"Fiasco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wailed the townsfolk, when the news of the fiasco of the fire ships was made known, "those dogs of English are too much for us upon the water; but let them attempt to meet us on land, and we will show ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... could not say, that she had never really tried to manage it; that as long as things had gone on without any open fiasco, and they had been able to enjoy themselves, and the servants had not been bad-tempered, she had been quite content. She could not make that confession now, and if she had it would not ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... as patient as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine months among the "Colonels" when he made that outburst; and with no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave us—save for our escape fiasco. I don't suppose Terry had ever lived so long with neither Love, Combat, nor Danger to employ his superabundant energies, and he was irritable. Neither Jeff nor I found it so wearing. I was so much interested ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... upshot? A friend paid the tax for him; continued year by year to pay it in the sequel; and Thoreau was free to walk the woods unmolested. It was a FIASCO, but to me it does not seem laughable; even those who joined in the laughter at the moment would be insensibly affected by this quaint instance of a good man's horror for injustice. We may compute the worth of that one night's imprisonment as outweighing ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this fiasco, the archduke still continues to consider himself as the protector of the Romanys, and remains proud of his title of "Gypsy Prince," being sagacious enough to realize that it is impossible for a race to eradicate from their character, in a comparatively short space of time, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... After the fiasco in Talland Cove Captain Arbuthnot had formed up his Dragoons and given the word to ride back to Bodmin Barracks, their temporary quarters, whence Mr. Smellie had ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he threw it, and not until the catcher had reeled off twenty yards or more toward Brimfield's goal did Carmine discover that he had been cruelly deceived by the Miter Hill right end! Even Mr. Robey, who had been viewing the game rather grimly, had to swing on his heel to hide a smile at that fiasco. But, if the subs didn't do much in the way of attack, they at least held the enemy from crossing their line, and the weird contest at last came to a close with the one-sided score of 26 ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... misgivings were realised. A few weeks later, on my way home from the club, I called in late one afternoon on the Conkys. They greeted me cordially as usual, but I could see something was amiss, and soon it all came out. The visit had been a fiasco. Uncle Joseph had been very friendly and even courteous, but at intervals he thought aloud with devastating frankness. Marjorie had exhausted herself in the labours of hospitality, but all in vain. Conky had sung, but the voice of the charmer had failed. And just as Uncle Joseph was going he observed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... me of you," said the lady. "It was very unfortunate that your sister's death deprived you of a home. An absurd thing, altogether, that fiasco of Jane Merrick's." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... concerning the perilous nature of the mission. At any rate, he could not foresee that, far from bringing him distinction, the task would shortly end, as Sir John Macdonald described it, in an inglorious fiasco. ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... bluster of blinding sand so that the morning was darkened with it. Breakfast in consequence was a fiasco, and very empty, very angry, we faced the trail head-on to the sandstorm. Hour after hour it continued with no sign of abatement, and with caps pulled down to shield the eyes and handkerchiefs tied over nose and mouth we struggled on. The day seemed a thousand years long; and when at last we ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... dummy guns and that the city had been abandoned by the Confederates. No commander responsible for such a ridiculous performance could retain the confidence of an army in the field, and Sherman assured Grant that Halleck would not long survive the fiasco. This advice was sorely needed, for Grant had grown tired of being constantly humiliated and had already requested Halleck to relieve him from duty when Sherman persuaded him to remain and ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... design; and there is no reason why a chimney should be made to vent, because it is so situated as to look comely from without. On the other hand, there is a noble way of being ugly: a high-aspiring fiasco like the fall of Lucifer. There are daring and gaudy buildings that manage to be offensive, without being contemptible; and we know that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread." But to aim at making a commonplace villa, and to make it insufferably ugly in each ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pulled him, not only over the chalk line, but all over the stage. They played havoc with him. And then the manager had to go on and make a speech, besides, because the "Purse of Gold" aroused dissatisfaction. The fiasco was hideous. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... uniforms. It was therefore impossible for the ambassador to present himself before the Emperor, and he flatly refused to do so; whereupon he received orders to proceed at once to the sea-coast, and take himself off to his own country. A curious comment on this fiasco was made by Napoleon, who thought that the English Government had acted wrongly in not having ordered Lord Amherst to comply with the custom of the place he was sent to; otherwise, he should not have been sent at all. "It is my opinion that whatever is the custom of a nation, and is ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... difficult to get when the stomach cannot stand either rancid oil or pig's grease. I begin to get accustomed to it; but Chopin is ill every time that we do not prepare his food ourselves. In short, our expedition here is, in many respects, a frightful fiasco. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... football at home must have been of a humble description, for his attempt at a kick now was a terrible fiasco. He missed the ball completely, and, losing his balance at the same time, fell heavily to ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... planning—and one almost inevitably shallow and presumptuous—of the long series that may be necessary before a clear light breaks upon the road humanity must follow. But we decline to be forced by this one intellectual fiasco towards the laissez faire of the Individualist and the Marxist, or to accept the Normal Social Life with its atmosphere of hens and cows and dung, its incessant toil, its servitude of women, and its endless repetitions as the only tolerable life conceivable for the bulk of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... when interested, sat absolutely still, but receptive and alert, instead of jerking and fidgeting as he had done over Michael's fiasco in the Chopin prelude, and at the end he jumped up with a ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... leader cast one agonised glance towards the American but Bill sent back a hopeless negative, and cleared his throat and twitched his New York tie. The Old Boys began to grin, and Lawyer Ed began to grow hot at the fear of making a fiasco of what he had intended for a grand finale. But he kept doggedly on, for Lawyer Ed never in his life gave up anything he started out to do, and even if he had had no tune as well as no words he would have sung that song through to the bitter end. So far above the band and the drum his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... not venture to notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely escaped a total fiasco. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... delighted with the village, enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had been condemned, when she ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Black Doctor Tanner said, scowling at Dal through his thick-rimmed glasses. "I want to know who was responsible for this fiasco, and why it occurred in the ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... of things," he wrote, "and do not intend to intrude on you until I have shown myself more worthy of consideration. I try to tell myself that my present fiasco is not my fault, but I've more than a suspicion that I'm playing the coward's part when I think that. You can be disappointed in me if you like. I'm outrageously disappointed. I thought I ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... for a spin in Mortimer's motor after dinner, but in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... facing him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her red lips were parted. Her eyes were aglow with a fire which she made no effort to hide from him. In her hand she still held the binoculars he had left on the cabin table. He guessed the truth. Through the glasses she had watched the whole miserable fiasco. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... that "the Democratic party has adopted and consistently pursued and affirmed a prudent foreign policy, preserving peace with all nations." Does it point with pride to the Mexican fiasco, or does it rely entirely upon the great fishery triumph? What has the administration done—what has it accomplished in the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a loud voice that there might be no question that our would-be terrorizers should hear me, for I was tiring of this nerve-racking fiasco. It had occurred to me, too, that the whole business was but a plan to frighten us back into the valley of death from which we had escaped, that we might be quickly disposed of by the savage ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... black spot of bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the retrocession of the Transvaal to the Boers. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to British influence, prestige, and power by the political consequences resulting from that ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... foreign credits and placing of foreign loans, its sales of stocks by influential investors, and its importations on the eve of the war of horses and foodstuffs, a strong circumstantial case may be developed of a deliberate purpose to retrieve the Moroccan fiasco by an audacious coup which would determine the mastery of Europe. The levy in 1913 of an extraordinary tax upon capital, which virtually confiscated the earnings of the German people for military purposes, adds much support to this contention. According to Giolitti, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... it was imperative that the enquiry should be thorough down to the minutest detail.... The commandant well knew the weak points in his procedure. There was this confrontation, with the absurd testimonies of the two soldiers: it had proved a ridiculous fiasco. Also, he would have great difficulty in showing conclusively that Fandor had been a certain time ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... cousin now, for she was telling him, dryly, yet with a mocking humour all her own, of her Paris fiasco that had delayed her return to London by a fortnight, and, by the expense it had entailed upon her, had deprived her of the new hat and dress that she had hoped in Paris to secure. Talking of Paris led to the letter she had sent him four or five days ago. 'About this rich American,' ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Washington government was trying to open negotiations but it was also in the fear of its own supporters playing craftily a double game. These astute diplomats saw that there was a psychological crisis in the North. By adding to the confusion of the hour they had well served their cause. Greeley's fiasco was susceptible of a double interpretation. To the pacifists it meant that the government, whatever may have been intended at the start, had ended by setting impossible conditions of peace. To the supporters ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... expectant of the best news, or at least in a fever of impatience, and that therefore 'twould be the more painful to tell her the truth. But when the captain's servant let the three of us in at the front door (Tom and I had waited while Falconer briefly reported our fiasco to General Clinton) and we found her waiting for us upon the stairs, her face was pale with a set and tragic wofulness, as if tidings of our failure had preceded us. There was, perhaps, an instant's last flutter of ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and the history and progress of English science, discovery, and invention. To Professor S. F. Rigaud is due the credit for the most part of working out the crooked and entangled history of the Zachean fiasco, which has apparently depreciated the real value of these papers. Professor Rigaud's papers may be seen in the Royal Institution Journal, 1831, volume ii, pages 267-271, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, iii, 125, and in ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... it necessary—even imperative—to the welfare of the movement, that John Tullis should be disposed of summarily before the crucial chapter in their operations. Truxton heard the Committee discussing the fiasco that attended his first attempt to draw the brainy, influential American out of the arena. It was clear that Marlanx suspected Tullis of a deep admiration for his wife, the Countess Ingomede; he was prepared to play upon that ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... without having first cleared the mind as to what is meant in history and literature by "the critical method," which in history may be defined as the "science of what is credible," and in literature as "the science of what is rational," is to invite fiasco. The theologian in such a state sees no obstacle to accepting an arbitrary list of documents with all the strange stuff they may contain, and declaring them to be sound historical material, while he applies to all the strange stuff of a similar kind surrounding ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was nearly eleven when we crossed the silent P. R. R. tracks and, plunging away into the night past great heaps of abandoned locomotives huddled dim and uncertain in the thin moonlight like ghosts of the French fiasco, dashed into a camp of the laborer's village of Cunette, pitched on the very edge of the now black and silent void of the canal. Eighteen thick-necked negroes in undershirts and trousers gazed up white-eyed from a suspended ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... plate as if it were a wedding present, stimulated them greatly. They could not lag behind that smile of hers which she gave them ere she kicked the drawing-room door. Mr. Beebe chirruped. Freddy was at his wittiest, referring to Cecil as the "Fiasco"—family honoured pun on fiance. Mrs. Honeychurch, amusing and portly, promised well as a mother-in-law. As for Lucy and Cecil, for whom the temple had been built, they also joined in the merry ritual, but waited, as earnest worshippers ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... crisis in the Nightingale's life, when all Bath was ringing with the fiasco of her engagement, and she herself was overcome by humiliation, that another and more dangerous lover made his appearance at Bath—a youth (for such he was) whose life was destined to be dramatically linked with hers. This newcomer into the arena of love was none other ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... party, while the bulk was held in reserve with an extensive mobilization of burghers to resist other supposed opposition of an altogether more formidable but yet undefined character. When nothing further transpired, the feeling uppermost with the people was unbounded derision at that impotent fiasco, and a loathing contempt for the cowering Johannesburg rabble who betrayed and sacrificed the insensate doctor. It was loudly asserted that the combined forces of the two Republics were competent to resist an invasion a hundred times stronger than the one so foolishly attempted; ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Women and marriage were simply not in the picture. His attitude to that inevitable event was, on his own confession—'not yet.' Possibly, when he got Home, he might discover it was Tara, after all. It would need some courage to propose again. For the memory of that juvenile fiasco still pricked his sensitive pride. A touch of the Rajput came out there. Letters from Serbia seemed to dawdle unconscionably by the way. But, in leisurely course, he had received an answer to his screed about Dyan and the quest; a letter alive ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... strives, ineffectually, to dominate the powerful sonorities of the large orchestras which are a necessity for modern scores. A sound and judiciously graduated preparatory training, in fact, is essential if the singer would avoid disappointment or a fiasco. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... own age, who pounced on him while he was at work, as Lasus pounced on Onomacritus. The discoverer, however, consented to "stand in" with Ireland, and did not divulge his secret. At last, after the fiasco of 'Vortigern,' suspicion waxed so strong, and disagreeable inquiries for the anonymous benefactor were so numerous, that Ireland fled from his father's house. He confessed all, and, according to his own account, fell under the undying wrath of Samuel Ireland. Any reader of Ireland's confessions ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... first real meeting of these two and Fate, with the help of Irish temper and the Pinckney conscience, was making a fine fiasco ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... something different, was disappointed; and when succeeding numbers brought further brain-racking profundities, there was a large ebullition of disgust. Cotta began to write of complaints and cancelled subscriptions; and ere long it looked as if the Horen would prove a big fiasco. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to be his special mission to borrow our dead hero's policy, he attacked Sackett's Harbour, but his "cautious calculation" was, of course, rewarded by ignoble defeat, and ultimately, after the Plattsburg fiasco, by a court-martial. In his civil administration of Canada Sir George Prevost may have been a success; as a soldier he was ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... ably defended Harrison against the indignation which menaced his station as commander of the army. The new Secretary of War, John Armstrong, ironically referred to Procter and Harrison as being always in terror of each other, the one actually flying from his supposed pursuer after his fiasco at Fort Stephenson, the other waiting only for the arrival of Croghan at Seneca to begin a camp conflagration and flight ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... do. I was thirty-one; I was the head of a family; I had lost my health; I had never yet paid my way, never yet made 200 pounds a year; my father had quite recently bought back and cancelled a book that was judged a failure: was this to be another and last fiasco? I was indeed very close on despair; but I shut my mouth hard, and during the journey to Davos, where I was to pass the winter, had the resolution to think of other things and bury myself in the novels of M. de Boisgobey. Arrived at my destination, down I sat one morning to the unfinished ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inquiries as to Amarendra Babu's position and the health of his son. Their result was satisfactory enough; not so the fiasco related in my last chapter, which reached him with amplification, and made him resolve that Amarendra Babu should not play such tricks on him. He ordered no ornaments for his daughter, because he had little cash or credit, ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... their knowledge of sea warfare in what is called the piratical line. But the spirit that inflamed the whole British fleet was that of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Seymour, and Howard, and the inspiration came mainly from the two former. On the Spanish side, as a naval battle, it was a fiasco, a mere colossal clerical burlesque. Neither naval strategy nor ordinary seamanship was in evidence on the part of the chief commander or his admirals. The men fought with rough-and-tumble heroism. The sailors ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... with a friendly chief, in constant correspondence on every point of duty from the beginning of my service, but there were many and strong ties between us in outside sympathies, and he was as kind to me as an elder brother. He was most unjustly credited with the Pigott fiasco, but, as I have shown, the evidence of the genuineness of the letter which Pigott had forged was so strong that the experienced counsel were all deceived by it, and the conduct of Parnell himself showed that he was not sure ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... place until permission was unwittingly given for a Mormon preacher to occupy the pulpit just once—a circumstance which resulted in a thorough break-up; many of the body liking neither Joe Smith nor his polygamising followers. After the Mormon fiasco and the evaporation of the Fieldingites, another denomination took it. The Particular Baptists—some people call them Gadsbyites—were at this period working the virtues of their creed in a small room towards the bottom of Cannon-street; and on hearing that Vauxhall- road Chapel was on sale, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... been made to connect the British Government with this fiasco, and to pretend that the Colonial Secretary and other statesmen were cognisant of it. Such an impression has been fostered by the apparent reluctance of the Commission of Inquiry to push their researches to the uttermost. It is much to be ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... among Lincoln's own friends, however, that his speeches produced the deepest impression. They had believed him to be strong, but probably there was no one of them who had not felt dubious about his ability to meet Douglas. Many even feared a fiasco. Gradually it began to be clear to them that Lincoln was the stronger. Could it be that Lincoln really was a great man? The young Republican journalists of the "Press and Tribune"—Scripps, Hitt, Medill—began to ask themselves the question. One evening as they talked over ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... therefore, have fortified to perfection—and whose strategic importance should have been known in its smallest details. I think our generals, who had a sufficient force at their disposal, of which the mobility has become world-famed, should have been able to prevent such a fiasco as our occupation of the splendid line of defence in the Biggarsbergen turned out ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... Henri, who revealed rare talent, took the part of the husband; Noemi of the neglected wife. The curtain fell upon enthusiastic applause, and Madame Bourjot, who had feared that her daughter would be a fiasco, was delighted with her success. Amid the hum of voices she heard the lady sitting next to her say to her neighbour, "His sister, I know ... but for the part he is not sufficiently in love with her ... and too much with his wife. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... by men," and in March, 1894, it reported that "a tract had been prepared which the Committee itself did not consider suitable for publication." Later the Committee was discharged, and in face of this fiasco nothing further ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... than life in Maeterlinck. The same apparent contradiction holds good in the case of the drama of 'L'Aiglon,' now being performed with so much success. Although the hero is a weakling, the subject a fiasco, the end a premature death and a personal disillusionment, yet, in spite of this theme, which might have been chosen for its depressing qualities, the unconquerable paean of the praise of things, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... touching part as the neglected wife very passably. This was a great relief to Mme. Bourjot, who was seated in the front row anxiously watching her daughter. Her vanity had been alarmed by the thought of a fiasco. The curtain fell, and amid the applause were heard shouts for "All the actors!" Her daughter had not made herself ridiculous, and the mother was delighted with this great success and gave herself up complacently to listening to that Babel of voices, opinions, and criticisms, which at amateur ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... but not captured, although the valiant attackers forced some of their prisoners to stand in the line of fire, between them and the building. The police had closed the windows with feather beds and mattresses, and these the Fenian bullets could not penetrate. Within a few days the fiasco of a rising was at an end. I do not think any of the people in our neighborhood joined it. When the rebels retreated along the Wicklow road, they threw several pikes over the wall close to our ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... After the Eagle Ridge fiasco, Peter, as cheerful as ever, journeyed over into Wyoming to try his luck once more. He moved up into the hills, spent a month in looking about him, narrowed his localities to one gulch, and built himself a log cabin in which to live. Then he made his general survey. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... following the regiment moved back to its old quarters near the fort, and remained there till ordered to Washington. In this unfortunate fiasco the regiment lost about two hundred men by desertion, from which depletion it never recovered. When ordered to the seat of war, I think there were not much above 700 men, and the regiment never saw the time when it had full ranks—that fact alone accounts for its not being in the list of ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... wasn't an immediate exposure of everything just what the public wanted? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of the promptness with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on her return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn't we published, while its freshness and flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own version of that great international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at this lumping of the actress and the author, and I confess that after ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... 'What a fiasco!' said the young lord. 'I wonder what the old boy means to say to me about it.' Then there was heard the clear tingle of a little silver bell, and Miles told Lord Nidderdale that his ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... or be friends. For ten minutes, regardless of the jeers of the spectators and the proddings of their handlers, the great brown beasts rubbed heads as amicably as a yoke of oxen. Then, just as we had made up our minds that it was a fiasco and that there would be no bull-fight pictures, there was a sudden angry bellow, the two great heads came together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was on. The next twenty minutes Hawkinson and I spent in alternately setting up his camera within range ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... a lady who has long lived among us in Exeter. Sir Francis Geraldine is the happy man, and Miss Altifiorla is the lady about to become Lady Geraldine. Miss Altifiorla is descended from an Italian family of considerable note in its own country. Her great grandmother was a Fiasco, and her great great grandmother a Disgrazia. We are delighted to find that Sir Francis is to ally himself to a lady of such high birth." Now Miss Altifiorla was well aware that there was an old feud between ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... high a spirit, and as brave as he was himself. Indeed most people will think, that so far from its being a rasher action, the occupation of Majuba, bad generalship as it seems, was a wiser move than either the attack on the Nek or the Ingogo fiasco. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... After the fiasco at Cambell's Station, the enemy retired behind his entrenched position in the suburbs of Knoxville. Longstreet followed rapidly, with McLaws in front, in line of battle, but all hopes of encountering the enemy before he reached his fortified ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... you lose by his opera," the prince replied, "supposing it be a perfect fiasco?" The manager ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of England's incapacity had been duly fulfilled. A military fiasco had accompanied an innocence of diplomatic guile which looked promising to the Continental rulers. But the promise was ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... not gained by reading the scriptures. The one essential is insight, which comes as illumination after meditation. Though this doctrine had subsequently much success in the Far East, it was not at first appreciated and Bodhidharma's introduction to the devout but literary Emperor in Nanking was a fiasco. He offended his Majesty by curtly saying that he had acquired no merit by causing temples to be built and books to be transcribed. Then, in answer to the question, what is the most important of the holy doctrines, he replied "where all ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... upon Antwerp and Britain were a fiasco in the military sense. The damage inflicted by the bombs was not at all in proportion to the quantity of explosive used. True, in the case of Antwerp, it demoralised the civilian population somewhat effectively, which perhaps ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... department. Fisbee was left with nothing. His wife and her kinsfolk exhibited no brilliancy in holding a totally irresponsible man down to responsibilities, and they made a tragedy of a not surprising fiasco. Mrs. Fisbee had lived in her ambitions, and she died of heartbreak over the discovery of what manner of man she had married. But, before she died, she ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... a moment before she replied; something in his voice, though still she could not see his face clearly, startled her. It sounded changed, somehow, full of something suppressed, something serious. But she could not risk a second fiasco; she had to play her high cards out, and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Glover undoubtedly had his bad quarter-of-an-hour that night, but the next morning he regained his usual equipoise, and cast off his chagrin with a characteristic gibe, at his own expense. A sympathetic friend ventured to ask if the fiasco was caused, perhaps, by too much blood ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... knew that Victor de Marmont with an escort of cavalry was after it, and, secondly, by allowing the man whom she loved to have the honour and glory of laying the money at his sovereign's feet. The whole had ended in a miserable fiasco, and Clyffurde felt ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... had an unusual power of getting his facts together so that they meant something. In a small way his work was recognized. A report of his had some weight. He felt certain that if on his return he wanted another position he could get it unless he made a terrible fiasco in China. Should he consult any one? He knew beforehand what they would all think about it. Mr. Lanley would think that it was sheer impertinence to want to marry his granddaughter on less than fifteen thousand dollars a year; Mrs. Farron would think that there were lots of ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... American militia, {222} refusing, on constitutional grounds, to serve outside the jurisdiction of their state, watched safely from the eastern bank. The second effort in November, under General Smyth, proved an even worse fiasco. Meanwhile General Dearborn, the supreme commander, tried to invade near Lake Champlain; but, after he had marched his troops to the Canadian border, the militia refused to leave the soil of the United States, and so the campaign had to be abandoned. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... advance; it was my first draught of consideration; it reconciled me to myself and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim fiasco; I knew it would not be worth reading; I knew, even if it were, that nobody would read it; and I kept wondering how I should be able, upon my compact income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, to meet my share in the expense. It was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
