"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her he loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a horse and a guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His companions spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried out savagely, "Shall we never be out of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Sandy Grahame could spare time from his multifarious work, Archie practised with him, with sword and pike. At first he had but a wooden sword. Then, as his limbs grew stronger, he practised with a blunted sword; and now at the age of fifteen Sandy Grahame had as much as he could do to hold ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... souls! He hath bewitched our souls! Our spears were blunted by his magic! Our swords were turned by the wall of his soul! He ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... moon being red near midnight, with blunted corners or horns, portends mild weather that month. If the corners are white and sharp, there will be frosty ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... no longer the warrior Thane whom we first encounter upon the 'blasted heath', and whom we afterwards see haunted by horrid visions of 'air-drawn daggers', as he turns his hand to crime. He has gotten far beyond all this. Murders to him are become but 'trifles light as air'; use has blunted his sensibility, and to bring back all that agony and horror needs a vastly stronger excitement than a mere deed of blood. We see this in the cool way he tells the murderer, 'There's blood upon thy face', ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... another missile which often appears on these battle-fields—the epithets of 'blasphemer' and 'hater of the Lord.' Of course, in these days these weapons though often effective in disturbing the ease of good men and though often powerful in scaring women, are somewhat blunted. Indeed, they do not infrequently injure assailants more than assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo. These weapons were then in all their sharpness and venom. The first champion who appears against him is Bellarmine, one of the greatest of theologians and one ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... love to little Winny and to marry her, if (and that was not by any means so certain) she would have him—no idea could well have agitated Ranny more. It blunted the fine razorlike edge of his appetite for Sunday supper. It obscured his interest in The Pink 'Un, which he had unearthed from under the sofa cushion in the back parlor, whither he had withdrawn himself to think of it. And thinking ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... sulphur whitening to ivory; and the recesses of the portals and the hollows behind the statues are lined with a black denser and more velvety than any effect of shadow to be obtained by sculptured relief. The interweaving of colour over the whole blunted bruised surface recalls the metallic tints, the peacock-and-pigeon iridescences, the incredible mingling of red, blue, umber and yellow of the rocks along the Gulf of AEgina. And the wonder of the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... patience proved of no avail in this instance. The wreck was too complete to admit of repair. The poor creature occasionally struggled hard to do better; but her constitution was destroyed by vice and hardship; her feelings were blunted by suffering, and her naturally bright faculties were stupified by opium. After she left the Asylum, she lived with a family in the country for awhile; but the old habits returned, and destroyed what little strength she had left. The last I knew of her she was on Blackwell's Island; and she ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Gordon not the slightest opening; and he continued uncomfortably on his way. There was a quality about that thick, black-clad figure which cast a shadow over the cloudless day, it blunted the anticipated pleasure of his meeting with Meta Beggs. There was about Merlier a smell of death like the smell of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... unarmored body. The force of the contact tore the spear from his hand; but almost before it could drop, he had recovered it. And in that flashing instant Denny had darted in at the side of the thing and half disembowelled it with a thrust of the acid-blunted point of his three-foot bar, and a lightninglike wrench up and to ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... wear no robes, no stars, garters, collars, etc.; and it would, therefore, be in good taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of dress. Now I object to the present fashions, as adopted from France, that they are flashy and theatrical. Having their origin with a community whose senses are blunted, drugged, and deadened with dissipation and ostentation, they reject the simpler forms of beauty, and seek for startling effects, for odd and unexpected results. The contemplation of one of our fashionable churches, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and activity of Dick showed him that he was able to play the part of a man. He said little, but watched the boy closely, made him go through trials of strength with some of his troopers, and saw him practise with blunted swords with others. Dick did well in both trials, and the Rajah then requested Anwar, who was celebrated for his skill with the tulwar, to give him, daily, half-an-hour's sword play, after his riding lesson. He himself undertook to teach him to ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... reasoning and subtlety. It was difficult to resist his corrupting influence. And as for Mme. Cantinet—a lean, sallow woman, with large teeth and thin lips—her intelligence, as so often happens with women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she had come to look upon the slenderest daily wage as prosperity. She soon consented to take Mme. Sauvage with her as ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... so long. It would give him some time before returning to the house. When once he was in the street he walked fast. He had no consecutive ideas, but a sort of heavy, ceaseless throbbing in his head like the throb of neuralgia. His sensations were blunted, as though he were in a stupor. He saw nothing but the legs of people walking and the wheels of the carriages turning round. His head felt heavy and at the same time empty. As he saw other people ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... ought to know everything, Sancho," said Don Quixote; "for there were knights-errant in former times as well qualified to deliver a sermon or discourse in the middle of an encampment, as if they had graduated in the University of Paris; whereby we may see that the lance has never blunted the pen, nor the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were, for the most part, as completely out of my reach, as a crown and sceptre. There was, indeed, a resource; but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... large part in the restoration of white control, but it could not have been effective without some connivance from the North. Before 1872 the keenness of Northern radicalism was blunted. Thoughtful Republicans began to examine their work and criticize it. "We can never reconstruct the South," wrote Lowell, "except through its own leading men, nor ever hope to have them on our side till we make it for their interest and compatible with ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... persuasiveness even astonished us. We fancied we were standing before a rhetorical sophist, who for jest and practice knew how to give a fair appearance to the strangest things. Unfortunately this first impression became blunted but too soon; for at the end of every discourse, manage the thing as I would, the man came back again to the same theme. He was not to be held fast to older events, although they interested him,—although he had them present to his mind with their ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... whimsically rapid, compared with the gravity of his employ, that an observer would be tempted to quote again from the same scene, 'Ha! Old Truepenny, canst thou mole so fast i' the ground?' Here, however, the comparison ceased; for, when Sir Elijah made his visit to Lucknow 'to whet the almost blunted purpose' of the Nabob, his language was wholly different from that of the poet—for it would have been totally against his purpose ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... others speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would—Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... another battle—not a battle of flashing swords and clashing steel—but a moral warfare, a battle against ignorance, poverty, and low social condition. In physical warfare the keenest swords may be blunted and the loudest batteries hushed; but in the great conflict of moral and spiritual progress your weapons shall be brighter for their service and better for their use. In fighting truly and nobly for others you win ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the hedge of foemen his blunted sword he threw, And, laid like the oars of a longship the level war-shafts pressed On 'gainst the unshielded elder, and clashed amidst his breast, And dead he fell, thrust backward, and rang on the dead men's gear: But still for a certain season durst no man draw anear. For ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... are, of animated beings," he exclaimed: "Gods, entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision—those mysterious stars!—in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Stephens, and Nathaniel represented Gloucestershire in Parliament at the time of the conviction of Charles I.: it is related that he was only persuaded to agree to the condemnation by the impetuous Ireton, who came there and sat up all night in urgent argument "to whet his almost blunted purpose." Stephens died in May, 1649, expressing regret for having participated in the execution of his sovereign. We are further told in the traditions of the house that when all the relatives were assembled for the funeral, and the courtyard was crowded with ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... course of these little events, or what objects and circumstances, in appearance the least important, lead to changes in fortune, there is not, to my mind, a deeper cause and opportunity for thought. For something in our ordinary actions resembles the little blunted arrows we shoot at targets; little by little we make of our successive deeds an abstract and regular entity that we call our prudence or our will. Then comes a gust of wind, and lo! the smallest of these arrows, the very lightest and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that he had been witless indeed. The thought of raising the bid of five hundred gold to a thousand or more had bemused him, blunted ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... England and for her gallant Allies the point of the cartoon has been blunted, if not entirely destroyed, by subsequent events. But the lesson? It is not far to seek. Is it not that had "business as usual" not been so gladly adopted as the national creed in the early days of war, we might have been ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... every incident. There was something really touching in the abject way in which he mentioned each trifle concerning her. Little circumstances connected with her daily life were described as one would describe the traits of some rare animal. His career of degradation seemed to have blunted every idea of responsibility. He looked upon her as a superior being, and her adornment as a sacred duty. The richness of her toilet, the magnificence of her equipage, the glory of her beauty, became an inexhaustible surprise and delight. The ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... frown sublime, Mocking the blunted scythe of Time, Whence I would watch its lustre pale 100 Steal from the moon o'er yonder vale Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast, Bared to the stream's unceasing flow, Ever its giant shade doth cast On the tumultuous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... last hour come, so they bore the body of the king within the wall. There they occupied a little mound in a sea of enemies, and there each man fought till he died, stabbing with his dagger when his sword was broken, and biting, and striking with the fist, when the dagger-point was blunted. Among them all, none made a better end than Eurytus. He was suffering from a disease of the eyes, but he bade them arm him, and lead him into the thick of the battle. Of another, Dieneces, it is told that hearing the arrows of the Persians ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... theologians with infinite stores of time and torture to draw upon, failed to wean men from sins which gave them a passing gratification, even when faith was incomparably stronger than it is now, or is likely to be again. One reason, doubtless, is that the conscience is as much blunted by the doctrines of repentance and absolution as it is stimulated by the threats of hell-fire. But is it not contrary to all common-sense to expect that the motive will retain any vital strength when the very people who rely upon it admit that it rests on the most shadowy ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... uplifts of trap and granite, over a comparatively level desert of sand and snowy alkali. The terrors of this journey, as performed by horse-carriage, have been fully depicted in our last April number. We may laugh at them now. The question which principally interests us, after we have blunted the first edge of our wonder at the sublime sterility of the Desert, is what conceivable use this waste can be made to subserve. Before the railroad, that question had but a single answer,—the inculcation of contentment, by contrast with the most disagreeable surroundings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... I. The reason is, 'tis much easier to face a blunted lance, than one with a spear-head; and a man may practise the one and thrive in it, but not the other; for the best lance in the tournament is not always the best ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... thoroughly out of danger, Ned was resting again in his own berth, and Jack was dining with the rest in the cabin as if nothing whatever had occurred; the yacht many miles now from the island, which stood in the evening light like a blunted cone of perfect regularity resting upon the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... this Cockney imagined that his condition showed no improvement on that of the savage warrior of two thousand years ago, except in that civilisation had developed finer weapons to kill with and be killed by. The finer instincts had been blunted by the naked and unashamed horrors of war. But the lessons taught him before war scourged the world came back to him on getting his first view of the Holy City. He felt that sense of emotion which makes one wish to be alone and think alone. He was on the ground where Sacred History ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... careful, Amy,' returned her sister. 'If you do such things by accident, you should be more careful. If I happened to have been born in a peculiar place, and under peculiar circumstances that blunted my knowledge of propriety, I fancy I should think myself bound to consider at every step, "Am I going, ignorantly, to compromise any near and dear relations?" That is what I fancy I should do, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... dim, shallow, and ineffective feeling after the great truth, that the only normal state of society is that in which neither the love of virtue has been thrust far back into a secondary place by the love of knowledge, nor the active curiosity of the understanding dulled, blunted, and made ashamed by soft, lazy ideals of life as a life only of the affections. Rousseau now and always fell into the opposite extreme from that against which his whole work was a protest. We need not complain very loudly that while remonstrating against the restless intrepidity of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... lovely in their silvery faint tints that they resemble gigantic roses, it is absolutely wicked to suffer those odious red ones to pervert one's taste; that a person who sees nothing but those every time he looks out of his window very quickly has his nice perception for true beauty blunted; that such a person would do well to visit my garden every day during the month of May, and so get himself cured by the sight of my peony bushes covered with huge scented white and blush flowers; and that he would, I was convinced, at the end of the cure, go home and pitch ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... further into the interior, and heavy burdens were daily bound on their shoulders, and the lash was frequently applied to urge them on, the keen sense of insult which had at first stirred them into wild anger became blunted, and at last they reached that condition of partial apathy which renders men almost indifferent to everything save rest and food. Even the submissive Stevenson was growing callous. In short, that process had begun which usually ends in making men ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... never do for me, I'd rather learn the rule of three— "And since I find it is the plan, To make me an automaton, I'll case my heart in triple mail, And fence it so completely round, That all this vaunted skill shall fail, Those blunted arrows back rebound; For know, usurper! from this hour, I scorn thy laws, abjure thy power! From this dear moment I despise The whole artillery of eyes; Reason alone shall be my guide, And Reason's voice shall win my bride. Some bonny ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... the influence of division of labor. While this takes away the last incentive to thought on the part of the workman, degrading him to a cunning but expensive machine, religion gives to him a new spring of thought, vivifies his blunted mind by the power of transformed affections, and makes him again ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... just alluded to, were the six muskets preserved in the Ti, and three or four similar implements of warfare hung up in other houses; some small canvas bags, partly filled with bullets and powder, and half a dozen old hatchet-heads, with the edges blunted and battered to such a degree as to render them utterly useless. These last seemed to be regarded as nearly worthless by the natives; and several times they held up, one of them before me, and throwing it aside with a gesture of disgust, manifested their contempt for anything that ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... never had he met a foe like this. The monster was so large and so scaly that he could not get round her, while his sword glanced, blunted, from off her skin. Blow after blow he struck, but they only served to increase her fury, till, gathering all her strength together, she wound her great tail about his body, pressing him ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... tobacco and snuff. We have been subjected to the annoyance of being stripped naked, a dozen men together, when a process of 'searching' takes place that is debasing to any human being, but perfectly revolting to men whose sensibilities have never been blunted by familiarity with crime—an ordeal of examination, and the coarse audacity with which it is perpetrated, as would make manhood blush, and which it would assuredly resent, as an outrage upon common decency, in any other place than a prison. And again, when the visiting justice ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... point, the emblem of peace and mercy. But in this he seems to have been partially mistaken. Henry was not created Prince of Wales till after his father's coronation, and he bore in right of the Duchy of Lancaster, and by command of the King, the blunted sword called Curtana, which belonged ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... is a new incident, Mr. Morton, that dead men should rise and push us from our stools. I must see that my blackguards grind their swords sharper; they used not to do their work so slovenly.—But we have had a busy day; they are tired, and their blades blunted with their bloody work; and I suppose you, Mr Morton, as well as I, are well disposed for ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... females who would kill a fowl or a lamb rather than go without it; but they are exceedingly rare. And who would not regard female character as tarnished by a familiarity with such scenes as those to which I have referred? But if the keen edge of female delicacy and sensibility would be blunted by scenes of bloodshed, are not the moral sensibilities of our own sex affected in a similar way? And must it not, then, have a ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... feet devolv'd I cast me, praying him for pity's sake That he would open to me: but first fell Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times The letter, that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead with the blunted point Of his drawn sword inscrib'd. And "Look," he cried, "When enter'd, that thou wash these ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... "One night my blunted steel struck on wood. I whetted the fragment of my blade and cut a hole; I crept on my belly like a serpent; I worked naked and mole-fashion, my hands in front of me, using the stone itself to gain a purchase. I was to appear ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... Anxley looked his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable, seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings, worn on a sturdy and powerful frame. His mouth ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... with growing earnestness. It was not reassuring to consider the possibility of his boy growing up with blunted ideals, with feeble convictions and a faint sense of the eternal difference between sharp cut right and wrong. The most sorrowful experience in Paul Douglas's life might be coming to him at this time if he should find ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... listening. He