"Blundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some reason or other — and Heaven knows what ingenuity men exercise to torment themselves — Dirk had got it into his head that his wife cared for Strickland, and with his genius for blundering he might quite well have offended her so that, to anger him, perhaps, she had taken pains ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... always kindly and encouraging, even though the sermon was hopelessly jumbled. She was the surest, severest critic and yet each man preached to her feeling that with the criticism would come kindliness and the sort of mother comfort that Grandma somehow knew how to give to the meanest and most blundering of creatures. Indeed, it was the least successful of Green Valley's ministers who had designated Grandma's seat as Inspiration Corner. And then had in a final burst of wrath told Green Valley that like Sodom and Gomorrah it was doomed, that no mere man preacher could ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... made a pretence to murder me with the same idea. But he didn't believe they were taken in. "There'll be warrants out before morning, if they ain't too shaken. But what were you doing in the business? The two Spaniards were lying in the fern looking on when you come blundering your clumsy nose in. If it hadn't been for Rooksby you might have——— ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... He would have neither blundering nor emphasis such as might rouse too soon the king's suspicion, or turn ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... and perverseness of some of your friends [relations, I should say—I am always blundering thus!] the as strange determinedness of others; your present quarrel with Lovelace; and your approaching interview with Solmes, from which you are right to apprehend a great deal; are such considerable circumstances ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sneezes, sharp clicks and snaps and snarls—telling of alarms, tragic escapes, and violent death-dealings—blend with the continuous murmur of the sea, and are occasionally punctuated by sudden slaps and thuds as a blundering, hammer-head shark pursues a high-leaping eagle-ray, or the red-backed sea eagle dashes down upon a preoccupied bream, the impact of its firm breast embossing a white ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... my blundering way, I have stumbled on the secret spring of my whole subject; so I may as well make a merit of confession, and acknowledge frankly that the trap in which these wary guides entangled my affections was generally neither more nor less than a net of silken flattery. Your good guide, your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... notices that they are fringed with small twigs of fir trees. The natural supposition is that these are to mark the boundary of the various oyster beds; but it is in truth designed to keep out the there. This blundering fish, bearing down on the oyster bed in search of luncheon, comes upon the palisade of loosely planted twigs. Nothing in the world would be easier than for him to steer between the openings, of which there are abundance. But though he has stomach enough for a hundred thousand oysters, he has ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... They call him the Kid, you know. Say, Sis, he's had a life for you! Full of adventure, all kinds of sport. And Bisbee shot first, too. But the Kid got him!" he concluded triumphantly. "Galloway told me all about it . . . and what a blundering rummy the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Republicans opened the door for their destruction. "They [the Republican leaders] have apparently believed the people would submit to anything and everything," said the Times, "and that the party was indestructible. If a newspaper warned them in a friendly but firm spirit against the policy of blundering, it was treated with a mixture of the insolence and arrogance which they exhibited ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... that! Had I gone out last night, infallibly I should have missed it." Just then I heard a blundering, uncertain step upon the stair, and then a dig in the centre of the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... indeed, my dear boy,' he returned; 'but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young's Dictionary, apropos of the "Nancy" having run down the "Sarah Jane", or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the "Nelson" Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... her cabin, Patty dropped her reins, pushed open the door, and entered. Her eyes flew to the little dressing table. The packet was gone! With a thrill of exultation she carefully inspected the room. Everything was exactly as she had left it. No blundering Microby had been here during her absence, for well she knew that Microby could no more have invaded the cabin without leaving traces of her visit than she could have flown to the moon. It was midday. She had intended to rest when she reached the cabin, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... worthless: desiring back my Direction to my Heirs that he should keep on the lugger in case of my Death. But I will wait for what you say about all this. I am really sorry to trouble you over and over again with the matter. But I am so fearful of blundering, where a Blunder may do so much harm. I think that Posh ought to be made to feel this severely: and, as his Wife is better, I do not mind making him feel it, if I can. On the other hand, I do not wish to drive him, by ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... its dislike of a man than that his purity and beauty of character make the lives of others seem base indeed. Bats feel the light to be light, though they flap against it, and the winnowing of their leathery wings and their blundering flight are witnesses to that against which they strike. Jesus had to say, 'The world hateth Me because I testify of it that the deeds thereof are evil.' That witness was the result of His being 'the Light of the world'; and if His followers are illuminated from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... talked like poor Poll," expresses the unanimous opinion of all who had actually seen him. Undoubtedly some of the stories of his childlike vanity, his frankly expressed envy, and his general capacity for blundering, owe something to Boswell's feeling that he was a rival near the throne, and sometimes poor Goldsmith's humorous self-assertion may have been taken too seriously by blunt English wits. One may doubt, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... to get stuck in, Jimmy could be depended on to do his share of the adventure. Not that he purposely chose to get mixed up in all these skirmishes with unpleasant things; but he was one of those unlucky chaps whose blundering feet so often led him ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that but for the timely arrival by forced marches of Buel's advance of two divisions on the field about four o'clock that afternoon, he would undoubtedly have executed his purpose. If Buel had been guilty of such blundering (not to call it by any worse name than this) it would have been impossible to make the country at the North believe that he did not meditate its destruction. For this blunder Grant was promptly relieved of his command, by the proper authorities, and it was many years afterwards, ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... things in his face and eyes, and when the time was fully ripe she cornered him. It was the old story over again, of a woman's determination to know pitted against a truthful man's blundering efforts to conceal; and before he knew what he was about Calvert had betrayed the Rajah's secret—which was also the secret of the ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... warm responsive clasp of those soft fingers, that ancient delicious thrill pierced every vein. Fool that he had been to doubt that dear hand! And it was wearing his ring still—she could not part with it! O blundering male ingrate! ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the running,—had never seen the like. Another officer swears they are flying from a shadow. Lee tries to account for it,—troops confused by contradictory intelligence, by disobedience of orders, by the meddling and blundering of individuals,—vague excuses all, the plain truth being that they had given way to a panic. But for Washington's fierce commands and threats, the retreat might have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Pennsylvania Railroad Friday afternoon. Soon the station was thronged with an anxious crowd, and the excitement became intense as the scant news came slowly in. Saturday the anxiety was relieved by a telegram from Ebensburg, which a blundering telegraph operator made "three hundred lost," instead of "three thousand." That was soon corrected by later news, and the citizens immediately were called upon to meet for action. The Mayor presided, and at once $2,600 was subscribed and provisions offered. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... that soon enough, and we were at present too much in love with our work to bear the shock of finding all our labour was thrown away. I am afraid of appearing tedious in describing our many mistakes, our frequent mishaps, and the many blundering contrivances we had. Certain it is that to the clerk of the works we owed most of our neatness, to the quick wits of the girls many of our ideas, and one and all worked with a will. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the commonest carpenter in the smallest ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... lady: And she was so sincere in it, that she suffered it to spread all over the company; and it was a pretty large one too; and not a person in it but turned either her consoler, or fell into stories of the like misfortunes; and so we all became, for the rest of the evening, nothing but blundering footmen, and careless servants, or were turned into broken jars, plates, glasses, tea-cups, and such like brittle substances. And it affected me so much, that, when I came home, I went to bed, and dreamt, that Robin, with the handle of his ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... read," responded Teacher, but her spirit was crushed and the children reflected her depression. Still, they were marvellously good and that blundering note had said, "Discipline is his lay." Well, ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... expect you to believe. And when he barked, his bark was so large that it filled up all the night and left no room for sleep or dreams or polite conversation, or anything else at all. He never barked at things that went on in the island—he was too large-minded for that; but when ships went blundering by in the dark, tumbling over the rocks at the end of the island, he would bark once or twice, just to let the ships know that they couldn't come playing about there just ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... will believe me when I say that it was my purpose to administer those affairs honestly, fairly and as capably as I knew how. I was not only deceived by these men, but by myself as well. I have played, like a blundering fool, into their hands. My chagrin is beyond words. I can only say to you now that you may count upon my unfailing support in any action you may decide to take. My forebears were honest, loyal, law-abiding ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... contrived, by the force of his belief, to impress the same on the others, and to make them think his great talent for silence such a proof of his discretion, that they were not staggered, even by his shy blundering exclamation that his wedding would be a great nuisance—a phrase which, as Dr. May observed, was, to him, what Est-il-possible was to his ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... after which your harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... A weekly journal patronized by his wife had three columns regularly, but he taxed his memory in vain for any instructions concerning brown-eyed strangers with sprained ankles. He felt that the path of duty led to the tram-lines. In a somewhat blundering fashion he proffered his services; the girl accepted them as ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... obedient, following to heel round the garden, the faithful servant of his master? Or will he be the same old silly ass, no use to anybody, always dirty, always smiling, always in the way, a clumsy, blundering fool of a dog who knows you can't help loving him? ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... sent for Mr Chantrey; he's on his way. Bring Mr Builder and the witnesses round sharp. See? And, I say, for God's sake keep it dark. Don't let the Press get on to it. Why you didn't let him go home—! Black eye? The constable? Well, serve him right. Blundering young ass! I mean, it's undermining all authority. . . . Well, you oughtn't—at least, I . . . Damn it all!—it's a nine days' wonder if it gets out—! All right! As soon as you can. [He hangs up the receiver, puts ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... who had travelled so far and endured so much, unable to move one step beyond a painted post. Such thoughts make rebels of us. Is man, then, the slave of all creation? Is his the one existence framed by the Almighty that cannot follow his nature? Better then to be a beast of chase, darting mouse or blundering mole, than a man, if the more erect posture is to be the badge of a greater degradation. If the sole merit of two legs be that they take less hobbling, better far to go upon four. Needless to say that these were the mutinous ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... they know, With fear and death and torture dwell. And sup and sleep with, woe. They're riven in the shrapnel gust, But; blind and reeling, plan Another blow, a final thrust To subjugate the tyrant's lust. So, bleeding, blundering in the dust, Men fight ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... delicacy is too great in drawing the curves of a pattern, no amount of care in getting the leading lines right from the first, can be thrown away, for beauty of detail cannot afterwards cure any shortcoming in this. Remember that a pattern is either right or wrong. It cannot be forgiven for blundering, as a picture may be which has otherwise great qualities in it. It is with a pattern as with a fortress, it is no stronger than its weakest point. A failure for ever recurring torments the eye too much to allow the mind to take any ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... one," he answered. "I could not help the blundering of other people. If I am regretfully compelled to kill you to-day, it is your own fault. I am only ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... trying," Brinnaria replied mutinously, "but I was not constructed to be a Vestal. I always knew it; I know it now and I am afraid I'll continue my blundering through the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... there would be at least a possibility that in his earlier stages the man might blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering might be more than he could bear. The plan of the Deity is to give man a limited amount of free-will; if he uses that small amount well, he earns the right to a little more next time; if he uses it badly, suffering comes upon him as the result of such ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... not so ill in other cases), of heroes (who are too often unconvincing), and even of villains (who have rather a habit of being so).[52] Why a man who is represented as being intensely, diabolically, wicked, but almost diabolically shrewd, should employ, and go on employing, as his instrument a blundering poltroon like the Gascon Chaudoreille, is a question which recurs almost throughout the book, and, being unanswered, is almost sufficient to damn it. And at the end the other question, why M. le ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of eating in these carnivorous larvae supplied with a single victim, which they have to spend a fortnight in consuming, on the express condition of not killing it until the very end! Could our physiological science, of which, with good reason, we are so proud, describe, without blundering, the method to be followed in the successive mouthfuls? How has a miserable grub learnt what our knowledge cannot tell us? By habit, the Darwinians will reply, who see in ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... sympathising invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would like to believe that love can do everything—it is the superstition peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is—how much more readily it destroys than ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... now. There was almost a taint of madness. Were all Helen's actions to be governed by a tiny mishap, such as may happen to any young man or woman? Can human nature be constructed on lines so insignificant? The blundering little encounter at Howards End was vital. It propagated itself where graver intercourse lay barren; it was stronger than sisterly intimacy, stronger than reason or books. In one of her moods Helen had confessed that she still "enjoyed" it in a certain sense. Paul had faded, but the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... of life in the city below them and the problem of raising one's head—"That's what I mean to do"—had seemed so like the confident tones of a child on the threshold of life. Were we all like that, after all—lifted up for a moment so that we could see; blundering forward the next, blindly, into pitfalls of our own making? His very offer of help, there on the hilltop, had been naive, and yet she was troubled by it. Why was he thrusting his stick into the still waters of her life? And yet she ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... compelling ability of mind; he had a personal cunning without any large intelligence, and he was so many removes from the First Presidency that it seemed unlikely he would soon attain to that position of which the power is so great that it only makes the blundering more ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... precession the improved value of 55'' Perhaps independently of Aryabhatta (born at Pataliputra on the Ganges 476 A.D.), he introduced the use of sines in calculation, and partially that of tangents. His principal work, De Motu Stellarum, was published at Nuremberg in 1537 by Melanchthon, in a blundering Latin translation by Plato Tiburtinus (fl. 1116), annotated by Regiomontanus. A reprint appeared at Bologna in 1645. The original MS. is preserved at the Vatican; and the Escorial library possesses in MS. a treatise of some value by him on astronomical chronology. Albategnius takes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... come, and not as if they came from nowhere, because no one appears presenting them. The careless soul receives the Father's gifts as if it were a way things had of dropping into his hand. He thus grants himself a slave, dependent on chance and his own blundering endeavour—yet is he ever complaining, as if some one were accountable for the checks which meet him at every turn. For the good that comes to him, he gives no thanks—who is there to thank? at the disappointments that befall him he grumbles—there must be some one to blame! He does ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... given, that the blacks were approaching, and a party, commissioned to repress them, would immediately advance; often blundering and incautious, shouting, smoking, and straggling about; carelessly firing their pieces, and affording abundant information of their approach. Thus, after a fatiguing march, the natives, whom they were sent out to meet, would be observed in ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... interpreter, we might have saved it from the ruin. What I carried away was a memory of the blue above, the gliding river below, hot sun and stillness, and the hum of a large, irridescent black beetle that went blundering through scarlet poinsettia leaves into the white, scented blossoms of a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... subscribers, which the writer to New York "considered to be about the mark," should be between 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there they are)? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly blundering and untrue, would any one wonder? Ah! if we had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer among the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy confidence his presence would impart to our meetings! He would find that "poor Mr. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... admit the justice of that. He could travel under the moonless sky as sure-footed as under broad sunlight. But to guide a blundering Dalgard through unknown country was not practical. However, they could take to cover and that they did as speedily as possible, using a zigzag tactic which delayed their advance but took them from one bit of protecting brush or grove of trees to the next, keeping ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... the ignorance or blundering," said the doctor quietly. "You were always too enthusiastic over your studies ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... friend, in 1797, and which was put unsealed under cover to Colonel Burr, I expressed a satisfaction that Mr. Jefferson, since he was not president, had accepted the vice presidency; "for," said I, "John Adams has such a talent for blundering and offending, it will be necessary to keep an eye over him." He has now sufficiently proved, that though I have not the spirit of prophecy, I have the gift of judging right. And all the world knows, for it cannot help ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... shivered in the cold night air. Emeline walked along briskly, and Julia stumbled beside her. The child was in such an agony of fatigue and chill that every separate step toward bed was dreaded by this time. She fell against her mother, as Emeline tore off shoes and stockings, stretched blundering, blind little arms for her nightgown sleeves, and sank deliciously against her pillows, already ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... manufacturing town, now determined to do the same thing. The people were warned not to assemble, but they persisted in doing so, on the ground that peaceful discussion, with the election of a representative, was no violation of law. The meeting was held in St. Peter's Fields, and, through the blundering of a magistrate, it ended in an attack by a body of troops, by which many people were wounded an ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... cried, quite mistaking the reason that her struggle to free herself from his clasping hand had so suddenly ceased; "now you are falling into a more complaisant mood. I am glad of that. Sit down and we'll talk. I must lock that door, or some blundering fool will be stumbling in without taking the trouble to knock. But first give me a kiss from those sweet lips, my dear, to assure me you don't quite ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... was calm again. He was quite in his element now. A criminal had to be apprehended, and the circumstances, though difficult, were not unfamiliar. But strategy was called for; there must be no hot-headed blundering. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... ran to the rope and examined it. "Of course it slipped, you lubber!" He stepped back on the pathway and spoke up to Skin as he would have talked on shipboard to a blundering seaman in the cross-trees. "Ain't a slip-knot made to slip? And when a man's fool enough to tie one ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... she went on: "You see, I don't lose sight of her so easily. As for you, you could only shut her up in Rome and leave her there; but I knew how to go to work to rid ourselves of this obstruction. The dogs of Jezebel were howling under her very windows, when there came a man blundering on to the scene and spoiled everything,—a man who is a man, who is more than a prince, a man from top to toe, in short, who carried off the woman from Rome. I hoped they would take flight to some foreign land, whence we might have obtained an official announcement ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... My blundering apology and evident embarrassment deepened Miss Cullen's blush five-fold, and she explained, hurriedly, "I found I was tired, and so, instead of writing, I went to my room ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... weighty than one, having for its object to deliver his honored name from a load of the most brutal malignity. Never more, we hope and venture to believe, will any thoughtless biographer impute to Shakspeare the asinine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of his earliest biographer has caused his name to be dishonored. We now resume the thread of our biography. The stream of history is centuries in working itself clear of any calumny with which ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... well thy ambidextrous part, Nor always filch. It was but yesterday, Blundering, they nearly caught thee in the fact; None of thy balls had livers, and the guests, In horror, pierced their airy emptiness. Not even the brains were there, thou brainless hound! If thou art hired among the middling class, Who pay thee freely, be thou honourable! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to Ernest Wilton, who, with Jasper and the dog Wolf, still remained by his side, "we are rid of poor Seth and his blundering sportsmanship, and have the coast clear for a shot; which way would you like to go best—up or down ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... secrets; exiling his daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other lovers than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse of manner—a hypocrite and a comedian in one—so guileful and yet so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked that Augustus survived him, the people ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... At last, after blundering about like this for many days, getting their clothes torn and their faces covered with mud, they walked right into the King's back-garden by mistake. The King's men came running up at once ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... arrives early, the time is passed in singing. Often he utilizes these few minutes to learn new hymns. So that when the real prayer meeting is in progress, there will be no blundering through new tunes or weak-kneed renditions of them. The singing, Dr. Conwell wants done with the spirit. He will not sing a verse if the heart and mind cannot endorse it. After singing several hymns in this ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... knew I was associated with the Morning Standard, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recall anything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. Poor Reggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourth desperate effort he gave it up. His memory, he said, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Countess Ida, who presided over her house during her minority, had foolishly allowed her to contract an attachment for her cousin-german, a penniless sub-lieutenant in one of the Duke's foot regiments, who had flattered himself to be able to carry off this rich prize; and if he had not been a blundering silly idiot indeed, with the advantage of seeing her constantly, of having no rival near him, and the intimacy attendant upon close kinsmanship, might easily, by a private marriage, have secured the young Countess and her possessions. But he managed matters so foolishly, that he allowed ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and 27 Vict., c. 110), entitled "An Act to amend the Lunacy Acts," was passed, but only consisted of three sections referring to one or two doubtful points in the previous Act, which do not require notice. How many Acts of Parliament are necessitated by the blundering obscurity of the person who, as draughtsman, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... piqued. "No need to play Ser Saccente with me. I know where the devil keeps his tail as well as you do. What! he swallowed the bait whole? The prophetic nose didn't scent the hook at all?" he went on, lowering his tone a little, with a blundering sense ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... A blundering charge made Sheeta, for with the first crash of his spotted body through the foliage verging the trail, Bara gave a single startled ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the summer time, an undesirable corner at the best of times. Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms there, when the main street was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl rolled into one, for all I know. You may be any old thing. I don't give a tinker's cuss what you are. Under ordinary circumstances I've no doubt I should find you a very pleasant old gentleman, but under present conditions you are a blundering old bore." ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... We'll take no blundering verse, no fustian tumour, No dribbling love, from this or that presumer; No dull fat fool shamm'd on ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... his world being thus limited, he had given unusual care to its details, compensating himself for the narrowness of his horizon by the minute finish of his foreground. It was a world of fine shadings and the nicest proportions, where impulse seldom set a blundering foot, and the feast of reason was undisturbed by an intemperate flow of soul. To such a banquet his wife naturally remained uninvited. The diet would have disagreed with her, and she would probably have objected ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... wives behind, young wives; Already some have launched new lives: A little daughter, little son— For thus this blundering world goes on. But never more will any see The old secure felicity, The kindnesses that made us glad Before the world went mad. They'll never hear another bird, Another gay or loving word— Those men who lie so cold and lone, Far in a country not their own; Those men who ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he had reached the car, and—through sheer blundering luck—at once stumbled upon the seat of trouble: a clogged valve in the carbureter. No serious matter: with the assistance of a repair kit more than commonly complete, he had the valve clear ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... dozen routes proposed, and Montague remembered how he had sat by the campfire one evening, and got into conversation with one of the younger men of the party, and listened to his grumbling about the blundering of the survey. It was his opinion that the head-surveyor was incompetent, that he was obstinately rejecting the best routes in favour of others ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... Hewett, though Ned has such a kind heart, would have been able to avoid blundering into some such ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... at my daybook," Ringg insisted, "I checked and marked it service fit! I tell you, somebody was blundering around, opening panels where they had no business, tore it out by accident, then was too much of a filthy sneak to report it ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... their doors. While they were so doing, I took out a knife, and ten louis-d'ors, called, and they re turned, grumbling curses; I then shewed the knife and the louis-d'ors. Their consternation was excessive; and I diverted my misfortunes by jesting at such blundering, short-sighted keepers. It was soon rumoured through Magdeburg, especially among the simple and vulgar, that I was a magician to whom the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... been troubled of late years, his mind had involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in the distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And now, as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,—so did the weight of slander drag him down—his thoughts suddenly saw a picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives lost, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... leader had befooled his foes— Left them like archers blundering in the dark To draw against the empty space their bows, While ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... be for me to go blundering through the city, hunting up people whom I shall not know ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Pichegru, were determined to kill the head of the State, overthrow the Government, and re-establish the Bourbon dynasty, caused the Duc to be arrested, tried by his fellow-countrymen, and found guilty of the charges brought against him, and, by the blundering of Savary, afterwards Duke of Rovigo, and the persistence of Murat, the death penalty was carried out and he was shot. Had he been permitted to live another twenty-four hours, Napoleon would unquestionably ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the memory of the Narakan Rifles rushing down the street with bugles blaring and flag waving right into the Rumi line of fire rose before him. The thought of O'Shaughnessy, even with his new lieutenant's commission, leading the blundering troops along the two hundred miles to Fort Craven was too ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... the little history now, as I have a hundred times before, merely because I would wring some sense out of it. Turn, then, thy sharp, wire-drawing, lawyer-like ingenuity to the same task—make up my history as though thou wert shaping the blundering allegations of some blue-bonneted, hard-headed client, into a condescendence of facts and circumstances, and thou shalt be, not my Apollo—QUID TIBI CUM LYRA?—but my Lord Stair, [Celebrated as a Scottish lawyer.] Meanwhile, I have written myself out of my melancholy and blue ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... guessed that the child-wife looked up to her and was so ready to be influenced by her, the older woman, she would have done altogether differently. It is the lack of this very knowledge that makes much of life a mere blundering about in ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... a minute, the quick change that had come into his face at Diccon's blundering words gone, and his features sternly impassive again; then, very slowly, he raised his arm from his side and held out his hand. His eyes met mine in sombre inquiry, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... two giants in combat, who tear up trees by the roots and break off fragments of cliffs from the mountains to smash in each other's skulls. And poor Peter—what was he? An ant which happened to come blundering across the ground where these combatants met. The earth was shaken with their trampling, the dirt was kicked this way and that, and the unhappy ant was knocked about, tumbled head over heels, buried in the debris; and suddenly—Smash!—a giant ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... other. Besides, it makes some people nervous. Snoring is impolite and so is talking in one's sleep, but they are beyond remedy. Talking with the person in the berth above or below is not, however, and is much more disturbing than the noise of the train. Forgetting the number of one's berth and blundering into the wrong place is a serious breach of good manners in a sleeping car, and it is extremely severe on timid persons who have gone to bed with visions before their minds of the man who was murdered in lower ten and the woman who brought her ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... diminishing circles above their quarry—drifted imperceptibly but steadily aft, toward the smoking-room. The two indispensable adjuncts to a successful voyage had already put in their appearance: item, the Pest, an overdressed, overgrown, shrill-voiced female-child, blundering into everybody's way and shrieking impertinences; item, a short, stout, sedulously hilarious gentleman who oozed public-spirited geniality at every pore and insisted on buttonholing inoffensive strangers and demanding that they enter ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... hill. Then, according to Lieutenant Halley, there was another scene very like the one which has been described. The Major and Carter insisted that all the men had not joined rank, and that there were more of them in the rear, clicking and blundering among the dead men's cairns. Lieutenant Halley told off his own troopers again and resigned himself to wait. Later on ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... far excelled in team work, especially on offense, and Lower's much-heralded speed hadn't shown up. On the defense, all things considered, Lower had done fairly well, although most of the honor belonged to Collier at left guard, Grafton Hyde having played a slow, blundering game in which he had apparently sought to substitute roughness for science. More than half of the fouls called on the Red had been made by Grafton. And, even though Upper had no very certain basket ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... near her with a brighter air. No doubt some of the party were surprised when, just before it broke up, the engagement of Cecil and Fane was announced; but no one guessed the truth except Jack Vavasour, who, anxious and remorseful, only cursed himself for a blundering idiot. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... You are a very young girl. You don't know much of what the world would say about anything. But being furnished with these admirable convictions, did it never occur to you that you might not be acting wisely in blundering into an affair ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... easily. Dr. Litter, in his lofty solitude as head-master, had heard nothing of what had passed; nor was it until the Sixth took their places in the library and began to construe that his attention was called to the fact that something unusual had happened. But the sudden hesitation and blundering of the first "put on," and the inability of those next to him to correct him, were too marked to be passed over, and he raised his gold-rimmed eye-glasses to his ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... that guarded them. Penrith market, where once he had been, had never shown him anything like such a concourse, and he could hear muttered exclamations from the archers, who walked by Sir Giles's orders in a double line on each side the horses, their pikes keeping off the blundering approach of bullocks or sheep. 'By the halidome, if the Scots were among them, they might victual their whole ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laughed the consul. "Say that a blundering German boy, who said he was a Boy Scout from Philadelphia, nearly dragged me out of bed about midnight and informed me that other Boy Scouts were in trouble at the telegraph office. I knew that Ned was expected here, and so lost no time in getting down. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old fool never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman," says Sir Thomas, who wanted ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but a golden frame for that white speck so carelessly approaching. Still and mute I stood as it drew nearer—so still, so mute, that a lazy pike thrust out its wolfish jaws just under my feet and, seeing me, splashed under again in great discomposure; so motionless that a blundering swallow all but darted against me, then swept curving to the water, and vanished down ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are so everlastingly interesting, and why we blundering, ram-stam, homely favored men love ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... exercise:—facts which it was equally in accordance with nature that the Fatherland should fail to perceive. For the causes which gradually determined American resistance we must look, (as regards us), not to the blundering English legislation after 1760,—to the formalism of Grenville, the subterfuges of Franklin,—but to the whole course of our commercial policy since the Revolution: As regards the Colonies, to the extinction of the power of France in America by the Treaty of Paris ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... from the hooded figure in the middle of the floor—a scream of mingled anger, defiance and terror which rang in Anstice's ears for hours afterwards, and following the scream a mad, wild rush for the door—a blundering, stumbling rush in which the very garment, the long, loose cloak which was intended for a disguise, proved itself a handicap and effectually prevented its wearer making good her escape. By the time she had torn ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... organizing genius developed the marvellous skill of the cataloguer that brought order out of the chaos of groping and guessing and blundering in which the science of botany had floundered up till then. Here and there in it all were flashes of the truth, which Linnaeus laid hold of and pinned down with his own knowledge to system and order. Thus the Frenchman, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... declared the other. "I saw the masts of a ship standing right in our path. I got this little craft turned just in time! That's what we get for blundering ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... mediumship is the ready separability of the principles, so from a medium he can draw without difficulty the matter he needs for his manifestation, whatever it may be. When he cannot find a medium or does not understand how to use one he sometimes makes clumsy and blundering endeavours to communicate on his own account, and by the strength of his will he sets elemental forces blindly working, perhaps producing such apparently aimless manifestations as stone-throwing, bell-ringing, etc. It consequently frequently happens that a psychic or medium ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... the beginning. Electricity might have been used ages ago, had not dull-witted man refused to find anything better for lighting purposes than an oil-lamp or a tallow candle! If, in past periods, he had been told 'there is something else'—he would have laughed his informant to scorn. So with our blundering methods of living—'there is something else'—not after death, but NOW and HERE. We are going about in the darkness with a candle when a great force of wider light is all round us, only awaiting connection and application to ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... villains, heroes, heroines—and Bob with his antics—in this book, and you will enjoy it. For the whole middle part of the book the people in it are blundering about, none of them ever quite sure what was going on. You, as the reader, may well have a better idea than they do, but be prepared to be wrong in your ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... was unveracious and mistaken. And yet those veracities of theirs were so torn from all connection with fact and truth, that they became falsehoods; and they were, as has been said, nothing more than "orthodox liars" in the sight of God. On the other hand, Job, blundering perpetually, and falling into false doctrine, was yet a true man—searching for and striving after the truth; and if deprived of it for a time, deprived of it with all his heart and soul unwillingly. And therefore it was that at last the Lord appeared ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Inez was less affected by the smoke than those who were taller. The blundering policeman who essayed to follow her into the doorway, came staggering back, choking and blinded. Walter himself, springing forward when he thought the way was clear, was met by the rolling volume of pungent smoke, which filled his ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... that three months later, when May was melting into June, Miss Ethel Lake arrived upon the scene as a result of the Colonel's blundering good intentions. She brought with her a kind disposition, a supreme ignorance of unordinary children, a large store of self-confidence—and a corded ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... you too-that you too were engaged to a young lady in your own rank of life, a Miss—what was her name?—Miss MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson Newcome, who I must say is a most blundering silly person, had set about this story. It appears there is no truth in it. Do not look surprised that I know about your affairs. I am an old witch, and know numbers ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... true, she is at the present moment very much alive, and yet retain her claims to be what is virtually an independent State. That these claims have been pitched on a high note is no doubt largely the fault of the blundering and cruel policy of the Russian bureaucracy. But it must be admitted that Finland has never tried in the very least to understand her mighty neighbour; she has always sat, as it were, with her back ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... and he turned to flee. The white man heard him, and dashed through the gloom to gain sufficient sight to warrant a shot. The fugitive must have been as familiar with the ground as was his pursuer, for he showed no hesitation as to his course, nor did he give any evidence of blundering. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... forest trees it [Fagus solandri, Hook. f.] is termed 'birch' by the bushman. . . . It is not too much to say that the blundering use of common names in connection with the New Zealand beeches, when the timber has been employed in bridges and constructive works, has caused waste and loss to the value ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... she could have held him she will never know, for at that inopportune time came blundering one of his men into the room with a call for his presence to take ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... poem, that pretends to great impartiality, but is evidently wrote by some secret friend of the ministry. It is called Pope's, but has no good lines but the following. The plan supposes him complaining of being put to death by the blundering discord of his two physicians. Burton and Thompson; and from thence makes a transition to show that all the present misfortunes of the world flow from a parallel disagreement; for instance, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... so cursed by fate!" he cried, as he finished reading Mrs. Bonnifay's note; "or, rather, by the stupidity of a blundering idiot! I don't believe Dick Peveril cares a rap for the girl; if he did, he would not desert her on any such flimsy pretext. The idea of his having business with a mine! He never did have any business, and never will. How I hate ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... vanity of phantasy he arose and removed the waist-cloth from his middle, and laughed till he well nigh fainted. He gave not over laughing for some time and at last quoth he to himself, "What aileth them to address me as if I were a Minister and style me Master, and Sir? Haply they are now blundering; but after an hour they will know me and say, This fellow is a beggar; and take their fill of cuffing me on the neck." Presently, feeling hot he opened the door, whereupon it seemed to him that a little white slave and an eunuch came in to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... to be such extravagance or bad management, that he was living much beyond his income, his lady had objected to the cutting of a pickled mango, and that I had taken an opportunity to ask the price of it, and found it was only two shillings; so here was a very poor saving. JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is the blundering oeconomy of a narrow understanding. It is stopping one hole in ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... through, and once more struggling over the viscid surface of the pond. Behind him he heard old Parrish blundering, and screeching at the top of his voice, but he paid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... all these people——Oh, I can't explain, and I'm afraid I'm distressing you," he went on remorsefully; for the frail figure was trembling, and the tears had gathered in the dark eyes. "I'm a blundering kind of idiot, and I'm worrying you with my tuppenny-ha'penny affairs. ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... both wonder what A finds so congenial in the other. The truth is that this personal equation, as we call it, in each cannot be made the subject of mathematical calculation. Human relations will not bend to it. And yet we keep blundering along as if they would. We are always sure, in our letter of introduction, that this friend will be congenial to the other, because we are fond of both. Sometimes this happens, but half the time we should be more successful in bringing people into accord if we gave a letter of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... desired value may be realized under these conditions, but, if it is realized, it is manifestly through accident, not through intelligent design. It is needless to point out the waste that such a blundering and haphazard adjustment entails. We all know how much of our teaching fails to hit the mark, even when we are clear concerning the result that we desire; we can only conjecture how much of the remainder fails of effect because we are hazy ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the long absence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... accordingly, blundering over heaps of rubbish, and encountering all the embarrassments of a ruinous street, in lighting the way to Sir Aymer, who, giving his horse to one of his attendants, and desiring Fabian to be ready at a call, scrambled after as well as the slowness ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... correspondence on which he was so intently engaged, he graciously took time to explain that the sudden movement northward from Bar-le-Duc was, as I have previously recounted, the result of information that Marshal MacMahon was endeavoring to relieve Metz by marching along the Belgian frontier; "a blundering manoeuvre," remarked the Chancellor, "which cannot be accounted for, unless it has been brought about by the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... thought that he should have been surprised, but he wasn't. There wasn't any time to be surprised. The kids didn't disappear. They spread out over the floor of the room easily and lightly, and the cops charged them in a great blundering mass. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was broadly comic. It was cunningly interwoven with the texture of the play, sometimes loosely, and by way of variety or relief, as in the episode of {115} Touchstone and Audrey, in As You Like It; sometimes closely, as in the case of Dogberry and Verges, in Much Ado about Nothing, where the blundering of the watch is made to bring about the denouement of the main action. The Merry Wives of Windsor is an exception to this plan of construction. It is Shakspere's only play of contemporary, middle-class English life, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the Revolution. The pioneers of the Old Southwest—the independent and aggressive yeomanry of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina—had risen in their might. Without the aid or authority of blundering state governments, they had created an army of frontiersmen, Indian-fighters, and big-game hunters which had found no parallel or equal on the continent since the Battle of ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... prisoner are. You go where he sends you. You live like a swine in the woods. You are made to work for your food. And a year is gone. A year! Serve you darn right. Oh, yes. Bah! You quit. You understand? I pay you no more. You are a fool, a blundering fool. I wash my ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... welcoming, maybe, some fearsome visitor, there stirred in his heart a feeling strangely akin to awe. Its indifference to human kind, its serene superiority to the obvious, struck him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so inaccessible seemed the secret purposes of its real life, so alien to the blundering honesty of other animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into his mind the opium-eater's words that "no dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious"; and he became suddenly aware that the presence of the dog in this foggy, haunted room on the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... may preach that to Metternich and remain with him." And so the Prince worked on; determined that neither fear, nor treachery, nor much less blundering, on his part, should imperil the precarious balance of the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... was scratched on the other leg from the fetlock joint to the fore-arm, but nowhere badly cut. After a hasty breakfast I returned to the road, and got safely to my destination in time for the second boat. It was a blundering adventure, but served me with a hearty laugh when it was over; I must, however, have been a good deal bothered by my fall, or I should never have headed the wrong way, dark as it was. My left temple continued swollen for two or three days; and my horse was laid ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... and at Corinth, and the death of Albert Sidney Johnston, who had been regarded as the ablest of all the officers of the old army who had taken service with the confederates, there had been a total absence of decisive results. McClellan had disappointed the hopes of the people; Grant was accused of blundering and of a fondness for drink; the great ability of Sherman was not fully recognized; and the country did not yet suspect that in Sheridan it had another Marlborough. Stonewall Jackson was in full tilt in Virginia, and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... they had wilted from their brief, shallow-soiled youth to a handful of dry stubble. (This Gertie Sumners would not even live long. He recognized already the thumb-marks of disease in her sunken cheeks.) And yet he was an outsider, blundering in their wake. Just because they accepted him, taking it for granted he was one of them, they deepened his isolation. He could not talk their talk. He could not play with them. He had tried. The old hunger "to belong" had ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... to the Astonishment of Mankind; Think how you will be read in After-times, When Friends are not, and the impartial Judge Shall with the meanest Scribbler rank your Name; Who would not rather wish a Butler's fame, Distress'd, and poor in every thing but Merit, Than be the blundering Laureat to a Court?" ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... towards the world of his creation.[16] But once admit that feeling is legitimate; once allow that tears are due to those who have been crushed and left bleeding by this great world of ours as it crashes blundering on its way; once grant that the writer's art can properly embrace what Shakespeare calls "the pity of it," the sorrows inwoven in all our human relationships; once acknowledge all this, and then I affirm, most confidently, that Dickens, working at his ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... For two years he had been the terror of the neighbourhood, and he showed now that at least he had courage. His smattering of science, however, appeared only ridiculous. Once, through sheer strength and blundering force, he broke down his opponent's guard and struck him in the place that had dispatched many a man before—just over the heart. His present opponent scarcely winced, and Billy the Tanner paid the penalty then for his years of bullying. His antagonist paused ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his metal strap by the resistance of the waters they ripped through, Norman yet retained enough of consciousness to glimpse beams of light that stabbed ahead from the prows of their rushing boats, to see vaguely strange creatures of the deep blundering in and out of those beams as the boats hurtled forward. The water that forced its way between his lips was fresh, he was vaguely aware, and even as he fought to hold his breath was aware too that the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... right. You always are. It's me that goes wrong; blundering, bumping, smashing into things. Blast it all! I—I don't know what to say. ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... planned it," continued De Gollyer, artfully blundering; "boat to Tangier, from Tangier bang ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of one who could also handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other publick business. He had printed an address of the House to the governor, in a coarse, blundering manner, we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every member. They were sensible of the difference: it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... morally and physically. Had she not stiffened herself, had she only allowed herself, as it were, to go—to call Luke to her and comfort him and sympathise with him—it would have altered every life in that room, and others outside of it. Even blundering, cringing, foolish Mrs. Ingham-Baker would have acted more wisely, for she would have followed the dictates of an ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... he got a kinsman, Dick Dawson, who loved fun, to take Andy under his especial care to London. When they arrived there it was wonderful how many persons were eager to show civility to his new lordship, and he who as Handy Andy had been cried down all his life as a "stupid rascal," "a blundering thief," "a thick-headed brute," suddenly acquired, under the title of Lord Scatterbrain, a reputation for being "vastly amusing, a little eccentric, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... by the Newcastle. At any rate the pursuit should not have been given up so early. Marshall says there was a mistake in the signalling. The British captains certainly bungled the affair; even James says (p. 558): "It is the most blundering piece of business recorded in these six volumes." As for Stewart and his men, they deserve the highest credit for the cool judgment and prompt, skilful seamanship they had displayed. The Constitution, having shaken ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... blundering delay there was that of Napoleon, prompt, keen, and ever victorious. The whole war had arisen out of the conflict of these two Powers; and Napoleon had never ceased to declare that it was essentially a struggle between England ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... bestowed on the two little girls, and hospitable offers showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this horrible blundering! Up to the present, we cheerfully spoke Quite unaware of our errors, nor wondering How many rules in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... understand rudeness; he was too finely framed for that; he could know it only as Swedenborg's most celestial angels perceived evil, as something distressful, angular. The ill-will that seemed nearly always to go with adverse criticism made him distrust criticism, and the discomfort which mistaken or blundering praise gives probably made him shy of all criticism. He said that in his early life as an author he used to seek out and save all the notices of his poems, but in his latter days he read only those that happened to fall ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... since the night of the murder of Wilson; and where, think you, my lords, it was found? It was found—you have heard how foolish be the wise—look now how childishly a cunning man can sometimes act, how blundering are clever rogues!—it was found this morning on the defendant Ray's person while he slept, in an inner breast pocket, which was stitched up, and seemed to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... pipe savagely. Spike's words seemed to have touched a spring and let loose feelings which he had kept down for three years. Molly McEachern! So "they" used to say that he was engaged to Molly. He cursed Spike Mullins in his heart, well-meaning, blundering Spike, who was now sitting on the edge of his chair drawing sorrowfully at his cigar and wondering what he had done to give offense. The years fell away from Jimmy, and he was back in New York, standing at the corner of Forty-second Street ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... his forehead. Had this stuttering static anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what terrified creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion? ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... he, "the original programme, as laid down by myself. I'm tired of dealing with blundering fools. Heinzman's mortgage will be foreclosed; and you will hand over as per the agreement your Boom ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White |
