"Botch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make a botch of ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... point of view of our own ends, we should probably make a botch of remodelling the universe. How much more then from the point of view of ends we cannot see! Wise men therefore regret as little as they can. But still some regrets are pretty obstinate and hard to stifle,—regrets for acts of wanton cruelty or treachery, for example, whether ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... that's why Sam was trying to get the best of us. We attempted to capture him, but made a botch of the business." ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... rightly enough, that to do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table, when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington corvette, on the South-American station. We were lying in the La Plata, and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... given under the heading of "Medicines External," was the following: "Pull off the feathers from the tails of living cocks, hens, pigeons, or chickens, and holding their bills, hold them hard to the botch or swelling, and so keep them at that part until they die, and by that means draw out the poison. It is good to apply a cupping glass, or embers in a dish, with a handful of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... in your own tongue, Ross—you don't know any other, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don't stare—it was a slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second. Rossmore—there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to Gwendolen. Are you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other woman on this here earth would have gone out to Martin Hawk's last night just for the satisfaction of seein' him arrested? We didn't want her,—not by a long shot,—but she made up her mind to go, and, by gosh, she went. I guess maybe she thought we'd make a botch of it, and so she took that long ride just to make sure she'd git her money's worth. 'Cause, you see, I had to pay each of the men a dollar and a half and mileage before they'd run the risk of bein' shot by Hawk and his crowd. Hard as nails, I said, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... leader, "so you are not dead after all! Well, I can assure you that we shall not botch our work ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... speaker insists—to change the figure—on laying all the cobbles of a conversation, he should at least allow another to carry the tarpot and fill in the chinks. When the evening was over, although I recalled two or three clever stories, which I shall botch in the telling, I came away tired and dissatisfied, my tongue ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... She could have made a better world herself—a finer, squarer world. This being so, then there was no God. God could not make a botch. The matron had been wrong, her mother had been wrong. Then there was no immortality, and Bert, wild and crazy Bert, falling at her front gate with his foolish death-cry, was right. One was a ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... heard all I wanted to out of Uncle Ezra. It was plain that he didn't think there was anything in that map. Well, as Elam said, it was all in a lifetime. My time wasn't worth anything to me, for I had men to do the work, and if I made a botch of it, if there wasn't anything to be made by digging up that gully, there was one thing out of the way. Elam was bound to become a cattle-herder in case this thing failed. He was determined to go to Texas, for he couldn't live there and have that nugget ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... door closed behind the girl old John readjusted his nose glasses and leaned back in his chair. "A clever engineer he is, beyond a doubt," he mused. "For I kept my eye on him while he was layin' out Orcutt's Nettle River project. If he'd made a botch of the job 'twould have saved me offerin' my plant to the city. But he has the look of a man ye couldn't trust in the dark—an' 'twould be clever engineerin' to marry a million. I'll set him a job that'll show the stuff that's in him. If he's a crook, I'll give him the chance to prove it." Reaching ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... gentle friend, Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway In this uncivil and unjust extent Against thy peace. Go with me to my house; And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks This ruffian hath botch'd up, that thou thereby Mayst smile at this: thou shalt not choose but go; Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me, He started one poor heart of ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... kneading and baking! Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch,—a mere enameled vessel of dishonor! Let the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... rather? What, to his honest apprehension, was the God made man? An exemplar, a light upon the path of duty, as others also had been. Had the world gone wrong, escaped from its mysterious Maker, and did it need to be redeemed by any such dramatic remedy? No, his God, the God who made, could not botch a job and be disconcerted at the continuing bad results of His handiwork. The only doubt about his God was whether He was in any degree benevolent. When he reflected that He had made a world full to the brim of its cup of bitterness, he sometimes, nowadays, thought ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... far-off, faint shadow of a very prosaic resemblance to the National Assembly of that era, . . and our weak efforts to cure cureless grievances, and to deafen our ears to crying evils, are very similar to the clumsy attempts made by Louis XVI. and his partisans to botch up a terribly bad business. Oh, the people, the people! ... They are unquestionably the flesh, blood, bone, and sinew of the country,—and the English people, say what sneerers will to the contrary, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... number. With Ramsey was the commodore. With the actor was Watson. With Mrs. Gilmore came old Joy, and, strange to tell, due to some magic in the tact of the senior Courteneys, the senator, no longer making botch work of his guile, walked with Hugh, displaying a good-natured loquacity which he was glad to have every one notice and from which he ceased reluctantly as they parted, finding no place to sit together. The player and his wife, over-looking the throng, complacently ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Translator of Soles—A disciple of St. Crispin, alias a cobbler, who can botch up old shoes, so as to have the appearance of being almost new, and who is principally engaged in his laudable occupation by the second-hand shoe- sellers of Field Lane, Turn Stile, &c. for the purpose of turning an honest penny, i.e. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... as he departed, "how foreign parts do spoil a gentleman! so mild as he was once! I must botch up the accounts, I see,—the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... must have made a handsome fortune in the promotion of a public enterprise. Be this as it may. It is not our business here to probe the corruption of any particular Government. But we observe that this miserable botch of a monument is to the ruins of the Acropolis, what this modern absolutism, this effete Turkey is to the magnificent tyrannies of yore. Indeed, nothing is duller, more stupid, more prosaic than a modern absolutism as compared with an ancient one. But why ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... against them, and flee seven ways before them, and shalt be moved into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, the scab and the itch, with madness and blindness, that thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness. Thou shalt not prosper in thy ways, and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. Thou ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... bran-new an' fresh. She did that with young Mr. Witton, but their furniture is gittin' pretty old an' worn out now. If she tries it with Mr. Hav'ley an' Dora Bannister, I reckon she'll make as big a botch of it as she did with ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... you find yourself unable to give reasons, or you entangle yourself in contradictions. In short, you flounder about helplessly and feel as though the bottom of your ship of knowledge has dropped out. And when the ordeal is over and you have made a miserable botch of a recitation which you thought you had been perfectly prepared for, you complain that "if the instructor had followed the book," or "if he had asked straight questions," you would have answered every one perfectly, having memorized the ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... see. No one, not even a little child, would make such a botch of copying the alphabet as that," Cleek said, as he took the letter up and opened it. The sheet it contained was lettered in the same uncouth manner and ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... theirs and say he liked his best. I don't know, maybe there was something wrong about Skinny. Maybe he was more crazy about weapons than he was about scouting. He didn't seem to think ahoot anything except cutting down that sapling, and the more of a botch he made out of it, the harder he worked. I remembered something Mr. Ellsworth said to Tom Slade about not caring more for his gun than he did for his country. But, gee, when I thought about what Skinny said about the two things he liked most, the axe and the ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... cried Munson from across the table. "I sat alongside of that fellow at the Ecole for two years. He can't draw, and never could. His flesh was beastly, his modelling worse, and his technique—a botch. You can see what color he uses," and he pointed to the palette Jack was trying ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... not the movement requiring a new staff was made by a company that went out of business back in the '80s, or it is a new movement, the material for which has not yet been placed on the market. This state of affairs leads to makeshifts, and they in turn lead to botch work. The watchmaker who does not possess the experience or necessary qualifications to make a new balance staff and make it in a neat and workmanlike manner, is never certain of having exactly what is needed, and cannot hope to long retain the confidence of ...
— A Treatise on Staff Making and Pivoting • Eugene E. Hall |