had even lost the sense of being watched in a sort of heavy tranquillity. His uneasiness, his exasperation, his scorn were blunted at last by all these trying hours. It seemed to him that now they were blunted for ever. "I am a match for them all," he thought, with a conviction too firm to be exulting. The woman revolutionist had ceased speaking; he was not looking at her; there was no one passing ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... hoped to rejoice the hearts of his wife and child, were utterly neglected. He let Isquay do what she pleased with them. The only thing that seemed to comfort him was the tobacco, for that, he found, when smoked to excess, blunted the edge of ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange paths with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... blunted, break on his fortitude; Two evils only never endureth he— Death by a wound in retreating, Life with a ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... married, more or less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that had haunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, that came in the train of the years, drove them ever further into the background. Want of sympathy in his home-life blunted the finer edges of his nature; of a gentle and yielding disposition, he took on the commonplace colour of his surroundings. After years of unhesitating toil, it is true, the most pressing material needs ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to obtain, Love secretly took up his bow again, As one who acts the cunning coward's part; My courage had retired within my heart, There to defend the pass bright eyes might gain; When his dread archery was pour'd amain Where blunted erst had fallen every dart. Scared at the sudden brisk attack, I found Nor time, nor vigour to repel the foe With weapons suited to the direful need; No kind protection of rough rising ground, Where from defeat ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... will now answer your sarcasm. There is some excuse for ignorant seamen before the mast, who enter on board of privateers: they are indifferent to blood and carnage, and their feelings are blunted—there is some excuse even for decayed gentlemen like me, Mr. Trevannion (for I am a gentleman born), who, to obtain a maintenance without labour, risk their lives and shed their blood; but there is no ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... here to the last struggle. As science progresses, it prolongs the agony which is the most dreadful moment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror, for the witnesses, at least; for, often, the sensibility of him who, in Bossuet's phrase, is "at bay with death," is already greatly blunted and perceives no more than the distant murmur of the sufferings which he seems to be enduring. All the doctors consider it their first duty to protract as long as possible even the most excruciating ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the Indians increased when they found that the door was closed. They attacked it with their tomahawks; but their weapons were blunted against the hard oak, clamped with iron as it was. By Tim's advice we still reserved our fire, as our stock of ammunition was small, and we might require it for ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... those things, while scenes that I have admired in my maturer years have been obliterated from my memory! Ah! the child's mind, like soft wax, is easily molded to sensations and impressions that never fade, while man's mind, blunted by the keenness of life's deceptions, can no longer receive and retain the imprints ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed; and, consequently, that her taste was much blunted. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... clear pieces of soft wood, that his knife might not be blunted in cutting them; the Ryls kept him supplied with paints of all colors and brushes fashioned from the tips of timothy grasses; the Fairies discovered that the workman needed saws and chisels and hammers and nails, as well as knives, and brought him a goodly ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... philosophical theories. Newman, who sometimes agreed with Doellinger in the letter, but seldom in the spirit, and who distrusted him as a man in whom the divine lived at the mercy of the scholar, and whose burden of superfluous learning blunted the point and the edge of his mind, so much liked what he heard of this book that, being unable to read it, he had it translated ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of some who were once civil, smiling, wholesome men, whether the mischance of life-taking has fallen to them in their duty to society or in outlawed deeds. It plunges some into dark taciturnity and brooding coldness, as if they had eaten of some root which blunted them to all common ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... to be satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no time for education, for learning, for contemplation; but by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism between muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so much exhausting bodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awkward, and consequently incapable of grasping any other than quite simple situations. At least nine-tenths of the human race falls under this category. But still the ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Court Martial, and sentenced to be shot. But the Emperor, out of consideration for Kasghine's family, commuted the sentence to one of hard labour for life in the mines of Kara,—a cruel kindness. After eight years in the mines, with blunted faculties, broken health, disfigured by the loss of an eye, and already no doubt in some measure demoralised by the hardships he had suffered, he was pardoned,—another cruel kindness. He was pardoned on condition that he would ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... lethal weapons, are not afraid to bite into clay and gravel. They knead the excavated rubbish into pellets, take up the mass of earth and carry it outside. The rest follows naturally; it is the fangs that dig, delve and extract. How finely-tempered they must be, not to be blunted by this well-sinker's work and to do duty presently in the surgical operation ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... his tulwar, examined the edge to see that nothing had blunted its razor-like keenness, and then took his stand at the foot of the bed. Twice he raised his weapon; and then let it fall, with a drawing motion. The keen blade cut through the rug, as if it had been pasteboard; and, at the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... nor stimulus for one half of his faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources, his mental powers, for want of exercise to keep up due vitality in their cerebral organs, become blunted, and his perceptions slow and dull. Unusual subjects of thought become to him disagreeable and painful. The intellect and feelings not being provided with interests external to themselves, must either ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Smith, and yet the glory of the case has rested with Mr. Webster and always will. He gained by his frank honesty and did not lose a whit. But in his latter days, when his sense of justice had grown somewhat blunted and his nature was perverted by the unmeasured adulation of the little immediate circle which then hung about him, he ceased to admit his obligations as in his earlier and better years. From no one did Mr. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... he stretched out his square, sunburned hand, with its misshapen nails, he laughed aloud at the absurdity of those blunted hopes. To-day he stood six feet three inches from the ground, with muscles hard as steel and a chest that rang sound as a bell, yet how much nearer his purpose had he been as a little child! He remembered the day that he had hidden in the bushes with his squirrel gun ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... their young energy; nor had a single pleasure palled upon their appetite. Born, as it were, at the moment when desires and faculties are evenly balanced, when the perceptions are not blunted, nor the senses cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance enjoyed what we may term the first transcendent springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more remarkable than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... exercise the talents with which he was so liberally endowed for his own support and the benefit of mankind; had he some profession which compelled him to mingle in the world, till the too exquisite edge of his sensibilities were blunted by contact with firmer, rougher natures, what a blessing it would have been! With what pride would I have seen him go forth to his daily duties, sure that he was imparting and receiving good. With what rapture would I have ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... him, however dreadful, however sudden, however afflicting. Habitual danger, with unbounded confidence in his own strength and sagacity, had rendered him indifferent to fear, and the lawless and precarious life he led had blunted, though its dangers and errors had not destroyed, his feelings for others. And it was to be remembered that I had very lately seen the followers of this man commit a cruel slaughter on an unarmed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... jumping, wheeling in retreat, throwing the horse. Orchan was a fumbler.... We took to bows next, twelve arrows each. At full speed he put two bolts in the target, and I twelve, all in the white ring.... Then spear against cimeter. I offered him choice, and he took the spear. In the first career, the blunted head of his weapon fell to the ground shorn off close behind the ferrule. The spectators cheered and laughed, and growing angry, Orchan shouted it was an accident, and challenged me to combat. I accepted, but His Majesty interposed—we might conclude with the spear and sword in tourney again.... ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... familiar old living-room. Adam was snoring with his head under the base burner, and Lizzie was clattering the dishes in the kitchen. Amos stood by the table, filling his pipe, and Lydia with her pile of text books had prepared for her evening of study. Amos' work-blunted fingers trembled as he tamped the tobacco into the bowl and Lydia knew that the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... wings above dark seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, in her ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Stephen Alard, also Admiral, both curiously carved with grotesque heads. The roof beams of the church, timber from wrecked or broken ships, are of an integrity so thorough that a village carpenter who recently climbed up to test them blunted all his tools in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... our borders, steady progress has been made in building a world of order. The people of West Berlin remain both free and secure. A settlement, though still precarious, has been reached in Laos. The spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in Viet-Nam. The end of agony may be in sight in the Congo. The doctrine of troika is dead. And, while danger continues, a deadly threat has been removed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw, and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too. Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was not an amiable man, his training as buccaneer and slaver having possibly blunted his finer feelings, and his consciousness of present treachery probably increasing the irritability often succeeding to a ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no help in her. Whether she was daunted and confused in her own conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to Rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say. Probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, girding himself anew, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... crucified Lord, he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails. This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and night. "The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and placed once more the cross upon him. It made his back, where the bones are, bloody and seared. Whenever he sat down or stood up, it was as if a hedgehog-skin were on ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the Kurus and Pandus there was a great struggle between Bhagadatta and Arjuna. In this fight, Bhagadatta being invincible, and Arjuna vulnerable, the latter called Krishna to his aid, who, receiving the charge of Bhagadatta on his breast, blunted the force of the weapons.[7] In like manner, Satish Chandra having received these attacks on his face, peace was restored. But their peace and war was like the ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... last few months, the quiet dulness of the place was infinitely grateful to me. I was like a bruised swimmer, tossed upon a monotonous sandbank, who only asks to be left there in peace, until long repose has rested the aching limbs, and blunted the harrowing recollections of the shipwreck. The incessant excitement of Paris was intolerable to me, and scarcely less so the idea of revisiting its troops of sympathetic friends. They would proffer venal consolation for the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... son. The tenacious old merchant was wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man's sacrifice. In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coarse work. Well, it was not too late to ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... been an indispensable article of wear at a party. The least of her smiles brought dimples into view, and her dimples seemed multitudinous, though there were really only three in her face and one of those irregular things called apple-seeds. Her agreeably blunted features and peachy roundness of cheek belonged to a good-humored, unimposing type, which took on a certain nobility in her case from being carried high on a strong, round neck over a splendid broad breast, partly bare this evening, and seen to be white ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... others, only a word or so, but there was amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however, was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It did produce a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant was issued for her arrest, but, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served. Thus did Mrs. Hicks not ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... two days since the fatal night, not suffering, for every nerve of suffering was blunted and destroyed. He lay, for the most part, in a quiet stupor; for the laws of a powerful and well-knit frame would not at once release the imprisoned spirit. By stealth, there had been there, in the darkness of the night, poor desolated creatures, who stole from their scanty ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... requires expanding a little, in order that it may become of any practical use.—By the "study of the Bible," I do not mean a chapter occasionally read with care: nor even a chapter regularly conned over at night; when a convivial meeting has blunted the edge of observation, or severe study has exhausted the powers of the brain. The devotional use of a portion of Holy Scripture is quite a distinct affair. Still less would the practice satisfy me of following the lessons in ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... concrete. He had been in the cement business before taking to the turf, and there were those who hinted that he still carried a massive sample of the old line above his shoulders. When cross-examined about the grey horse, he blunted every sharp inquiry with polite evasions, but he looked wiser than any human could possibly be, and the impression prevailed that he knew more than he would tell. Perhaps ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... review of a place which had been the residence of her parents, and the scene of her earliest delight, was mingled, after the first shock had subsided, a tender and undescribable pleasure. For time had so far blunted the acuteness of her grief, that she now courted every scene, that awakened the memory of her friends; in every room, where she had been accustomed to see them, they almost seemed to live again; and she felt that La Vallee was still her happiest home. One of the first ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the original Bunkers, with others whom Tim had collected together, his conscience proved less troublesome. The first wrong step taken, the second follows with less compunction, and so on, till the moral sense is completely blunted. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... aspirations of the various states. Such a general preliminary treaty would have gone far towards restoring a basis for the resumption of normal political and economic activity; it would have permitted Wilson to return to the United States as the unquestioned leader of the world; it would have blunted the edge of senatorial opposition; and finally it might have enabled him to avoid the controversies with Allied leaders which compelled him to surrender much of his original programme in a ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... that the vichy had been "killed"; mentally his temper became more vicious than ever as he thought of Dumont's blunted wit at his expense—a wit with edge enough left to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... maintain a common scale of prices. This condition of loose, irregular, and partial co-operation among competing industrial units is the characteristic condition of trade in such a commercial country as England to-day. Competitors give up the combat a outrance, and fight with blunted lances. ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... of Mr. Lee in this manner, even though he could claim disinterested motives, rather phased even the blunted spirit of Donald Pike. If he had dared to, he would have committed his story to writing, and so brought it to Lee's attention. But things that are written often have an unpleasant way of reappearing, to the discomfiture and undoing of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... custom somewhat blunted his sense of the dishonesty, and he began to criticise the thing arithmetically instead of morally. That view once admitted, he was charmed with the ability and subtlety of his dignified sharper; and so the mole-catcher ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to 'im!—Lend it to 'im, eh? Mercy knows, I wouldn't lend 'im a halter to hang himself, since he blunted my iron wedges, and broomed up my beetle so! And I guess, you wouldn't talk about lendin', if the chain had ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Erie he approved the measure enabling corrupt operators to retain possession of the road for an indefinite period in defiance of the stockholders. It is probable that the real character and fatal tendency of his associates had not been revealed to him. Nevertheless, ambition seems to have blunted a strong, alert mind. The appointment of Ingraham, Cardozo, and Barnard to the General Term of the Supreme Court within the city of New York, if further evidence were needed, revealed the Governor's subserviency. To avoid the Tweed judges ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Mr. Griffin's proposal that I should edit such a Cyclopaedia, I had it in my mind that I might make the scissors eminently effective. Alas! on narrowly examining our best Cyclopaedias, I found that the scissors had become blunted through too frequent and vigorous use. One great exception exists: viz., the Penny Cyclopaedia of Charles Knight.[470] The cheapest and the least pretending, it is really the most philosophical of our scientific dictionaries. It is not made up of a series of treatises, some good ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... have answered with the epigram of Canius when Caligula declared him to have been cognisant of a conspiracy against him. "If I had known," said he, "thou shouldst never have known." Grief hath not so blunted my perceptions in this matter that I should complain because impious wretches contrive their villainies against the virtuous, but at their achievement of their hopes I do exceedingly marvel. For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... with a dull and blunted perception that some great calamity had overtaken me. I was in my mother's dressing-room, and Julia was holding to my nostrils some sharp essence, which had penetrated to the brain and brought back consciousness. My father ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... exchange not only absorbs a large quantity in that use,[35] but greatly increases the effect on the imagination of the quantity used in the arts. Thus, in brief, the force of the functions is increased, but their precision blunted, by their unison. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... furious at the escape of their victim, burned his dwelling to the ground. Drentell never forgot his ignominious repulse nor the wound he received at the hands of Haim Kusel. His own offence counted as naught, so blunted was his moral sense. To inflict misery upon a Jew was at all times considered meritorious, but for a Jew to so far forget himself as to assault an officer of the Czar, was a crime for which the whole race would one day ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Her mood did not puzzle him, but how to keep from plunging her deeper into despair baffled him. He exhausted all his powers trying to do for her what he had been able to do for Ruth. Yet he failed. Something had blunted her. The shadow of that baneful trial hovered over her, and he came to sense a strange terror in her. It was mostly always present. Was she thinking of Jane Withersteen and Lassiter, left dead or imprisoned ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... forget to feign surprise when the alarm of murder was raised was very natural, and so was the fact that a woman with a soul so blunted to all delicate instincts, and with a mind so intent upon perfecting the scheme entered into by the murderer of throwing the blame upon the man whose dagger had been made use of, should persist in visiting the scene of crime and calling attention to the spot ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... Baltimore, and the snares of robbery laid for the unwary—and the method adopted to entrap a rich and unwary citizen. The revelations were truly startling, and displayed a painful instance of the "facilis descensus averni"—a father whose feelings were blunted, and hardly to be re-awakened even by the death of a beloved daughter. And this was but one instance out of thousands, in which the sum of $1200, $1500, and $2000 had been lost at various times, and a fatal, fascinating ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... after, and the sufferer who had been carried back received the first attention, the others all having their turn; and just as the last bandage had been applied, Sir Morton, who had been having a walk round, came upon the pikes, stained and blunted, leaning against a buttress of the wall. This brought him to the men's quarters, and in utter astonishment he stood gazing at ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... the horrors of which will never be known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the room and close the door. There were wild cries and shrieks and groans. Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a window in exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans gradually ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of mutilated remains were thrown ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... been arranged. You will advise him also that it is our royal will that this contest be not fought upon the bridge, since it is very clear that it must end in one or both going over into the river, but that he advance to the end of the bridge and fight upon the plain. You will tell him also that a blunted lance is sufficient for such an encounter, but that a hand-stroke or two with sword or mace may well be exchanged, if both riders should keep their saddles. A blast upon Raoul's horn shall ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ... God! how he had loved her! ... And yet, latterly, how he had got to take his supreme possession of her as a matter of course; had allowed the joy of it to be blunted by depression and irritability over sordid station worries. He remembered with piercing remorse how often he had neglected the trivial courtesies to which he knew she attached importance. How he had been prone to sullen fits of moodiness; had ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... learned to write. The boy's wits, sharpened instead of blunted by repression, saw opportunities where more favored children could see none. He gave himself his first writing lesson in his master's shipyard, by copying from the various pieces of timber the letters with which they had been marked by the ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... yet towards—the outspread wings of the dove that lies brooding on the troubled waters. So long all is well,—all replete with instruction and example. In the fierce and inordinate I am made to know and be grateful for the clearer and purer radiance which shines on a Christian's paths, neither blunted by the preparatory veil, nor crimsoned in its struggle through the all- enwrapping mist of the world's ignorance: whilst in the self- oblivion of these heroes of the Old Testament, their elevation above all low and individual interests,—above all, in the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... now abandoned by his false friends. Then he goes on: "As to the flatterers you speak of and their ingratitude, I shall deal with them another time, and they will meet with their due punishment as soon as I have had my thunderbolt repaired. The two largest darts of it were broken and blunted the other day when I got in a rage and flung it at the sophist Anaxagoras, who was trying to make his disciples believe that we gods do not exist at all. However, I missed him, for Pericles held his hand over him, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... the year, Four varying seasons to one law conformed. If chilly showers e'er shut the farmer's door, Much that had soon with sunshine cried for haste, He may forestall; the ploughman batters keen His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand, Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands Amerian for the bending vine prepare. Now let the pliant basket ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... her ears with cotton, began to breast the slope with fearless heart and dauntless soul; and as soon as she had advanced a few steps a hubbub of voices broke out all around her, but she heard not a sound, by reason of her hearing being blunted by the cotton-wool. Then hideous cries arose with horrid din, still she heard them not; and at last they grew to a storm of shouts and shrieks and groans and moans flavoured with foul language such as shameless women use when railing one at other. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... stalwart frame. But, in front of the face, one forgot the framework. The speaking countenance, from which it was impossible to detach one's gaze, both charmed and fascinated the beholder. His hair floated over the forehead in large locks; his black eyes pierced like arrows blunted by benevolence; they entered yours confidently as if they were friends; his cheeks were full, rosy, and strongly coloured; the nose was well modelled, yet a trifle long; his lips, gracefully limned, ample and raised at the corners; his teeth, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... which they cultivate upon the Chinese whom it demoralizes. Is this difference merely the difference between a pocket in a toga and one in the trousers? But a nerve from the moral sense does, nevertheless, spread into papilloe over the surface of the tighter pocket, not entirely blunted by yellow potations; so that the human as well as financial advantage of Jamaica emancipation is perceived. Should we expect this from the nation which undertook the destruction of the Danish fleet before Copenhagen in 1801, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... insensibly, sinking into her grave. No appetite, and indeed was threatened with atrophy at one time. But she was so surrounded with loving-kindness that her shame diminished, her pride rose, and at last her agony was blunted, and only a pensive languor remained to show that she had been crushed, and could not be again the bright, proud, high-spirited ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... hearing were somewhat blunted by age, and he was proceeding very slowly; for his horse was old and feeble, like his owner. He was suddenly disturbed by loud hurrahs from behind, and by a furious pelting of balls of snow and ice upon the top of ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the general public, I have no doubt that the feeling of shame and sympathy, are blunted by these repeated military calamities, and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... stay awake hour after hour, tossing and turning on the tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing into his right side and his head throbbing and aching after Canteen? He thought over this for many, many nights, and the world became unprofitable to him. He even blunted his naturally fine appetite with beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot talked at and made a mock ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... for Cecilia, was the most unfortunate that could have happened; the gentleness of Delvile was alone sufficient to melt her, since her pride had no subsistence when not fed by his own; and while his mildness had blunted her displeasure, his anguish had penetrated her heart. Lost in thought and in sadness, she continued fixed to her seat; and looking at the door through which he had passed, as if, with himself, he had shut out all for ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... conscience, though still felt, have become less keen. The offence is repeated, again and again, till conscience is almost seared over—and the omission of what had at first given great pain, almost ceases to be troublesome. And thus the conscience, having been blunted in one respect, is more liable to be so in others. Alas for the individual, who is thus, from day to day, growing worse, and yet from day to day becoming less sensible ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... and tried to stick it into the hippopotamus, but the skin was so tough the knife was blunted against it. Then he tried other means; but ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... witnessing the agony of her rival. Vane was dead and retribution had swiftly overtaken his assassin. What was left? Nothing. Sally had also found romance, and some tender womanly instinct—an instinct too often blunted by her life and temptations—sealed her lips. She had avenged the death of the only man she ever loved with anything like purity. Let ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he has let go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that his conscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whet his 'almost blunted purpose'; and conscience may unsettle a purpose but does not blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given on the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... that his mind was rigid and of a close fibre: it was a mind (to repeat the metaphor) out of which a strong graying-tool could be forged. Its blade would not be blunted: it could deal with its material. Of this character, which I take to be the first essential in his achievement, the few essays before us ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... I expected every day to receive an agonised message from Mrs. Boyce announcing his death. Then, as is the way of humans, the keenness of my apprehension grew blunted, until, at last, I took his continued existence as a matter of course. I wrote him a few friendly letters, to which he replied in the same strain. And so ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... country and in small towns people come face to face with life, especially women. It means marrying, child-bearing, household cares and burdens, neighbourhood gossip, sickness, death, burial, and whether the corpse appeared natural. But ever so much kindness goes with their disillusion; they are blunted, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the same day for a sufficient pretext. As the hour approached Fergus made the distressing discovery that his friend and host had anticipated the festivities with too free a hand. Macbean was not drunk, but he was perceptibly blunted and blurred, and Fergus had never seen the pale eyes so watery or the black skull-cap so much on one side of the venerable head. The lad was genuinely grieved. A whiskey bottle stood empty on the laden board, and he had the temerity to pocket the corkscrew ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... by attaining in this way whole half days of unconsciousness, from which she emerged only half awake, with benumbed intelligence, blunted perceptions, hands that did things by force of habit, the motions of a somnambulist, a body and a mind in which thought, will, memory seemed still to retain the drowsiness and vagueness of the confused waking hours ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... fellow does his best to find other hosts for them. As to those parasites, and the ingratitude they showed him, I will attend to them before long; they shall have their deserts as soon as I have got the thunderbolt in order again. Its two best spikes are broken and blunted; my zeal outran my discretion the other day when I took that shot at Anaxagoras the sophist; the Gods non-existent, indeed! that was what he was telling his disciples. However, I missed him (Pericles had held up his ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... joy receive, In the proud mansions of the rich and great? Or, tell me, can the wounded bosom heave With blunted anguish ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... incapable of mutually sustaining each other; for we all know that mere corporal employment lessens affliction, or enables us in a shorter time to forget it, whilst the acuteness of bodily suffering, on the other hand, is blunted by those pursuits which fill the mind with agreeable impressions. During the few days, therefore, that intervened between the last interview which Connor held with Nogher M'Cormick, and the day of his final departure he felt himself rather relieved ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her satin-shod feet, to cling to her odorous hands, such hands as were never formed out of China, like petals of coral. Not only her bodily charm intoxicated him, but the thought of her subtle mind added its attraction, its shadows never to be pierced by the blunted Western instinct, the knowledge of pleasures like perfumes, the calm blend of the eight diagrams of Confucius, the stoicism of the Buddhistic soul revolving perpetually in the urn of Fate, and of the aloof ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and though I have spared no pains to let her know how detestable I think her, it is all in vain; she remains as firmly entrenched in her own good opinion as folly and conceit can make her; and I have the despair of seeing all my buffetings fall blunted to the ground. She reminds me of some odious fairy or genii I have read of, who possessed such a power in their person that every hostile weapon levelled against them was immediately turned into some agreeable ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... itself. The crystals are generally half an inch long, but often less. The modifications of the above form, which are frequent in this species, strike one forcibly of the resemblance they bear to a broad stone spear head on a diminutive scale, with a blunted edge; their hardness is about 4, specific gravity 2.2, the color generally a pearly white or grayish. After a long boiling with nitric acid it gelatinizes, but it foams up and fuses to a transparent glass before the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them. This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually becomes inert, dull, blunted; it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things; nothing but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries can entertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself; it hasn't time to slump down to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... understood it, had she known to what base deeds a mind blunted by selfishness and vanity can ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau |
