"Bungler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the niceties of polite mental behavior. Sure, they'd get a few months or maybe a few years for breaking and entering as well as assault, but after all, they were friends of Rambaugh and this might well be a matter of retaliation, even though they thought Rambaugh was an incompetent bungler. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... supply us with a standard in the nature of this Being himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not sin; but if we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it, and not only does his moral character fall from ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... his long leave of absence from his Chief and left for Washington the night before the formal farewell. His rage against the bungler who ruled the Nation with autocratic ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... doubtless yours," said Claparon, holding himself very straight and looking at Birotteau; "hey! you are not a bungler. None of the roses you distil can be compared with her; and perhaps it is because you have ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... than almost any other foodstuff, can not be better than what it is made of. Here as elsewhere a bungler can ruin the very best of flour or meal. But the queen of cooks can not ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... returned without any ulterior thought. He responded gladly to Jacqueline's advances; he thought her charming, and amused himself thoroughly with her: and he thought so well of her that he was not far from thinking Olivier rather a bungler not to be able to be happy with her and to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... sincerity of his. He saw it even now reluctantly—though he could never veer round again to his absurd theory of Rickman's dishonesty. He would have liked, if he could, to regard him as a culpable bungler; but even this consoling view was closed to him by Lucia. It was plain from her account that Rickman's task had been beyond human power. Jewdwine, therefore, was forced to the painful conclusion that for this loss to himself and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... onset; Prosper rocketed into him; horse and man went over in a heap. "Bungler," cried Prosper, and went on. The other two faced him together standing. Prosper drove in between them, and had one of them off at the cost of a snapt spear. He turned on the other with his sword whirling round ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... time with. I never lived till I knew her, till I loved her—entirely and only loved her. People have often said of me, not to my face, but behind my back, that in most things I was but a botcher and a bungler. It may be so; for I had not then found in what I could show myself a master. I should like to see the man who outdoes me in the talent of love. A miserable life it is, full of anguish and tears; but it is so natural, so dear to me, that I could ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... these poisonous medicines from the system and get the Sexual Organs into proper condition to admit of a restorative treatment; and in still others the effect of our usually quick and thorough-going remedies were delayed and interfered with by the ignorance or botchwork of some quack or bungler, or the well-meant but stupid doctoring of some "family physician" who thinks himself competent to treat ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... do not make a harvest. I am a stupid bungler, spoiling canvas and wasting paint, or else you are as obtuse as the critics who may one day hover hungrily over it. Try the aid of one more clew, and if you fail to catch my purpose, I will dash my brush all loaded with ochre, right into those mystic, prescient eyes, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... to me," said the cold, hard voice with quiet passion. "Your silly scruples aren't going to outweigh a nation's need. There it is in your pocket. Be careful you don't use too much. If you fail again, remember, you'll earn your own living. Oh, you bungler! When ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... word was used of a coarse workman, or a bungler, in any mechanical trade. So the Cobbler's answer does not give the information required, though ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... before you speak once, and before long you won't be the worst bungler with your tongue that lives ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but somehow ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The bungler was condemned to grace the wheel, On which the dullest fibers learn to feel, His limbs secundum artem to be broke Amid ten thousand people, perhaps, or more; Whenever Monsieur Ketch applied a stroke, The culprit, like ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that dog! Dogs are mixed,—like men. Few know how to jog; Hasty tongue and pen, Many a bungler bog, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... In these really domestic scenes, where the painter sought unreproved his models in simple nature, and trusted for his effect to what was holiest and most immutable in our common humanity, he must have been a bungler indeed if he did not succeed in touching some responsive chord of sympathy in the bosom of the observer. This is, perhaps, the secret of the universal, and, in general, deserved ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... separated from each other. The governors and officials must not be classified as educated or uneducated on the evidence of their letters; all alike employed professional scribes, of whom one might be skilful and the next a bungler whose communications must be guessed at rather than read. Occasionally a Babylonian word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a translation. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic sovereigns had each his staff of scribes. ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... with a deep sigh, "I reckon I'm just a bungler. Everything I do seems wrong. I'm afraid,"—and here she grew dreamy,—"I'm afraid I'm like the poor poplars. I see over the dunes. I see too much, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... not work after the drawings made by my own hand?" asked Kaunitz, with a firey glance of anger in his eyes. "Because he is an ass does the churl dare to criticise my drawings? Let him bring the body of the coach to the palace, and I will show him that he is a bungler and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... was a genius! Yes, what did I tell you? Your very words imply a comparison as you say them. For I?—what am I? A miserable bungler, a wretched dilettant—or have you another word for it? Oh, never mind—don't be afraid to say it!—I'm not sensitive tonight. I can bear to hear your real opinion of me; for it could not possibly be lower than my own. Let us get at the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... child of his enemy, through the child to revenge himself. Kill it?—no! he is no short-sighted bungler; he has refinement, foresight, understanding. She is but an infant,—open and impressible, warm and sanguine! He isolates her from sight and reach. He pries into her nature with keenest delicacy,—no leaf is unread. Being learnt, he works upon it; touches each budding trait with gentlest ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the pole, but another boy got hold of it—rather a bungler he seemed; so Ernest left him to puff and blow by himself in his vain efforts at getting up, and went on to one of the swinging ropes. He seized it well above his head, and pressing his knees and feet against it, steadily drew himself up, to the surprise of Bouldon ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... moved slowly to Voban, and, pricking him with his sword, said, "You are a bungler, barber. Now listen. I never wronged you; I have only been your blister. I prick your sores at home. Tut! tut! they prick them openly in the market-place. I gave you life a minute ago; I give you freedom now. Some day I may ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to," said the Sieur de Corasse; "you are but a bungler. You promised to show yourself to me yesterday, and ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... name of Alcibiades had gained the favor of the popular assembly. He suggested a raid upon the Spartan colony of Syracuse in Sicily. An expedition was equipped and everything was ready. But Alcibiades got mixed up in a street brawl and was forced to flee. The general who succeeded him was a bungler. First he lost his ships and then he lost his army, and the few surviving Athenians were thrown into the stone-quarries of Syracuse, where they ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... mere bungler and the whole matter must be set right without delay. This was rather a large task, but the Professor went at it in a large way. He did it in the approved German manner. Germany would be forever disgraced if any philosopher took up a new position about anything ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... badly in the spring, certainly, and why? Because we feel. And because that man is a duffer who thinks the creative artist is allowed to feel. Every genuine and sincere artist smiles at the naivete of this bungler's error—sadly perhaps, but he does smile. For what one says must of course never be the first consideration, but the ingredients, indifferent in themselves, from which the esthetic product is to be put together with easy, calm mastery. If you care too much about what you have to say, if your ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... I want to find out from you if my boy has such genuine talent that you can make a really good musician of him." "Naturally, I was called on to play," says Moscheles, in his "Autobiography," "and I was bungler enough to do it with some conceit. My mother having decked me out in my Sunday best, I played my best piece, Beethoven's 'Sonata Pathetique.' But what was my astonishment on finding that I was neither ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sufficed Your spirit; yes, a moth's wing could have blown You toward them! 'Twas so nearly I fulfilled All that I promised. Therefore when I speak, You will, for justice's sake, concede I am No absolute bungler, no ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... no bump of respect—never had!" and he began to give a half humorous account of the troubles and storms of Hester's bringing up. "I often ask myself whether we haven't all—whether I, in particular, haven't been a first-class bungler and blundered all through with regard to Hester. Did we choose the wrong governesses? They seemed most estimable people. Did we thwart her unnecessarily? I can't remember a time when she ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was just a plain, every-day bungler. He began by urging the obstinate horse with voice and whip; but at each fresh application the creature merely laid back his ears, shook his head, and set his feet more resolutely against all progress. At last the driver worked himself into a rage. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... dear Madame," murmured the artist, interrupting Presley's impatient retort; "I am a mere bungler. You don't mean quite that, I am sure. I am too sensitive. It is my cross. Beauty," he closed his sore eyes with a little expression ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... surpass. See below, vol. ii. p. 444. In spite of such cases, however, it must be held that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body, the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the Indian. See Dodge's Our Wild Indians, pp. 536-538. Colonel Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty years, and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... them into confusion, they lost the stroke, and Barney was such a bungler himself that he could not ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... of Pentillie Castle by Tamar and High Sheriff of Cornwall, was an amiable gentleman of indolent habits and no great stock of brains. On receiving Sandercock's message and instant appeal for help, he cursed his Under-Sheriff for a drunken bungler, and reluctantly prepared to ride ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the yellow head, this unfortunate bungler, who had been in love with Norah since he had worn knickerbockers, and Norah held her own head higher in the air. And she let Mr. Williamson, the new book-keeper at Conner's (he who would have mortgaged two farms for her), take her to the ice-cream table, leaving the bungling lover (christened ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... her masts rolling about until her shrouds were like iron bars on one side and hanging in festoons upon the other? The meanest sloop that ever sailed out of France would have overmatched her, and then it would be on me, and not on this Devonport bungler, that a ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Not I, unless thou mumblest in thy sleep. We go about our good intents—the improvement of our fortune for instance— with awful care, and step by step, fortifying. The practice is applicable to wickedness. I am no bungler. I will tell thee a tale.... Thou knowest the Brotherhood of the Monastery of St. James of Manganese is very ancient, and that the house in which it is quartered is about as old as the Brotherhood. Their archives ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... A bungler even in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are afraid, States to be curb'd, and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or Congress to be made— Cobbling at manacles for all mankind— A tinkering slave-maker, who mends ...
— English Satires • Various
... though loath to leave the Patriarch's face, travelled over the gray homespun suit that clothed the man, the white wristbands of the home-washed shirt, unstarched, but spotlessly clean—and his fancy of flowing, Grecian robes with rope girdles seemed to hold him up to mockery as a crude and paltry bungler before the ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... thee go. I'm but a rude bungler in these women-ways, and I've said or done somewhat that wounds thee sorely, and I'll not let thee go till 't is all outsaid and I have once more cleared myself of at least willful ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... It is said that he caused the life of the great architect, Apollodorus—who carried out such noble works for Trajan—to be extinguished—and why? because formerly that illustrious man had treated the imperial bungler as a mere dabbler, and would not accept his plan for the temple of Venus ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... answered he. "I fancy I am not so great a bungler as to overshoot my purposes and baffle my own designs; and, woman," said he, raising his arm threateningly above her head, "I caution you to beware. I believe you have already let drop some unguarded words; else why is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... believe it. I must tell you more of Crochard, some day. Beside him, I am a mere bungler—I realise it more deeply each time I meet him. And I assure you that I am not one to ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... only see how you meant to set about it' sighed John. 'But you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler.' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... art galleries, comparatively few people will ever see them. But if you are an artist in conversation, everyone who comes in contact with you will see your life-picture, which you have been painting ever since you began to talk. Everyone knows whether you are an artist or a bungler. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... my dear Cecilia," said Lady Davenant, smiling; "I am, indeed, a sad bungler, but still I shall always maintain a great respect for work and workers, and I have good ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... was at least unproductive of those glaring ill consequences, with which it has subsequently been attended. A singleness of design and a unity of action, could not be deviated from during the period of its infancy by the most ignorant and inexpert bungler in political science. There was a broad path open to its government, which it could not possibly mistake. The colony as yet entirely dependent on external supplies, always precarious from their very nature, but rendered still more so by a tedious, and at that ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... so that the walls reechoed. "The bungler, the greenhorn!" he exclaimed out loud, as so often in such self-communings. "He did not know how to make a good use of his opportunities. Or the Marchesa was hanging round his neck all the time. Or perhaps he took her as a next-best, when Marcolina, the philosopher, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... antiquarian inquiries respecting Caesar's ford at Kingston, and Maxims for an Angler, by a Bungler. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... scudi. Take your hat off! Since the world was, Has she seen no greater master, Nor—" He was then interrupted By a man with gray moustaches, Who his shoulder tapped and scornful Said: "You are mistaken; never Saw the world a greater bungler! ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... failure, and bungler, and mischief-maker means well. That's their charter. I'm not concerned with that. I'm speaking of what she did. She fixed it in your mind that you were like a sapling sprung from a seed blown outside the orchard. You think you can minimize that accident ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... who confidently and contemptuously declared him to be a bungler; a patient, hard-working bungler. These were the men who saw few of his successes, and always contrived to smell out his failures. These people were those who had no understanding of the difficulties of a handful of men pitted against a country ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... The valiant fate-confronter, The soldier brave, and blunter Of speech than BISMARCK's self? This bungler all-disgracing, This braggart all-debasing. This spurious sportsman, chasing No nobler ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... good farmer has the feel and the habit of good work. The really successful man in any calling or profession is he who does his work conscientiously and as well as he can. The sloven becomes the bungler, and the bungler is on the high road to failure. It is always a pleasant thing to see a man do his work well and artistically. It is the habit, the policy, the attitude of thus doing that tell in ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... held that he was not dead were now destroyed. The evidence of his friends was enough to convince any one. It convinced him. Now that it was too late, his act of self-sacrifice appeared supremely stupid and ridiculous. Bitterly he attacked himself as a bungler and an ass. He assured himself he should have made a fight for it; should have fought for his wife: and against Maddox. Instead of which he weakly had effaced himself, had surrendered his rights, had abandoned his wife at a time when most was required of him. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... the boast of the Atheist, that God is wasteful and a bungler, in that he wastefully scatters his sunlight, and sun-heat, in all directions into space, is set at naught. Nature has been misinterpreted. No sunlight nor sun-heat is disclosed, except in the direction of ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... change of front in respect to Roxbury Medcroft before the breakfast was over. It may have been due to the spell of her eyes or to the call of her voice, but it remains an unchallenged fact that he no longer thought of Medcroft as a stupid bungler; instead, he had come to regard him as a good and irreproachable Samaritan. All of which goes to prove that a divinity shapes our ends, rough hew them how ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... are a murderess, Belle," he said solemnly. "And you are a bungler, too. You could ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... at first sight, to bring into a sermon all the Circles of the Globe and all the frightful terms of Astronomy; but I will assure you, Sir, it is to be done! because it has been. But not by every bungler and ordinary text-divider; but by a man ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... coward at the heart) At fear-created phantoms start. The priest—that very word implies That he's both innocent and wise— Yet fears to travel in the dark, Unless escorted by his clerk. But let not every bungler deem Too lightly of so deep a scheme; For reputation of the art, Each ghost must act a proper part, 500 Observe Decorum's needful grace, And keep the laws of Time and Place; Must change, with happy variation, His manners with his situation; What in the country might pass down, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... all!" he murmured to himself, as he walked down the street, with an occasional nervous glance to the right and left. "I thought I had done my work effectually: I did not know I was such a bungler. Does he guess who attacked him, I wonder? I suppose not, or I should have heard of the matter before now. Fortunate that I took the precaution of drugging him first. What an escape! And he has got hold of Heron! I shall have to make sure of the old lady pretty soon, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... class, Denyven. Every soul of us has the privilege of bettering out condition if we have the brain and the industry to do it. Energy and intelligence come to the front, and have the right to be there. A skillful workman gets double the pay of a bungler, and deserves it. Of course there will always be rich and poor, and sick and sound, and I don't see how that can be changed. But no door is shut against ability, black or white. Before the year 2400 we shall have a chrome-yellow president and a black-and-tan secretary of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... would work with that idea always in mind. In the meantime he would go with Braceway as long as the Braceway theories seemed to have any foundation at all. He did not want to run the risk of being shown up as a bungler. He was anxious to be "in on" anything that ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... "You bungler," he cried, and his voice rang through the long quiet corridor. "You do not know what this means. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the file of carriages. I witnessed this heartrending spectacle; I saw the ominous procession. In the midst of all the tumult, clamour, and singing, interrupted by frequent discharges of musketry, which the hand of a monster or a bungler might so easily render fatal, I saw the Queen preserving most courageous tranquillity of soul, and an air of nobleness and inexpressible dignity, and my eyes were suffused with tears of admiration and grief.—"Memoirs ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... high in the back, to the left of the spine—a bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be dangerous. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters, wherein I had perished unseen, un- pitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature of playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... must be nimbly, cleanly, and swiftly done, and conueyed so as the eyes of the beholders may not discerne or perceaue the tricke, for if you be a bungler, you both shame your selfe, and make the Art you goe about to be perceaued and knowne, and so bring it ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... realize that he had no talent for concealment; that he was a sad bungler in the management of any business which was not open and above-board. This impertinent, disagreeable little coxcomb of a New Yorker, without a warning sound to announce his coming, had suddenly stepped between ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... especial notice. It is a thorough criticism of all the dramas of Euripides, in which he takes a view of the dramatist exactly the reverse of that maintained by Walter Savage Landor—asserting that he was a bungler in the tragic art, and far too much addicted to foisting his stupid moralisings into his plays. Another article in the Westminster, on the Prussian Constitution, is worthy of remark for its thoroughness. The whole machinery of the Prussian bureaucracy is explained ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... satisfactory result, for added to his weakness the boy now showed an increasing terror of his father. He shrank from the hard words or the uplifted hand with an evident fear, which only strengthened Mr Darvell's anger, for it mortified him still more to find his lad a coward as well as a bungler ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... his great joy. From that time his pride disappeared, and whenever any one called him "Professor" he would exclaim: "Ah, what folly that is! There are gentlemen in Venice and professors in Padua, but I am a bungler." ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... at noonday, —Reckless imp, To leave his shaded nights And brave the glare,— And I saw him then plainly For a bungler, A stupid, simpering, eyeless bungler, Breaking the hearts of brave people As the snivelling idiot-boy cracks his bowl, And I cursed him, Cursed him to and fro, back and forth, Into all the silly mazes of his mind, But in the end ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... senseless marble—Well, I'm a magician, and it rests with me To say what kernel lies within its shell; It shall contain a man, a woman, a child, A dozen men and women if I will. So far the gods and I run neck and neck, Nay, so far I can beat them at their trade; I am no bungler—all the men I make Are straight limbed fellows, each magnificent In the perfection of his manly grace; I make no crook-backs; all my men are gods, My women, goddesses, in outward form. But there's my tether—I ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... it takes me forever to mend anything. I am a wretched bungler with my needle," she confessed, with engaging frankness, but with a ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... rocks, and passing through dense patches of timber, he kept on the alert for signs of game. Now, Bluff did not make any pretence at being a skilful sportsman. In fact, until a year or so back he had been the bungler of the party when it came to a knowledge of woodcraft; but since then he had studied up on various subjects, and was now anxious ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they can frustrate the bungler as they mock at his toils from their ambush. But the mightier adventurers, equally foiled in despite of their patience and skill, would have said, 'Not with us rests the fault; we neglected no caution, we ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... stock to arrive from England. If that were correct, they must get near enough to attack us with assegais. They are more dangerous so. I remembered what an old Boer had said to me at Buluwayo: "The Zulu with his assegai is an enemy to be feared; with a gun, he is a bungler." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... what he did, but what he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. And then how your Blockhead (Dummkopf) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfuscher): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... mistress's maidenly reserve. "I stole it from her. The hand is a reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is a bungler in every one of them. The man who will do anything well must confine himself to doing a very few things. Yet while the things a man can produce to advantage are few, the things he wants to consume are many. Exchange ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once. Hoary Time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce. But I will not fear to match them—no, by God, I will not fear, I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... hopelessly, "and you are right. There was a time, before I knew you, when I would have defended my action, when I would have held that it was right; but I cannot now. Perhaps if I had known you longer—But what's the use. I am a sad bungler in this great work, Miss Worth. I am out of place in the big desert. I should have stayed at home. I wish—I wish you had never wakened me to the possibilities of life—real life. You would not need to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... care. Therefore he sedulously maintained his mask. Miss Hargrove should be made to believe that she had added much to the pleasure of the excursion, and there he would stop. And Burt on his mettle was no bungler. The test would come ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... made the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Though of high talents and a fine speaker, Gallatin found him a "great bungler" in the business of the House, a large share of which fell upon his own shoulders as well as the direction of the Republicans, of whom, notwithstanding the jealousy of Giles, he now was the acknowledged leader. As a member for Pennsylvania, Mr. Gallatin presented a memorial from ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of great thinkers' thoughts—Python interpreters to oracles. Nor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... right, but I seen her,—the pretty lady,—your girl,—standing in the aisle right ahin' the c'ndct'r, jes' es I wuz pullin' the trigger knowed her right off, 'ith her eyes shinin' like two stars; an' I couldn't run no resks. I ain't never bin no bungler at my trade, but I hed to bungle this time 'cause I couldn't shoot your girl! So I turned it jes' in time an' took it mese'f. She seen how 'twas 'ith me that time at your house, an' she he'ped me git away. I sent her word I'd ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... consistent and masterly achievement; and if it stands a little lower than the "Matthew," if the "Matthew" is mightier, more impressive, more overwhelming in its great tenderness, this is not because the Bach who wrote in 1722-23 was a bungler or an incomplete artist, but because the Bach who wrote in 1729 was inspired by a loftier idea than had come to the Bach of 1723. It was only necessary to compare the impression one received when ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... are simply splendid," she went on, "the dearest old bungler I know. You remind me of the Faulkners' ostrich, which goes on tapping at the window when it has been opened and there ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... see, he can't keep from weeping. The other one too came not twenty minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina's confessor after Abbe Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes, a handsome man he is, but a fine bungler all the same, a perfect killjoy with all the crafty hindrances which he brought into that divorce affair. I wish you had been here to see what a big sign of the cross he made after he had knelt down. He didn't cry, he didn't: he seemed to be saying that as things had ended ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words—nay, as well as if he could read the very hearts of them. He turned to Nick Leary. Nick had already bandaged his face with a piece ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... man consents not, boldly bent To fashion his own fate; Man, a mere bungler in the trade, Repents his crime ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Puant. If the attack was half-hearted and the Indians gained time to rally, Celeste would suffer the consequences; they could kill her or escape with her. If you wish to gain an Indian's respect you must make a neat job of shooting him down. He never forgives a bungler. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "What a bungler!" exclaimed the adjutant, still holding out his hand for the glass. Everybody burst out laughing, not excepting Guskof, who was rubbing his hand on his sore knee, which he had somehow struck as he fell. "That's the way the bear waited on the hermit," continued ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he is ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... a bungler I am!" she exclaimed with half-amused regret. "The truth is, I am so glad, and when I am very happy I ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... now had taken place but a week before, Ranjoor Singh would have found himself in a fine fix, for all except I would have there and then denounced him for a bungler, or a knave. But now the other daffadars who clustered around him and me said one to the other, "Let us see what our sahib makes of it!" The men sent word to know what was being revealed through two long hours of talk, and Chatar Singh went back to ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... well-bred young woman she seems," he admitted. "I fear that I should only be a bungler in your profession, Mr. Quest, but if there is anything I can do to help you to discover her whereabouts, you can count upon me. Personally, I am convinced that Craig will return to me with some plausible explanation as to what has happened. In that case he will doubtless ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sir Geoffrey Hudson sprang from the stool on which he sat en Signor, at the risk of breaking both his guitar and his neck, exclaiming, "That he would rather prepare breakfast every morning betwixt this and the day of judgment, than commit a task of such consequence to an inexperienced bungler like ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Christian, released him from his dilemma, and opened the door of the house to him, out of respect to the wine, which is lord of this country. The good man then went and got into the bed of the maid-servant, who was a young and pretty wench. The old bungler, bemuddled with wine, went ploughing in the wrong land, fancying all the time it was his wife by his side, and thanking her for the youth and freshness she still retained. On hearing her husband, the wife began to cry out, and by her terrible shrieks the man was awakened to the fact that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... succeed," said Jean after a while. "The possibility of their trying rather worried me. The Hoggins type is such a bungler that it was almost certain ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes the artist from the bungler—the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or "in ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... but his first romance had ended in such complete disaster that he saw in a vision his life blasted; changed in one brief moment from that of a prosperous young painter to that of a blighted and despised bungler, whose week's wages were likely to be expended in molasses to ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with pulque. He claps 'em on the bar, eyes you a heap sooperior like he's askin' you to note what a acc'rate, high- grade barkeep he is, an' then raisin' his hand, he slats the pulque off his fingers into the two glasses. If he spatters a drop on the bar, it shows he's a bungler, onfit for his high p'sition, an' oughter be out on the hills tendin' goats instead of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... any expert, whether at a machine bench, an accountant's desk, or at golf, gives an impression of such ease as to make his accomplishment seemingly require no skill, a bungler makes himself and every one watching him uneasy if not actually fearful of his awkwardness. And as inexpertness is quite as irritating in personal as in mechanical bungling, so there is scarcely any one who sooner or later does ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... softly at my wrists, and then at my ankles, but whichever of the two had secured me was no bungler at his work. I could not move either of them an inch. Then I tried to work the handkerchief down over my mouth, but the ruffian beside me raised his knife with such a threatening snarl that I had to desist. I was lying still looking at his bull neck, and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the detection of sophisms, has to do merely with an error in the logical consequence of the propositions, or with an artificially constructed illusion, in imitation of the natural error. There is, therefore, a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason—not that in which the bungler, from want of the requisite knowledge, involves himself, nor that which the sophist devises for the purpose of misleading, but that which is an inseparable adjunct of human reason, and which, even after its ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... some that he later returned) were discovered in his room. More quick work! The amateur's method had been very simple. He knew that the loan had been made and the bonds sent to the bank. So he forged a check, certified it himself, and collected the securities. Of course, he was a bungler and ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... fully aware that his official career and perhaps his life hung in the balance. To fail of arresting the desperado was to brand himself a bungler and to expose himself to the contempt of other sure-shot ruffians. However, having faced death many times in the desert and on the range, he advanced steadily, apparently undisturbed by the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... skirted round the northern squadron, Disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as nearly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Mrs. Ryder. Once, indeed, Mrs. Phillips asked me if I wouldn't like to try a third dance with her (she goes at it with a good deal of old- time vivacity and vim); but I told her she must know by this time that I was something of a bungler. 'I wouldn't quite say that,' she returned, smiling; but we continued to sit there side by side on a sort of bench built against the wall, and she seemed as well pleased to have it that way as the other. She did, however, speak about a little singing. I told her that she must have found ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... me, and had I not known that Marie's fate depends upon my calmness, I should assuredly have broken out and told this dapper little demagogue my opinion of him. But this is glorious! What news I shall have to give the girls in the morning! If I cannot ensure Marie's freedom now I should be a bungler indeed. Had I had the planning of the events of this evening they could not have ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... said he. 'Not that I wanted to have secrets from you; but all the same, I am a precious bungler. His name is Donogan, and what's more, it's Daniel Donogan. He was the same who figured in the dock at, I believe, sixteen years of age, with Smith O'Brien and the others, and was afterwards seen in England in '59, known as a head-centre, and apprehended on suspicion in '60, and made ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever |
