"Wet blanket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luncheon that we would come. I thought you'd enjoy it" (Her acceptance, which had been a real sacrifice to her, was a bomb to the other boarders. "What has happened?" they said to each other, blankly. "She'll be an awful wet blanket," some one said, frowning; and some one else said, "She's accepted because she won't let him out at ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... into Suffolk, will I hope take this letter and despatch it to you properly. I write more on account of this opportunity than of anything I have to say: for I am very heavy indeed with a kind of Influenza, which has blocked up most of my senses, and put a wet blanket over my brains. This state of head has not been improved by trying to get through a new book much in fashion—Carlyle's French Revolution—written in a German style. An Englishman writes of French Revolutions in a German style. People say the book is very deep: but it appears to me that the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... may be added, was ever anything but a wet blanket and a cross to his companions who boasted not a copious spirit of enjoyment. Whether as man or artist let the youth make haste to Fontainebleau, and once there let him address himself to the spirit of the place; he will learn more from exercise than from studies, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... adversely critical may do injury to the efficiency of a good teacher. No one can teach as well under disapprobation as he can where he feels that his hands are free; and so in some places supervision may act as a wet blanket. It may suppress spontaneity, initiative, and real life in the school. But this is only an abuse of a good thing, and probably does not occur frequently. In any event, the exception would only prove the rule. Supervision is as necessary in ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... line of fire, an' Monty knowed the rancher was away, an' his wife an' baby was home. He knowed, too, the way the wind was, thet the ranch-house would burn. It was a long chance he was takin'. But he went over, put the woman up behind him, wrapped the baby an' his hoss's haid in a wet blanket, an' rode away. Thet was sure some ride, I've heerd. But the fire ketched Monty at the last. The woman fell an' was lost, an' then his hoss. An' Monty ran an' walked an' crawled through the fire with thet baby, an' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and it is advisable, when practicable, to have a blanket which has been wrung out of hot water placed over the abdomen, then covered by several dry blankets, which are maintained in position by straps or ropes passing round the body. The wet blanket must be changed as it cools—the object of treatment being to warm the surface of the body and to determine as much blood to the skin as possible. The diet should consist of laxative food and drinks, such as linseed tea. If peritonitis assumes ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... discerned in looking under the near trees and over the more distant ones proved, on further inspection, to be a patch of plowed ground. Presently we made out a burnt fallow near it. This was a wet blanket to our enthusiasm. No lake, no sport, no trout for supper that night. The rather indolent young man had either played us a trick, or, as seemed more likely, had missed the way. We were particularly anxious to be at the lake between sundown ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... few intimate friends, including Mrs. Trotter. Here, then, was a painful position for the two guilty ones: they were forced to sit and see the child whom they had cast off feted and honored by the woman both of them had injured. It seemed as if a wet blanket were placed over the whole assembly: Dombey sat moodily biting his finger-nails, and as Mrs. Trotter would not sing and Mrs. Dombey could not, matters went ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... the Luxembourg, and doubtless contract some sovereign alliance. Vain illusions! Conflicts of the heart were about to succeed to those political storms from whose effects she had just recovered. The most vainglorious of the daughters of France was destined to extinguish with the wet blanket of vile prose the brilliancy of a long and ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a nutshell—it would put a wet blanket on the project if they both backed down. In the meanwhile we canna hurry them. Ye will have to give ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... unseemly expletives, or retailing scandals,—these and other disreputable follies are utterly inconceivable of Mr. Gladstone. A very serious man may be an object of veneration; but he is a constant rebuke to the weaknesses of our common humanity,—a wet blanket ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... by Mr. Wedmore's special wish, had been prepared for that evening; and while Doreen and Queenie and Mildred Appleby and two young nephews of Mr. Wedmore's chattered and laughed, and made dinner a very lively affair, Max was quiet and what his cousins called "grumpy," and threatened to be a wet blanket on the evening's entertainment. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... placed over the pelvis and one under the back. Cold cloths are put on the face and around the neck, and these should be changed every three minutes. This pack continues for fifteen or twenty minutes, at the end of which time the accessory heat and the wet blanket are removed and the patient is cooled off by a cold mitten friction, a saline rub, a witch-hazel rub, or an alcohol rub; or the patient may be placed in a tub of water, temperature 98 F., after which he should ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... we crossed the desert, over our shoetops in sand; climbing one hill after another, only to slide or glide or ride down the yielding slope on the farther side. Meanwhile the fog came in like a wet blanket. It swathed all the landscape in impalpable snow; it chilled us and it thrilled us, for there was danger of our going quite astray in it; but by and by we got into the edge of the town, and what a ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... drawing-room. I have ordered the musicians to play, and consequently there is more or less dancing. But, of course, nothing can remove the wet blanket which has fallen over us all—nothing but the finding of this jewel. Do you see your way to accomplishing this? We are from this very moment at your disposal; only I pray that you will make no more disturbance than is necessary, and, if ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green |
