"Point-blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask very odd questions. But you cannot learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands. I don't care a rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my right to fish in it. He was an ass to raise the question; for, if he had not, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accidentally parted his anchor, turned his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; he was obliged to give up ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... in what followed Christianity. If, at a period five, or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,—there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as a reagency of destruction to all forms of idolatrous error. That argument ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ground. Even at this casual gait they would reach the point at which he and the gray must swing onto the floor of the valley before him unless he urged Molly to top speed. He must get there at a sufficient distance from them to escape close rifle fire, and certainly beyond point-blank revolver range. Accordingly he threw his weight more into the stirrups and over the withers of the mare. This brought greater poundage on her forehand and made her apt to stumble or actually miss her step, but it ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... God could see every action of His creatures, and that she would neither damn her soul nor place herself under the necessity of saying to her confessor that she had so far forgotten herself as to commit such a sin with a priest. I objected that I was not yet a priest, but she foiled me by enquiring point-blank whether or not the act I had in view was to be numbered amongst the cardinal sins, for, not feeling the courage to deny it, I felt that I must give up the argument and put an end ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the fatherly manner assumed by Balcom. Instead she almost point-blank refused to do as ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... many jogs between them, came to me through the darkness, and then a long groan and a choking. I made towards the sound, as nigh as ever I could guess, and presently was met, point-blank, by the head of a mountain-pony. Upon its back lay a man bound down, with his feet on the neck and his head to the tail, and his arms falling down like stirrups. The wild little nag was scared of its life by the unaccustomed burden, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... action to the word himself as he said this, discharging both his revolvers point-blank at two of the Arabs, who were leading on the gang in hot pursuit of us, tumbling them ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... question at him point-blank, without reflection, and now stood looking at her lover with wide open frightened eyes, like one who in self-defence has dealt a blow without measuring his strength, and fears ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Of course, if he should ask me point-blank if I had told any one, I should answer truthfully, tell him that I had told you and explain why I did it. And some day I shall tell him whether he asks or not. But when he first comes here I want him to be—to be—well, as nearly happy as is possible under the circumstances. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his kinsfolk stop the way Point-blank, there could not be A happening in the world ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... weakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper's snowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... cartridge and altered the sights. "It's a shocking bad light for judging distance," said he. "This is where the low point-blank trajectory of the Lee-Metford comes in useful. Well, we'll try him at five hundred." He fired, but there was no change in the white camel ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... maliciously misrepresented Koenig so much in his talks with the junior officers as to create quite a strong feeling against him. He had stated that Koenig, although abundantly able to help some momentarily embarrassed comrades out of their troubles, had not only refused point-blank, but had added insult to injury. Such supposed behavior, since Borgert's tales had found credence, had cost Koenig the sympathy of the majority of the officers, and now that trouble had overtaken him, many of them rejoiced at the fact. Lieutenant Bleibtreu would ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Godby louder than ever, "who's for an honest life, a free pardon and a share in Black Bartlemy's Treasure—or shall it be a broadside? Here be every gun full charged wi' musket-balls—and 'tis point-blank range! Which ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... up the hill, the painted walls of a number of comfortable inns clamour loudly. One or two inhabitants in reduced circumstances would act as hotel touts, there are several hotel omnibuses and a Bureau de Change, certainly a Bureau de Change. And a small house with a large board, aimed point-blank seaward, declares itself a Gratis Information Office, and next to it rises the graceful dome of a small Casino. Beyond, great hoardings proclaim the advantages of many island specialities, a hustling commerce, and the opening of a Public Lottery. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... moment Valerie was posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly up to the second floor, arguing thus: "If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed at to my face.—Take the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Jebb soon found out that they could only obtain their desires by means of carefully worded requests, or pathetic appeals to her good feelings and sense of right. An unreasonable order, or a reasonable one unexplained, promptly met with a point-blank refusal. And this characteristic still obtained, though modified by time; and even the duchess, as a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Ticonderoga was by far the most important of these fortresses. At this place the opposite shores of New York and Vermont are pushed out into the lake toward each other, thus forming two peninsulas, with the lake contracted to a width of half a mile, or point-blank cannon range, between them: one is Ticonderoga; the other, Mount Independence. Thus, together, they command the passage of the ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... turned a blind eye. No future, however dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession. "I hope," said the King at last, "I may live to see you old and willing," as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and Racket; on his way back he called at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused point-blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying of their own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to high Mass at the parish church. Three times a week the worthy ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... only sympathy expressed is, "What better could he expect?" Something of this sort befel Burns: he had already satisfied the kirk in the matter of "Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess," his daughter, by one of his mother's maids; and now, to use his own words, he was brought within point-blank of the heaviest metal of the kirk by a similar folly. The fair transgressor, both for her fathers and her own youth, had a large share of public sympathy. Jean Armour, for it is of her I speak, was in her eighteenth year; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... careful, but I was dreadfully upset when I wrote those letters. You see, Stanley came to my home on the evening of the day he returned from Oregon. As you know, I had decided to have a plain talk with him. It began pleasantly enough, but before it ended we were both very angry. He declared point-blank that after we were married I would positively have to give up my settlement work. He said a great many hateful, sneering things about the poor people I've been trying to help. I was going to give ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Neuri, who assumed once a year the shape of wolves; Pliny says that one of the family of Antaeus, chosen by lot annually, became a wolf, and so remained for nine years; Giraldus Cambrensis will have it that Irishmen may become wolves; and Nennius asserts point-blank that "the descendants of wolves are still in Ossory;" they retransform themselves into wolves when they bite. Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucian have similar stories. The Emperor Sigismund convoked a council of theologians in the fifteenth century ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... of death's hurricane sprang the ladies' man, swept the ladies' men. "Battery, trot, walk. Forward into battery! Action front!" It was at that word that Kincaid's horse went down; but while the pieces trotted round and unlimbered and the Federal guns vomited their fire point-blank and blue skirmishers crackled and the gray line crackled back, and while lead and iron whined and whistled, and chips, sand and splinters flew, and a dozen boys dropped, the steady voice of Bartleson gave directions to each piece by number, for "solid shot," ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... accurately at the process which was going on within it. I felt very strongly disposed to have the tree cut down and subjected to examination; but there were two strong arguments against this, one being the overpowering carrion-like effluvium which the tree exhaled, while the other was Piet's point-blank refusal to have anything to do ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of- fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried, monotonous &c 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. Of course, we have no intention of wandering into a topic so thoroughly beaten as that of the authorship of Junius; but we must acknowledge, if Sir Philip Francis was not the man, no other nominal candidate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... his mind at length to take a certain step and abide by the result, and, having made up his mind, he determined to take the step at once. Luckily enough the next morning was one of Foinet's days, and he resolved to ask him point-blank whether it was worth his while to go on with the study of art. He had never forgotten the master's brutal advice to Fanny Price. It had been sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out of his head. The studio seemed strange without her, and now and then ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... former point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up natural history as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... trench line of about 150 yards, the Bavarians threw during an hour about 400 5.9's, not to mention smaller shells, while two field guns galloped into Gommecourt Park and unlimbering in full view fired obliquely at the wire from point-blank range. They were harassed and eventually forced to retire by the action of Lieut. Coombes, of the Bucks, on our left, who gallantly got a machine gun into the open and took them in the flank. Our own guns were not available at the ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... seemed to contradict him point-blank. It was so magnificent that even the careless sailors, used as most of them were to the glories of the Southern sky, stood still to admire it, and pronounced it "the finest show they'd ever seen, by a long way." Not a cloud above, not a ripple below; the steamer's track ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the wine and Vichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of food, which at every performance are jeopardised by the members of the nobler sex starting off with a considerable quantity of the ample table cloth wrapped round their legs. At last I can stand it no longer, so ask the Captain point-blank what is the matter. "Nothing," says he, bounding out of his chair and flying out of his doorway; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two bottles of champagne with Woermann's Agent for Njole, as to who shall reach ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 16th would be the great day that should decide the fate of Germany. I expressed my conjectures to several French officers, that, according to all appearance, fresh armies of the allies were on their march toward Leipzig. They contradicted me point-blank; partly because, as they said, the crown-prince of Sweden and general Bluecher had been obliged to retreat precipitately across the Elbe, as an immense French army was in full march upon Berlin; and partly because they were convinced that the reinforcements ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... there was a pause, so long that the Englishman thought he was going to be refused point-blank; then an even voice said, "Come in," ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... arranging them in line, in a locality where the bushes were about eight feet in height, the Indians made so much noise as to reveal their exact position. One of our batteries was quietly placed within point-blank range of the Indians, and suddenly opened upon them with grape and canister. They gave a single yell, and scattered without waiting ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... frock, a blazing red shawl, and a yellow crape bonnet profusely decorated with azure, orange, and magenta artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a white parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting from the bosom of the river and striking point-blank on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gorgeousness, made her an imposing spectacle in the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole guiltily along by garden walls and fences until she reached ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... 525 As three or four-legg'd oracle, The ancient cup, or modern chair; Spoke truth point-blank, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Dorothy had told them every thing: if it was, never again would she utter word good or bad to one whose very kindness, she said to herself, was betrayal! The first moment therefore she saw Polwarth alone, unable to be still an instant with her doubt unsolved, she asked him, "with sick assay," but point-blank, whether he knew why she was in ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... unrest after the war, the new loan, and other matters, when, of a sudden, a black-mustached man in a dark grey overcoat and a round fur cap sprang from the bushes at a lonely spot, and, raising a big service revolver, fired point-blank at ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Ardea, and in thus forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their little dealing to ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... how she would take his sudden exclusion from these parties. Now Lucy missed the Dodds very much, and was surprised to see them invited no more. But it was not in her character to satisfy a curiosity of this sort by putting a point-blank question to the person who could tell her in two words. She was one of those thorough women whose instinct it is to find out little things, not to ask about them. When day after day passed by, and the Dodds were not invited, it flashed through her mind, first, that there must be some reason ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... able to break her fetters, which she abhorred, which bound her to Greece. Then, in 1876, the atrocities committed by the Turkish inhabitants of Bulgaria took place. The Porte, when besought by the Constantinople Conference to make concessions, refused point-blank. Then Russia stepped in and declared war, and proposed themselves to make a Bulgarian State. England and Austria promptly refused to lend themselves to this scheme, and a Berlin Congress was summoned. The Berlin Treaty in 1878 arranged the limits and administrative ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... their way to the tomb of Christ. In the later plays these interpolations developed into scenes of roaring farce. When Herod learned of the escape of the Wise Men, he would rage violently about the stage and even among {25} the spectators. Noah's wife, in the Chester play of The Deluge, refuses point-blank to go into the Ark, and has to be put in by main force. The Second Shepherds' Play of the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos less effective. The scene in the Brome play of Abraham and Isaac ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his "Vattene, vattene! Non seccami!" ("Out, out! Don't pester me!") rocking down the dim passages of the house; and Molly, whom this sudden new expedition had bereft of what wit she had, turned pale to hear ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... made a lunge toward the speaker as if to strike him. Had Rutter fired point-blank at him he could not have been more astounded. For an instant he stood looking into his face, then whirled suddenly and swung ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... me in no doubt on this point. When I was ushered into his study, after a much-needed wash and a shave, he received me standing and said point-blank: "Your orders are to stay here until ten o'clock to-night, when you will be taken to Berlin by Lieutenant Count von Boden. I don't know you, I don't know your business, but I have received certain orders concerning you which I intend to carry out. For that ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... you write to Torrance and ask him point-blank if he has had a hand in getting you nominated for Senator? Torrance is a big man in his line, and he probably ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... frights of women utterly devoid of grace; she disturbed him ten times a day with importunate visitors, and then every evening laid out for him a dress suit and light gloves, and dragged him from drawing-room to drawing-room. You will tell me he could have rebelled, could have replied point-blank: "No!" But don't you know that the very fact of our sedentary existences leaves us more than other men dependent on domestic influence? The atmosphere of the home envelopes us, and if some touch of the ideal does not lighten it, soon wearies and drags us down. Moreover, the artist ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... do this was to abandon Dandie Dinmont to their mercy, Brown refused point-blank. Affairs were at this pass when Dandie, staggering to his feet, his loaded whip in his hand, managed to come to the assistance of his rescuer, whereupon the two men took to their heels and ran as hard as they could over ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... would not give him any peace now. His London success must not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and with great brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional appearances, wiring at last ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to have it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him in leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant- colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from his horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's squires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German page, who tried to raise him; the king could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... same regiment than if he went to another. But something happens: either the other officer's suspicions are aroused, or the German does not wish to be recognised again by him. The trench is quiet; an occasional rifle is going off, so he does the bold thing. He shoots him from point-blank range—probably with a Colt. As he stands there with the dead officer in front of him, waiting, listening hard, wondering if he has been heard, he sees the two badges on the officer's coat. So, being a cool hand, he takes off the left one, puts it on his own coat, and ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... next day that Mr. Holywell had summed up the situation very accurately. No point-blank questions were asked about his religion, but he could by no means persuade his customers to give him even a small order. Every shop-window was filled with goods placarded ostentatiously as 'made in Robeen.' Every counter had tweeds, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with a sight weak and delicate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his curious-looking face, and his quiet ways, I wanted badly enough to know something about him, and who his connections were. First, I asked his friend who had recommended him—the friend wasn't at liberty to answer for anything but his perfect trustworthiness. Then I asked Mannion himself point-blank about it, one day. He just told me that he had reasons for keeping his family affairs to himself—nothing more—but you know the way he has with him; and, damn it, he put the stopper on me, from that time to this. I wasn't going to risk losing the best clerk that ever man had, by worrying him ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... ask her point-blank what she really knew of the yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... the smoke rushing out with each discharge, and then swaying back with the gun's recoil. But the guns were rarely stationary long, and we soon had the unwonted experience of finding ourselves well behind our own artillery. Finally, in places our batteries were firing at almost point-blank range; the enemy was simply blasted ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... had made him a liberal offer for "Splatchett's" about six years ago; but he had refused point-blank, being ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Brethren's rules were so strict that candidates could only be received with caution; that the Brethren had no desire to disturb those whose outward mode of religion was already fixed; that they lived in a mystical communion with Christ which others might not understand; and, finally, that they refused point-blank to rob the other Churches of their members, and preferred to act "as a seasonable assistant in an irreligious age, and as a most faithful servant to the other Protestant Churches." Thus were the society members blackballed; and thus did Zinzendorf ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... then declared that she must go and get the Doctor to look at her. She knew he must be a man of taste, he talked so beautifully about the Millennium; and so, bursting into his study, she actually chattered him back into the visible world, and, leading the blushing Mary to the door, asked him, point-blank, if he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Tabs still spoke with friendliness. "While we were together your telegram arrived and I agreed to be the bearer of her message. But as for her second request, that I should become engaged to her, I refused that point-blank." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... waited about an hour when through the mist they saw an Indian cautiously riding in. He was reconnoitering the wallow. Their hearts sank. They kept quiet until he was within point-blank range—they could see his red ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... and the lad they gave voice to a shout of triumph, and raising their carbines fired point-blank at ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from you. I had thought you would draw the line at assassination, but we live and learn. Last night, as I was returning to the shelter of my humble roof, a dirty hairy fellow—but why should I describe him to you?—leapt out and fired at me point-blank with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol, and missed. I give you my word he singed half an inch off my left whisker. Of course they say he was a ruffianly suitor offended by my just decision in favour of his opponent, but I know better. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... particular point, even women managed to restrain their curiosity: and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further. So, though many people hazarded guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the point-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... He listened to all that I had to say with a very polite smile, and every now and then kept on taking out his watch. When I had finished, he thanked me very much, but gave me clearly to understand that he considered I had been made a fool of. I tried to persuade him to see you, but he declined point-blank. Shall I tell you his message ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the denial he has received from the brother, roused to recklessness, he resolves on having an answer from the sister, point-blank, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sound, and try if Ships might come near enough to batter, who all gave it, as their Opinions, that there could not more than three Ships possibly anchor at the upper End of the Harbour; and if they were laid but in a Foot Water more than they drew, they would not be in a Point-Blank-Shot, and consequently could do no material Execution; however, to convince the General, that Ships could be of no manner of Service to him, the Admiral caused the Galicia (one of the Spanish Ships) to be fitted proper for ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... of any novelist—any painter of life—doing harm, if he but gives us the whole. It is the story-teller who rolls some prurient morsel under his tongue who has the taint in him: he who, to sell his books, panders to the degraded instincts of his audience. Had Balzac been asked point-blank what he deemed the moral duty of the novelist, he would probably have disclaimed any other responsibility than that of doing good work, of representing things as they are. But this matters not, if only a writer's nature be large and vigorous enough to report of humanity in a trustworthy ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Cossacks tried to retake the guns with a superb charge, but though he got through himself he lost more men, amongst whom was a splendid fellow, his second in command, named Berwkoff, who was greatly loved by us all. A Magyar soldier seeing Kalmakoff with his Ataman banner borne by his side, took a point-blank shot at his head, but he forgot the high trajectory of the old Russian rifle, and the bullet merely grazed the top of the Cossack leader's head and sent his papaha into the mud. His banner-bearer could not see his leader's cap so left, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... religious ideas along the same general lines—and that even to the extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland of the animal life, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Upton had no sympathy with any such view as that. She had been so near to victory that she was not going to surrender now without one more charge. She tried a little sounding of Bliss herself, and finally asked him point-blank if he would take dinner with herself and Upton and Molly and make it up, and he declined absolutely; and it was just as well, for when Molly heard of it she asserted that she had no doubt it would have been a pleasant dinner, but that nothing ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn't want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn't been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice. He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the promptitude and exactitude of Jenny's lie, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in that direction? Why will they not come within range? I will give everything I have on earth for one good point-blank shot!" ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to come into the field of battle. Dyck Calhoun could see the struggle going on. The two sets of enemy ships had come to close quarters, and some were locked in deadly conflict. Other ships, still apart, fired at point-blank range, and all the horrors of slaughter were in full swing. From the square blue flag at the mizzen top gallant masthead of one of the British ships engaged, Dyck saw that the admiral's own craft was in some peril. The way lay open for the Ariadne ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Louden and the doctor, and while we were there, talkin', one of Pike's clerks came with a basket full of tin boxes and packages of papers and talked to Miss Tabor at the door and went away. Then old Peter blundered out and asked her point-blank what it was, and she said it was her estate, almost everything she had, except the house. Buckalew, tryin' to make a joke, said he'd be willin' to swap HIS house and lot for the basket, and she laughed and told him she thought he'd be sorry; that ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... privately buried, after photographs of it had first been taken. I even went the length of communicating the opinion of the surgeon consulted, that some chemical means of arresting decomposition had been used and had only partially succeeded—and I asked her point-blank if the surgeon was right? The trap was not a bad one—but it completely failed. She said in the coolest manner, "Now you are here, I should like to consult you about my play; I am at a loss for some new incidents." Mind! there was nothing satirical in this. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... suspects at another. It is no use beating about the bush. You cannot ignore such outrages as these. I wish to spare everybody's feelings—yours, mine, even the lady's, and, above all, my poor friend's; but I must tell you, point-blank, that the intimacy which I have reason to believe existed between Mr. Stanmore and Lady Bearwarden has not been discontinued since her marriage; and I come to you, as that gentleman's friend, on Lord. Bearwarden's behalf, to demand the only reparation that can be made ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Alice, to say such things of your sister. Well, anyhow the town is full of it. When I went out yesterday Mrs. Morris asked me point-blank if I hadn't news for her, and Miss Peters has taken so frightfully to rolling her eyes whenever Matty and Captain Bertram are seen together, that I'm quite afraid she will contract a regular squint. How long was he with Matty on the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... itself might fail to inspire. I sent him, therefore, the book, carefully sealed up, with an intimation that I requested the favour of his opinion upon the contents, of which I affected to talk in the depreciatory style, which calls for point-blank contradiction, if your correspondent possess ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... lelah was kept up at intervals, but every shot went over them, whether fired point-blank or made to ricochet from the sands. There was tremendous bustle and excitement on board the prau, but no fresh attempts were made to land, and as the long, hot, weary hours crept on the question rose as to what would be the enemy's ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... as to how she should answer that question. It was very tempting to say that Elaine had suggested it—but decidedly risky. Riviere might ask the girl point-blank. It was better to be prudent in this game of strategy, and accordingly ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... I have already with shame confessed to you, been out a couple of times on gallant adventure, but never with such point-blank, unabashed directness as on this summer's day in my beloved little Dutch city. I also felt none, absolutely none, of the shyness, the conscientious scruples, the nervousness that usually attend the gallant adventures of a married man. I felt like a schoolboy ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the home government, and was, in effect, arbitrarily appropriating the property of subjects without their consent asked or obtained. Pitt disposed of the argument of virtual representation by denying it point-blank; Americans were not in the same position with those Englishmen who were not directly represented in Parliament; because the latter were inhabitants of the kingdom, and could be, and were indirectly represented in a hundred ways. But while opposing the right of Parliament to rob America, he ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... magazines!" shouted Sergeant Hal to the men in the swiftly formed front rank. "Ready, aim! At will, point-blank range—fire!" ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... General Lucas Meyer. It is said that at the battle of Dundee General Meyer, feeling convinced that the God of Battles had decided against him and his forces, decided to surrender to the British, but Louis Botha fiercely combated his general's decision, and point-blank refused to throw down his arms or counsel his men to do so. What followed all the world knows, and Botha went up very high in the estimation of the better class of fighting burghers. At the Tugela, before the first big battle ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... would have been worse than what I did say. Remember that he asked me the question point-blank, and that no reply would have been equal to an affirmation. I should have confessed that ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Lady Davenant, "you have not told me whether you have any of you found out what changed Granville's mind about this falconry scheme—why he so suddenly gave up the whole to Mr. Churchill. Such a point-blank weathercock turn of fancy in most young men would no more surprise me than the changes of those clouds in the sky, now shaped and now unshaped by the driving wind; but in Granville Beauclerc there is always ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... day," she said, point-blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... malicious of destiny to pick him out as a victim, when there are so many worthless young men (the name of John Flemming will instantly occur to you) who deserve nothing better than rough treatment. You see, I am taking point-blank ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy. This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name would be given out as missing from the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... him point-blank just what his life had been, and why he had never been to school, Ruth did not see how she was to learn more than the white-haired boy ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... There could be no doubt about it. There in material form on the corner of his table was a point-blank, tangible contradiction of the universally accepted axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same space, and that, come from somewhere or nowhere, there were two plainly material objects through which his daughter's hand, without her even knowing it, had passed as easily as it would ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... that a fort built on the southern end of Sullivan's Island, within point-blank shot of the channel leading into Charleston Harbor, might help prevent the British fleet from sailing up to the city. At all events it would be worth trying. So, in the early spring of 1776, Colonel William Moultrie, a veteran of the Indian wars, was ordered to build ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... anchor, one on the bow of their admiral, and the other on the bow of their vice-admiral, got astern, and could not with all our diligence be of any service for a full half hour after the action began. At length we got within point-blank shot of them, and then were forced either to anchor or drive farther off with the current, as there was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point-blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his official character, which was not that 'he could not prepare despatches in a good style,' but diametrically the opposite case—that he insisted too much on style, to the serious retardation of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... emerged into light again close to the table with napkins on her arm. She removed the work-box reverentially, the doctor's manuscript unceremoniously, and proceeded to lay a cloth: in which operation she looked at Rose a point-blank glance of admiration: then she placed the napkins; and in this process she again cast a strange look of interest upon Rose. The young lady noticed it this time, and looked inquiringly at her in return, half expecting some communication; but Jacintha lowered her eyes and bustled about ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Varia is mine! mine!' ... Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has just said to a guest, 'Make yourself at home,' and sees the guest actually beginning to settle ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... point-blank," answered the detective. "But my own idea is that the affair has a very close connection with the two mysteries ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae of sharkdom, with numbers reversed—a Red Sea passage resonant with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sullenly. "I got up and went forward along the roof of the house, so as to have an eye on either rail. You understand, this business had to be done with. I kept straight along. Every shadow I wasn't absolutely sure of I made sure of—point-blank. And I rounded the thing up at the very stem—sitting on the butt of the bowsprit, Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stump, as the feller said, an' I'm above board." He paused for a moment; then he kicked a rotten spot on the log with the broad heel of his brogan till it crumbled into dust. "I've got some'n to say to you of a sort o' confidential nature, an' ef you'll let me, I may ask you a point-blank question." ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... asked, not so much from a laudable desire of obtaining information as to set the captain talking. It was a mistake on my part. Sailors do not like point-blank questions. They remind them unpleasantly, I suppose, of the Courts of Admiralty, or they betray greenness or curiosity on the asker's part, and thus effectually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... occasions the countess showed some little curiosity about the lover; and at last, after about ten days, when she found herself beginning to be intimate with her new companion, she put the question point-blank. "I hate mysteries," she said. "Who is the young man you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pause, during which the young man searched wildly for some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the regiment more than a half hour to get up to it. The writer speaks of the advance of that troop as having been made "in the fool-hardy formation of a solid column along a narrow trail, which brought them, in the way I have described, within point-blank range of the Spanish rifles, and within the unobstructed sweep of their machine guns." He sums up as follows: "And if it is to be ambushed when you receive the enemy's fire perhaps a quarter of an hour ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... afraid of nothing, to speak out our minds to him without fear of offending him, to stand in no dread of rousing his anger, but only of grieving his love. And so, you see, Helen, it is the same with your boy. He never attempts to deceive you. He tells out, point-blank, the most foolish things he has done—the most ridiculous expenses he has run into. He may be extravagant, but he is not untruthful. I have no doubt, if I sent this list to his trades-people, they ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... after a few short sentences he turned on his heel and retired. I then directed Long Guled to approach the group, and say that a traveller was at their doors ready and willing to give tobacco in exchange for a draught of milk. They refused point-blank, and spoke of fighting: we at once made ready with our weapons, and showing the plain, bade them come on and receive a "belly full." During the lull which followed this obliging proposal we saddled our mules and rode off, in the grimmest of humours, loudly cursing the craven churls ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton |
