"Blow off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the world: "Place his honour in his own keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off a friend's head or his own before the end of the first month. Huffy! decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad! Pity! for that youngster has in him the right metal,—spirit and talent ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which is usually pronounced and sometimes spelled "sou'wester," is a hat made from yellow oilskin, waterproof, and it can be tied on under the chin so it won't blow off. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... three songs for them at Mr. W's request. When my friend made a motion to go, the good manager thus addressed me: "look you my good lad, when the waiter of a tavern or the potboy of a porter-house presents me a pot of beer or ale, I always blow off the froth from the top or wait till it subsides, and then bring it to the light and look down carefully through it, lest it should be muddy or foul, or have some dirt such as a candle-snuff, a mouse, a toad, or some trifle of that kind floating in it: in a word, to know what ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... a great protection against both cold and dust. Unhappily, most people who have no machines of their own, when invited to ride, have nothing fit to wear; they dress too thinly, wear hats that blow off, and they altogether are, and look, quite unhappy—to the great discomfort of those with them. It is not a bad plan to have available one or two good warm coats for the benefit of guests, and always carry water-proof coats and lap-covers. In emergency, thin black oil-cloth, purchasable ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... realize the full strength of life in man and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Madame! Madame! Now to settle accounts with you the very moment that Abercromby has reported back from Calcutta. I think I will just have a good old-fashioned talk with Ram Lal Singh. I need his evidence to hoodwink this old cask of grog, Abercromby. I must blow off' ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... dropped with a bullet through his shoulder, and Simmons stood over him. He had lost the satisfaction of killing Losson in the desired way: hut here was a helpless body to his hand. Should be slip in another cartridge, and blow off the head, or with the butt smash in the white face? He stopped to consider, and a cry went up from the far side of the parade-ground: "He's killed Jerry Blazes!" But in the shelter of the well-pillars Simmons was safe except when he stepped out to fire. "I'll blow yer 'andsome 'ead off, Jerry ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... ended up by blackin' 'is face an' smotherin' 'er with a pillow for something quite different. After that he got better, an' they ended up by playin' a thing that made everybody laugh. I didn' 'ear it, but took a walk outside to blow off steam, an' only came back just as the fuss began about the carriages. Fact is, missy, I can't abear to see ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the long rows of boxes are packed, wax paper laid over each—to blow off every time Louie goes by. Then come covers with lovely ladies in low-neck dresses on the tops—and the room so cold, anyhow. Why are all the pictures on all the boxes smiling ladies in scanty attire, instead of wrapped to the ears in fur coats so that a body might find comfort in gazing ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... type should be guarded most carefully and advised to "get busy" early in life at something worth while. Many a bright fellow brimming with excess power has gone as a lamb to the slaughter into the maelstrom of vice because of being held back from legitimate occupation. He just had to blow off steam so he did it in a gin mill rather than ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... confidence. Then we grew harmoniously enthusiastic over Herbert Spencer and Darwin and Mantegazza and I talked a stream. My long silence found vent. Words poured from me in a torrent but he listened smilingly, his big head cocked on one side, waiting patiently for me to blow off steam. Later, when given a chance, he showed me the manuscript of a book upon which he was at work and together we discussed its main thesis. He asked me my opinion of this passage and that—and I replied, not as a pupil but as ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... favour of having it to take care of. The windows won't open, and the doors won't shut; and these latter (a cat could get in, between them and the floor) have a windy command of a colonnade which is open to the night, so that my slippers positively blow off my feet, and make little circuits in the room—like leaves. There is a very ashy wood-fire, burning on an immense hearth which has no fender (there is no such thing in Italy); and it only knows two extremes—an agony ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... while the pressure gauge is so arranged that the pressure in both condenser and evaporator is shown at the same time. A safety valve is fitted at the top of the condenser, and an automatic blow-off valve, P, is arranged to blow off when a certain density of brine has been attained in the evaporator. The "Esco" triple pump (Fig. 3), which has been specially manufactured for this purpose, has three suctions and deliveries, one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... haughty good looks we breed so easily from shirtsleeves, free with his money, known as the son of his powerful father, a good boxer, knowing no fear, he speedily became a familiar popular figure around town. It delighted him to play the prince, either incognito or in person; to "blow off the crowd," to battle joyously with longshoremen; to "rough house" the semi-respectable restaurants. The Barbary Coast knew him, Taits, Zinkands, the Poodle Dog, the Cliff House, Franks, and many other resorts not to be spoken ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... his prisoner. "I believe you're harmless enough to have the use of your legs and mouth." With a comic bow the little doctor added, "M'sieur, I'm going to ask you to drive us back to Fort Smith, and if you so much as look the wrong way out of your eyes I'll blow off your head. You and your friend are to answer for the killing of Pierre Thoreau and for the attempted murder of this young man, who will follow us to Fort Smith ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... your head. And if you haven't done one on paper so much the better. You'll jam them back, and stifle them, and screw the cover down tight on every natural impulse, and then, some day, the cover will blow off with a loud report. You can't kill that kind of thing, Fanny. It would have to be a wholesale massacre of all the centuries behind you. I don't so much mind your being disloyal to your tribe, or race, or whatever you want to call it. But you've turned ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... would have it, though, the Henry Clay joined the North Atlantic fleet and started for the Greenland fishing grounds. We lost the rest of the fleet in a big blow off Cape Farewell and worked northward alone, having the good fortune to fall in with several school of right whales, out of which we captured three or four 'balleeners,'[*] the oil and bone together being worth something ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... Molly, that the man be put at his ease," he said deliberately (happy in ordering at last); "more, that his direction be turned. He must be made high-hearted, full of glorious hope, not counting cost, keen in pursuit. He must blow off the cobwebs of his doubt; rather, these must shred from him as he flies in chase. I cannot afford his distrust. I can do nothing without you. Light of Heaven! am I asking too much? Or do you suppose that my safety with ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... fortresses" man, a fascinating talker, explained to me after the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... points to suicide. Even when the weapon is fired quite close there may be no blackening of the skin, and the hand is not always blackened in cases of suicide. Smokeless powder does not blacken the skin. Wounds on the back of the body are not usually self-inflicted, but a suicide may elect to blow off the back of his head. A wound in the back may be met with in a sportsman who indulges in the careless habit of dragging a loaded gun after him. If a revolver is found tightly grasped in the hand it is probably a case of suicide, whilst if it lies lightly in the hand it may be suicide or homicide. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... the deck! You wouldn't believe! The other day da Costa got the cook to fry a steak for him—a turtle steak it was too, not beef at all—and the fat caught or something. Young da Costa himself was telling me of it here in this room. 'Mr. Schomberg'—says he-'if I had let a cylinder cover blow off through the skylight by my negligence Captain Falk couldn't have been more savage. He frightened the cook so that he won't put anything on the fire for me now.' Poor da Costa had tears in his eyes. Only try to put yourself in his ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... heading almost exactly due east; and if the wind should happen to come away out from that quarter—which seemed to be its prevailing direction thereabout—I thought it not improbable that we might blow off the mudbank and go ashore again on the lee side of the lake, quite possibly in a very much worse position than that which we then occupied. Gurney and Saunders were quite of my opinion; and after talking the matter over for a while, we decided to get the stream anchor over the bows, in place ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... the cartoon just about says it for all returned soldiers from North Russia. We want nothing to do with the Bolo agitator in this country who would make another Russia of the United States. We let them blow off steam, are patient with their vagaries, are willing to give every man a fair hearing if he has a grievance, but we don't fall for their wild ideas about tearing things ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... prevent the rank shoots coming forth at all. The way to get a high-spirited horse to be content to stay peaceably in its stall is to allow it to have a tearing gallop, and thus get out its superfluous nervous excitement and vital spirit. Let the boiler blow off its steam. All repression is dangerous. And some injudicious folk, instead of encouraging the highly-charged mind and heart to relieve themselves by blowing off in excited verse and extravagant bombast, would (so to speak) sit on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... precipitation, without even discharging a poisoned arrow. To make their flight more rapid the white men had fired their rifles in the air; and one in grabbing his gun from his boy had managed to discharge it in such a manner as to blow off the sight of his neighbour's rifle. Finding that danger was at an end for the time being, I begged them to remain as they were, ready to receive an attack, while I returned with my boys to Gordon, and got the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... deep into his trouser-pockets and emitted a long breath, as though, his cup being full, he must needs blow off ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... neither of these two classes, except perhaps in the irresponsibility of its author. It is compounded of gossip,—the flying gossip or dust of Peking. Take it lightly; blow off such dust as may happen to stick to you. For authentic information turn to the heavy volumes written by the acknowledged students ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... few leagues out at sea, since it sometimes drove a prodigious sea before it into the bay, during which we rode forecastle in. Though the northerly winds are never to be apprehended in this bay, yet the southerly winds, which generally prevail here, frequently blow off the land in violent gusts and squalls, which seldom lasted, however, longer than two or three minutes. This seems to be owing to the high hills, in the neighbourhood of the bay, obstructing the southern gale; as the wind, collected by this means, at last forces its passage through the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... with it wash with a soft brush any gilding which requires restoring, and when dry it will come out as bright as new work. Frames may also be brightened in the following manner: Beat up the white of eggs with soda, in the proportion of three ounces of eggs to one ounce of soda. Blow off as much dust as possible from the frames, and paint them over with a soft brush dipped in the mixture. They will immediately come out ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... or repairing a hydro turbine, fasten the cover insecurely so that it will blow off and flood the plant with water. A loose cover on a steam turbine will cause it ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... a speed of six knots only, to give our stokers a chance to get their boilers into the best possible trim and to raise a good head of steam for the final rush, and as soon as our safety valves began to blow off, we increased the number of our revolutions until, when we arrived within four miles of the harbour's mouth, we were racing in, as though for a wager. At this point the destroyers stopped their engines and lay-to. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... will listen to reason. When I read this piece in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he's so fired up about it that he is down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?" And Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... blow off, and seemed to my mother to have so good an opinion of her Pamela, that I was sorry, as I told her, I had such a surmise: saying, that though the fellow and the pillion were odd circumstances, yet I dared to say, there was nothing in it: for I doubted not, the girl's duty ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... he went on, "in my capacity as Pooh Bah, Major and doctor too, I've got to be part medico to take care of the poor devils who blow off their hands or drop things on their feet, or eat too much cheap candy at the store. How is Sim's knee ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... to prevent the pressure in the envelope from exceeding a certain determined maximum and are fitted both to ballonets and the gaschamber. They are automatic in action, and, as we have said, the gas valve is set to blow off at a pressure in excess of that ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... said I, "ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a big cannon cracker," said Dave, holding up the still burning paper. "That was big enough to blow off ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... suggested, that one half of the cabin table, which was divided in two, should be placed upon the other, so as to raise it up to the coamings of the skylight-hatch; on the upper table to place a pound or two of powder, which, from the ascending principle of explosion, would blow off the skylight and grating without injuring the vessel below. Then, with their muskets loaded and bayonets fixed, to jump on the table, and from thence, if possible, gain the deck. This was agreed to, and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... We often have such, and they ain't all empty talk, nuther; some of 'em are surprisingly bright, and all mean so well I don't never reluct to hear 'em. They must blow off their steam somewheres, else they'd bust with the big idees a swellin' in 'em; Mr. Power knows it and gives 'em the chance they can't find nowheres else. 'Pears to me," added Mrs. Wilkins, ironing rapidly as she spoke, "that ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... shown in the annexed cuts is capable of effecting a certain amount of saving in the fuel of a generator, and of securing a normal operation in a steam engine. If occasion does not occur to blow off the motive cylinder frequently, the water that is carried over mechanically by the steam, or that is produced through condensation in the pipes, accumulates therein and leaks through the joints of the cocks ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... some bald-faced galoot got yappin', leastways there wus a temperance outfit come right along an' lay hold o' the boss. Say, flannel-mouthed orators! I guess that feller could roll out more juicy notions on the subject o' drink in five minutes than a high-pressure locomotive could blow off steam through a five-inch leak in ha'f a year. He wus an eddication in langwidge, sir, sech as 'ud per-suade a wall-eyed mule to do what he didn't want, and wa'n't ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... and their corporal marched into the cabin, where a couple kneeled upon the little table, and two more stood ready to cover them, when the folly of attempting to blow off the hatch became apparent to Hilary; for he saw that he would do more harm to his own men ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... Hazon, breaking into this train of thought, which, all unconsciously, had entailed a long gap of silence. "I don't in the least mind smoke, although I can't blow off a cloud myself just now—at least I have no inclination that way," he added, reaching for a bottle of white powder which stood upon a box by the bedside, and mixing himself ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... never, as I have said, complained of his father to me, and his only other friends were, like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination to parents—good young men, in fact—and one cannot blow off steam to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... he said to Mr. Buchanan. "For all her dead weight, she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the Banks? I was ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... the peasant. "How could it be otherwise with such a wind as this,—a wind that would blow off the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... to allow Count Simon time to cool before meeting him, but this summons was imperative, and, besides, he knew the danger of failing to provide a safety-valve in the shape of a listener, before the Count could blow off the first ebullitions of rage over Mdlle. Selpdorf's untoward speech. If pent up within his own breast, there was no knowing in how disastrous a manner Sagan's ill-humour might explode. Defeat meant much to Elmur, his reputation was at stake. Other ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... exactly; you're right, no doubt. I hope the dear child can be moved to-morrow, for this place is like a musty chicken coop; I wouldn't put my worst enemy's dog in such a room, and I think I'll go down and blow off my feelings by telling the man who runs this shanty, just what I think of him;" and away went the excited old gentleman in a hurry, after telling Olive once more to spare no expense, if the dear child ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... sleep, or talk, or write as I choose. I think I will write, for I am in the humour for writing. Do you know what it is to be in the humour for writing—to feel that there is a head of steam somewhere that must blow off? It isn't so much that you have something you want to say as that you must say something. And, after all, what does the subject matter? Any peg will do to hang your hat on. The hat is the thing. That saying of Rameau fits the idea to perfection. Some one was asking that great composer ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner) |
