"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it? To account for this, the Persian creates a second spirit, whose nature is evil, and supposes a continual war between that and the god of good. In our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians image a similar demon. Perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders us!—folly that arose from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a corporeal, a human being, of this unknown power—that clothes the Invisible with attributes and a nature ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... was not to allow for that earlier train! It's abduction, Watson—abduction! Murder! Heaven knows what! Block the road! Stop the horse! That's right. Now, jump in, and let us see if I can repair the consequences of my own blunder." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... myself, Hoka was still staring and ruffling like a gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years before called him cochon sauvage—cocon chauvage, as Hoka mispronounced it. With people so nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be supposed that our company of greenhorns should not blunder into offences. Hoka, on one of his visits, fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after left the ship with cold formality. When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and pointedly explained the nature of my offence: I had asked him to sell cocoa-nuts; and in Hoka's view articles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had gone smoothly," he thought, "I should have cursed the fellow's stupidity. As it is, I'm not sorry for the blunder." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... know." Up to a certain point this is shrewd and wholesome advice. One does undoubtedly keep some kinds of suffering in check by resolutely minimising them. But there is a significance in suffering too. It is not all a clumsy error, a well-meaning blunder. It is a deliberate part of the constitution ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the instant comprehended his blunder. For the first time Booverman's shot went wide of the mark, straight into the trees that bordered the river ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... liberties enormous, after ideas of their own, with the text of a friend thus honoured. But although they printed with intent altogether faithful, they did so certainly without any adequate jealousy of the printers—apparently without a suspicion of how they could blunder. Of blunders therefore in the Folio also there are many, some through mere following of blundered print, some in fresh corruption of the same, some through mistaking of the manuscript corrections, and some probably from ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... things, or all of them, but it is always something more. Friendly visiting means intimate and continuous knowledge of and sympathy with a poor family's joys, sorrows, opinions, feelings, and entire outlook upon life. The visitor that has this is unlikely to blunder either about relief or any detail; without it, he is almost certain, in any charitable relations with members of the family, to blunder seriously. Visitors have said to me that they could not see that they had been of any special service, though their friendly feeling for certain families made ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... loyalty to their sovereign, and one of whom, Egmont, had performed distinguished services for his country and king, was profound. A wave of mingled rage and sorrow swept over the land. It was not only an act of cruel injustice, but even as an act of policy a blunder of the first magnitude, which was sure to bring, as it did bring, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... reader at all events, it argues very much indeed in a writer's favour, that the "layman" has managed to write the simplest sentence about a specialty, without some more or less serious blunder. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... though there was a side-table for the children, at which, when the Shepherd of Ettrick was about to seat himself, his friend probably whispered that it was reserved for the "little lords and ladies, and their playmates." This blunder may seem undeserving of any explanation; but it is often in small matters that the strongest feelings are most strikingly betrayed—and this story is, in exact {p.088} proportion to its silliness, indicative of the jealous feeling which mars and distorts so many of Hogg's representations ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... mind could hardly decide; but she was afraid it was by herself. She knew she had never felt sure enough of his attentions to do more than speculate on what she would do if they should become more pointed, and yet she felt angry and sore at having been exposed to so absurd a blunder by the silence of the parties concerned. "After all," she said to herself, "there can be no great harm done, I have not been weak enough to commit my heart to the error. I am unscathed, and I will show it by sympathy ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I was still in durance vile, and Higgins was in his strait-jacket. On being released, my hands were full, as you can suppose. Moreover, I did not learn at once of your detention. The saddle and the valise caused me to suspect that a blunder had been committed. I cannot adequately express my regrets. In ten minutes," continued Dr. Pendegrast, turning a fat gold watch over on its back in the palm of his hand, where it looked like a little yellow turtle, "in ten minutes dinner will ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... such set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,— Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... life never to get into a passion, never to let herself go, never to reveal herself by intemperate speech, never to any one, except occasionally to her husband when his cold sarcasm became intolerable. She felt, as soon as the door closed on Philip, that she had made a blunder, and yet in her irritation she committed a worse one. She went at once to Evelyn's room, resolved to make it perfectly sure that the Philip episode was ended. She had had suspicions about her daughter ever since the Van Cortlandt dinner. She would find out if they were justified, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all speakers would reasonably be called upon to render such an account, if any of their words were spoken for money; I only say this. If Aeschines in his private capacity has spoken wildly on some occasion or committed some blunder, do not be over-strict with him, but let it pass and grant him pardon: but if as your ambassador he has deliberately deceived you for money, then do not let him go, or tolerate the plea that he ought not to be ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... law. What a mysterious labyrinth was this Trade confederacy, into which he had put his foot so rashly, and shown his game, like a novice, to the subtle and crafty Grotait. He now collected all his powers, not to injure Little, but to slip out of his own blunder. