"Confound" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the least, madam—confound it, I don't! Now when will you put the series, lock, stock ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... you what I think—and what I want to say! You're a girl, confound it! I'll only make a fool of myself, talking to you about our rights and our property. But I can say to you, about your own work, that you have been paid by our money ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... general condition of human life understood by the panegyrists and historians, who amuse us with accounts of the poverty of heroes and sages. Riches are of no value in themselves, their use is discovered only in that which they procure. They are not coveted, unless by narrow understandings, which confound the means with the end, but for the sake of power, influence, and esteem; or, by some of less elevated and refined sentiments, as necessary to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... at him. "Confound it, what are you doing with no more rank than captain? On the face of it, you're an old hand, a highly ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... grimly, "that anything I ought to know I shall be told ... over and over again ... confound it.... And remember, Aunt Mary, that what I've told you is not in the least private. Tell Pen, tell Mrs. Fream, tell Withells, but just leave me to tell Miss ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... say, in a deprecatory tone that amused me vastly, "I really pity the poor little devil, and can't help doing all in my power for him. He's such a soft little ass,—confound Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!—and then the boy is out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of ale ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... "myriad-minded Shakespeare" could do what to an ordinary, or even extraordinary, man would be an absolute impossibility. One critic discovers Shakespeare to be a musician; another, a classical scholar; and so he has been claimed in almost every field. He was not all. So critics confound us. They also confound themselves. The genius which could write the plays could master all these, though he squandered his youth. Let the history of genius guide from this labyrinth. Was not Caesar orator, general, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the presents.] Very nice. [Picking up a case of jewellery.] Ve-ry nice. [Throwing the case down angrily.] Confound 'em, what the devil do ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Said in a quasi-complimentary sense, as we say, "Confound him, what a clever rascal he is!" See the Nights passim for ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... strong, and his continual aversion to childish sports and youthful exercise provoked the easy criticism of that large part of humanity who are ready to confound cause and effect, and such brief moments as the Sluysdaels could spare him from their fashionable duties were made miserable to them by gratuitous suggestions and plans for their child's improvement. It was noticeable, however, that few of them were ever offered to Johnnyboy personally. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "Confound it!" said Solomon Oldfield. "What am I to do? I mustn't tell her it is Miss Somerset." So the wary lawyer had a copy of the letter made, and sent to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... my muse! what numbers wilt thou find To sing the furious troops in battle join'd? Methinks I hear the drum's tumultuous sound, The victors' shouts and dying groans confound; The dreadful burst of cannon rend the skies, And all the thunders of the battle rise. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war: In peaceful ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the fatal ring. Of course, mused he, with a shrug, he might have guessed it. No such beauty as this was wandering unclaimed about the world. Well, her fiance, whoever he might be, was a lucky devil! Without doubt, confound his impudence, his arm had traveled the pathway of that band of leather ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... No, Margie! there is something wrong somewhere. He is either playing us false—confound him!—or he has met with some accident! By George! who knows but he has been waylaid and murdered! The road from here to the depot, though short, is a lonely one, with woods on either side! And Mr. Linmere carries always about his person ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations, as well as of others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise, is the reward or punishment which the world confers or inflicts on merit or demerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound them in the application. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed I do: and as for her—but I will spare the good lady for your sake—and one argument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the present contention—she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "Confound them!" growled the quartermaster, a fresh, cheery salt at my side, as one or two sail still dawdled on the horizon, "These lubbers will spoil all. The Dutch are shallow sailers, and they'll have us on the flats before we are ready ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... intriguing Denham; the coquettish, cold, and cunning Richmond; the innately-dissipated and unrestrainable Southesk; the equivocal Middleton; the rapacious, prodigal, and insinuating Querouaille,—are rendered infamous in our national history—let us not confound the innocent with the guilty. We can point out to our daughters, for admiration and example, the patient, affectionate, and enduring Lady Northumberland, the beloved sister of Lady Rachel Russel; the beautiful Miss Hamilton; the peerless Lady Ossory; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... The count, conceiving some suspicion from her manner, craftily answered, that God had blessed him with three fine children; on which she exclaimed, like Willie's mother in the ballad, "May Heaven confound the old hag, by whose counsel I threw an enchanted pitcher into the draw-well of your palace!" The spell being found, and destroyed, the count became the father of a numerous family.—Hierarchie of the Blessed ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... down. You showed good form in the first innings, and it was a very unlucky ball that settled you so soon. But you will have a good chance again presently." Which speech had the unintended effect of making Saurin more exasperated than ever. "Confound his patronising!" he said to himself; but he could not find any excuse for any audible utterance except the conventional "All right," and he now drew on his gloves, took up his bat, ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... to show that the world is governed by the providence of the Gods. This is an important point, which you Academics endeavor to confound; and, indeed, the whole contest is with you, Cotta; for your sect, Velleius, know very little of what is said on different subjects by other schools. You read and have a taste only for your own books, and condemn all others without examination. For instance, when you mentioned ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Hand. Here my mind gets relief in contemplating this subject, not in abstract reasoning, not in logical premises and deductions, but by resting in Providence. There are mysteries in it,—as truly so as in the human apostasy, origin of evil, permission of sin, which confound my reasonings as to the benevolence of God; in which, however, I, nevertheless, maintain my firm belief. Here was the great defect in Mr. Jefferson's views of slavery. In the highest Christian sense, he was not qualified to understand this ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... washed my face and jumped on board Delila. But it was too late, for when I arrived at my hole it was already occupied! Such a thing had never happened to me in three years, and it made me feel as if I were being robbed under my own eyes. I said to myself: 'Confound it all! confound it!' And then my wife began to nag at me. 'Eh! what about your Casque a meche? Get along, you drunkard! Are you satisfied, you great fool?' I could say nothing, because it was all true, but I landed all the same near the spot and tried to profit by what was left. Perhaps ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... careful not to confound this union of the soul with God, which is a moral union, with a personal union, such as exists between the humanity and the divinity in Jesus Christ. For, in Him, though these two natures are distinct, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... Kalmuks, you'll have stayed so long I shall never be able to bring to your mind who Mary was, who will have died about a year before, nor who the Holcrofts were! Me perhaps you will mistake for Phillips, or confound me with Mr. Dawe, because you saw us together. Mary (whom you seem to remember yet) is not quite easy that she had not a formal parting from you. I wish it had so happened. But you must bring her ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... grasp relaxed its hold of this truth; and howsoever in later works, in what are intended as biographical illustrations of it, he may seem to confuse mere strength and energy with righteousness of will, and thence to confound outward and visible success with vital achievement, that strength and energy are always in his eyes, fighting or enduring against some phase of the many- headed hydra ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... confound you!" he ground out, as he swung out of the room rapidly in a high state ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus does Teufelsdroeckh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Confound these parties! I should not have gone last night, and if I'd given the matter due consideration would ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... their opening, blend with, and give vividness and appropriate distance to, the dream image which returns when they close again; and thus we unite the actual perceptions, or their immediate reliques, with the phantoms of the inward sense; and in this manner so confound the half-waking, half-sleeping, reasoning power, that we actually do pass a positive judgment on the reality of what we see and hear, though often accompanied by doubt and self-questioning, which, as I have myself experienced, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... elements of human feeling seemed to have been, from his birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manners, inexpressibly attractive. It has never been my fortune to meet with him since my school-boy days; but either I confound my present recollections with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now a source of honour and utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and winning, that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep, that in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... turned towards the spectators, according to circumstances. Voltaire, in his Essay on the Tragedy of the Ancients and Moderns, prefixed to Semiramis, has actually gone this length. Amidst a multitude of supposed improprieties which he heaps together to confound the admirers of ancient tragedy, he urges the following: Aucune nation (that is to say, excepting the Greeks) ne fait paraitre ses acteurs sur des especes d'echasses, le visage couvert d'un masque, qui exprime la douleur d'un cote et la joie de l'autre. After a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... toward the refutation of such claims, however wrong or right these claims may be. Engineering is an exact science. It is based on principles hardly refutable. Yet there are engineers who will and can confound these principles before a court of law in such manner as to win for their clients a decision of non-suit where the facts point glaringly to infringement—in the matter of mechanics—or to win for their clients a favorable decision in the ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... his name for the Academy. The event justified M. de Montesquieu's silence. Usbec expresses himself freely, not concerning the fundamentals of Christianity, but about matters which people affect to confound with Christianity itself: about the spirit of persecution which has animated so many Christians; about the temporal usurpation of ecclesiastical power; about the excessive multiplication of monasteries, which deprive the State of subjects without giving ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... down, confound him,' says the parson; for, ye see, parsons is men, like the rest on us, and the doctor had got his ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... appears, Who sense have none of benefits conferr'd. Then Medon answer'd thus, prudent, return'd. 840 Oh Queen! may the Gods grant this prove the worst. But greater far and heavier ills than this The suitors plan, whose counsels Jove confound! Their base desire and purpose are to slay Telemachus on his return; for he, To gather tidings of his Sire is gone To Pylus, or to Sparta's land divine. He said; and where she stood, her trembling knees Fail'd under her, and all her spirits ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... accomplished. The apostle Paul teaches us that this is the way in which God generally acts; and that he does it for the very reason just spoken of. He says, "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought the things that are; that ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... that it should be most easily imagined. If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... leaves with withered ones, as if they were to confound ripe apples with rotten ones. I think that the change to some higher color in a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity of fruits. It is generally the lowest ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... moment's thought or puzzle, Dame weasel opened her peaked muzzle To eat th' intruder as a bird. "Hold! do not wrong me," cried the bat; "I'm truly no such thing as that. Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. I'm cousin of the mice and rats. Great Jupiter confound the cats!" The bat, by such adroit replying, Twice saved herself ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... to the flag of Sicily, that flag which we had come to strike,—for such we all knew must be the effect of our withdrawal. I recollected the manly courtesy with which the Sicilians received us, their earnest assurances that they did not confound our involuntary errand with our personal feelings; and how, when a wild Greek mountaineer from the Piano de' Greci, unable to comprehend the intricacies of politics, and stupidly imagining that those who were not for him were against him, had insulted one of our officers, the bystanders ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... and presto! in his place we see our old friend, the cunning, resourceful barber and town factotum of the earlier days, who shall hatch out a plot to confound his master and shield his love from persecution. First of all he must hasten the wedding. He sets about this at once, but all unconscious of the fact that Dr. Bartolo has never forgiven nor forgotten the part he played in robbing him of his ward Rosina. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... it, then, that with a document so conclusive in my hands I have not brought my accusers before the courts to contradict and confound them? Alas, monsieur, there are cruel responsibilities in families. I have a brother, a poor fellow, weak and spoiled, who has for long wallowed in the mud of Paris, who has left there his intelligence and his honour. Has he descended to that degree of baseness which I, in his name, am accused ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... improve, for his advantage, those moments of frailty from which no woman is exempted. In short, this consummate politician taught his agent to poison the young lady's mind with insidious conversation, tending to inspire her with the love of guilty pleasure, to debauch her sentiments, and confound her ideas of dignity and virtue. After all, the task is not difficult to lead the unpractised heart astray, by dint of those opportunities her seducer possessed. The seeds of insinuation seasonably sown upon the warm luxuriant soil of youth, could hardly ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... take it into that head of yours," he went on, "that you was included in the treaty, here's the last word that was said: 'How many are you,' says I, 'to leave?' 'Four,' says he—'four, and one of us wounded. As for that boy, I don't know where he is, confound him,' says he, 'nor I don't much care. We're about sick of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Confound the fellow! It's a most break-neck place. I ought to be able to come down where he could climb up. The water-pipe feels ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sea-phrase, insulted our misfortune by bawling, "Ship ahoy!" A fellow in a red shirt, who looked more like a Bowery bhoy than like a Carolinian, hailed the captain to know if he might come aboard; whereupon he was surrounded by twenty others, who appeared to question him and confound him until he thought it best to disappear unostentatiously. I conjectured that he was a hero of Northern birth, who had concluded to run away, if he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... meat business. He signed a paper, too, agreein' not to engage in the business in or within ten miles o' Lynnfield for a period o' five years, and a month ago he opened a shop almost 'cross the street from me and is cuttin' my prices right and left, confound him." ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... when he learns that it is not the author of Macbeth and Othello that he is to regard as the best painter of nature that England has produced, but the author of the Parish Register and the Tales of the Hall. Absurd and indiscriminate laudations of this kind confound all intellectual distinctions and make criticism ridiculous. Crabbe is unquestionably a vigorous and truthful writer, but he is not the best we have, in any sense ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... violation of law. At the same time there is a plain distinction as to the penal consequences, between a moral and a legal aiding or abetting; and holding throughout these examinations, as I trust I may be enabled to do, an impartial as well as a firm hand, care shall be taken not to confound an indiscretion or a moral perversion, or any mere expression of opinion, however gross, with a wilful act constituting legal guilt. I fully recognise the doctrine suggested in the defence, of the largest liberty within law, and also the right of the ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... herself to confound the plans of the Jacobite conspirators, the number of travellers was unusually great, their appearance respectable, and they filled the public tap-room of the inn, where the political guests had already occupied most of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... wisely deciding that they will be better away from their people. But they met each other in the same way as Tom and Muriel are meeting; He has seen Her in Her own home, in His home, at the tennis club, surrounded by the young bounders (confound them!) of Turret Court and the Wilderness; She has heard of him falling off his bicycle or quarrelling with his father. Bless you, they know all about each other; they are going to be ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... "Confound my tenants!" said Mr. Greenville. "There's old Paul Smith; if to-morrow's sun does not witness him bringing my just dues, he shall leave,—yes, George, he shall leave! I am no more to be trifled with and perplexed by his trivial excuses. All my tenants who do not pay shall toe the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... this chair now?" he said stiffly, formally. She was looking down into the fire, but he saw the dimple deepen in her cheek and an almost imperceptible twitching at the corner of her mouth. Confound her, was she laughing at him? Was he a ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... and reasonable diffidence arose, in humble and timorous piety, a disposition to confound penance with repentance, to repose on human determinations, and to receive from some judicial sentence the stated and regular assignment of reconciliatory pain. We are never willing to be without resource: we seek in the knowledge ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... (Chamah), at the mouth of the Bosom Prah, when driven out by war, first founded 'Kabeku,' near the present place of that name. His sons built Bein, or Behin, [Footnote: The aspirate is hardly audible. Captain Brackenbury, generally so careful, manages to confound Bein and Benin.] meaning a 'strong man,' and Atabo, in Fanti ataba, the name of a tree with a reddish-yellow fruit. The latter was paramount till late years, when turbulent and unruly Bein was allowed to set up for herself an independent king; and the sooner things return to the status ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Barnes, haven't you my word that I will not shoot unless ye try to come out? And I know you wouldn't use her for a shield. Besides, I have a bull's-eye lantern with me. From the luxurious seat behind this rock I could spot ye in a second. Confound you, man, you ought to thank me for being so considerate as not to flash it on you before. I ask ye now, isn't that proof that I'm a gentleman and not a bounder? Having said as much, I now propose arbitration. What have ye to offer in the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... occasions, he had lurked behind the scenes while the miraculous "oracle" was delivering fiat or prophecy, and then he told his white brother how Tlacopa meant to completely confound the Children of the Sun when ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... of a duel, a horse killed by a flash of lightning in the moment of collision with the enemy, a bridge carried away by an avalanche at the instant of a commencing retreat, affect the feelings like dramatic incidents emanating from a human will. This man they confound and paralyze, that man they rouse into resistance, as by a personal provocation and insult. And if it happens that these opposite effects show themselves in cases wearing a national importance, they raise ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... way of coming into a room backwards, which he said showed more humility and less affectation. Where other people stood, he sat; where they sat, he stood; when he went to Court, he used to kick away the state, and sit down by his prince cheek by jowl. "Confound these states," says he, "they are a modern invention." When he spoke to his prince, he always turned his back upon him. If he was advised to fast for his health, he would eat roast beef; if he was allowed a more plentiful diet, then he would ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... "Confound you, Chris McKeen, if 'tain't nothin' but a blankety blank woodchuck!" he shouted, making as if to back water and try to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... came up to the insult of the smacks," said Sancho, "for the simple reason that it was duennas, confound them, that gave them to me; but once more I entreat your worship to let me sleep, for sleep is relief from misery to those ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... extricate yourself from the puzzle, ratify your first opinion and confound the critic; picture another set of circumstances. You stand before St. Peter's, wrapped in admiration at this ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Dumiger!" said Carl. "Why, Confound it, man. I thought you were poring over dull tomes of the University library, or worshiping a saint" and he took off his hat to Marguerite. "Here is Krantz, your old friend Krantz, whom you have not seen since we were all at Bonn together: so I will drink ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... abhorred the crime imputed to him, could not suppose him capable of committing it. His ambition was all for herself. Neither, she felt, would Lady Gourlay, even allowing for the full extent of her suspicions, confound the innocent daughter with the offending parent. Then her reputation for meekness, benevolence, patience, charity, and all those virtues which, without effort, so strongly impress themselves upon the general spirit of social life, spoke ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the true reason," said her parent, "but, confound it! I have lived in this spot for twenty years; the little town of Akwar lies near, and there is hardly a person in it who has not been my patient. I am known even in Meerut and Delhi, and I can hardly ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... "Confound that grease-spot-chaser," growled Pen. "He'll be bound to take it out of me as long as the cruise lasts. But I'll get even with him. No cheap greaser is going to ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... ever dislike anybody so much," said Joe angrily, "as I did that man while he was chewing my throat. We were trying to kill each other, of course, but—confound it, people ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... "Confound the booby!" thought Mowbray; "he will get out of leading strings, if he goes on at this rate; and doubly confounded be this cursed tramper, who, the Lord knows why, has come hither from the Lord knows where, to drive the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... repose in the convent and its delightful garden, I set out for the holy places around it, a pilgrimage which I had deferred making immediately on my first arrival, which is the usual practice, that the Arabs might not confound me with the common run of visitors, to whom they shew no great respect. The Djebalye enjoy the exclusive right of being guides to the holy places; my suite therefore consisted of two of them loaded with provisions, together ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... sit the vendors of shawls, skull-caps, toys, shells, sugar-cane, and various other commodities; but to enumerate the extraordinary diversity of goods exposed for sale, or to describe the Babel of tongues which confound the visitor as he wanders through the motley crowd, would ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... old age so much wound us?[2] There is nothing in it all to confound us: For how happy now am I, With my old wife sitting by, And our bairns and our oys all around us; For how happy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... round in his seat as he spoke, for there was a broad straight piece of river before them; and as the boat came on he pointed his revolver uncertainly in the mist and fired. 'Confound you!' roared Peter, 'don't draw their fire yet! Probably our best chance is that they don't know for certain ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... he was doing just what he had always intended to do: falling heels over head and hopelessly in love with her. Never had he seen hair grow so exquisitely about the temples and neck as this one's hair—but, just to confound his budding singleness of interest, his gaze at that instant wandered off and fell upon something that caused him to stare hard at a certain spot far removed from the coiffure of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a man, confound—Martyn went on. "She broke up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. 'Settled the whole thing in three hours—servants, horses, and all. I didn't ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the deep and deadly wound, which could never be healed by his successors, and which is poorly expiated by his theological dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final passage of the Hellespont, [51] and describe the son of Orchan as a nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions, explores by stratagem a hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... believe how many fallacies were discerned in such lessons as these by the author of Iphigenie, and the passionate admirer of the ancient marbles. Diderot's fundamental error, said Goethe, is to confound nature and art, completely to amalgamate nature with art. "Now Nature organises a living, an indifferent being, the Artist something dead, but full of significance; Nature something real, the Artist something apparent. In the works of Nature the spectator must import significance, thought, effect, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... nations as barbarous as ourselves, interfered with every plan of policy and order that might have been formed to settle the emerging state; and swarms of foreign monks were turned loose upon us with their new faith and mysteries, to bewilder and confound the plain good sense of our ancestors. It was too much to have Danes, Saxons, and Popes, to combat at once! Our language suffered as much as our government; and not having acquired much from our Roman masters, was miserably disfigured by the subsequent invaders. The unconquered ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... "Confound it! Now we're upsticks again," said the agent. "Tell you what let's do. Here's ten of us. Each man put up a two, and we'll shake the dice to see who gives it to the kid—winner to set 'em up. That'll make seventy-five—a very ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... "Confound him," came the swift answer. "Let me know when he is gone. He said he was going home," whereon Stella switched ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Hippocoon, son of Hyrtacus renowned; Then Mnestheus, victor in the naval race, Mnestheus, his brows with olive wreath still crowned. Third in the casque Eurytion's lot is found Thy brother, famous Pandarus, whose dart, Hurled at the Danaans, did the truce confound. Last comes Acestes, for with dauntless heart Still in the toils of youth the veteran claims ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Slade, a note of insistence in his voice. "Why don't you say something? Confound you, why don't you say something?" His speech rose husky and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... now,' Roy answered hastily. 'We must get our hands free. Confound it! We can't use the chisel. But here's a stone with a sharp edge. Try what you can do with the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... reached the gates of the citadel we saw that preparations were made for giving us an awe-striking reception. Parting at once from the sailors and our servants, the General and I were conducted into the audience hall; and there at least I suppose the Pasha hoped that he would confound us by his greatness. The hall was nothing more than a large whitewashed room. Oriental potentates have a pride in that sort of simplicity, when they can contrast it with the exhibition of power, and this the Pasha was ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... exhorting them to join in putting in for a share of the honour, charged the enemy on the flanks. When the addition of this new alarm assailed the enemies' troops on both sides, and the Roman legions, having renewed the shout to confound the enemy, rushed on, they began to fly. And now the plains were quickly filled with heaps of bodies and splendid armour. At first, their camp received the dismayed Samnites; but they did not long retain even the possession of that: before night it was taken, plundered, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... in by Zamiel (whom the stars confound!), gives us her charming little side-box look, and smites me to the core. Mystery eating sponge-cake. Pine-apple atmosphere faintly tinged with suspicions of sherry. Demented Traveller flits past the carriage, looking for it. Is blind with agitation, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... wager that your wife will confound the two words to-day, and think you have sorely transgressed against the 'ought.' These are bad times ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it is, the now sad king, Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound, Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground; Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering; Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound; His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick, And much he ails, and yet ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the malady doubtless made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... As active round the hollow dome, Illusive cataracts! of their terrors Not stripped, nor voiceless in the mirrors, That catch the pageant from the flood Thundering adown a rocky wood. What pains to dazzle and confound! What strife of colour, shape, and sound In this quaint medley, that might seem Devised out of a sick man's dream! Strange scene, fantastic and uneasy As ever made a maniac dizzy, When disenchanted from the mood That loves ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... no doubt, an unprincipled thing to do, but I soothed my outraged conscience with the thought that I was making a martyr of myself—that when the examination-week arrived the examiners' reports would confound me by exposing the difference between my paper and their gold. The examination-week did arrive, of course, and I found that I was to be myself the examiner of my classes. Let not the reader think that I would be pleasantly satiric when I say that not till ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Vesalius, while he was professor in Italy, to issue a public notice the day before each demonstration, stating the time at which it would take place, and inviting all who decried his errors to attend and make their own dissections from his subject, and confound him openly. It does not appear that any one was rash enough ever to accept the challenge; yet, although the majority of the young men were on the side of Vesalius, the older teachers continued to regard him as a heretic, and in 1551 Sylvius published a bitterly ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... as well by nature as by the experience of his past life, a character not likely to be daunted by the threatening prospect before him; and behaved with such courage and decision, as for the time to confound his rebellious subjects, and reduce them to obedience. For when, on his assumption of the tiara, the senate,—which by this time seems to have arrived at the last pitch of insolence, under the training ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... "Yes, confound them, too," growled Beamish, who seemed to be in an unenviable frame of mind. "Damned nuisance their coming round. I should like to know ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... the attention of my enemies and preventing me, for that reason, from collecting proofs which I need in order to confound them." ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the wars, was nevertheless, for his great prudence and courage, made captain of a ship; and being in the midst of an engagement, a cannon bullet took off his wooden supporter, so that he fell down. The seamen immediately called out for a surgeon. "Confound you all," said he, "no surgeon, no surgeon,—a ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... back to pickin' cotton, an' don't let me hear any mo' of you' nonsense—helpin' a strappin' fellow twice you' size. An' tell Buck I won't have him whippin' any my negroes ev'ry night in the week. Confound it! a mule couldn't stan' it. If I've got a negro that needs floggin' ev'ry night, I'll sell him or give 'im away, or turn 'im out to grass to shif' for himself. I'll be out there soon, an' 'ten' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the highest bidder, for the houses are coming up like toadstools after rain. The men who do not build cheer those who do, in that building means backing your belief in your town—yours to you and peculiarly. Confound all other towns whatsoever. Behind the crowd of business men the weekly town paper plays as a stockwhip plays on a mob of cattle. There is honour, heaped, extravagant, imperial for the good—the employer of labour, the builder of stores, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... waiting and hoping for better times? We may make these times better, if we bestir ourselves. Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting, as Poor Richard says. There are no gains, without pains. Then help hands, for I have no lands, as Poor Richard says.' Oh, confound all this wisdom! It's a sort of insulting to talk wisdom to a man like me. It's wisdom that's cheap, and it's fortune that's dear. That ain't in Poor Richard; but it ought to be," concluded Israel, suddenly slamming ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... which has been committed by some of the writers against Hume's Essay on Miracles, and by Bishop Butler before them, in their anxiety to destroy what appeared to them a formidable weapon of assault against the Christian religion; and the effect of which is entirely to confound the doctrine of the Grounds of Disbelief. The mistake consists in overlooking the distinction between (what may be called) improbability before the fact and improbability after it; or (since, as Mr. Venn remarks, the distinction of past and future is not ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... "Confound you! (no offence!) Out of our way,—push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!" Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he, "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land, Constables, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... time being, from quest of My Lady of the Blue Eyes. However, she was still escorted by the conductor, who in his brass buttons and officious air began to irritate me. Such a persistent squire of dames rather overstepped the duties of his position. Confound the fellow! He surely would come to the end of his run and his rope before we went ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... aiding himself with his hands, he was transported in the twinkling of an eye to the ceiling, just like a weight run up by a cord, without any visible agency. While he hung there, with his feet glued to the ceiling, and his head down, I made the demon, for I had determined to confound and humiliate him, confess the falsehood of the Pagan religion. I made him confess that he was a deceiver, and at the same time admit the holiness of Christianity. I kept him for better than half an hour in the air, and not possessing enough of constancy to hold him there any ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Power, than to look beyond them for a cause. Was it not natural then that these northerns, dwelling in daily communion with this grand Nature, should fancy they could perceive a mysterious and independent energy in her operations, and at last come to confound the moral contest man feels within him, with the physical strife he finds around him, to see in the returning sun—fostering into renewed existence the winter-stifled world—even more than a TYPE ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "Confound your fool tongues, how they goin' to know there's any women here? I tell you, fellers, my old man waded in bloody gore up to his neck and I'm ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart |
