"Slurred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who sat in the first row of the other division, and whom I had remarked as being at once the ugliest and the most attentive in the room; she rose up, walked over to me, and delivered her book with a grave, modest curtsey. I glanced over the two dictations; Eulalie's was slurred, blotted, and full of silly mistakes—Sylvie's (such was the name of the ugly little girl) was clearly written, it contained no error against sense, and but few faults of orthography. I coolly read aloud both exercises, marking the faults—then ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Chrysolite carried five boats, no less than four of them were unseaworthy. In those days the examination of an outward-bound ship was slurred over, with the natural consequence that the marine law was more frequently broken than observed. The only boat on board the Chrysolite worth launching was the life-boat, which stood bottom upward between the main and ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... is of the essential nature of Rousseau's eloquence, as it is of the essential nature of his temperament, that any kind of sensual abandonment, slurred over by rich orchestral litanies of human freedom, should be ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... hypothesis, they knew to be utterly unfounded. The bare idea, that Santurri or the others were really guilty of any intrigues against the Republic, is treated as absurd; the fact that any trial or investigation ever took place is slurred over; and yet, with a marvellous inconsistency, Salvatori is accused of being in reality the guilty author of these executions, because some witness—name not given—reports that he heard a report from a servant of Garibaldi, that Santurri was only ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... in build of these two men—a likeness accentuated, rather than slurred, by their contrast in colour and face, was now seen to extend even to their feet. When the stranger stood up at length in Zeb's shoes, they fitted him to a nicety, the broad steel buckles lying comfortably over the instep, the back of the uppers closing ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... awakening sense of responsibility expressed itself in this unanswerable question, which irritated his mind as a splinter might have irritated his flesh. He thought of it constantly—thought of it when Eleanor sang (with a slurred note once or twice), "O sweet, O sweet content!" Thought of it when his conscience reminded him that he must have tea with her in the garden under the poplar on Sunday afternoons. Thought of it when he and she went up to the Houghtons', to spend ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... scream of the Serpents and the noise of their circling was quickened to a slurred savage sound and they closed on Ruark, and she felt him stifling and that they were relentless. So in the height of the tempest Bhanavar seized the Jewel in the gold circlet on her brow and cast it from her. Lo! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... madhouse. The Regent was deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up or slurred over; justice must take ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of the thing admits. Nor shall we, I hope, any more have difficulty in understanding how the noble mystery and the ignoble, though direct opposites, are yet continually mistaken for each other—the last aping the first; and the most wretched artists taking pride in work which is simply slurred, slovenly, ignorant, empty, and insolent, as if it were nobly mysterious (just as a drunkard who cannot articulate supposes himself oracular); whereas the noble art-mystery, as all noble language-mystery, is reached ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... in the trial of Verres, to which we shall come soon—felt very strongly that his only means of getting a true verdict from the majority of judges was to frighten them into temporary honesty by the magnitude of the occasion. If a trial could be slurred through with indifferent advocates, with nothing to create public notice, with no efforts of genius to attract admiration, and a large attendance and consequent sympathy the judgment would, as ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... as though he had no heart for talk. He tried, as I thought, to make some fitting reply, but it slurred off into a mumble and silence. How bent and weak and old he seemed—ten years older at the least than when first I had seen him! It went to my heart to see this fine old fellow wasting away before my eyes. There was the eternal letter which he unfolded with his shaking fingers. Who was this ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... twist out of shape what I have just said, easy to affect to misunderstand it, and, if it is slurred over in repetition, not difficult really to misunderstand it. Some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that to denounce mud-slinging does not mean the indorsement of whitewashing; and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Francis Train picked out certain parts of the Bible and printed them, and was arrested for publishing obscene literature, the charge was proper and right. There are things that need not to be emphasized—they may all be a part of life, but in books they should be slurred over as representing simply a passing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... touching fragility, the heavenly meekness and tranquillity, of Mrs. Maldon as she lay there helpless, victimized by a paralytic affliction. (Rachel wanted to forget utterly the souvenir of Mrs. Maldon's paroxysm in the night, because it slurred the unmatched dignity of the aged creature.) Another reason was the mere fact that Mr. Batchgrew had insisted on leaving the money in the house. Who but Mr. Batchgrew would have had the notion of saddling poor old Mrs. Maldon with the custody of a vast sum of money? It was a shame; ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... not my own, it was thin, the articulation was slurred, the resonance of my facial bones was different. Then, to reassure myself I ran one hand over the other, and felt loose folds of skin, the bony laxity of age. "Surely," I said, in that horrible ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... keep his promise: how he had thrown her over to her own devices: and how she had ever since been trying to pick up a precarious livelihood for herself in stray ways as a sempstress, work for which she wag naturally very ill-fitted, and for which she had no introductions. She slurred over nothing on either side of the story; and especially she did not forget to describe the full measure of her troubles and trials from her Methodist friends at Hastings. Ronald shook his head sympathetically at this stage of the story. 'Ah, I know, I know,' he muttered, half under his breath; ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... seqq. Referred to in Upton's note on Faery Queen, B. I. c. vii. 32. Into what a breezy couplet trailing off with an alexandrine has Homer's [Greek: pnoiai pantoion anemon] expanded! Chaplin unfortunately has slurred this passage in his version, and Pope tittivated it more than usual in his. I have no other translation at hand. Marlowe was so taken by this passage in Spenser that he put it bodily ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the point of law and the Constitution yet to be at issue, the substance of difference yet remaining, and that such great question could not be slurred over. It must be decided by Parliament, and should be the first subject of debate and decision; namely, for Tuesday. It was a question for themselves and for posterity. He then said, that the outline of his plan was, as matter of discretion and conveniency, to appoint the Prince of Wales ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... pipe to his mouth, and after a long flourish, bawled out what appeared to Mr Vanslyperken to be—all hands to be keel-hauled; but Jemmy slurred over quickly the little change made in the order, and, although the men tittered, Mr Vanslyperken thought it better to say nothing. But there is an old saying, that you may bring a horse to the pond, but you cannot ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Devin was seated apparently agreed. In a rather high pitched voice it pointed out that: "If the Lunar Fort falls, the Earth—" It stopped abruptly, and an electroscope beside Douglass took up the thread in a high, shrill voice, rather slurred, "—will be ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... nowt but mope i' th' house," Liz fretted. "I want to go out a bit loike other foak. Theer's places i' Riggan as I could go to wi'out bein' slurred at—theer's other wenches as has done worse nor me. Ben Maxy towd Mary on'y yesterday as I was the prettiest lass i' th' place, fur aw ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pray"— [This "pretty bit," or that "sweet air," This "little thing from Tootovere"]. They listened a while, but wearied soon, And, like the professor, they changed their tune. Vainly they coughed and a-hemmed and stirred; Only the harder he trilled and slurred, Until, in despair, and rather than grieve The willing professor, they took their leave, And left him singing this "sweet air," And that "pretty bit from Tootovere;" And then the hostess, in sorry plight, While yet he sang with all ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... execution was not only an injustice; it was an insult, a humiliating snub. And the worst was that the rest of the country had really discovered no sympathetic interest in the affair. Certain London papers, indeed, in commenting casually on the execution, had slurred the morals and manners of the Five Towns, professing to regard the district as notoriously beyond the realm of the Ten Commandments. This had helped to render furious the townsmen. This, as much as anything, had encouraged the spontaneous outburst of feeling which had culminated ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" the teacher asked the children the name of Jesus' father and mother, and accepted the simple answer, Joseph and Mary. Thus the point of the story, whether regarded as reality or myth, is slurred over, the result is perplexity, the teaching, in short, is bad, apart from all theory as to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... from Allah means mercy, from the Angels intercession and pardon; and from mankind blessing. Concerning the specific effects of blessing the Prophet, see Pilgrimage (ii. 70). The formula is often slurred over when a man is in a hurry to speak: an interrupting friend will say " Bless the Prophet!" and he does so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the emergency treatment instruments' cautious restraints permitted, Maulbow was twisting slowly about on the bed. He was speaking in a low, rapid voice, his face distorted by emotion. The words were not slurred, but they were in a language Gefty didn't know. It seemed clear that Maulbow had reverted mentally to his own time, and for some seconds he remained unaware that Gefty had entered the room. Then, surprisingly, the slitted ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... Nageli's essay, confining himself to the simpler statement that there are many structural characters in plants to which we cannot assign uses. See Volume I., Letter 207.) I find old notes about this difficulty; but I have hitherto slurred it over. Nageli gives as instances the alternate and spiral arrangement of leaves, and the arrangement of the cells in the tissues. Would you not consider as a morphological difference the trimerous, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... that would have become the loftiest spirit of the ancient city, Rienzi, with a majestic step, swept from the chamber into the Hall of Council. (The guilt of the Barons in their designed assassination of Rienzi, though hastily slurred over by Gibbon, and other modern writers, is clearly attested by Muratori, the Bolognese Chronicle &c.—They even confessed the crime. (See Cron. Estens: Muratori, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... useless for teachers to pooh-pooh this matter as visionary and inconsequential or to disregard aspiration as a vital factor in the scheme of education. This quality is fundamental and may not, therefore, be either disregarded or slurred. Fundamental qualities must engage the thoughtful attention of all true educators, for these fundamentals must constitute the ground-work of every reform in our school procedure. There can be life without arithmetic, but there can be no real life without aspiration. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... peculiarity was not suspected until Brian discovered it and dragged it forth. He persuaded Frank to talk, listened with absorbing interest to the flattest tales, encouraged him if he flagged, and laughed until the tears came if he by chance forgot or slurred a point. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... conversation continued. Agnes, without much difficulty, gained her brother as an ally. She acknowledged that she had been wrong in not telling him, and he then declared that she had been right on every other point. She slurred a little over the incident of her treachery, for Herbert was sometimes clearsighted over details, though easily muddled in a general survey. Mrs. Failing had had plenty of direct causes of complaint, and she dwelt on these. She dealt, too, on the very handsome way in which ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the shortest history I could contrive of this chivalry of the pen; something mysteriously clouds over the fate of the defendant; Bales's history, like Caesar's, is but an ex-parte evidence. Who can tell whether he has not slurred over his defeats, and only dwelt ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the King is chased round the room, and one of the troop, amid much noise and outcry, strikes with his sword a blow on the King's robe of bark till it rings again. Then a gratuity is demanded. The ceremony of decapitation, which is here somewhat slurred over, is carried out with a greater semblance of reality in other parts of Bohemia. Thus in some villages of the Kniggrtz district on Whit-Monday the girls assemble under one lime-tree and the young men under another, all dressed in their best and tricked out with ribbons. The ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... punishment. A child has done something wrong. It is angrily told that for this it must learn a page or two of the Catechism! The task is sullenly learned and sullenly recited; and the Catechism is hated worse than the sin committed. Then too, it is slurred over in the Sunday-schools, without an earnest word of explanation or application. The learner does not realize that it is meant to change the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... out of mind by the modern Englishman; who tries to laugh at it, instead of weeping and considering, which would better beseem. Pitt speaks with a tragical vivacity, in all ingenious dialects, lively though serious; and with a depth of sad conviction, which is apt to be slurred over and missed altogether by a modern reader. Speaks as if this brave English Nation were about ended; little or no hope left for it; here a gleam of possibility, and there a gleam, which soon vanishes again in the fatal murk of impotencies, do-nothingisms. Very sad to the heart of Pitt. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... on my return from office, the little white shirt, and the fat little body used to rise from the shade of the creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid; and daily I checked my horse here, that my salutation might not be slurred over or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... error are supposable in such a set of Offices; these two, acting and reacting, are the vice of all inefficient Offices whatever.—First, that the work, such as it may be, is ill done in these establishments. That it is delayed, neglected, slurred over, committed to hands that cannot do it well; that, in a word, the questions sent thither are not wisely handled, but unwisely; not decided truly and rapidly, but with delays and wrong at last: which is the principal character, and the infallible result, of an insufficient ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... moving upon the works of the enemy, and claiming the victory already won. And when these things are put in their proper order, prayer first, and the other things second; second, I say, not omitted, not slurred over; done with all the earnestness and power of brain and hand and heart possible; but done after the victory has been won in secret, against the real foe, and done while the winner is still claiming the victory already ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... was only a slight disinclination to fulfil all his duties—so slight, indeed, that he would have been very angry if any one had spoken to him about it, and hinted at the truth. In this frame of mind, though most things were done, some few were slurred over, particularly the Latin Exercise and Grammar, for Marten's papa had not set him any task, and had even said Marten might have a holiday during his absence; and at any other time the boy would have been glad of this indulgence, but now he ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... and slurred. Drew guessed that he had not only been in a fight but that he was partly drunk. Yet, as he faced the stranger eye to eye, the Kentuckian was as wary as he had been when bellying down a Tennessee ridge crest to scout a ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... that women in every clime and country formed one species, it was soon asked what constituted a species? If all women shared a common form, what was that form? Where was it? So long as it was supposed that all women descended from Eve, the difficulty might be slurred over by the name of heredity. But the more thoughtful would ask even then how it was that, while all individual women came and went and vanished, the form in which they ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... so many of his countrymen, a strong vein of satire. The metre is trochaic, scanned, like these of Plautus and Terence, by accent as much as by quantity, and noticeable for the careless way in which whole syllables are slurred over. In the former fragment the fourth line must ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... reread all the advance literature of this "prairie route," I perceived how skilfully every detail with regard to the last half of the trail had been slurred over. We had been led into a sort of sack, and the string ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... He could detect a slurred note of the sixteenth violin in the crash of a ninety-piece ensemble of orchestration, and one-eighth-of-a-second miscalculation of his two-minute egg could embroil a breakfast table. A creature of elbows and knees, such as a chimpanzee ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... King, Constitution, or Parliament. All the conditions grow more definite and seem, perhaps, too exacting; remember the greatness of the enterprise. Suppose in the building of a mighty edifice the architect at any point were careless or slurred over a difficulty, trusting to luck to bring it right, how the whole building would go awry, and what a mighty collapse would follow. Let us stick to our colours and have no fear. When all these principles have been combined into one consistent ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... than he had done previously, but I found that my call must be just right to elicit a response. I might whistle all day and he would pay no attention, till I uttered a two-note call, the second note a third above the first and the two slurred together. I was delighted to find that even a dove, and a baby at that, could "talk back." He was unique in other ways; for example, in being content to pass his days in, and around, his own tree. I do not believe he had ever been farther ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the tea-cups was easily slurred over and forgotten. Adrian Torrens saw the risks of attempting too much, and gave up pretending that he could see. Irene and the Countess let the subject go; the former most willingly, the latter with only slight reluctance. Gwen alone dwelt upon it, or rather it dwelt upon her; her memory ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... that of the old Pagan statues (wings and all—for the wings of Christian angels are copied exactly from those of Greek Genii), and only differing in that ascetic and emasculate tone, which was peculiar to themselves. Here is a dilemma which the worshippers of high art have slurred over. Where did Angelico de Fiesole get the idea of beauty which dictated his exquisite angels? We shall not, I suppose, agree with those who attribute it to direct inspiration, and speak of it as the reward of the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... history is usually slurred over by our writers. It is considered to be a national disgrace, a shameful confession of cowardice, like an attempt at suicide in a man. It did undoubtedly show want of faith in the future. Those who organized the movement did 'despair of the republic.' But it is possible ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... unrecognisable with fear. She had learnt her pieces by heart for those occasions and played them through with trembling limbs and burning eyes—alternately thumping with stiff fingers and feeling her whole hand faint from the wrist on to the notes which fumbled and slurred into each other almost soundlessly until the thumping began again. At the musical evenings, organised by Eve as a winter set-off to the tennis-club, she had both played and sung, hoping each time afresh to be able to reproduce the effects which came so easily when she was alone or ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... than many other theatres. At the beginning Wagner secured every possible appliance, and then set to work to teach his men how to use them. And it was just in this that he reformed the opera-house: he insisted on everything being done artistically and with the utmost care. Nothing had to be slurred over; every detail had to be carried out as conscientiously as if the fate of empires depended on it. The idea was novel in operatic circles. It aroused opposition; but in the end Wagner got his way, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... slurred over the Latin, my excuse must be that the precise meaning of the Latin is difficult to catch. Is Teucer called auspex, as taking the auspices, like an augur, or as giving the auspices, like a god? There are objections ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... the city," Steve slurred the words. "I been daown to git Miss Sarah a dozen eggs—and I run ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... upon the motive of escape, and upon sheer curiosity. "Miss Lulu Bett" was a story of revenge. Booth Tarkington's "Alice Adams"—to bring in a new title—is a good illustration of a story where for once a popular novelist slurred over the popular elements in order to concentrate upon a study of character. His book received tardy recognition but it disappointed his less critical admirers. Mr. White's "Andivius Hedulio" depends for its ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... articulation, the lips and tongue have almost everything to do with making the difference between a clear, musical, and refined enunciation, which is so easy to understand that it is a pleasure to listen to it, and a slurred, drawling, squeaky, nasal kind of speech, which is as hard to understand as it is ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he, without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the completion". And in the moment when the sound of "Om" touched Siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse |
