"Blunderer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could. If an error, however gross, on any subject, were made in his presence, he never took willing notice of it; or if circumstances obliged him to touch upon it, it was always done with a politeness and tact that afforded the blunderer the means of retreat. If some gross historical error, for instance, happened to be committed in a conversation with himself (and then only), he would set the mistake right, as a matter of conscience, but ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... thinking only makes men wretched; And happiness is still the lot of fools. Why should a wise man wish to think, when thought Still hurts his pride; in spite of all his art, Malicious fortune, by a lucky train Of accidents, shall still defeat his schemes, And set the greatest blunderer above him. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Confronted him with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer was the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... eyes had seen half so quickly as Hannah and Little Sister's who the blunderer was. In the whole drill there had been but one figure for them, and that was Bud, Bud, and it was he who had dropped his bayonet. Anxious, nervous with the desire to please them, perhaps with a shade too much of ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the inclination of his son about a trade. A boy may have more qualifications for one pursuit than another; and this will generally be made manifest in the bent of his mind. He will exhibit a degree of tact for one calling, while he may be a blunderer at almost anything else. This characteristic is more remarkable with some boys than with others, and a disregard of it often entails unhappiness upon a whole family. When Handel, the distinguished musician, was a child, his father strictly ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... running lecture on abstract points of science, subject to cross-examination by two acute students. Bernie does not cross-examine much; but if any one gets discomfited, he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle giggle, which is trying to the unhappy blunderer." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one of the masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior age. That had been a part of Gaston's plan—he was a blunderer born, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's eye wander from the splendid ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... delirious from starvation that a prosperous shoe-merchant, benevolently engaged in religious rescue-work, came across Thompson, and, struck by the incongruity of his gentle speech, induced him to accept employment in his shop. But one cannot allow business to suffer on account of an inveterate blunderer, even though the blunderer wear wings and has endeared himself to the family. Mr. McMaster, kindly Anglican lay-missionary, who deserves grateful remembrance for recognizing and temporarily helping merit under the most deceptive disguise, was obliged ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass—so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... which we were clambering, were in many places fearful spots enough—places where a stumble or a divagation of the foot but six or eight inches from the narrow path would have precipitated the blunderer to assured and inevitable destruction. "Here," said I to my wife, as we stood side by side on one such ledge, "would be the place for a husband, who wanted to get rid of his wife, to accomplish his purpose. Done in ten seconds! With absolute certainty! One ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward we are fidanzati, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on the day when you succeed ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so good a book. You will notice one or two other variations in the prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend's discretion. Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in regard to the amount of 9 ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... into Mainz. It only remained for Great Britain to attempt to keep the French out of Holland. The defence of the Dutch, after everything south of the river Waal had been lost, Pitt determined to entrust to abler hands than those of the Duke of York; but the presence of one high-born blunderer more or less made little difference in a series of operations conceived in indifference and perversity. Clerfayt would not, or could not, obey the Emperor's orders and succour his ally. City after city in Holland welcomed the French. The very elements ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... truth, Tuscarora, if the Mingoes didn't know that they are near soldiers; but soldiers commonly think more of their dinner at a halt than of their wisdom and danger. No, no; let the boy pile on his logs, and smoke them well too; it will all be laid to the stupidity of some Scotch or Irish blunderer, who is thinking more of his oatmeal or his potatoes than of Indian sarcumventions or ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... influence of continuation, should be seriously considered as regards all Rommany words which resemble in sound others of the same meaning, either in Hindustani or in English. It should also be observed that the Gipsy, while he is to the last degree inaccurate and a blunderer as regards English words (a fact pointed out long ago by the Rev. Mr Crabb), has, however, retained with great persistence hundreds of Hindu terms. Not being very familiar with peasant English, I have generally found Gipsies more intelligible in Rommany ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... servant is lazy, with which you get angry once for all, and have done with it? If your servant makes twenty blunders a day, do not regard them as twenty separate facts at which to get angry twenty several times: regard them just as twenty proofs of the one fact that your servant is a blunderer; and be angry just once, and no more. Or if some one you know gives twenty indications in a day that he or she (let us say she) is of a petted temper, regard these merely as twenty proofs of one lamentable fact, and not as twenty different facts to be separately ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... He might insinuate, but a barefaced putting into words outraged his feelings. His eyes sent out flashes of lightning at the innocent little blunderer, but Marie's eyes shone; her face was one beam of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... evolution of "Dodd" while he went to school to Amos Waughops, in "deestrick four." As the plot unfolds, and it shall appear what kind of a pupil-carpenter Amos really was, you may wonder how it happened that such a blunderer ever got into that workshop, the school room, and had a chance to try his tools on "Dodd." Wait a minute, and verily you shall find ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... busy telling over his blunders. He had served French instead of German champagne at a banquet for Prince Henry, and he had allowed the Kaiser's yacht to be christened in French champagne. How could such a blunderer satisfy the diplomatic requirements of the vain and petty Kaiser? And yet! Holleben was utterly devoted and willing to grovel in the mud. He even suggested to President Roosevelt that at the State Banquet at the White House, Prince Henry, as a Hohenzollern, and the representative ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... A mysterious power dealt the cards for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by my ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... through his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not. I'm an awful blunderer,' Dick said, adding, mentally, 'and liar, too, though I didn't say anybody would be happy to see them. Poor Billy, he is well enough, and so is Ann Eliza, if she wouldn't pile that red hair so high on the top of her head and wear so much jewelry. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... ready-made identity and so believed that it had already existed as a Challon before re-birth as a dog. Its brain received instantly all 'my' training, so that it became at once 'mature.' What I have endured in these eight years—the isolation of mind and inadequacy of body—have been a blunderer's reward visited upon his victim as a further injury. Now that Homer lies near death—and 'I' with him, of course—I welcome 'our' approaching release ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... I was generally a blunderer; yet something warned me that my answer would displease her. I could, however, see no way of avoiding it, and when I said as unconcernedly as I could, "Yes, and talked to her about Canada!" Alice for no particular ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... had sometimes suspected he possessed in rare, exalted moments, were now shown vain ideas born from his own conceit; and the event had proved him no more subtle, clever, or far-seeing than other men. Indeed, he rated himself as an abject blunderer and thought he saw how a great overwhelming fear, at the bottom of his worship of Chris, had been the only true note in all that past war of emotions. But he had refused to listen and pushed forward; ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... as beyond his understanding—the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid—but we of modern times must add a fifth, and that is the way of justice. For often a blunderer caught red-handed escapes with slight punishment, while the clever man who transgresses, yet conceals his transgression craftily, pays at the end of a devious sequence with his life. Of this fashion was the death ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... would have landed their entire expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in Esmond's heart always created a sort of rage of pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he loved best, the young blunderer sank down on his knees, and besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a speech, he who had caused her malady, and Doctor Tusher told him that a bear he was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fourth day an unexpected event threw out his calculations. Summoned to town by the arrival in England of her husband's mother, she left without giving Darrow the chance he had counted on, and he cursed himself for a dilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was tempered by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France; and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she avoided him, or ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a great deal of pains with that part of her subject, for she was determined to do justice to it. She was aware that it was open to her to take the ordinary practical view of Rickman as a culpable blunderer, who, by holding his tongue when he should have spoken, had involved her in the loss of much valuable property. To an ordinary practical woman the fact that this blunder had entailed such serious consequences to herself would have made ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the verge of perdition. He would meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all posts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor. Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whether they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... away feeling that he was a blunderer. The fact was that he was a neophyte and, it was true, did not possess the qualities which make a successful lobbyist. Mr. Stamps had wheedled or forced his way into the great man's apartment and had persisted in remaining to press his claim until he was figuratively turned out by the shoulders. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nothing that is not in the spelling-book. For the first half hour or so he chooses common and easy words, that the spirit of the evening may not be damped by the too early thinning of the classes. When a word is missed, the blunderer has to sit down, and be a spectator only for the rest of the evening. At certain intervals, some of the best speakers mount the platform, and "speak a piece," which is generally ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... arms and currents ultimately meet in the main stream. What an idea, Raphael, I form of the Great Artist, who, differently travestied in a thousand copies, still retains identical features in all this diversity, from which even the depreciating hand of a blunderer ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... answered Walter. "In case they do not, however, they cannot be meddled with by underlings. Instead they are immediately reported to the government and the two countries involved settle their dispute by arbitration. It is too delicate a matter for others to butt in on, for some blunderer might offend another country and get us into war just through being stupid. Conversely, when our ships are in foreign waters they must keep the naval rules of ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this trick. When ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... dedication to the Earl of Salisbury, the translator informs his lordship that "ce livre est la premiere traduction de l'Anglois jamais imprimee en aucun vulgaire"—the first translation from the English ever printed in any modern language! Whether