"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passed before him, however dreadful, however sudden, however afflicting. Habitual danger, with unbounded confidence in his own strength and sagacity, had rendered him indifferent to fear, and the lawless and precarious life he led had blunted, though its dangers and errors had not destroyed, his feelings for others. And it was to be remembered that I had very lately seen the followers of this man commit a cruel slaughter on an unarmed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... blunted and ineffective everywhere. When Herbert Bowater tried to reclaim Harry Hornblower into giving up his notorious comrades, he received the dogged reply, "Why should not a chap take his pleasure as well as you?" With the authority at once of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... miscreants—fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching opportunities to plunder—made a dash at the camp, but the women defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the southern end of the mountain, and realized that the edge of the excitement was blunted, the men walked nearer to each other, and talked on indifferent themes as they pushed through the brush just below the top of the ridge. One after another fell silent, perhaps through fatigue; possibly impressed with the beauty ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... Peter, blood, hair, and bones of other saints, and by the strength of these holy relics it had conquered vast realms. Ten and more mighty blows he struck with Durendal upon the hard rock of the terrace, in the endeavor to break it; but it neither broke nor blunted. Then, counting over his great victories, he placed it and the olifant beneath him, and committed his soul to the Father, who sent down his angels to bear ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground in the South as fragments of forgotten marbles. So fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. This keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which she knew too well ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... were staring into each other's eyes, and—could I believe my sense of touch, or was it mercifully blunted? It seemed that the monster on the floor was gently licking my toes with a tongue like a huge slice of pink ham, instead of chewing them to the bone. But there are creatures which do that to their victims, I've heard, by way of making it ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Since then, habitual intercourse with the best society has relieved me from the embarrassing appendage of a conscience. My long career upon town—in the course of which I have been bitten, and rung, and subjected to the most humiliating tests—has blunted my sensibilities, while it has taken off the sharpness of my edges; and, like the counterfeits of humanity, whose lead may be seen emulating silver at every turn, my only desire is—not to be worthy of passing, but ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the realisation, tenfold, a hundredfold, of all your dreams of happiness, as though they had divined your soul's most secret thoughts; again, impenetrable as sevenfold plated shields of the hardest metals, they flung back your gaze like blunted and broken arrows. With a simple inflexion of the brow, a mere flash of the pupil, more terrible than the thunder of Zeus, they precipitated you from the heights of your most ambitious escalades into depths of nothingness ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... an effeminate and unwarlike people. As I passed through the camp, I was astonished at the order and regularity which prevailed among these barbarians. Some were exercising their horses in the mimic representation of a battle; part fled with incredible speed, while the rest pursued, and darted blunted javelins at their antagonists. Yet even those who fled would frequently turn upon their pursuers and make them repent their rashness. Some, while their horses were running in full speed, would vault from off their backs to others that accompanied them; some would gallop ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the trees, the elms, would grow tall enough and thick enough to hide the steeples and towers which stand up so stiff and stark, and bare and cold, some of them blunted and squab, some of them sharp enough to impale, with no more shape than a walking-stick, ferrule upwards—every one of them out of proportion and jarring to the eye. If by good fortune you can find a spot where you cannot see a steeple or a church tower, where you ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... his persuasiveness even astonished us. We fancied we were standing before a rhetorical sophist, who for jest and practice knew how to give a fair appearance to the strangest things. Unfortunately this first impression became blunted but too soon; for at the end of every discourse, manage the thing as I would, the man came back again to the same theme. He was not to be held fast to older events, although they interested him,—although he had them present to his mind with their minutest circumstances. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... this worldly spirit even in Thomas, when he said, "Except I see in His hand the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe"; and in so far as the world-spirit is permitted to hold sway within us, our powers of spiritual perception will be blunted, and become infected with the tendency to make our intellect or imagination our sole means ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... that at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is soon blunted in the reader and becomes habitual, owing to the frequent repetition of the word "cold," and (2), the word "glossy" ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... they were habitually used for locomotion and for supporting the whole weight of the body, or, as before remarked, so long as they were especially fitted for climbing trees. Such rough treatment would also have blunted the sense of touch, on which their delicate use largely depends. From these causes alone it would have been an advantage to man to become a biped; but for many actions it is indispensable that the arms ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... us all. He came into my old heart like a son. We are not all brute, gentlemen. I have waded in blood and plunder like the rest, but in every heart there is some spot that beats for things better. I divided my love between him and my captain. This man"—he pointed to his old master with his blunted finger, drawing himself up until he looked taller than he was, his one eye flashing with anger and hatred, as with a stern, rude eloquence he recited his wrongs, the grim indictment of a false friend—"this man betrayed us at Panama. With what he had robbed his comrades of he bought immunity, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... "we now-a-days discourage the romantic turn a little too much. Our boys are prudent too soon. Mistake me not, I do not mean to blame them for want of levity or dissipation; but their pleasures are those of hackneyed vice, blunted to every finer emotion by the repetition of debauch; and their desire of pleasure is warped to the desire of wealth, as the means of procuring it. The immense riches acquired by individuals have erected a standard of ambition, destructive of private morals, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... association with good, little Connie who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... poised halfway, their eyes blinded by my beauty. I could tramp up and down between the tables for hours, and no one would know I was there. I'm one of a million women who look their best in a tailor suit and a hat with a line. Not that I ever had either. But I have my points, only they're blunted just now." ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... dangers apprehended from menstruation is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.[244] Similarly, in various parts of Europe, it is still believed that if a woman ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... red near midnight, with blunted corners or horns, portends mild weather that month. If the corners are white and sharp, there will be ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... tradespeople, the fierce competition to control this cheap market, encourages the use of an outrageous system of food adulteration, and with it, every possible degree of lying, cheating, fraud and deception; until the moral tone of both business and society, has become blunted; yes, well nigh destroyed. As a result of this shameful state of commercial affairs, the successful man in any line of business, can no longer afford to be honest. He knows very well, that in competitive ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... moan, His voice was lessened, as he tried to speak, And issued through a long extended neck; 10 His hair transforms to down, his fingers mee In skinny films, and shape his oary feet; From both his sides the wings and feathers break; And from his mouth proceeds a blunted beak: All Cycnus now into a swan was turned, Who, still remembering how his kinsman burned, To solitary pools and lakes retires, And loves the waters as opposed to fires. Meanwhile Apollo, in a gloomy shade (The native lustre of his brows decayed) 20 Indulging sorrow, sickens ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... manufacture to the toy-merchant in the Rue de la Loi; for their more convenient carriage he had hit on the idea of tying them at the end of a pole, as the street hawkers do with their commodities. His manners were always chivalrous towards women, even to those whose fascination for him had been blunted by long familiarity, as could hardly fail to be the case with Madame de Rochemaure,—unless indeed he found her appetizing with the added seasoning of betrayal, absence, unfaithfulness and fat. Be this as it may, he now greeted her on the sordid stairs with their ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... thing of yesterday with us, but our top-hat carries us back to the Wars of the Roses and beyond. It is not its beauty that explains it. I have never heard any one deny that it is ugly, though custom may have blunted our sense of its ugliness. It is not its utility. I have never heard any one claim that this strange cylinder had that quality. It is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind and ruined ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... wild at any time and gore a man, however careful and conscientious the owner might be, and in these circumstances the injured man could not bring an action against the owner. But if a bull had already gored a man, and, although it was known to be vicious, the owner had not blunted its horns or shut it up, in the event of its goring and killing a free man, he had to pay half a mana of silver. One-third of a mana was the price paid for a slave who was killed. A landed proprietor who might hire ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... the criminal is not only unjustly dealt with, for both the moral and civil laws are violated, but a great sin is committed against society, the moral sensibilities are blunted and the crime intended to be suppressed ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... it queer, take my word for it." This was earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my arm, that cut it sharply like a blunted knife. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... again as accurately as before and twice as fast. The trench began to yawn in wide holes, and its sides to crumble and collapse. No. 2 Platoon occupied a portion of the trench that ran out in a blunted angle, and it caught the worst of the fire. One shell falling just short of the front parapet dug a yawning hole and drove in the forward wall of the trench in a tumbled slide of mud and earth. A dug-out and the two men occupying it were completely buried, and the young officer scurried and ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... beyond our borders, steady progress has been made in building a world of order. The people of West Berlin remain both free and secure. A settlement, though still precarious, has been reached in Laos. The spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in Viet-Nam. The end of agony may be in sight in the Congo. The doctrine of troika is dead. And, while danger continues, a deadly threat has been ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... fame to which destiny had called them. For others the money that they grubbed with blunted fingers from the dross-heaps of commerce. But for Campbell what work he could do, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... quickly that the eyes refuse to see any single effort—but the grasshopper has vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I tried the experiment of a bit of blunted bent wire on a long piece of thread, and at the very first cast I entangled a flutter-mouse and pulled him in. I was aghast when I saw what I had captured. A body hardly as large as that of a mouse was topped with the head of a fiend incarnate. Between his red puffed lips ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... different species from those to which we have alluded. The sun shines on both sides of the hedge, and blank and dreary, if not dismaying and crushing, is the first trial of monetary difficulty. People, long struggling, get blunted to the res angustae, precisely as people fast prospering do to the steady tide of wealth. The man who leaps heart-struck from his seat, as for the first time he contemplates a quarter's rent due and unprovided for, or the foolish fellow who groans in spirit over a protested bill returned upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... without calling. I was not disappointed, for there was slight inducement for going ashore, oppressed as I was with the ever-present incubus of dread. At intervals this feeling became less acute, but only to return, strengthened by its short absences. After a time my danger sense became blunted. The nervous system became torpid under continuous stress, and refused to pass on the sensations with sufficient intensity to the brain; or the weary brain was asleep at its post and did not heed the warnings. I could ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted, nor the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable than the fulness of the life that throbbed in them. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... hand, he drove it against the head of the formidable animal, but without effect. At the same time Abou Do met the hippo sword in hand, reminding me of Perseus slaying the sea-monster that would devour Andromeda; but the sword made a harmless gash, and the lance, already blunted against the rocks, refused to penetrate the tough hide. Once more handfuls of sand were pelted upon his face, and, again repulsed by this blinding attack, he was forced to retire to his deep hole and wash it from ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... the evening, that the window remained open, until Ponto erected his crest as a footfall came steadily along, nearer and nearer. Uplifting one of his pendant lips, he gave a low growl through his blunted teeth, and listened again; but apparently satisfied that the step was familiar, he replaced his head on his crossed paws, and presently Robert Fulmort's head and the upper part of his person, in correct evening costume, were thrust in at the window, the moonlight making ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Taras to the remaining kurens: "is there still powder in your flasks? Are your swords blunted? Are the Cossack forces wearied? Have the ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... so weary and sleepy that her curiosity and capacity for any other emotion was blunted. She had become simply a little, tired, sleepy animal. She let herself be undressed; she was not even moved to much self-pity when the lady discovered the cruel bruise on her delicate knee, and kissed it, and dressed it with a healing salve. She was put into a little night-gown which ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that weep." It was natural, therefore, that on Mr. Kennedy announcing his decrees, Charley and Kate should hasten to some retired spot where they could commune in solitude; the effect of which communing was to reduce them to a somewhat calmer and rather happy state of mind. Charley's sorrow was blunted by sympathy with Kate's joy, and Kate's joy was subdued by sympathy with Charley's sorrow; so that, after the first effervescing burst, they settled down into a calm and comfortable state of flatness, with very red ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... you would always have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald when the skin peels off, and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to the air. The tender points of the fibers of the optic nerve, too, would soon become blunted and broken, and the eye, of course, useless. How, then, is the nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were covered with skin, as the other nerves are, you could not see through it. For thousands ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... flatly at last, stopping to press down the hem she had turned with the blunted nail of her thumb. "Of course your ma would be dead against it, but there ain't any reason in the world why you shouldn't go back home and marry Arthur Peyton, as you ought to have done ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... understanding, moreover, is from the light that proceeds from the Lord as a sun. Since, then, the will's love, without the light of the understanding, sees nothing and is blind, it follows that without the light of the understanding even the bodily senses would be blind and blunted, not only sight and hearing, but the other senses also, - the other senses, because all perception of truth is a property of love in the understanding (as was shown above), and all the bodily senses derive their perception from their mind's perception. ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... not mean that my larger sympathies are blunted. By going to certain places, looking upon certain scenes, I could most effectually destroy all the calm that life has brought me. If I hold apart and purposely refuse to look that way, it is because I believe that the world is better, not worse, for having one more inhabitant ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... thought—He remembered how impatiently Sylvia waited the return of the answer he writ to him, wherein he owned his passion for that beauty. He knew she permitted him to write it, more to raise the little brisk fires of jealousy in Philander, and to set an edge on his blunted love, than from any favours she designed Octavio; and that on this answer depended all her happiness, or the confirmation of her doubts, and that she would measure Philander's love by the effects she found there of it: so that never lover had so hard a game to play, as our ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... was not an amiable man, his training as buccaneer and slaver having possibly blunted his finer feelings, and his consciousness of present treachery probably increasing the irritability often succeeding to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men, were those ancient baubled fools: ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... your heavenly Master. I do not, therefore, suppose that at present any temptation would induce you to incur the guilt of a deliberate falsehood. The perception of moral evil may, however, be so blunted by habits of mere carelessness, that I should have no dependence on your adhering for many future years to even this degree of plain, downright truth, unless those habits are decidedly broken through. But ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... governments, are asked to assist poor nations by making an apportionment of goods and credit which the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. The edge of this issue should not be blunted. If the people and government of America were only concerned to let their individual citizens extort the highest prices they could get for their surplus in the best markets, they would let Central and Eastern Europe starve. If, ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... unreasonable and improper, and one that would meet with general disapprobation in America. I do not wonder that a people gets to be immoral and depraved in their practices, who keep such improper hours. The mind acquires habits of impurity, and all the sensibilities become blunted, by taking the meals out of the natural seasons. I impute much of the corruption of France to the periods of the day in which the food ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... assure you from my own experience that this restraint will but serve to redouble your eagerness, to sharpen an appetite in danger of becoming blunted by a plethora of desiderata and a shrinkage of your purse. So that whereas before, a short stroll about the book-shops would discover to you abundance, or at least plenty, of books that you would like casually to possess, now that you have become a specialist ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... heart, the man who should have been standing beside her now, shielding her with his strong arms, comforting her with words of pity and love. The double blow had fallen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the pain of it had been dulled and blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and no farther;" and this limitation ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... I received was that change is the soul of life. The truth of this profound saying becomes especially obvious after having lived for ten weeks in a sunny room of a hotel, with the look-out on pavements. The charms of moving become rather blunted if they occur repeatedly within a short period; I therefore determined to forego them, handed over all paper to——, gave Engel my keys, declared that I would put up in a week at Stenbock's house, and drove to the Moscow station. This ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... just about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of tobacco-juice aimed at a passing cat, when he checked himself hastily at sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that many hatchets were blunted in Maloja, which is as it should ever be in such a fairyland, and that Helen, looking back at the mighty chain of the Alps from the deck of a steamer on Lake Como, had no reason to regret the day when first she crossed that ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... darkness those Allied states whose interests were described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be blunted if, as some French and Italian observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the "representatives of the twelve million soldiers" was indeed to enable peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously with the conceptions and in harmony with the interests ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... else would speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would—Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... as when the Fates lay their hand upon a man his senses are wont to be blunted and dimmed, so Gallus, being led on by these alluring persuasions to the expectation of a better fortune, quitted Antioch under the guidance of an unfriendly star, and hurried, as the old proverb ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... remorse or shame. And when she dies by her own hand, it is not in madness, but to escape humiliation. Suicide was one of the worst features of Pagan antiquity. It was a base and cowardly reluctance to meet the evils of life, as much as indifference to the future and a blunted moral sense. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... valiantly, but never had he met a foe like this. The monster was so large and so scaly that he could not get round her, while his sword glanced, blunted, from off her skin. Blow after blow he struck, but they only served to increase her fury, till, gathering all her strength together, she wound her great tail about his body, pressing him close against ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... seen to consist of a simple loop of wire fixed in a handle to be held in the left hand, and a certain number of rings secured by wires which pass through holes in the bar and are kept there by their blunted ends. The wires work freely in the bar, but cannot come apart from it, nor can the wires be removed from the rings. The general puzzle is to detach the loop completely from all the rings, and then to put them ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... long as they were faithful and obedient He never deserted them. They conquered hosts ten times their numbers—they were victorious against armed warriors, and mighty giants. The Lord blinded their enemies so that they saw not; He blunted their weapons; He paralyzed their courage; chariots and horses did not avail them; nor strong walls, nor mighty men of battle. The Lord loved the Israelites, and as long as they were faithful and obedient, they prevailed ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... long time he spoiled my taste for any other criticism; he made it seem pale, and poor, and weak; and he blunted my sense to subtler excellences than I found in him. I think this was a pity, but it was a thing not to be helped, like a great many things that happen to our hurt in life; it was simply inevitable. How or when my frenzy for him began to abate I cannot say, but it certainly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... warmed just enough by such sunlight as filtered through the live-oaks, soothed by the good tobacco and the prolonged murmur of the spring and creek. By degrees, the sense of his own personality became blunted, the little wheels and cogs of thought moved slower and slower; consciousness dwindled to a point, the animal in him stretched itself, purring. A delightful numbness invaded his mind and his body. He was not asleep, he was not awake, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and all the household; and after a while the old Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who, whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and delight with ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... melancholy situation. To these articles of intelligence she added, that the name of her benefactress was the celebrated Lady —, to whose character the youth was no stranger, though he had never seen her person before. The killing edge of her charms was a little blunted by the accidents of time and fortune; but no man of taste and imagination, whose nerves were not quite chilled with the frost of age, could, even at that time, look upon her with impunity. And as Peregrine saw her attractions heightened by the tender office ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... ears with cotton, began to breast the slope with fearless heart and dauntless soul; and as soon as she had advanced a few steps a hubbub of voices broke out all around her, but she heard not a sound, by reason of her hearing being blunted by the cotton-wool. Then hideous cries arose with horrid din, still she heard them not; and at last they grew to a storm of shouts and shrieks and groans and moans flavoured with foul language such as shameless women use when railing one at other. She caught ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Cottage—how she had grown to love it, and what happy hours she had passed there, sitting by that window and watching the pigeons fluttering among the arches! Her heart was soft towards the woman she had left. Could she help it, she thought, if her moral sense were blunted and distorted? There was something defective and warped in her nature—something that seemed to make her less accountable than other people. Truth was not dear to her, or her marriage-vows sacred in her eyes. How came it that she and Matthew O'Brien should have ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... These birds are considered the best, but they are all arrayed in brilliant colors, and all superbly magnificent. They are caught chiefly in the Aroo Isles, either by means of bird-lime, or shot with blunted arrows. After being dried with smoke and sulphur, they are sold for nuts or pieces of iron and ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... females who would kill a fowl or a lamb rather than go without it; but they are exceedingly rare. And who would not regard female character as tarnished by a familiarity with such scenes as those to which I have referred? But if the keen edge of female delicacy and sensibility would be blunted by scenes of bloodshed, are not the moral sensibilities of our own sex affected in a similar way? And must it not, then, have ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... portals and the hollows behind the statues are lined with a black denser and more velvety than any effect of shadow to be obtained by sculptured relief. The interweaving of colour over the whole blunted bruised surface recalls the metallic tints, the peacock-and-pigeon iridescences, the incredible mingling of red, blue, umber and yellow of the rocks along the Gulf of AEgina. And the wonder of the impression is increased by the sense of its evanescence; ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... breasted the water which filled the cabin and reached her hands toward the bowed helmet of the prisoner. Gingerly, her blunted talons scraping across metal, she pulled ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... and she has so little," she said to herself, and her pity blunted all Hatty's sharp, sarcastic little speeches and took the sting out of them. "Poor little thing! she does not mean half she says," she remarked, as a sort of apology to Christine, when Hatty ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that soars on high, And scorns the whirlwind's breath Behold thy Poet's youth defy The blunted dart of Death! His gaze as ardent as the light That shoots athwart the heaven, His soul yet fiercer than the light In the eternal heaven, Of Him, in whom as in an ocean-surge Creation ebbs and flows—and worlds arise and merge! Through Nature steers ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for them. As to those parasites, and the ingratitude they showed him, I will attend to them before long; they shall have their deserts as soon as I have got the thunderbolt in order again. Its two best spikes are broken and blunted; my zeal outran my discretion the other day when I took that shot at Anaxagoras the sophist; the Gods non-existent, indeed! that was what he was telling his disciples. However, I missed him (Pericles had held up his hand to shield him), ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... cease to be evils because they are less sharply felt by us; but we have grown accustomed to them from having them constantly with us, and through the goodness of God our thoughts and feelings concerning them have become blunted. That is why they move us the more deeply when we do feel them now and then, since we have not learned through familiarity to despise them. So true is it, therefore, that we feel scarce a thousandth part of our evils, and also that we estimate them ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... an account of a bull, which fed on the savannahs of Central America. He had gored so many cattle, that he was at length caught with a lasso, and to prevent him doing further mischief, the tips of his horns were blunted. Some weeks after, a cow belonging to his herd was found killed by a jaguar, and from the state of the bull's head and neck, which were fearfully torn, it was evident that he had fought bravely for the animals under his care. It was now seen that it would have been wiser not ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... as death of the old chap," laughed a sottish-looking man, whose age ought to have inspired him with some respect for the relation between father and son, and doubtless would, had not a long course of drinking and familiarity with debasing associates blunted ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... warlike memory. By slow but sure degrees, we neared the shore, until Vera Cruz, in all its ugliness, became visible to our much-wearied eyes. We had brought a pilot from Havana to guide us to these dangerous coasts, but though a native of these parts, it seemed that a lapse of years had blunted his memory, for we had nearly run upon the rocks. A gun was therefore fired, and another pilot came out, who at sight of the Spanish flag waxed enthusiastic, and pointing out the castle to our ignorant friend, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... The senses are blunted at an age when they should be keenly sensitive. It is only within ten years or so that very many of the higher schools have made a point of indoor sanitation beyond plumbing provisions. Outdoor sports ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... flood his neighbor's land must restore the value of the grain he has damaged. The owner of a vicious ox which has gored a man must pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the animal and had not blunted its horns. A builder who puts up a shaky house which afterwards collapses and kills the tenant is himself to be put to death. On the other hand, the code has some rude features. Punishments were severe. For injuries to the body there was the simple ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... his exultant flight by the look upon her face. Her fingers turned inward, the blunted nails scratching at the sheet of paper as though she would tear it ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... it, and on what has been told again by those to whom a matter was told in confidence. Nothing is a surer mark of good breeding and careful "upbringing" (as the Scotch call it) than delicacy on those little points which are trusted to one's honour. But refinement in such matters is easily blunted if one lives much with people who think any little meanness fair that is not found out. I really saw no harm in trying to overhear all that I could of the conversation between my father and Mr. Andrewes, though I ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is in the murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other murders by a new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti. They have always had the knife at each other's throats, after they had almost blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought that, in the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the bargain if any time was lost; they therefore took one of their short revolutionary methods, and massacred him in a manner so perfidious and cruel, as would shock ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... a course against each other with blunted spears, since they won't grant us sharp ones, more's ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... anything else after the day's work is done. Naming and arranging specimens is a most admirable and useful employment, but when you have done it is "cutting blocks," and you, my friend, are a most indubitable razor, and I do not wish to have your edge blunted in that fashion. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... flatterers you speak of and their ingratitude, I shall deal with them another time, and they will meet with their due punishment as soon as I have had my thunderbolt repaired. The two largest darts of it were broken and blunted the other day when I got in a rage and flung it at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was trying to make his disciples believe that we gods do not exist at all. However, I missed him, for Pericles held his hand over ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... this statement of any of our contemporaries, was reincarnated in Winckelmann. At the very beginning it endured its mighty probation, and was not tamed by thirty years of humility, discomfort, and sorrow; it could neither be diverted from its path, nor blunted by adversity. As soon as he attained a worthy freedom, he appears well rounded and complete, quite in the antique sense. He was to live a life of action, enjoyment and self denial, joy and suffering, possession and loss, exaltation and debasement—yet in such ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... due under God, to your co-operation, and, above all, to the amazing goodness of our Heavenly Father. Looking my long pastorate squarely in the face, I think I can honestly say that I have been no man's man; I have never courted the rich, nor wilfully neglected the poor; I have never blunted the sword of the Spirit lest it should cut your consciences, or concealed a truth that might save a soul. In no large church is there a perfect unanimity of tastes as to preaching. I do not doubt that there are ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... its method. In many cases they have had a fair degree of success: in one case, that of Hans Christian Andersen, the success is admittedly very complete. As a rule, however, the sharpness of the sense of wonder has been blunted, and many imitators of the old fairy tale succeed in keeping only the shell. Another class of modern fantastic tale is that of the pourquoi story, which has the explanation of something as its object. Such ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... somewhat faltering, hunger assails and is forgotten, even the solace of tobacco is denied because the hand is too tired to grope for and fill the pipe. Thereafter comes a deeper stage of fatigue, one in which every separate step requires a distinct and tragic effort of will. The perceptions are blunted, the uncertainty of footfall is more pronounced, the stark reality of the winter woods partakes of a dreamlike quality. Then ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the calm night like a jewel! Not a line of its proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom of its ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... are incessantly worn away in front, and as incessantly grow from the base, take the curved form of their sockets, and act much like shears which have the inestimable property of self-sharpening when blunted, and self-renewal when chipped or actually broken off by coming against any hard substance. Were the teeth to be without this power, the animal would run a great risk of dying from hunger, the injured tooth not being able either to do its own work, or to aid its companion of the opposite jaw. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... exhilarating and delightful treat. I don't enjoy it above once in ten days, but therefore with double zest." What told on him most was the physical depression induced by the very look of these vast, monotonous masses of sheer poverty. "My wits are getting blunted," he says, "by the monotony and ugliness of this place. I can almost imagine, difficult as it is, the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing anything but the meanest and vilest of men and men's works, and of complete exclusion from the sight of God and His works,—a position in which the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... come,—and will you think a poor, uneducated person, in whose mind the sense of right and wrong is confused, the sense of honor blunted, easier of access than one refined and thoughtful? Surely you will not, if you yourself are refined and thoughtful, but rather that the case requires far more care in the choice of a favorable opportunity,—when, then, the good time is come, perhaps it will be best to do what you do in a way ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that this is one of the benefits of growing older, that these beautiful things seem to speak more and more instantly to the mind. Perhaps the faculty of eager enjoyment is somewhat blunted; but the appeal, the sweetness, the pathos, the mystery of the world, as life goes on, fall far oftener and with far more of a magical spell upon ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lion long unfed, Whom wasting famine had made lean and spare, Devours and rends, and swallows, and lays dead The feeble flock, which at his mercy are; So, in their sleep, the cruel paynim bled Our host, and made wide slaughter everywhere: Nor blunted was the young Medoro's sword, But he disdained ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... execution. It was easy to give Jewish titles to their heroes, but the difficulty lay in drawing their characters with the force and precision of their prototype. Buckingham himself was rash enough to engage in this conflict; but, whether his anger blunted his wit, or that his share in the "Rehearsal" was less even than what is generally supposed, he loses, by his "Reflections on Absalom and Achitophel," the credit we are disposed to allow him for talent on the score of that lively piece.[10] A nonconformist clergyman published ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Kercheff of Plesaunce iwrapped aboute hys arme, the gwych Knight," says the writer, "wyl renne a cours wyth a sharpe spere for his sou'eyn lady sake." (Fenn, Original Letters, (1787,) vol. i. p. 6.) The practice of using sharp spears, instead of the guarded and blunted weapons usual in the tournament, seems to have been affected by the chivalrous nobles of Castile; many of whom, says the chronicle of Juan II., lost their lives from this circumstance, in the splendid tourney given ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the great world. In the Capital he had, no doubt, enjoyed all that seems pleasant in the eyes of a wealthy youth, but in spite of that he had remained fresh and open-hearted even to the smallest things; and this was what most rejoiced his father. In him there was no trace of the satiety, the blunted faculty for enjoyment, which fell like a blight on so many men of his age and rank. He could still play as merrily with little Mary, still take as much pleasure in a rare flower or a fine horse, as before his departure. At the same time he had gained keen insight into the political situation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... whether Milt, when the sting and faith of romance were blunted, would engage in Great Propositions, and fight for the recognition of his—toothpicks. Would his creations be favorites in the best lunch rooms? Would he pile ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... harbour, or I'd have mentioned it earlier. The savages in my Tin Islands go naked and stain themselves blue with woad, and are very filthy and brutish to look upon. They are sturdy, and should make good slaves, but one would have to get blunted in the taste before one could wish to be father ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the Ring lasted, our Cavaliers alternately bore away great share of the Honour. That Sport ended, Marshals were appointed for the Field, and every thing in great form settled for the Combat. The Cavaliers were all in good earnest, but orders were given to bring 'em blunted Lances, and to forbid the drawing of a Sword upon pain of his Highness's Displeasure. The Trumpets sounded and they began their Course: The Ladies' Hearts, particularly the Incognita and Leonora's ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... but any doctor in England will tell you that the average Englishman eats and drinks a great deal more than is good for him. It is melancholy to think how many professing Christians have the edge and keenness of their intellectual and spiritual life blunted by the luxurious and senseless table-abundance in which they habitually indulge. I am quite sure that water from the spring and barley-bread would be a great deal better for their souls, and for their bodies too, in the case of many ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... every where about Queen Charlotte's Sound is uncommonly mountainous, rising immediately from the sea into large hills, with blunted tops. At considerable distances are valleys, or rather impressions on the sides of the hills, which are not deep, each terminating toward the sea in a small cove, with a pebbly or sandy beach; behind which are small flats, where the natives generally build their huts, at the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... put together, they stand with the upper ends placed in contact, so as to form them into one great cone, and the lower ends diverging. The upper are socketed into the end of the pestle, and the lower, when a little blunted by use, are not unlike the jaw-teeth of the mammoth, with their studs. They say here, that pestles armed with these teeth, clean the rice faster, and break it less. The mortar, too, is of stone, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... man in his stalwart frame. But, in front of the face, one forgot the framework. The speaking countenance, from which it was impossible to detach one's gaze, both charmed and fascinated the beholder. His hair floated over the forehead in large locks; his black eyes pierced like arrows blunted by benevolence; they entered yours confidently as if they were friends; his cheeks were full, rosy, and strongly coloured; the nose was well modelled, yet a trifle long; his lips, gracefully limned, ample and raised at the corners; his teeth, unequal, broken, and blackened ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... atoned, and, bad as he thought it from the standpoint of good sense as to the way to get on with her, he suffered far more because it was such a stinging, scoffing denial of all his pretenses of personal pride. "Her sensibilities have been too blunted by association with those Washington vulgarians," he reasoned, "for her to realize the enormity of my offense, but she realizes enough to look down at me more contemptuously every time she recalls it." However, the greater the blunder the greater the necessity of repairing. He resolutely thrust ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... made you what you are; and that had you not been ruined by the world, you would have been disinterested and generous; even now, your real nature often gains the ascendency, and I am sure that in all that you have done, which is not defensible, your poverty, and not your will, has consented. Now, blunted by habit and time, the suggestion of conscience do not ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... complaint or appeal reached his cruel and inexorable ear. The certain graciousness of Providence to those in extreme peril seemed to have blunted the edge of fear in the innocent victims. They lay still and apparently without consciousness upon the iron altar. The red glow played upon their faces, shining through from the inner chamber, and the figure of the marshal stood out ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... strength and the virtues of other types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will be a self-centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of Nature's laws. His whole character will be impressionable, and will respond to the most ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... structure, which is much less simple than it at first appears. We perceive that the bevelled end-part consists of a series of truncated cones, fitting one into the other, with their wide base slightly projecting. This arrangement produces a sort of file, a sort of rasp with very much blunted teeth. When pressed on the slide, the thread divides into four pieces of unequal length. The two longer end in the toothed bevel. They come together in a very narrow groove, which receives the two other, rather shorter pieces. These both end in a point, which, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... looked, the track of the herd had been straight down the middle of the ever-widening barren. By now he must be a good two miles from the nearest cover; and he knew well enough that, in the bewilderment of the storm, which blunted even such woodcraft as his, and blurred not only his vision, but every other sense as well, he could never find his way. His only hope was to keep to the trail of the caribou. The beasts would either lie down or circle to the woods. In such a storm as this, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... whichever road you take. Now go. These fellows mustn't recognize you. It is time to take them one by one into the exercising yard. I daren't take more than one at a time or they'd kill me even with the blunted practise-weapons. I wish they might face Commodus as boldly as they tackle me! I am a weary man, and many times a bruised one, I can tell you, when the night comes, after putting twenty of them through ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... the weather, it was resolved to leave the artificers on board this evening, and carry only the smiths to the rock, as the sharpening of the irons was rather behind, from their being so much broken and blunted by the hard and tough nature of the rock, which became much more compact and hard as the depth of excavation was increased. Besides avoiding the risk of encumbering the boats with a number of men who had not yet got the full command of the oar in a breach ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scientific habit of mind can be trusted to report things as they are. Most of us, in observing the wild life about us, see more or see less than the truth. We see less when our minds are dull, or preoccupied, or blunted by want of interest. This is true of most country people. We see more when we read the lives of the wild creatures about us in the light of our human experience, and impute to the birds and beasts human motives and methods. This is too often true of the eager city man or woman who ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... but upon mentioning it at the Cape of Good Hope to Dr. Andrew Smith, he told me that he recollected finding on the south-eastern coast of Africa, about one hundred miles to the eastward of St. John's river, some quartz crystals with their edges blunted from attrition, and mixed with gravel on the sea-beach. Each crystal was about five lines in diameter, and from an inch to an inch and a half in length. Many of them had a small canal extending from one extremity to the other, perfectly cylindrical, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were futile. So this Cockney imagined that his condition showed no improvement on that of the savage warrior of two thousand years ago, except in that civilisation had developed finer weapons to kill with and be killed by. The finer instincts had been blunted by the naked and unashamed horrors of war. But the lessons taught him before war scourged the world came back to him on getting his first view of the Holy City. He felt that sense of emotion which makes one wish to be alone and think alone. He was on the ground where Sacred History ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... were numerous and their entertainment costly. We are reminded, however, by the Observances of Barnwell Priory that "by showing hospitality to guests the reputation of the monastery is increased, friendships are multiplied, animosities are blunted, God is honoured, charity is increased, and a plenteous reward in heaven is promised." It was enjoined that the hosteller, or brother in charge of the hospitium, should have "facility of expression, elegant manners, and a respectable bringing up; and if he ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer periphery of his thought—nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak—as a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and then he would start, and remember ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... pistol, a blunted shape no larger than his palm. It was a beautiful mechanism, and as with his silken razors, merely to hold it, to test the smooth action, gave him a sense ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... camp outside Independence had evidently blunted his perceptions. The small waist, a round, bare throat rising from a narrow band of lace, and a flat, yellow straw hat were the young woman's only points of resemblance to the beauty-book heroines. She was not in the least beautiful, only fresh and healthy, the flat straw hat shading a girlish ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... charm at all comparable with that of being swindled in the midst of fine scenery, when the funds and enthusiasm still hold out, and the sense of actually getting the worth of one's money is not yet so blunted by transactions calculated to awaken Thought, as to have lost the power of increasing one's felicity. That the intelligent lad who drove me was in league with every one of the parties who were stationed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... cry of realization, and all his instinctive energy seemed on the verge of collapse. He grew limp, he sagged, he tottered. His sensorial perceptions seemed momentarily blunted. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... custom somewhat blunted his sense of the dishonesty, and he began to criticise the thing arithmetically instead of morally. That view once admitted, he was charmed with the ability and subtlety of his dignified sharper; and so the mole-catcher ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the unhappy youth hath even been more blunted, by exposure and the usages of a savage life, than by Nature," said Content, who with most of the others had been recalled, by his interest in the examination, to the scene they had momentarily quitted. "Let the sister deal tenderly ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... were most anxious to buy snuff. It appears that the Texan females are in the habit of dipping snuff—which means, putting it into their mouths instead of their noses. They rub it against their teeth with a blunted stick. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... the very highest gratification which the case allowed, that (in the language of our modern auctioneers) the whole, "without reserve," should perish before their eyes. Even such spectacles must have hardened the heart, and blunted the more delicate sensibilities; but these would soon cease to stimulate the pampered and exhausted sense. From the combats of tigers or leopards, in which the passions could only be gathered indirectly, and by way of inference from the motions, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... like this one. He blushed, too, spiritually, as it were. He had invited himself to dine with her merely to watch her table manners. They were exquisite. Knowing the South Seas from hearsay and by travel, he knew something of that inertia which blunted the fineness, innate and acquired, of white men and women, the eternal warfare against indifference and slovenliness. Only the strong survived. This queer father of hers had given her everything but his arms. "Tell me, what ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... senses are palled with excessive gratification; when the eye is tired with seeing, and the ear with hearing; when the spirits are so sunk, that the grasshopper is become a burthen, how shall the blunted apprehension be capable of understanding a new science, or the worn-out heart be able to ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... of Plautus' Curculio, or the Forgery. The Parasite of Phaeaedromus, who gave his name to the piece, says (ii. 3):—"I am quite undone. I can hardly see; my mouth is bitter; my teeth are blunted; my jaws are clammy through fasting; with my entrails thus lank with abstinence from food, am I come... Let's cram down something first; the gammon, the udder, and the kernels; these are the foundations for the stomach, with head and roast-beef, ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... bring him the lion's teeth and claws—so much of them as she could find—and hack him a club of alder. And he put the teeth and claws very cunningly into the wood so that the points were outward. Very long it took him, and he blunted two of the teeth hammering them in, and was very angry and threw the thing away; but afterwards he dragged himself to where he had thrown it and finished it—a club of a new sort set with teeth. That day there ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... Mexicos be roof'd with gold. 410 Exiled by thee from earth to deepest hell, In brazen bonds, shall barbarous Discord dwell; Gigantic Pride, pale Terror, gloomy Care, And mad Ambition shall attend her there: There purple Vengeance bathed in gore retires, Her weapons blunted, and extinct her fires: There hateful Envy her own snakes shall feel, And Persecution mourn her broken wheel: There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain, And gasping Furies thirst for ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... fighting teeth are blunted runs from the field before his foe. With many an afterthought ran Gisli. Gone is his fame, ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... Scoundrels are very often acquitted nowadays in Russia on grounds of abnormality and aberration, yet these acquittals, these unmistakable proofs of an indulgent attitude to crime, lead to no good. They demoralize the masses, the sense of justice is blunted in all as they become accustomed to seeing vice unpunished, and you know in our age one may boldly say in the words of Shakespeare that in our evil and corrupt age virtue ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... anchor then. It was enclosed in the most beautiful combination of city and scene that exists anywhere. Beyond the city the blunted cone of Vesuvius rose. In the city, newspaper vendors shrilly hawked denunciations of the American ships because of the danger that their atom bombs might explode. Well outside the harbor, a Navy crew of experts worked to make quite impossible the detonation of atomic bombs in a ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... glorious opportunities before him? Before our young men is another battle—not a battle of flashing swords and clashing steel—but a moral warfare, a battle against ignorance, poverty, and low social condition. In physical warfare the keenest swords may be blunted and the loudest batteries hushed; but in the great conflict of moral and spiritual progress your weapons shall be brighter for their service and better for their use. In fighting truly and nobly for others you ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... away from the gorge-like head of Toba with its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Bay the island-dotted area of the Gulf of Georgia began. There a snowfall seldom endured long, and the teeth of the frost were blunted by eternal rains. There the logging camps worked full blast the year around, in sunshine and drizzle and fog. All that region bordering on the open sea bore a more genial aspect and supported more people and industries ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was a trifling decision, but it led to important results, as trifles often do, because, if he had not satisfied his hunger, he would have limped back through the settlement towards the railroad and probably never would have re-entered the valley. As it was, when the edge of his hunger was blunted he felt drowsy, and, curling himself up among the roots of hemlock, sank into slumber under the open sky. Early next morning Bransome stopped him on ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... considered movable, occupied one corner of the table by itself: the earthen tobacco-jar, with a small piece chipped from the cover; pamphlets and books, standing or lying upon one another; heaps of rusty steel and blunted quill pens; a quire or two of blue and white letter-paper; a paper-knife, loose in the handle, but smooth of edge; a box of lucifer matches, and several burnt ends; an extra pipe or two; the professor's straw hat; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... Consuls—did the republic's vengeance delay the death of Lucius Saterninus, a tribune of the people, of Caius Servilius, a prtor, even a single day? And yet, we Consuls, suffer the edge of this authority to be blunted, until the twentieth day. For we have such a decree of the Senate, but hidden in the scroll which contains it, as a sword undrawn in its scabbard. By which decree it were right, O Catiline, that thou shouldst have been slaughtered on the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert |
