"Fiasco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a sudden inquiring shrewdness, that lit up his faded eyes and made them for a moment almost young. He had caught a sound of vexation in her voice, which reminded him oddly of the sound in her singing voice when Miss Filberte was making a fiasco of the accompaniment. Lord Holme was visible and audible in the hall. His immense form towered above his guests, and his tremendous bass voice dominated the hum of conversation round him. Lady Holme could see from ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the door. Catcalls were frequent from the corners, and the back of the hall became aggressive. The girl had sat with white, pained face, understanding little save that Lewis was talking nonsense and losing all grip on his hearers. In spite of herself she was contrasting this fiasco with the pithy words of Mr. Stocks. When the meeting became unruly she looked for some display of character, some proof of power. Mr. Stocks would have fiercely cowed the opposition, or at least have ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely escaped a total fiasco. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... shouted Fitz, his heart sinking with despair the while, as he noted the smiling looks of every face before him, and felt what a miserable fiasco he had made. ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... question. The success of the impending "revolution," for which he and his confreres had labored so long, depended in large measure upon the maintenance of their race prestige, which would be injured in the eyes of the world by such a fiasco. While they might yet win by sheer force, their cause would suffer in the court of morals, where they might stand convicted as pirates, instead of being applauded as patriots. Even the negroes would have the laugh on ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was the way Carfax ended—a tiny tragedy of incompetence compared to the mountainous official fiasco at Gallipoli. Here, a few perished among the filthy salamanders in the snow; there, thousands died in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... After the Eagle Ridge fiasco, Peter, as cheerful as ever, journeyed over into Wyoming to try his luck once more. He moved up into the hills, spent a month in looking about him, narrowed his localities to one gulch, and built himself a log cabin in which ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Sommers. It seemed to take for granted that there could be nothing professionally to keep him in Chicago after the fiasco of his introduction. He would have to learn how much a man's future depended upon the opinion of men whose ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... their culminating point when on one occasion Mr Balfour and his supporters left the House and allowed a motion hostile to tariff reform to be passed nem. con. Though the Scottish Churches Bill, the Unemployed Bill and the Aliens Bill were passed, a complete fiasco occurred over the redistribution proposals, which pleased nobody and had to be withdrawn owing to a blunder as to procedure; and though on the 17th of July a meeting of the party at the foreign office resulted in verbal assurances of loyalty, only two days later the government was caught ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... fiasco of a delirious Revolution went careering through the giddy maze of treachery and madness until a frenzied wave of rapine and disorder swept all the noblewomen of the Imperial household into a barricaded fortress around which lust and ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Some one was fooling him!—only he has managed—I'm convinced of that—to regain possession of the green box. As I impressed on you just after the fiasco, there was some one in one of the presses, and now it is evident that Caw captured that person after we had left. Unfortunately, it means that a fourth person has knowledge of the diamonds. Still, my ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... de bois had rallied for a last supreme effort. But in spite of the strength of this array, it was not expected by those who knew the vacillating Governor that he would be successful. Even the most sceptical, however, were not prepared for the woeful fiasco which followed. Instead of advancing to destroy his enemies, La Barre summoned them to a council, where the Seneca deputies were not slow to perceive the weakness of their foe, and contemptuously dictated terms ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... they were gone, and Otto knew the length and breadth of his miscarriage, and how he had done the contrary of all that he intended, he stood stupefied. A fiasco so complete and sweeping was laughable, even to himself; and he laughed aloud in his wrath. Upon this mood there followed the sharpest violence of remorse; and to that again, as he recalled his provocation, anger succeeded afresh. So he was tossed in spirit; now bewailing his inconsequence and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclaimed. "I fully realise the necessity of getting funds. The other affair, though we worked it so well, proved a miserable fiasco." ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... kopjes surrounding the town, much to the surprise of the inhabitants. The invaders possessed themselves of the keys of the town, and endeavoured with great parade to hoist the Free State flag. The ceremony was a fiasco, however, as before the flag reached the top of the staff, the halyard, which had been secretly cut partly through by some loyalists, broke, so that the flag, flying a little above half-mast, could neither be hoisted properly nor hauled down again. Ultimately the Boers tied another flag ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Jannissary, but it was useless to repine over that. He turned instinctively to Hinde for advice, and Hinde was generous with it. He was generous, too, with more profitable things. He put work in John's way as often as he could, and in spite of the fiasco over the Abbey ceremony, had offered employment on the Herald to him, but John had refused it, feeling that his novel would never reach its end if he were tied to a newspaper. When, however, the book was completed, he went to Hinde again and consulted him about the prospect of obtaining regular ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Bad intention against you here Below; But thank God I meet allowais with a good wish for you from evry Mouth each one entertining such Caracter of you as I have the honour to do myself." He served again in the Braddock march, and in that fiasco, Washington wrote, "Captain Peyroney and all his officers down to a ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... "Botzon!"' Antonio-Pericles corrected him furiously, exclaiming to the sovereign skies, 'Though I pay for brains, can I get them! No. But make a fiasco, Luigi, and not a second ten for you, my friend: and away, out of my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mid-September, was totally artificial in character, representing as it did a combination of Soviets and organs of self-government in a ratio calculated to secure a preponderance of the fusionist parties. Born of helplessness and confusion, the Conference ended in a pitiful fiasco. The professional bourgeoisie treated the Conference with the greatest hostility, beholding in it an endeavor to push the bourgeoisie away from the positions it had approached at the Moscow Conference. ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... it's no good. I can't do it. The whole thing is off. I am not going to risk a repetition of last night's fiasco. You talk in a light way of taking another whack at her, but you don't know what it means. You have not been through the experience of starting to ask the girl you love to marry you and then suddenly finding yourself talking about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... just outside the new city of Heliopolis, which was built at the cost of about $40,000,000 by a Belgian syndicate to rival Monte Carlo, but it was a fiasco as a money-making concern. Nevertheless, there were some gorgeous buildings, and it was a source of constant interest to us. The Palace Hotel was the most magnificent building I have ever seen; used by us as a hospital. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... leading character? Supposing, when the time came, he could not be found.... Into what a dismal fiasco the play would turn. All his interest would have been thrown away. His solicitors would have been investigating a lost cause. Forest would have been sent packing back to Rome upon ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and Britain were a fiasco in the military sense. The damage inflicted by the bombs was not at all in proportion to the quantity of explosive used. True, in the case of Antwerp, it demoralised the civilian population somewhat effectively, which ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... coming, its movements generally. We felt a little disappointed at the delays which the opposition it had encountered rendered unavoidable. But we were not despondent, nor hyper-critical—not yet. The bombardments might be written down a fiasco, and what after all did it matter whether relief came to-morrow, or not till the day following. Still, these delays upset plans and calculations. They upset bets and wagers, and the "bad losers" who villified both Briton and Boer with delightful impartiality. They upset diary-writers—prospective ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of flexibility into the services, so that the congregation can seldom know what is going to happen) has so entirely outweighed the merits of the work that it cannot possibly be adopted by the Church, and must be dismissed as a dismal fiasco, to be dealt with anew in some ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... American, on the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the failure of the effort to force the Dardanelles, the House is evidently of opinion that Lord Fisher might now be let alone by foes and friends. The idea of blaming Queen Elisabeth for the fiasco is so entirely satisfactory to all parties concerned that one wonders why the Commission couldn't have thought of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... carried away by seeing the large audience, played her touching part as the neglected wife very passably. This was a great relief to Mme. Bourjot, who was seated in the front row anxiously watching her daughter. Her vanity had been alarmed by the thought of a fiasco. The curtain fell, and amid the applause were heard shouts for "All the actors!" Her daughter had not made herself ridiculous, and the mother was delighted with this great success and gave herself up complacently ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... I've got none,' replied Davis; and wandered for some time in aimless discussion of the difficulties in their path, and useless explanations of his own fiasco. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his own and led the way along the passage, I following. The committee hesitated, and then one by one came after us, more anxious, I think, to complete the fiasco than to ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... But he, like his grandfather, was worn out by the difficulties of siege warfare; and in 1240 he turned southward to reduce the States of the Church. One more attempt he made on Lombardy in the winter of 1247-1248. But a disastrous fiasco destroyed his hopes and gave a mortal blow to his prestige. For five months he blockaded Parma, and the city was at the last gasp, when he imprudently dismissed a part of his troops. The garrison saw their opportunity, and made a desperate sortie while the Emperor was absent on a hunting ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... having accomplished the task of receiving, beckoned him, and intimated to him that, being a lion and the king of beasts, he must roar. 'I think everyone here has done something,' she said as she took him round and forced him to roar. His roaring was a miserable fiasco, but most people mistook it for the latest fashion in roaring, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... upon them at Bergen (September 19), and at Castricum (October 6). York thereupon entered upon negotiations with Brune and was allowed to re-embark his troops for England, after restoration of the captured guns and prisoners. The expedition was a miserable fiasco. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... A friend paid the tax for him; continued year by year to pay it in the sequel; and Thoreau was free to walk the woods unmolested. It was a FIASCO, but to me it does not seem laughable; even those who joined in the laughter at the moment would be insensibly affected by this quaint instance of a good man's horror for injustice. We may compute the worth of that one night's imprisonment as outweighing half a hundred voters at some subsequent ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... burghers to resist other supposed opposition of an altogether more formidable but yet undefined character. When nothing further transpired, the feeling uppermost with the people was unbounded derision at that impotent fiasco, and a loathing contempt for the cowering Johannesburg rabble who betrayed and sacrificed the insensate doctor. It was loudly asserted that the combined forces of the two Republics were competent to resist an invasion a hundred ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... sports and amusements prepared for the soldiers commenced, and in the evening the brilliant fireworks which were let off rose in a luminous column, which was distinctly seen from the English coast.—[It appears that Napoleon was so well able to cover up this fiasco that not even Bourrienne ever heard the true ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... black spot of bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the retrocession of the Transvaal to the Boers. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to British influence, prestige, and power by the political consequences ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... be forgeries. Knowing what we do of the Bāb, it is probable that he had the best of the argument, and that the doctors and functionaries who attended the meeting were unwilling to put upon record their own fiasco. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... like that Wordsworth states in the Prelude to have been his, when, after the vanishing of his aspirations for man which followed the imperialistic fiasco of the French Revolution, he found himself without love or hope, but with full power to make an intellectual analysis of nature and of human nature, and was destroyed thereby. It is the same position which Paracelsus attains and which is followed by the same ruin. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... singing, was not a little relieved to learn that she would not be called upon to fulfil her engagement, and the company of benefactors went home foiled but not too much disappointed for a good laugh over their fiasco before they parted. The affair set Hester thinking; and before morning she was ready with a scheme to which she begged her mother to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... her lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer. "Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... taken to intercept him, and whilst Gatton, inspired by I know not what hopes, had hastened to the burning Bell House, I had set out in the police car in pursuit of Dr. Damar Greefe accompanied by Detective-Sergeant Blythe—upon whom, apparently, the onus of the fiasco rested. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... and despite their bravery and the fiasco of the mob's attack, the hearts seemed to have left the bodies of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... were destined to be brought from their homes and help swell the ranks of the oppressors of America. The first attempt made was to organize the Highland regiments in America. The MacDonald fiasco in North Carolina and the Highlanders of Sir John Johnson have already been noticed. But there were other Highlanders throughout the inhabited districts of America, who had emigrated, or else had belonged to the 42nd, Fraser's or Montgomery's ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which is always given to a young writer of talent. But the stress of creation soon overwhelmed me. Only Art with a capital H gives any consolations to her henchmen. And I, who crave no knighthood, shall write no more. I shall write no more. Already I feel myself to be a trifle outmoded. I belong ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... difficult now to fancy Mr. Chamberlain making such a fiasco. He is at the present time probably one of the most ready and fluent speakers we have, and although many strange things might happen in the House of Commons, one of the most astonishing would be to see Mr. Chamberlain break down in a speech. It would create a sensation in that unserene assembly ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... report that after the fiasco of the rotary model these timers were a financial success, but the facts indicate otherwise. They were well built and reliable, so that the trade was pleased to stock and promote them. The public responded well when in the market ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... more in the matter than met the eye, and that, in some mysterious way, he had actually obtained leave to visit Rutton that day. After all, the man didn't know very much about School rules, and the recollection of the recent fiasco in which he had taken part would make him think twice about playing the amateur policeman again, especially in ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Van, "who honored us once with a visit to the Monte Cristo fiasco. He's been lost on the desert and he's too done up to talk, so I want him to be fed and entertained. And of the two requirements, the feed's more important than the vaudeville show, unless your stunts can put ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... He had, as a matter of fact, nearly lost his neck in the Irish fiasco, either in Clonmel or Sligo, bolting violently from the English dragoons, in the mist, to a French man-of-war's boats in the bay. To him, even though he was now a judge in Cuba, it was an episode of heroism of youth—of romance, in fact. So that, probably, he did not resent my mention of it. I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... when we are sure of God's will, is usually a condition of success. Life is too short, and the work to be done too pressing and great, to allow of dawdling. 'I made haste, and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy commandments.' Let us learn, too, from Adonijah's fiasco, to see the end of a thing before we commit ourselves to it, and to have the work done first before we think of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