the translator is a bold liar, or an ignorant blunderer, remains to be ascertained; at all events it is a humiliating demonstration of the small progress which our home literature had made ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... was gaining control of himself; the shock, the readjustment, had been so sudden that sensation returned slowly—"to think, dear blunderer, of your coming among us all, striking your blow, and then rushing to your In-Place! But love is mightier than thou; mightier than ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... her, she could do almost anything. You take off her rival, and I send away the interfering sister; and all she has to do is to snap up the young man, while her mother and that illustrious cook of yours stand by and clap their hands. But I do not give you much credit. You are merely an inconsiderate blunderer, to say no more. You did not plan anything; I did that, and when my plans don't work one way, they do in another. This one was like a boomerang that did not hit what it was aimed at, but came banging and clattering back all the same. And now I will remark that I have given up that sort ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... man has full sway, he is as much a tyrant to-day as he was five hundred years ago. Nations have been emancipated, but the kingdom of which the small boy is a subject remains what it always was. Nature, who is a well-meaning blunderer, has tried to set things right, first by planting some natural affection for his small boy into the stony heart of the parent, and, second, by making the small boy himself an optimist. Happily, there is always a silver lining to the cloud that hovers over the small ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "What sort of blunderer do you take me to be? I sent her a note two hours ago saying I should go after her, and she sent me for reply, a note saying she would be more than glad to come. But you mustn't grow conceited over that. I didn't tell her you were ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... "You are no blunderer, monsieur," she said gravely; "and if you are a giant, you are one of the good kind who use their strength and their courage in rescuing distressed damsels. I hope they will not all requite you as badly ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... treatment of Van Braam, more than any thing else, which convinces us that the suspicion of his being in collusion with the French in regard to the misinterpretation of the articles of capitulation, was groundless. He was simply a blunderer. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... You have told me much ancient history!—but all that truly concerns me this morning lies in the dark. The last time I saw you, you were standing at the garden-door, with a look which made me say to myself that I was the same blunderer I had always been, and had far best keep away. Bridge me the gap, please, between that hell ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... To speak plainly, I wish he had given us both a sound cudgelling. What was the good of showing yourself, and, like a Blunderer, coming and giving the lie to all ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... that the new master will abandon the blunderer for the insult, and there is the peril that the old one will destroy him for ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... said the prisoner, moodily. "I'm sitting here because one of us blundered." He cursed the blunderer. "Lighting his fool fire queered the whole deal," he added. As he again heavily cursed the blunderer, the others murmured to each other various I told ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Humphrey Wanley, and were given to the printer by Lord Chief-Justice Parker. But these types were very indifferently cut. Wanley himself said 'when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but unlike ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... this, with a frank show of reaction from some of his friend's terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the babbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. "He too has known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of 'the drift of public opinion'!" After which he quite charged at his vain informant. "Am I to tell you again ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... Charles might well conceive himself happy. Upon his sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope[30] actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young Prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... craft of Catholic superstition first corrupted its simplicity. So, so. Here it comes out at last! It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted! O impudence! And then the exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer! ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... if you like to put it so, it was kindness and generosity and universal compassion that ruined him; but it would be nearer the truth to call him a fool and a simpleton and a blunderer; he did not realize that his proteges were carrion crows and wolves; vultures were feeding on his unfortunate liver, and he took them for friends and good comrades, showing a fine appetite just ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... that this accomplished black-letterer must have been under a common delusion, that our ancestors not only wrote but pronounced the definite article "the" as "ye." Every blunderer ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have recourse to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for expressing ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise. Being so well warned beforehand, it is a very stupid animal, or a very bold one, that cannot keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... less attractive to him, the songs of the birds, who were all awake, fell on inattentive ears; he was haunted by her face and voice, and he was, moreover, a little out of humor with himself for having been such a blunderer as to give her offense and thus leave an unfavorable impression on ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... know, if you wouldn't mind telling me, what you detect of the blunderer in him. I am quite ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... violence, to make so weak a man uneasy about his personal safety. He would soon be eager to fly. All facilities for flight must then be placed within his reach; and care must be taken that he should not again be stopped by any officious blunderer. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stiffly aloft; Lucas, half in and half out of his chair, seemed to have got just where he intended, making no effort to seat himself. Skinny Thompson, his hand on his gun, seemed paralyzed; his mouth was open to frame a reply that never was uttered and he stared through narrowed eyelids at the blunderer. The sole movement in the room was the slow rising of Hopalong and the markedly innocent shuffling of the cards by Elkins, who appeared to be entirely ignorant of the weight and effect of his words. He dropped the pack for the cut and then looked up and around as if ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... from the stables; Mamercus from the garden. Drusus faced his two subordinates, and in an eye's twinkling had taken in the situation. Mamercus, who felt within himself that he, by his oversight, had been the chief blunderer, to vent his vexation smote Falto so sound a cuff that the under villicus sprawled his ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Some very pleasant blunderer is said to have declared Moore's Life of Sheridan to be the best piece of Autobiography he had ever read; and with little more propriety can the concluding volume of Vidocq's Memoirs be said to belong to that species of literature styled Autobiography. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... respects and reverences another more than I do General Washington. I esteem his virtues, private and public. I know him to be a man of sense, courage and firmness." But four months later he was lamenting Washington's "fatal indecision," and by inference was calling him "a blunderer." In another month he wrote, "entre nous a certain great man is most damnably deficient." At this point, fortunately, Lee was captured by the British, so that his influence for the time being was destroyed. While ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... well marked and with her scent strong upon it, she knew it could be no ignorant blunderer that drew near. It was plainly an enemy, and an arrogant enemy, since it made no attempt at stealth. The steps were not those of any hunter, white man or Indian, of that she presently assured herself. With this assurance, her anxiety ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... an attractive one. Just now she is in a mood to turn to us, to you. But, for Heaven's sake, be careful! She is delicate and sensitive and requires managing. She likes you. If only you weren't such a blunderer!" ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... overawe, browbeat, or deceive Lincoln, the President nurses his leg, and is reminded of a story; when anybody tries the same game with Grant, the General listens and—smokes. If you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the Presidency, it does not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... forgotten him yet?" Victor enquired in simulated surprise. "Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... jest-books that has been saved from the wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning; the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is always called a man ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... shallow, little beauty, the fitting mate for his staid maturity. And that his failure to make this point clear might lead to a serious misapprehension on Persis' part, failed to present itself as a possibility to the honest blunderer. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... to Jacqueline. There, too, things were going better. None of Philip's growing interest and tenderness for his little playmate had escaped her notice. Motherwise, she exaggerated these into symptoms of greater import. Blunderer that she was, she had at least managed to bring the child safe through the perils of a first passion, that rock upon which so many young lives wreck, even as hers had wrecked. In the rebound from the affair with ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... For a blunderer, the souvenir he had evoked was a very skillfully-contrived piece of baseness; for by the remembrance of his own fete he, for the first time, perceived its inferiority compared with that of Fouquet. Colbert received back again at Vaux what Fouquet had given him at Fontainebleau, and, as ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to send them to France by the first opportunity. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit, might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue in favour of the exiled family of the Bourbons." Thus the paternal advice ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the secret of night-riding is to give yourself up to your horse, for your horse may be as big a blunderer as you, and become a mixture of stupidity and anxiety. What I advise is, give yourself up to your sub-consciousness, if you can, and this will lead you through the darkest places and the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... common to be amusing, but sometimes the blunderers manage to hit upon something which is rather comic. Thus an ignorant reader coming upon a reference to an angle of forty-five degrees was puzzled, and astonished his hearers by giving it out as angel of forty-five degrees. This blunderer, however, was outdone by the speaker who described a distinguished personage "as a very indefatgable young man,'' adding, "but even he must succmb'' (suck 'um) ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... now ran straight toward defeat; for, while the leaders could not avoid supporting Adams for a second term, they hated him as a blunderer and marplot. On his part, his patience exhausted, Adams dismissed two of his secretaries, in a passion, in 1800. Later, through the wiles of Aaron Burr, Republican leader in New {180} York, a pamphlet, written by Hamilton to prove Adams's utter unfitness for the Presidency, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... fool. You may be worse. I believe you are. But one thing's certain—you're a fool. Even in wickedness you're a blunderer." ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands." Integrity in purpose and discretion in action are the two qualities here emphasized. The former without the latter makes the impracticable blunderer; the latter without the former makes the time-serving schemer; the two together make the wise ruler of men. Unless I greatly err, we shall see these two qualities strikingly illustrated in the story of that Episcopate of which I am now to speak ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... crimes—are precipitated into the coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open road to connubial felicity, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... pages, had, however openly at war with religion, kept at least upon decent terms with the cause of morality. It was indeed a fatal day for Mr. Jeffrey, when he degraded both himself and his original coadjutors, by taking into pay such an unprincipled blunderer as Hazlitt. He is not a coadjutor, he is an accomplice. The day is perhaps not far distant, when the Charlatan shall be stripped to the naked skin, and made to swallow his own vile prescriptions. He and Leigh ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... ear. The thing was clearing somewhat in Crowley's direction; the blunderer had not lied on one point at least—the point that Mern found most blindly puzzling. What in the mischief had happened to the nature of Lida Kennard, as Mern knew that nature, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... a settled thing that the organist of San Roman—that squint-eye, who is always slandering other organists—that great blunderer, who seems more like a butcher than a master of sol fa—is going to play this Christmas Eve in Maese Perez's old place. Of course, you know, for everybody knows it, and it is a public matter in all Seville, that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... her only response. Then the discomfited experimenter told herself that she was a blunderer. How could the poor fellow be expected to know what she meant? Why had she not asked the service from him? She ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaroscuro—if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors—then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great Circe of art—the great transformer of mind into sensuality—no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... lugged into court as reluctant witnesses of the truth of Christianity, as their further attendance can be no longer necessary: and I would leave him to consider whether the liberal appellation of "dogmatical blunderer," which he has bestowed upon me, p. 114 of his work, relative to my arguments upon this prophecy, may not better apply to ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... is (as I have said) for describing this lady, arises out of her relation to the tragic events which followed. She, by her criminal levity, was the cause of all. And I must here warn the moralizing blunderer of two errors that he is too likely to make: 1st, That he is invited to read some extract from a licentious amour, as if for its own interest; 2d, Or on account of Donna Catalina's memoirs, with a view to relieve their too martial character. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... personal abuse of several great men, the poet's particular friends, he most amply deserved a niche in the temple of infamy: witness a paper, called the 'Free Briton;' a dedication entitled, 'To the genuine blunderer,' 1732, and many others. He wrote for hire, and valued himself upon it; not indeed without cause, it appearing that he received 'for Free Britons, and other writings, in the space of four years, no less than ten thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... ruin stared me in the face. It is easy enough to be contrite with the policeman at your heels. But I was yet to discover that real repentance is made of sterner stuff, and needs a hand that is stronger to save and steadier to direct than any which I, poor blunderer that I was, had as yet reached ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... blunderer released her victim, with the view of allowing Nelly a chance to express her gratitude, and, for the first time, caught sight of ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... certainly very kind, now that your anger has had time to cool during these ten years, to accord to me the merit of being possibly sincere. Now I was more Christian in my conclusions; I set you down as an honest blunderer. That I have had occasion since to change my opinion is nothing to the purpose but it would be pleasanter for both of us if apologies could restore our friend, Mrs. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... times," said Milton, "I've told you chaps to load the grub half and half between the boats? Somebody blundered. I'm not going to ask who because I'm the chief blunderer myself, for neglecting to check you over, at every loading. With care, we've about two days' very scanty rations here, and only beans and coffee, at that. With the best of luck and no stops for Survey work we're ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... dear, you can't do that, you know! You're a blessed old blunderer, but one doesn't boil water for tea in a leaky coffee-pot! Wait! I'll tell you! I'll call the girls and we'll make a 'bee' of it and get the supper ourselves, before Aunt Malinda and Dinah and the rest get back. They'll be sure ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... interest that hovered between jeering and applause, his neighbours followed him up and down the dam. As I might not go on, I wandered up and down the bank too, and occasionally joined in a murmured cheer when he deftly evaded some intentional blunderer, or cut a figure at the request of his particular friends. I got tired at last, and went down to the pond, where I ploughed about for a time on my skates in solitude, for the pond was empty. Then I ran up to the house to see if Jem had come ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... myself for a blunderer. When I got to the street the two men had disappeared. I should have shadowed the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in action and how magnanimous in after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he had been credited (to his ingenuous delight) by reviewers of "The Greater Glory" with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's nature, I have never met a more dunder-headed blunderer in his dealings with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on Liosha's part, but seems to have been absolutely fogged ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... understand the vast purification that has been wrought, we must study the history of the reign from 1765 to 1784, and then we may feel happy as we compare our gentle, beneficent Sovereign with the unscrupulous blunderer who fought the Colonists and all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... occasion to wonder where the Boss would banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win; but even idle speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... there is 'danger nigh'—because we are pleased with the beautiful foam, need we steer straight for the breakers? Not every tempting morsel is the enemy's bait, though we should be careful how we nibble;—he is no blunderer (a proof positive that he is not Irish), never leaves his trap sprung—and we may ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