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... two danced with delight. Many in the situation of Fred Greenwood would have laughed at Jack and "guyed" him over his blunder, but the incident was too dreadful and the terror of his friend too intense for Fred to wish to amuse himself at his expense. However, he could not help indulging just a trifle. Suddenly pausing in his antics he looked down at ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... me. They lead me about and show me the things they are interested in. Of course the little ones cannot spell on their fingers; but I manage to read their lips. If I do not succeed they resort to dumb show. Sometimes I make a mistake and do the wrong thing. A burst of childish laughter greets my blunder, and the pantomime begins all over again. I often tell them stories or teach them a game, and the winged hours depart and leave us good ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on. "I can take Casa Triana's," said he, "since he's still posing as a soldier of Spain." And a glance warned me not to blunder by asking why, in the name of common sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which was on his back. He wanted her to wear his coat, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is given in the old copies, sarua voulra boungrace, but surely Mercatore was not intended to blunder in his own language.] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... of me Maddy would be," he thought, glancing sidewise at Mrs. Noah, who had witnessed the blunder, and was now looking from the window to ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Du. haakbus, hook-gun, the second element of which appears in blunderbuss. The first part of this word has undergone so many popular transformations that it is difficult to say which was the original form. Ludwig has Donner-buechs, Blunder-buechs, oder Muszketon, "a thunder-box; a blunder-buss; a musketoon; a wide-mouthed brass-gun, carrying about twenty pistol bullets at once." It was also called in German Plantier-buechs, from plantieren, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Canada which would terminate in independence and freedom from the baneful domination of the mother country, and the tyrannical conduct of a small and despicable faction in the colony." The official class availed themselves of this egregious blunder to excite the indignation of the Loyalist population against Mr. Mackenzie and other Reformers, many of whom, like the Baldwins and Perrys, disavowed all sympathy with such language. Mr. Mackenzie's motive was really to insult Mr. Ryerson, with whom he had quarrelled. ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... hands of a man who was so little qualified to govern Rigganites, as was the present rector, the Reverend Harold Barholm. A man who has mistaken his vocation, and who has become ever so faintly conscious of his blunder, may be a stumbling-block in another's path; but restrained as he will be by his secret pangs of conscience, he can scarcely be an active obstructionist. But a man who, having mistaken the field of his life's labor, yet remains amiably self-satisfied, and unconscious ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... worse by adding "Alcolom (Al-Kulub?) signifying Ravisher of Hearts" and his names for the six slave-girls (vol. iv. 37) such as "Zohorob Bostan" (Zahr al-Bustan), which Galland rightly renders by "Fleur du Jardin," serve only to heap blunder upon blunder. Indeed the Anglo-French translations are below criticism: it would be waste of time to notice them. The characteristic is a servile suit paid to the original e.g. rendering hair "accomode ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sturdy old Commodore Jones will blunder along with the American liners, CYANE and UNITED STATES, and haul down that proud Mexican ensign. He will hoist for the first time, on October, 19, 1842, the stars and stripes over the town. Even though he apologizes, the foreigners ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of marines sitting in the house-place, drinking. He, too, like Philip, had lost his way; but was turning his blunder to account by telling all manner of wonderful stories to two or three rustics who had come in ready to drink on any pretence; especially if they could get good liquor without ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the "Leonore" operas, of Gaveaux and Paer. Much confusion has existed in the books (and still exists, for that matter) touching the order in which the four overtures were composed. The early biographers were mistaken on that point, and the blunder was perpetuated by the numbering when the scores were published. The true "Leonore No. 1," is the overture known in the concert-room, where it is occasionally heard, as "Leonore No. 2." This was the original overture ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... cannot overlook a stupendous and laughable blunder of Rienzi. The Lex regia empowers Vespasian to enlarge the Pomrium, a word familiar to every antiquary. It was not so to the tribune; he confounds it with pomarium, an orchard, translates lo Jardino de Roma cioene Italia, and is copied by the less excusable ignorance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... razor down. Here (in Michael's words) was the total disappearance of a valuable uncle; here was a time of inexplicable conduct on the part of a nephew who had been in bad blood with the old man any time these seven years; what a chance for a judicial blunder! "But no," thought Morris, "they cannot, they dare not, make it murder. Not that. But honestly, and speaking as a man to a man, I don't see any other crime in the calendar (except arson) that I don't seem somehow to have committed. And yet I'm a perfectly respectable man, and wished nothing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after all, the settlers had been caught more or less off their guard. And, so far from it being possible for me to undertake singlehanded an expedition for the rescue of Nell, I was liable at any moment to blunder upon a war party of savages and either be slain by them forthwith, or, still worse, be carried off a captive, to suffer death by torture; indeed, the wonder was that something of this kind had not already happened to me, as doubtless it had to many another unsuspecting ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to the Barmecides, who had begun to set forth shadowy feasts. That is the way in thick weather; you are no sooner out of one scrape than you blunder into another. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... fault against which they hurl the rather stolid thunders of their "Inasmuch." The world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its rejoicings, in its habits, and in its pleasures, is severer than the Code and the Church; the world punishes a blunder after encouraging hypocrisy. The whole economy of the law on marriage seems to me to require reconstruction from the bottom to the top. The French law would be perfect perhaps if it excluded ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... hide the hideous blunder. "Told of such a home as this is," he explained, "a true ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... takes his judgments generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and is no true lover of his own art, and is but chilled by an enthusiasm for it in another, such as that of Jean-Baptiste? as if Jean-Baptiste over-valued it, or as if some ignobleness or blunder, some sign that he has really missed his aim, started into sight from his work at the sound of praise—as if such praise could hardly ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... known that a man had to be up very early in every sense if he wanted to keep an eye on a Putnam horse. Mat Woodburn might be old, but he was by no means sleepy; and Joses could not afford to blunder. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... War must soon be over. Europe as a whole could not allow this devastation of resources. America would intervene. Already the Germans realized their gigantic blunder in starting the attack. Their men were said to be—she read—much less brave than people had expected. The mighty German Armies had been held up for ten days by a puny Belgian force and the forts of Liege and Namur. There ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... me a big brown bob-cat, and you said I looked like I'd slept in the Hondo 'royo all my life. I know I looked it, too. I'll forgive you if you will excuse my blunder to-day. What became of that boy, Marcos? Have you ever seen him since you left Santa Fe?" ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... more careful in future. Another blunder like this, and I shall be compelled to ask the aid of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... blunder. Gilks, in his flurry, got hold of the wrong rudder. I really think that's why it wasn't found out ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... the cause of this singular intoxication, the consequences of which might have been very disastrous? A simple blunder of Michel's, which, fortunately, Nicholl was able ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... engaged some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly forms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have been pardoned for his blunder, and for a short time was permitted by the manager to appear in one or two children's parts. Little did the dignified manager imagine that the child—who was one of his cauldron of imps in Macbeth—was to become, twenty years later, his formidable rival—formidable enough ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... the gig came alongside the schooner, the lieutenant offered his hand to Miss Lydia, and then helped the colonel to swing himself up on deck. Once there, Sir Thomas, who was still very much ashamed of his blunder, and at a loss to know what he had better do to make the man whose ancestry dated from the year 1100 forget it, invited him to supper, without waiting for his daughter's consent, and with many fresh apologies and handshakes. Miss Lydia ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... impishness of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... Elections. Some violent Tories in the House of Commons flattered themselves that they might be able to carry a resolution reflecting on the King. They moved that whoever had advised His Majesty to refuse his assent to their bill was an enemy to him and to the nation. Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper of the House was very different from what it had been on the day when the address against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation. The detection of a murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a French invasion, had changed every thing. The King was popular. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quick, Count! Aye, aye, that was a blunder indeed. Don't you see the dogs? There they run—they have lost the scent. [Exit Baron looking after ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... useless and undefended village, hundreds of their number lay wounded and dying in the snow. The carnage and slaughter this day in the enemy's ranks was terrific, resulting from a most stupid military blunder, but it atoned slightly for our losses previous thereto. The valley below us was dotted with pile after pile of enemy dead, the carnage here being almost equal to the terrific fighting later at Vistavka. When he discovered his mistake and useless sacrifice of men, and seeing it was hopeless to ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... told me I am perfect, and everything I do is perfect, and he does not want me different. But I have never really shared his life and interests. If I make idiotic mistakes he does not correct me. I have to find them out, when I repeat them before others. When I made that silly blunder about the brazen serpent, you so kindly put me right. Michael would have smiled and let it pass as not worth correcting; then I should have repeated it before a roomful of people, and wondered why they looked amused! Ah, but what do I care for people, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... as he stepped by her reaching out for butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder. Meaning a man." ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Committee on the Conduct of the War, Hooker and Sickles both testify that the panic of the Eleventh Corps produced a gap in the line, and that this was the main cause of disaster on this field. But the fatal gap was made long before the Eleventh Corps was attacked. It was Hooker's giddy blunder in ordering away, two miles in their front, the entire line from Dowdall's to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... here when the doctor was out, switched the barn line on to this one, and taken my call without Jones knowing anything about it," he said as he hung up the receiver and went out. "It was a pretty good plot, but one little blunder will spoil ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their vice, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a petulant way,' the President responded, '"It is with you, sir, all story, story! You are the father of every military blunder that has been made during the war. You are on your road to hell, sir, with this government, by your obstinacy, and you are not a mile ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... faults and inaccuracies in the work; but I have reason to believe that they are neither numerous nor important: I may have occasionally given a wrong name to a hill or a brook; or may have overstated or understated, by a furlong, the distance between one hamlet and another; or even committed the blunder of saying that Mr Jones Ap Jenkins lived in this or that homestead, whereas in reality Mr Jenkins Ap Jones honoured it with his residence: I may be chargeable with such inaccuracies; in which case I beg to express ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... in the boxes on the left hand, and as quickly as we could accommodate ourselves to the heat of the water, we got into the great tank. We were scarcely in, when a company of six or eight men and women entered the bath house; they at once perceived our blunder, but without the slightest hesitation, the women as well as the men went over to the men's side and proceeded to undress and get into the tank with us, betraying no consciousness that aught was amiss. So far as I could see there was not ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No stabbing! No submarines! Guns and shooting! ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... of the various books of our Bible, concerning women, are compared with the times in which severally they probably were written, in general they are certainly in advance of most contemporary opinion. The hurtful blunder of later eras has been the setting up of early, cruder standards touching the relations of men and of women, as moulding influences and guides to broader civilizations. They ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... we broke camp and the time they reached the bridge the three who went ahead drank a quart of whisky, and there was the initial blunder at Northfield. I never knew Bob to drink before, and I did not know he was drinking that day till ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... his victim was bent upon sparing Southern feeling so far as it could be spared without injustice being done to the country, Booth must have expected to find his act condemned by every rational Southern man as a worse than useless crime, as a blunder of the very first magnitude. Had he succeeded in getting abroad, Secession exiles would have shunned him, and have treated him as one who had brought an ineffaceable stain on their cause, and also had rendered their restoration to their homes impossible. The pistol-shot of Sergeant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... in another quarter, Allcraft suddenly discovered that he had committed an egregious blunder. He had entrusted Planner with the secret of his critical position—had made him acquainted with the dishonest transactions of his father, and the consequent bankruptcy of the firm. Not that this disclosure had been made in any violent ebullition of unguarded feeling—from any particular ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the head, old man; it will be all right to-morrow. Their blunder is in having unwittingly sprung their trap on the very evening the Princess and you came to an understanding. Had they been even a few hours earlier you would not have dared to speak of love to her—and so you might not have had the King's daughter as a special advocate. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... as of some consternation in the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later, when I had perceived my blunder. ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... ornamented with this decoration. Can any of your correspondents produce another example? or can they account, from any other cause, for Richard Harpur receiving such a distinction? or may I not rather attribute it to the blunder ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... declined Jack's polite invitation, upon the plea that he felt it to be his imperative duty to return forthwith to Havana, to report to the authorities there the full and true circumstances of the case, in order that Jack might be subjected to no further annoyance from the unfortunate blunder that had somehow been made. But no doubt the true explanation of his refusal was to be found in the fact that his exceedingly sensitive pride was hurt by Jack's innuendo, and by the fact that he had been placed in a false and somewhat ridiculous position. It was bad enough to be ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Pompey means to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think he knows himself. Certainly none of us know.—It is all panic and blunder. We are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy. If he stays, I fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he go, and how and what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar will be a Phalaris, and that we may expect the very worst. The flight of the Senate, the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in the most stupid, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... from disclosing it. I perceive, however, that he keeps up an acquaintance with your real mother, and that, in private, he assists her; perhaps all this is not done without a reason. On the other hand, he commits a blunder by urging you to marry some young lady! Perhaps he knows that you took the place of his son, without knowing that you are a girl. But this digression might gradually carry us too far; let us return to that secret which I am impatient ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... did. They were to see still more within the compass of a day's march, but they had seen enough in their two weeks' comradeship to give them confidence in the young officer they never felt for their own and only "Grumbly," who, with all his experience, would often blunder, and Grumbly's blunders told on his troop, otherwise ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... trust that the present Administration will not commit the blunder of attempting to 'gain favour with this or that section of the constituencies, by indulging in loose talk on ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... how damned weak I am," he said to himself. The adventure was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to forget. His horror at the degradation he had suffered helped him. He was like a snake casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering with nausea. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... made another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked upon as a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... annulled at any moment by Arthur's reappearance on the political scene. If, therefore, Arthur—as is most probable—was now really dead, whether he had indeed perished a victim of one of those fits of ungovernable fury in which—and in which alone—the Angevin counts sometimes added blunder to crime, or whether he had died a natural death from sickness in prison, or by a fall in attempting to escape,[35] it would be equally politic on John's part to let rumor do its worst rather than suffer any gleam of light to penetrate the mystery ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... saw what a misleading blunder she had committed towards Loveday in playing to the yeoman. Perhaps she had sown the seeds ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... they don't commit murders—not in Europe, at any rate," said Mr. Flexen. "In the East and in the United States it's different perhaps. Murder is always as much of a blunder as a crime. It makes people so keen after the criminal. No: no really ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Louise caught a faint resemblance to Marthy in his face. "I saw a man accused of a theft once," he said. "The evidence was—or seemed—absolutely unassailable. And afterward he was exonerated completely; it was just a horrible mistake. But he left school under a cloud. His life was ruined by the blunder. I'd have to know absolutely before I'd accuse anyone of stealing those calves, Miss Louise. I'd have to see them in a man's corral, with his brand on them—I believe that's the way it's done, out ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... erected into charms. In other words, men play the love game so unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in proportion as she seems to disdain and make a mock of her intelligence. Women seldom, if ever, make that blunder. What they commonly value in a man is not mere showiness, whether physical or spiritual, but that compound of small capacities which makes up masculine efficiency and passes for masculine intelligence. This intelligence, at its highest, has a human value substantially ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... nevertheless preserve her own peculiar modes of thought and feeling? One striking fact is hopeful: that the Japanese admiration for Western material superiority is by no means extended to Western morals. Oriental thinkers do not commit the serious blunder of confounding mechanical with ethical progress, nor have any failed to perceive the moral weaknesses of our boasted civilisation. One Japanese writer has expressed his judgment of things Occidental after a fashion that deserves to be noticed by a larger circle of readers than ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... he is at war with himself as well as with others, for it is the life of a being who, though essentially social, tries to find satisfaction in a personal or individual good. The "intelligence" and the "heart" equally condemn such a life; it is not only a crime but a blunder. For a spiritual being as such is one who can only save his life by losing it in a wider life, one who must die to himself in order that he may live. In the progress of man's spirit, therefore, there is no necessary or possible schism between the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... deprives any discussion about date of its point. But as I have said, this is the one Dickens work of which the date is essential. It is really an important part of the criticism of this book to say that it is his first book. Certain elements of clumsiness, of obviousness, of evident blunder, actually require the chronological explanation. It is biographically important that this is his first book, almost exactly in the same way that it is biographically important that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was his last book. Change or no change, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... Avernus, and coot and teal also blunder here occasionally, as if to contradict Virgil and confute etymology—for Avernus is [Greek: aornos] (birdless,) and Latinised as every one knows. However, few birds are to be found here. The Lucrine is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... an armchair and a throne. The minor actors are not so accustomed to their new position. Nothing is more amusing than the embarrassment of the courtiers when they have to answer the Emperor's questions. They begin with a blunder; then, in correcting themselves, they fall into still worse confusion; ten times a minute was repeated, Sire, General, Your Majesty, Citizen, First Consul. Constant, the Emperor's valet de chambre, has given us a description of this ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... action, always with an eye to his general oversight. I never forgot that fact. He possessed the eye of an eagle. His uncanny powers of observation kept me terrified. He could detect at a glance the slightest blunder or wrong doing in my day's activities. Every afternoon, about sunset he came whirling into the yard, his team flecked with foam, his big gray eyes flashing from side to side, and if any tool was out of place or broken, he discovered it at once, and his reproof was never a cause ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Vertebrata into hot and cold blooded is a curiously retrograde step, only intelligible when we reflect that the excellent entomologist had no real comprehension of vertebrate morphology; but he makes some atonement for the blunder by steadily upholding the class distinctness of the Amphibia. In this he was followed by Dr J. E. Gray; but Dumeril and Bibron in their great work,7 and Dr Gunther in his Catalogue, in substance, adopted Brongniart's arrangement, the Batrachia being simply one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Mr. Pyecroft quickly, easily, to forestall any blunder by the hapless Matilda—and deftly interposing himself between Jack and Mrs. De ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... 'for life in general there is but one decree. Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret. Do not suppose,' he added, smiling, 'that I hold that youth is genius; all that I say is, that genius, when young, is divine. Why, the greatest captains of ancient and modern ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... in impressionable years, through a court blunder, young William had had a tutor, Delbrueck, who poisoned his charge's mind against the Prussian ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... too—she's given the highest amount subscribed, you know; she has slews of money all in her own right, because she's of age, you know—and then the girls began to get scared and Elsie Dare got right up and said she thought there had been some kind of a mistake—a blunder—they mustn't get excited—they must begin all over, and somebody must go after Jane and bring her back and explain—as if there was any way to explain a bold, bare insult like that!—and they sent a committee after her. They wanted me to go, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... mark on him with more than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early years, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... relations, and that, too, at some little cost, on the propriety of using me himself that evening at the chateau of the King of the French. Fortunately, his monitress, though by no means of the purest water, knew better than to suffer her eleve to commit so gross a blunder, and I escaped the calamity of making my first appearance at court under the ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... things, necessary that the inquiry bear a tint so neutral that the person to whom it is addressed shall find it impossible to reflect its colour in his reply. He will then sometimes, in his confusion, blunder into a truthful answer, but he does so generally with a bashful air, indicative of the painful consciousness that he has been reluctantly violating the rules of good breeding. A search after accurate statistics, under such conditions, is ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... under the figure of a white horse with a crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles) to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... smoldering ruin and the smoke of its burning buildings could be seen for miles. The Germans displayed their "thoroughness" as they retired by poisoning the wells with arsenic, and setting high-explosive traps into which they hoped the British advance guards would blunder. Bridges over all the waterways were burned and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... blunder, also, to throw out that insinuation about the ten thousand dollars. Clyde realized this perfectly. He wished now that he not done it, and would have recalled his hasty words had it been possible. But the deed had been ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... dissipated as practically not to be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... Professor W. P. Trent, of Columbia University, has offered valuable suggestions and given important advice; and to Mr. M. Grant Daniell's patience, accuracy, and judgment this volume owes both its freedom from many a blunder and its possession ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... after this humiliation; resigned his office, and, to soothe his feelings, was actually promoted to be an earl! It is the most wonderful reason for promoting a man that ever I heard. Lord Bruce was made an earl for a blunder in prosody; and Nelson was made a baron for the victory of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... father had given him a fortnight in Paris on his way to Germany, as the reward of acquiescence. That (from Herr Harrison's point of view) was a disastrous blunder. How could the dear old Pater be expected to know that Paris is, spiritually speaking, no sort of way even to South Germany? He should have gone to Brussels, if he was ever, spiritually speaking, to get ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... He persists in writing "Zobeyda," "Khalifa," "Aziza" (p. 194) and "Kahramana" (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if not in Turkish, is a sine qua non (see my Suppl. vol. v. 302). He preserves the pretentious blunder "The Khalif" (p. 193), a word which does not exist in Arabic. He translates (p. 181), although I have taught him to do better, "Hadimu 'I-Lizzati wa Mufarriku 'l-Jama'at," by "Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies" instead of Destroyer ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... sad blunder— What can be come over me lately, I wonder? The Prince was as cheerful as if all his life He had never been troubled with Friends or a Wife— "Fine weather," says he—to which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable rather, of late." He took it, I fear, for he lookt ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... be defrayed largely out of Imperial and not merely out of Provincial funds. If the educational problem is the most vital and the most urgent one of all at the present hour in India, it stands to reason that no more disastrous blunder could be made than to stint the new department ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... caused by war could scarcely have fitted them to stand this unexpected trial. Rome's harsh dealings with the treasonable South, although adopted for political motives, was almost unquestionably a political blunder. She confiscated devastated lands, and so perpetuated their devastation. She left ruined harbours and cities in decay. She crippled her own resources to add to the pastoral wealth of a handful of her citizens. In the East of Italy there was ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... not raise the question whether Lincoln made a colossal blunder when he renounced his favorite doctrine so emphatically set forth in his Congressional speech (page 47). The die was cast when Sumter was fired on. The question which confronted him in 1863-64—What to do with the perishing Union prisoners?—was ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... blunder. It stirred up the embers of Napoleonism. Ten years later they blazed into a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... her intense suffering, she had an irresistible claim upon his compassion, her husband did not feel certain that even were Eva herself again Toni's tragic blunder would be repaired; and although he was fully determined to do all in his power to bring Eva's restless spirit peace, there was a possibility that she would return to life as callous, as heartless, as vindictive ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... my power to have cancelled the leaf in the large paper as well as in the small; but I thought it might thereby have taken from the former the air of a true edition; and so the blunder (a mere transposition of the letters ar) will go down to a future generation in the large paper. There is yet another slight variation between the small and large. At p. 111, in the account of the catalogue of Krohn's books, the concluding sentence wholly varies: but I believe there is not ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Squadron sometimes only one-fourth could be used. To professional readers it may seem unnecessary to enter on such familiar and obvious details; but a military man, in making his estimate, has fallen into the curious blunder of making a fleet fire every gun, bow, stern, and both broadsides, into one fort, a hundred yards square; a feat which only could be performed by landing a ship in the centre of the works, in which case it could enjoy an all-round fire. The nine gunboats carried ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Lieutenant Loti but uninstructed evidently, marries a geisha whose father had made the happy dispatch at the request of the Son of Heaven after making a blunder in his military command. She is Cio-Cio-San, also Madama Butterfly, and she comes to her wedding with a bevy of geishas or mousmes (I do not know which) and a retinue of relations. All enjoy the hospitality of the American officer while ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... his officers there was a colonel, a very brave man, and a capital soldier, who, on one occasion, had made some slight military slip or blunder. This drew on him the king's displeasure, and was never forgotten. So his pension or half-pay allowance was made the very lowest his rank would permit; for these allowances were regulated by ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... him could point appeal. His mistress was the thing of uses tried. Frigid the netting smile on whom he wooed, But on his Policy his eye was lewd. That sharp long zig-zag into distance brooked No foot across; a shade his ire provoked. The blunder or the cruelty of a deed His Policy imperative could plead. He deemed nought other precious, nor knew he Legitimate outside his Policy. Men's lives and works were due, from their birth's date, To the State's shield and sword, himself the State. He thought for them in mass, as Titan may; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... military skill, he fails. Once more has the President on his hands the serious problem of finding the right man. This time the commission was given to General Joseph Hooker. With the later records before us, it is easy to point out that this selection also was a blunder. There were better men in the group of major-generals. Reynolds, Meade, or Hancock would doubtless have made more effective use of the power of the army of the Potomac, but in January, 1863, the relative characters and abilities of these generals were ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by the personality of his man. Edge's doing pretty well, considering. He probably is wise to the situation. He didn't expect anything like a contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two made. Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in the God-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one evening of free booze. On the other hand, your life has been perfect—always careful and sound in business, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... having tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened by suffering. In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life," says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct. There is nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun. Her most hideous blunder cannot undo a woman's soul. Bjoernson knows that the deed is nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees. Not everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man. At all events, so it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that—as the Philistines would say—has ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... course, what you mean. And, Billy, I'll confess that I've been sorry lots of times, since, that I spoke as I did to you, particularly when I saw how it grieved my brother William to have you go away. If I blundered then, I'm sorry; and perhaps I did blunder. At all events, that is only the more reason now why I am so anxious to do what I can to rectify that old ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed would have been of no consequence, for he could not love that faithful lady too well; but for poor Lysander to be forced by a fairy love-charm, to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after another lady, and leave Hermia ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... the keenest fox-hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by Master Simon, and on which he had founded great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder at the very outset; the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a fever, everything went on lamely and irregularly until they came to a chorus beginning "Now let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... ventures on a remark on Sanskrit grammar. It is the only passage in all his writings, as far as I remember, where, instead of indulging in mere sheet lightning, he comes down upon me with a crashing thunderbolt, and points out a real grammatical blunder. He says ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... intrusion. Nokomee began to talk swiftly in that rattling, high-pitched tongue of theirs. I squatted down on my heels, took out my pipe, lit it. At the flare of my match Holaf struck it from my hand. I realized it had been a blunder, even a spark might attract attention to their presence on the hillside. Still, the incident told me Nokomee had not been lying ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... highest to the lowest—in all metres, and on every variety of subject. This feat was lately communicated to me by one of his then schoolfellows; and I also recollect him once mentioning the subject to me himself; adding, if I recollect correctly, that there was not a blunder found in any of the verses which he had written. During his vacations he visited France, and mastered the French and Italian languages, with both of which, up to the period of his death, he continued perfectly familiar, and very partial to the writers of both. About this time he began to cast about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the parties. This man Cole seems to have been the most wiley conspirator of them all, and played his infamous part of the plot with the most adroit shrewdness; and the defeat of the whole scheme was not owing to any blunder of his, but rather the blunder of those who employed and furnished him with the means. Having been well supplied with money by Mr. Thompson, and no limit put to his expenses, he began his work with a will. He seems to have begun by getting generally well acquainted with the officers ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... while doing their best to precipitate it through the downfall of the Government, may very reasonably continue their policy of pin-pricks to keep politicians from going to sleep, but serious violence would be worse than a crime; it would be a blunder. No general dares throw away his men when nothing is to be gained, and our analysis shows that the interval between women and the vote can only be shortened by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... in such a shape that we cannot fail of debating it with great advantage. He intends, as you will see by his speech, to move the previous question on Pitt's proposition, which he is afraid to attempt to negative. After this recantation was over, the day was closed by such a blunder of Sheridan's, as I never knew any man of the meanest talents guilty of before. During the whole time that I have sat in Parliament, in pretty warm times, I never remember such an uproar as was raised by his threatening us with the danger of provoking the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... and was equally implicated with my graceless self in this little conspiracy. But one thing yet—tell me before I go, Isabelle, Comtesse de Lineuil, whether you really do intend to accept the Baron de Sigognac as your husband—I don't want to run any risk of making a blunder at this stage of the proceedings, you understand, after having conducted the negotiations successfully up to this point. You do definitely and finally accept him, eh?—that is well—and now I will go to the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... by the present Metellus on the Capitol, a statue of Africanus with the name of Serapio inscribed under it, I thought it a mistake of the workman. I now see that it is an error of Metellus's. What a shocking historical blunder! For that about Flavius and the Fasti, if it is a blunder, is one shared in by all, and you were quite right to raise the question. I followed the opinion which runs through nearly all historians, as is often the case with Greek writers. For example, do they ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... wrong term," said James, irritably. "Mesne profits refer to profits derived from real estate. Just like a solicitor to make such a blunder." ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... Nita joined it, and they had the exquisite pleasure of seeing Bob blush so red that there was no need for a candle this time, then turn very white, and clinging to the chairman's arm insist that there must be some blunder—it couldn't be she that they wanted. Finally, assured that the honor had indeed fallen to her, she broke into a war- whoop which shook the house to its foundation and brought the matron on the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... danger would not be divined by the invader. Of course, the chances are that the invading airship would unconsciously miss the mines; on the other hand the possibilities are equally great that it would blunder into one of these traps ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... The blunder, perhaps unavoidable, which stands out with equal emphasis among the preliminary preparations of all the nations engaged in the struggle was the underestimation of the artillery power required for the conduct of a successful military ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... for applying "so pricketh hem nature in hire corages" to the folks that "longen to go on pilgrimages"—and not to the "smale foules." Or is it intended for a happy innovation? To us it seems an unhappy blunder—taking away a fine touch of nature from Chaucer, and hardening it into horn; while "all energies and ages" is indeed a free and affected version of "corages." "For to wander thro'," is a mistranslation of "to seken;" and to "sing the holy mass," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... I told you I was going to be married, you showed your confounded supercilious pity! You thought I was making a fatal mistake. Well, you're not a clever fellow, Stephen, but that was the worst blunder you ever made. Marrying Sadie is perhaps the only wise thing I have done. She has borne with my follies, hustled me when I needed it, and helped me to fight my weaknesses; and if there's any hope of my being a useful man, I owe it to her. Now it's obvious that I can't ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good sense and prudence demanded a more extended enquiry than had yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... witnessed. At the last he discovered that the man had picked up in his wanderings a little German. His own German was not first-rate; it was fluent, forcible, and accurate enough, so far as hotels and railway-stations were concerned; elsewhere it had a tendency to halt, blunder, and double back on itself. But, at all events, he managed to convey to his companion the distinct intimation that any further troubling of that young lady would only procure for him ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... you came here. Then I saw you couldn't be he. Chester had known you when Frank was at home with his mother—I compared dates and was sure of that—and he called you Ford Campbell. So then I saw what a horrible blunder I'd made, and I was worried nearly to death! But I couldn't see what I could do ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of the responsibility that would rest upon you," protested the colonel. "A single blunder on your ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... an army is likely to be a mere encumbrance in war, it is perhaps even a still graver blunder to maintain one during that conflict of preparation which is at present the European substitute for actual hostilities. It consumes. It produces nothing. It not only eats and drinks and wears out its clothes and withdraws men from industry, but under the stress of invention it needs constantly ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche. |
