it may be blunt, but for all that it is truthful, and decidedly just, as far as it goes. Bryant, who was called cold, took umbrage at the portrait drawn of him. But his verse has all the cold glitter of the Greek bards, despite the fact that he is America's greatest poet of nature, and some of his ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... powder—it was empty! "The God of Righteousness hath punished him!" exclaimed Amine; "but O! that this man should have been my father! Yes! it is plain. Frightened at his own wicked, damned intentions, he poured out more wine from the flagon, to blunt his feelings of remorse, and not knowing that the powder was still in the cup, he filled it up and drank himself—the death he meant for another! For another!—and for whom? one wedded to his own daughter!—Philip! my husband! Wert thou not my father," continued Amine, looking at the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... passed away, and empty praise was all that he could, for the most part, earn. After lingering, in the sickness of hope deferred, at several of the German courts, his destination was at last fixed for Paris. His chance of success as a courtier was probably diminished by the blunt though kindly frankness of his opinions, and by his inability to stoop to unworthy means of rising. He had also many rivals to encounter, particularly those of the more slender school of Italian melody; and few of the public ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and great wattles, the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; the Pouter with shorter legs, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... just uttered, almost made him start, because half waking up towards daybreak that night he had cried out "Laceration, laceration," probably applying it to his dream. He had been dreaming all night of the previous day's scene at Katerina Ivanovna's. Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov's blunt and persistent assertion that Katerina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and only deceived herself through some sort of pose, from "self-laceration," and tortured herself by her pretended love for Dmitri from some fancied duty of gratitude. "Yes," ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... when two of the same blood meet; but still, he recognised the genuine kindness underlying the inquiry, and stifled his resentment, which May would not have understood, because she and Walter and Ida were in the habit of asking each other similar blunt questions. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... But the solicitus timor of his love—the dependence upon Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)—denaturalized him. He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to the end and they faced five thousand British veterans; wherefore they had done what the navy expected of them. On a day so shameful that no self-respecting American can read of it without blushing they had enacted the one redeeming episode. Commodore Barney described this action in a manner blunt and unadorned: ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... need, a timely Apparition Steps in between, to bear the awful brunt; Making him change his horrible position, To marvel at this comer, brave and blunt, That dares Time's irresistible affront, Whose strokes have scarr'd even the gods of old;— Whereas this seem'd a mortal, at mere hunt For coneys, lighted by the moonshine cold, Or stalker of stray ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... If I am blunt of speech, I beg your forgiveness. I bring to you a letter from the citizen Lamachus, which I shall read, if it be ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Francqui is blunt, silent, aggressive. When Belgium wants something done she instinctively turns to him. In 1920, after the delay in fixing the German reparation embarrassed the country, and liquid cash was imperative, he left Brussels on three ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... analysis. Sometimes a government will propose, in the interests of peace and good government, to crush the enemy's aggressiveness by a purely defensive aggression, an excuse for bloodshed which only the most fanatical pacifist could confuse with Mr. Asquith's blunt watchword of "crushing German militarism." The logical fallacy of such an excuse which is almost invariably pleaded by powerful belligerents,[84] a fallacy of which no one could wish to accuse Mr. Asquith's ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... conducted me to their prince's tent, at the very moment that Missouf was brought before him. Thou wilt doubtless be pleased to hear that the prince thought me beautiful; but thou wilt be sorry to be informed that he designed me for his seraglio. He told me, with a blunt and resolute air, that as soon as he had finished a military expedition, which he was just going to undertake, he would come to me. Judge how great must have been my grief. My ties with Moabdar were already dissolved; I might have been the wife of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... with me, and for your country fell! O'er your cold dust I wept not; hurrying war Forbade all pause.—Yet, oh! whatever star, Sacred to patriot worth, and valour's crown, } Contain you now,—from heaven's bright noon look down, } Visit an exile's dreams, and blunt misfortune's frown! } ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... plates on which she amused herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals. She felt sickened by the sight of the dead sheep; Louis seemed unmoved as he ran an anatomical eye over it and hacked off slices with a blunt knife. He became very wise on the subject of flapjacks and felt that Marcella was not quite playing up to him when she preferred to make omelets. The meal was quite a success in spite of the fact that, when it was ready Louis had difficulty in beating up the host and the other guests, and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... open at a deep brown throat, leggings of some thin material, boots, and a funny little patched brown coat and pointed hood made all in one, and hanging down with a fulness almost of skirts about the small determined legs. The accompanying dog was a very sympathetic, blunt-nosed, round-headed, curly-coated type, whose whiteness, which positively invited the stroking hand, was broken by two great black blotches set all askew on the back, and by a black patch which ringed the left eye and completely ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... audibly, made a jerky movement towards the screens, then suddenly became aware of three MPs standing beside him, hands nonchalantly cradling blunt-nosed weapons. ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... —and brain sauce—did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little, just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the colour of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no complement of boiled neck of mutton before it, to blunt the edge of delicate desire? Did you flesh maiden teeth in it? Not that I sent the pig, or can form the remotest guess what part Owen could play in the business. I never knew him give anything away in my life. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wearily to find that a letter had been thrust beneath his door, and so silently that he had not been aroused from his thoughts. The paper was of palest blue and heavy-laid. His name was written with a blunt pen in an angular, eccentric hand, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... for her ludicrous mistakes and blunt remarks were the bane of her new teacher's methodical life, and many an hour she had been kept after school as a ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... good-natured, whatever else he was, and as Grace said no more, he touched his cap, and passed on. The devoted admirer of Shuffles's nobleness and goodness was greatly disconcerted by the blunt statements of the second master, who had declared that the ship's company were almost in a state of mutiny against the captain. She continued her inquiries among other officers; but, though some of them thought it was quite unnecessary to go to sea, they all spoke very ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... for this unfaithfulness to conviction and to Christ, are put by the Apostle here in a very blunt fashion—'For fear of the Jews.' That is not what we say to ourselves; some of us say, 'Oh! I have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough to be united to Christ. The Christian communities are very imperfect. There is not any of them that I quite ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... obvious in its simplicity, and not in the least discreditable from my point of view. It was perhaps inevitable that a boy like Bob should imagine I was trying to "cut him out," as my blunt friend Quinby phrased it to my face. I had not, of course, the smallest desire to do any such vulgar thing. All I wanted was to make myself, if possible, as agreeable to Mrs. Lascelles as this youth had done before me, and ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... those organs, on the contrary, which softness and sensuality can alone improve, must remain in a state of rudeness, utterly incompatible with all manner of delicacy; and as his senses are divided on this point, his touch and his taste must be extremely coarse and blunt; his sight, his hearing, and his smelling equally subtle: such is the animal state in general, and accordingly if we may believe travellers, it is that of most savage nations. We must not therefore ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... blunt, perhaps all the more so for the unwonted touch of fiery feeling which Olga was quick to detect in their utterance. They moved her strangely. It was almost as if he had flung open his soul to her, challenging her to enter and satisfy herself. And something very deep ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... better days; even a landsman could tell that. But from the blunt bows to the weather-scarred stern, on which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about it, the air of something that has lived; it was eloquent of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Winchester, brother of King Stephen, went to the King, and offered to pay the whole sum required of Becket; but he was not listened to, and the Bishops of Chichester and London plainly told the Archbishop, that what was aimed at was to force him to resign. The plain, blunt Bishop of Lincoln said, "The man's life is in danger; he will lose it, or his bishopric; and what good his bishopric will do him without his life, I do ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of Newman's Apologia; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the fear of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stream down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard thumping of the blunt bows ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... before you a second time, you will have a right to see how far I have wronged that trust reposed in me as your representative. Mr. Briggs, I dare say it may seem rude and impolitic to address you in this manner; but I am a plain, blunt man, and I disdain the vulgar arts of electioneering, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much time, so let us be off at once," said Ernest. "Nine shall be the game. Are you all provided with blunt-headed arrows? That is right. Twelve a-piece we should have. Let us take half-an-hour's turn round the wood, and then be back for the races. By that time the servants will have the dinner things cleared away and the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Gold and silver and copper they knew, and also tin, which they used for hardening the copper. But this new metal was altogether strange to them. It enormously exceeded copper in strength and hardness. Its edge did not, like that of their own weapons, blunt with usage, and they could well understand that, if armor could be formed of it, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... came to a small straight stem. "This will do, at all events," he thought, and he set to work with his knife to cut it down. As the knife was blunt, he made but slow progress. Even when it was down, he would have to pare off the lower part, so as to make it of the same size as the upper. At length by cutting round and round, he made a notch of sufficient depth to enable him to break off the stem. Shouldering his ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Eustacia, looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... for her on the ground. The camp site appeared to be just the same as any other part of that monotonous plain-land, but evidently there was a stream or water-hole near by. Allie saw her companions were the only women in the caravan; they were plain persons, blunt, yet kind, used to hard, honest work, and probably wives of defenders of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... thrust, which was taken in such excellent part by Stingaree as to prove him a victim to the desired illusion. It was the cleverest touch that Vanheimert had yet achieved. And he had the wit neither to blunt his point by rubbing it in nor to recall attention to it by subtle protestation of his pretended persuasion. But once or twice before sundown he permitted himself to ask natural questions concerning the old country, and to indulge in those genial gibes which the Englishman in the bush learns ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives nothing from like. And I thought that he who said this was a charming man, and that he spoke well. What do ...
— Lysis • Plato
... smile, instead of softening the effect of her words, appeared to call attention to the width of the gulf that separated Kesiah's generation from her own. The edge of sweetness to her look tempered but did not blunt the keeness with which it pierced. This quality of independent decision had always attracted him, and as he watched her walking under the hanging garland of the wild grape, he told himself in desperation that she was the only woman he had ever seen whose ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Lavendar's blunt refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... four hours had not looked up from his interminable chess game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt brown hand. ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... Surprised at the blunt straightforwardness of the question, as coming from him, I replied thoughtlessly, "Oh, my ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... owl?" No one spoke in the shop, The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop; The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading The "Daily," the "Herald," the "Post," little heeding The young man who blurted out such a blunt question; Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion; And ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too hard and bare in statement. We are told in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... of ground, which lies between them, and the wild Indians, who are not reduced under their dominion. We read of some barbarous people, whom the Romans placed in their armies, for no other service, than to blunt their enemies' swords, and afterwards to fill up trenches with their dead bodies. And thus our people who transport themselves, are settled in those interjacent tracts, as a screen against the insults ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... sometimes, I am told, to fourteen feet; the horns, of which I saw a great many at Whale-Fish Isles, were from three feet to seven feet in length. The use of this horn is a matter of controversy amongst the fishermen: it is almost too blunt for offence, and its point, for about four inches, is always found well polished, whilst the remainder of it is usually covered with slime and greenish sea-weed. Some maintain that it roots up food from the bottom of the sea with this horn; others, that it probes the clefts and fissures ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... lumps, but some weighing upwards of fifteen pounds. Some were hanging on to the trunk; others had fallen, and were partly buried in the ground near the roots. Ali took some of these lumps, and, putting them on a piece of rock, with the blunt end of his axe reduced them to powder. He then cut some palm-leaves, which he formed into tubes about a yard long, and these tubes he filled with the resin, binding them tightly round with small creepers. He presented one ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... The blunt-faced Etchemin woman, once a prisoner brought from northern Acadia, now the companion of Madockawando's daughter, knew her duty to the strangers, and gave them food as rapidly as the hunter could broil it. The hunter was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... so as not to break the ball of earth round the roots, and fill in with mould round the sides. In order to supply water readily the pots must not be filled up to the rim. Pot firmly, and in the case of hard-wooded plants ram the earth down with a blunt-pointed stick; soft-wooded ones may be left rather looser. Give shade till the plants have recovered themselves. The soil used for potting should be moist, but not clammy. A rather light, rich loam is most suitable for strong-growing plants; peat for slow-growing, hard-wooded ones, like Ericas, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... Indians are very expert in the use of a long bow, with wooden arrows, rather heavy and blunt at the end. Maquin said he could shoot ducks and small birds with his arrows; but I should think they were not calculated to reach objects at any great distance, as ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... he was an active, stoutly built man (though far too energetic to be fat), with blunt rounded features, eyes a little protruding, and sandy hair and a reddish complexion which made his age an unguessable secret. He might have been in the thirties or he might have been ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... once. "It's this," he said finally, with blunt directness. "Your partner, Philip Rochester, appears to be a bankrupt. Harding and Taylor came in here to attach his private bank account to cover indebtedness ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... His large, blunt head was scarred with the record of old wounds, a series of battlefields all over it. His muzzle was as black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, and a tooth or two, all he had, gleamed out of his jaws of darkness. One eye was out, one ear cropped close. The remaining eye ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg |
