"Bungled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lover, and a Sweetheart, and her Man; she had just agreed to all this with her soul, less than an hour ago under the red haw. No wonder she was late, no wonder she spilled and smeared; and red of face she blundered and bungled, for the first time in her life. Then in came Kate. She must lose no time, the corn must be finished before it rained. She must hurry—for the first time dinner was late, while Polly was messing like ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... test-tube of H2O" and "a cup of cold water" "A pair of brogans" and "a little empty shoe" "Bump" and "collide" "A brilliant fellow" and "a flashy fellow" "Bungled it" and "did not succeed" "Tumble" and "fall" "Dawn" and "6 A.M." "Licked" and "worsted" "Fat" and "plump" "Wept" and "blubbered" "Cheek" and "self-assurance" "Stinks" and "disagreeable odors" "Steal" and "embezzle" "Thievishness" and "kleptomania" "Educated" and "highbrow" ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a few animals myself over in the Peninsula, but not having had any advice I guess I bungled the job somewhat. Anyhow, they said down in St. Louis, where I sent my bunch, that they were misfits, and I suppose it must have been so, if a fellow was to judge from the size of the check they sent on. Since then I've been told that all animals can't be skinned alive. Is that so? I just sliced ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... flatter yourself it was at all on account of your disposal of the rugs, for the moment you had left a very handsome young lady came along, and, looking at me, said, with such a pleasant smile, 'Why, what a pretty rug you have there; but how the steward has bungled it about you! Let me fix it,' and with that she gave it a touch here and a smooth down there, and the result was really so nice that I hated to go down to breakfast. It is a pity you went away so quickly ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... not sleep for thinking of it. I have shamed you, Tom, and I have shamed all that belonged to me; and many and many a time I have longed to die and end it all, but something would not let me. I was always a precious coward. Why, I tried to shoot myself once; but I could not do it, I bungled so. That was when things were at the worst; but I never tried again, so don't look ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... make it plain," he said shortly. "The less attention we attract the less talk there will be, and this is too damn serious an affair to be bungled. You hear?" ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... filled by brothers, sons, and cousins. What matter ignorance and pride? The man was happily allied. Provided that his clerk was good, What though he nothing understood? 70 In church and state, the sorry race Grew more conspicuous fools in place. Such heads, as then a treaty made, Had bungled in the cobbler's trade. Consider, patrons, that such elves, Expose your folly with themselves. 'Tis yours, as 'tis the parent's care, To fix each genius in its sphere. Your partial hand can wealth dispense, But never give a ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... back of his hand across his wet eyelids. His lips were growing numb, and he bungled over ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... young calf with the cow. We wasted no time on preliminaries. The little girl ran away screaming, while we slaughtered the cow. I omit the details, for they are not nice—we were unaccustomed to such work, and we bungled it. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... exclusive control of taxation and legislation was not inconsistent with Imperial Union, but essential to it. Grattan and his Irish friends, ignorant of the true solution, honestly thought, in the intoxication of the moment, that they had solved the problem so disastrously bungled for America. The facts of ethnology and geography seemed to have been recognized. Ireland and England, united by a Crown which both reverenced, stood together, like Britain and the Dominions of to-day, as sister nations, with the old irritating servitude swept away, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... a letter from her mother has only just reached me in a roundabout way. She had been ailing for some time. They suspected drains, and had workmen in, with assurance that all had been put right. Since H.'s death the drains have again been examined, and it was found that the men who came before so bungled and scamped their work that an abominable state of things was made much worse."—Those fellows will shout nobly for the Empire one of these days!—"I never saw her, but she spoke of me just before the end; spoke very kindly, says her mother. Damnation! I can write no ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... He drew still nearer. "I've said them once to-night. Will you hear them again? No—please listen! I meant what I said, but I was carried out of myself—clumsy—bungled my meaning. You misunderstood, misconstrued, and before I could correct you I'd lost my temper. You said cruel things—just enough, no doubt, from your point of view—and you put words into my mouth, read thoughts into my mind that never were ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... either unfitted for kitchen work or else my presence was resented. At all events I soon realised that my first day in the cook-house would undoubtedly be my last. I had to serve out the bread, and ostensibly, either from lack of experience or nervousness, I bungled my task. The men had to go by the boiler in single file, passing on to the table to receive the bread, where serving was carried out so dexterously that the moving line never paused—until it got to my table. But there ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... some manner bungled the job? Or had he passed it up? He must find out how much the greener knew. The boss guessed that if the other had unearthed the plot, he would force ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... could not explain; and I had to listen. She said things that I did not believe she could have said to me, to anyone. Things that I did not think she could have thought . . . I dare say she was right in some ways. I suppose I bungled in my desire to be unselfish. What she said came to me in new lights upon what I had done . . . But anyhow her statements were such that I felt I could not, should not, remain. My very presence must have been a trouble to her hereafter. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... was thoroughly dissatisfied with myself. I had bungled the affair dreadfully. This was not the time for explanations; I should not have attempted them. It would have been better, much better, to have accepted the inevitable as gracefully as I could, paid the bills, and then, after we reached home, have ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... suppose that he isn't really handsome—at least, not like Dr. Bentley. He isn't so wonderful as Don; but I think that he is more understanding. He seemed to realize just how I felt this morning, and he was as sweet and considerate as a woman when I bungled things awfully in the operating room. The head nurse gave me a deserved call down, however, and it was perhaps just as well that she did, for my mind needed to be 'brought back.' Only my body was in the hospital, and the real me, as Mr. Talmadge ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... workmen into the Old House at once. To this he readily consented, but would not listen to her suggestion that in the meantime he should go to some watering-place. He would be quite well in a day or two, and there was no rest for him, he said, until the work so sadly bungled was properly done. He did not believe his plans were defective, and could not help doubting whether they had been faithfully carried out. But the builder, a man of honest repute, protested also that he could not account ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... at that, and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside my doublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved listlessly and his fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him in some wonder, it not being like him to come tardily ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... as I have wished for your company, I never did it more earnestly than when I rode over Flodden Edge. I know your taste for these things, and could have undertaken to demonstrate that never was an affair more completely bungled than that day's work was. Suppose one army posted upon the face of a hill, and secured by high grounds projecting on each flank, with the river Till in front, a deep and still river, winding through a very extensive valley called Milfield Plain, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... suddenly awoke to the fact that this was not going to be the conventional massacre by any means. The First had scored an unconverted try five minutes after the kick-off, and it was after this that the Second began to get together. The school back bungled the drop out badly, and had to find touch in his own twenty-five, and after that it was anyone's game. The scrums were a treat to behold. Payne was a monument of strength. Time after time the Second had the ball out to their three-quarters, and ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... have all ceased their singing, and I still sit on, in the absolute silence, unconscious—unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will not tell her! I will never tell any one. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart—out of the book of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... you fool?" cried his cousin, "you lose more than I. You've bungled it worse than even I did. If you had a spark of feeling, you would be shaking in your boots with vexation. But I'll tell you one thing—I'll have that eight hundred pound—I'll have that and go to Swan ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rather ominous, and I feared I had bungled. Yet my meaning should have been transparent even to a child. To make sure she had ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... I do everything that he could have done? And more. A bonehead like Jerry would have been certain to have bungled the thing somehow. I know him well. A good fellow, but in matters requiring intellect and swift thought dead from the neck up. It's a very lucky thing he is out of the running. I love him like a brother, but his dome is of ivory. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... at the gate of the house of the deceased; and although I bungled about the passages, yet, following the man who seemed to act as the confidential servant, I came to the little door which leads into the anderun. I permitted him to do what he no doubt was daily accustomed to do, and just as he had opened the door, and I had advanced two or three paces, he shouted ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... other schemes which might be suggested; on the contrary, he distinctly stated his approval of the scheme developed in the bill introduced by Senator Davis and passed by Congress. Reconstruction, as it was actually conducted later on, was wretchedly bungled, and was marked chiefly by bitterness in disputation and by clumsiness in practical arrangements, which culminated in that miserable disgrace known as the regime of the "carpet-baggers." How far Lincoln would have succeeded in saving the country from these ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then turned away ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the packing room of the flour mill with the master's eye, he was in the cooperage, the center of a group round one of the hooping machines. It had got out of gear, and the workman had bungled in shutting off power; the result was chaos that threatened to stop the whole department for the rest of the day. Ranger brushed away the wrangling tinkerers and examined the machine. After grasping the problem in all its details, he threw ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... I face him!). You would not like the Book at all, I think. But I must now tell you an odd thing, which will also be a sad thing to you. I left London last Tuesday fortnight for Bedfordshire, meaning to touch at Hertford in passing; but as usual, bungled between two Railroads and got to Bedford, and not to Hertford, on the Tuesday Evening. To that latter place I had wanted to go, as well to see it, as to see N. Newton, who had made one or two bungled efforts to see me in London. So, when I got to Bedford, I wrote him ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... have bungled it," Lady Carey said thoughtfully. "I will go back to him. There's that idiot of a partner of mine. I must go and pretend to ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I don't mean to ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is ... was...." He, too, bungled over the tense, but she pretended not to notice his confusion. "What are you going to be—or do? I hope your dreams ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... related and each term explained. How troops were set in battle, how a siege Was ordered and conducted. She complained Because he bungled at the fall of Liege. The curious names of parts of forts she knew, And aired with conscious pride her ravelins, And counterscarps, and lunes. The day drew on, And his dead fish's fins In the hot sunshine turned a mauve-green hue. At last ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... at all, and then her women friends would send wreaths for the coffin and carriages to the funeral, and would whisper mysteriously together in their boudoirs, and look askance upon the doctor who had attended her. For of course he had bungled shockingly, or everything would have gone off as right as rain ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... bungled, the other day, when I suggested your giving Mrs Polsue a duplicate list of the names and addresses. I thought it would please her and save you half the secretarial labour; and now it appears that you like ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to make similar deductions from the gold bag and the newspaper, but I couldn't do it. I bungled matters every time. My deductions are mostly from the witnesses' looks or ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... you're not trained to the business, it's fearfully hard to slip your hand deftly into some one else's pocket. Margery bungled, and Janet, impatient at her slowness, loosened slightly her own hold. On the instant, Willie Jones wrenched one arm free, dived into his pocket, and before his captors knew what he was about had pulled up the nickel and popped ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... And because I looked upon her this way, I foolishly went to her once to confess my love for another; her dearest and most intimate friend, and ask if she thought I had a chance for success. I must have bungled strangely, for she mistook my meaning and thought I was speaking of herself and in a way she accepted me; and before I had time to explain, her mother came in and I have never seen her since; but I shall never forget the eyes ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... But then, the point is that you don't know the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left it to me; he said I was to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... wounds in the arms—unnecessary as helping the assassin to kill her, I mean—gave me the first hint of that. Afterward, when I saw the body, and noticed the position of those wounds, I was sure of it. That is where Glossop bungled. They could not have come about in any struggle or any possible effort of the deceased to protect herself by throwing up her arms, for they were in the wrong position, for one thing, and they were deep, clean-cut punctures, for ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... it will probably be found—as might have been anticipated by Maggini had he known beforehand of the course to be taken by his art, which was at the time almost a local one—that a repairer has at one time thought it necessary to lift the ribs from one or the other plate, and almost, of course, bungled over it. This will be seen in the irregularity of the fitting of the ribs, which have been ruthlessly cut or torn out of the groove, some portions being left in. Taking them out was found to be unprofitable ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... believe that you thought I came out to bargain with you," chuckled the blond man. "Not at all! I told you that you'd be no trouble. I just came out to finish the job Peters bungled." ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... heard at Drybone reassure her. Sunrise found the white stage lurching eternally on across the alkali, with a driver and a bottle on the box, and a pale girl staring out at the plain, and knotting in her handkerchief some utterly dead flowers. They came to a river where the man bungled over the ford. Two wheels sank down over an edge, and the canvas toppled like a descending kite. The ripple came sucking through the upper spokes, and as she felt the seat careen, she put out her head and tremulously asked if anything ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister |
