"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have. Trousers are a thing of yesterday with us, but our top-hat carries us back to the Wars of the Roses and beyond. It is not its beauty that explains it. I have never heard any one deny that it is ugly, though custom may have blunted our sense of its ugliness. It is not its utility. I have never heard any one claim that this strange cylinder had that quality. It is not its comfort It is stiff, it is heavy, it is unmanageable in a wind and ruined by a shower of rain. It needs as much attention as a peevish child or a pet dog. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... to our daily meetings, who sins not here, if however he sin at all?" Yet it is respect of persons to honor the rich for their riches, for Gregory says in a homily (xxviii in Evang.): "Our pride is blunted, since in men we honor, not the nature wherein they are made to God's image, but wealth," so that, wealth not being a due cause of honor, this will savor of respect of persons. Therefore it is not a sin to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... indigestion. But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not wholly recover her former attitude toward life. The growing remoteness of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her neighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their troubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Beaufort disaster out of her mind. But for the first time she became absorbed in her own symptoms, and began to ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... tardy to avenge the death of a Jacobin proconsul. The judges of the revolutionary commission were worn out with fatigue—the arm of the executioner was weary—the very steel of the guillotine was blunted. Collot D'Herbois devised a more summary mode of slaughter. A number of from two to three hundred victims at once were dragged from prison to the place de Baotteaux, one of the largest squares in Lyons, and there subjected to a fire of grape-shot. Efficacious ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Burdening his weary ghost: 150 Ever walking by his side He must see his angel guide, Who at intervals doth turn Looks on him so sadly stern, With such ever-new surprise Of hushed anguish in her eyes, That it seems the light of day From around him shrinks away, Or drops blunted from the wall Built around him by his fall. 160 Then the mountains, whose white peaks Catch the morning's earliest streaks, He must see, where prophets sit, Turning east their faces lit, Whence, with footsteps ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... blunted, the hearing becomes dull, the eyes lose their luster, vivacity, and strength, and vision becomes in general shorter, less ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... near the bull's-eye, so to speak—as a vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and then he would start, and remember he had ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... were allowed to be made. Those who possessed them had to surrender them. This is true in a nobler and better sense regarding the Gospel Stronghold. There can be no deadly weapons forged there. Their edge is blunted: "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."[46] Satan's armoury has been plundered; the "Stronger than he" has "taken from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... an encouraging sign. It shows that the vulgar ideals, the false moral measurements, the feverish social ambitions, the love of the ostentatious and the factitious, and the disdain for simple habits, pleasures, and characters so apparent in certain conspicuous sections of society, have not yet blunted the moral sense or perverted the moral perceptions of the great masses on either side of the Atlantic. To this type, indeed, we could scarcely find a more complete antithesis than in the life and character of the great Queen who has passed away. Nothing ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... for a long time to an unvarying round of employment, which affords neither scope nor stimulus for one half of his faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources, his mental powers, for want of exercise to keep up due vitality in their cerebral organs, become blunted, and his perceptions slow and dull. Unusual subjects of thought become to him disagreeable and painful. The intellect and feelings not being provided with interests external to themselves, must ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... occupying the next shack to the gambling place. For convenience of service extra doors had been cut and a rough-boarded passageway erected between the two places. The fever of gambling provided thirsty customers for the liquor dealer, and the whisky blunted the wits of the gamblers and gave the dealers more than their customary percentage of odds in the favor of the house. It was a combination that worked both ways. Waiters impressed into service from camp followers, crudely took orders and delivered ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Somewhat blunted by over-employment is another romantic instrument, eminently characteristic of Heine, namely, irony. Nothing could be more trenchant than his bland assumption of the point of view of the Jew-baiter, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of published materials, and Sanskrit MSS. also are so easily obtained from India, that much might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany—much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... keep the lists against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended successfully the cause of which he was the champion; but, before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lifelong hatred, my cherished purpose. Blank amazement was in the gaze that he turned upon me. I feared that impending death had blunted his senses, and that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... when the Fates lay their hand upon a man his senses are wont to be blunted and dimmed, so Gallus, being led on by these alluring persuasions to the expectation of a better fortune, quitted Antioch under the guidance of an unfriendly star, and hurried, as the old proverb has it, out of the smoke into the flame;[20] and having arrived at Constantinople ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Margot dismally to herself, "some day I shall laugh over this!" For the present, however, her sense of humour was strangely blunted, and the handkerchiefs were needed for a very ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... yawned. "It depends on your funny bone. Mine's got blunted. I'm the lady that the Irish comedy guy slaps in the face with a bunch of lettuce. Say, there's something about you that makes a person get gabby and tell things. You'd ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... is an imitation of Plautus' Curculio, or the Forgery. The Parasite of Phaeaedromus, who gave his name to the piece, says (ii. 3):—"I am quite undone. I can hardly see; my mouth is bitter; my teeth are blunted; my jaws are clammy through fasting; with my entrails thus lank with abstinence from food, am I come... Let's cram down something first; the gammon, the udder, and the kernels; these are the foundations for the stomach, with head and roast-beef, a good-sized ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... playing tricks worthy a whipping if not a hanging on respectable persons of limited capacity. His most notable victim is the purveyor of drink or victualler to the camp, a tun-bellied coward, proud of his pretended noble descent, a Falstaff grown old, whose wit has been blunted, who has ended by marrying Mistress Quickly, and has himself become tavern keeper in partnership with her. In old days he drank on credit: now the good fellows tipple at his expense. Such is the end of all the Falstaffs ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the prince said, speaking for the first time, "It was but yesterday in the great hall downstairs he stood up with blunted swords against young Victor de Paulliac, who is nigh three years his senior. It was amusing to see how the little knaves fought against each other; and by my faith Gervaise held his own staunchly, in spite of Victor's superior height and ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much. So, when he had occasion to be seen, He was but as the cuckoo is in June, Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes As, sick and blunted with community, Afford no extraordinary gaze, Such as is bent on sun-like majesty When it shines seldom in admiring eyes; But rather drowsed, and hung their eyelids down, Slept in his face, and render'd such aspect As cloudy men use to their adversaries, Being with his presence glutted, ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... placeman, man of mark and note, Worthy of honor from a feeble pen Blunted in service of all true, good men, You serve the Lord—in courses, table d'hote: Au, naturel, as well as a la Nick— "Eat and be thankful, though it ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... community, the nation, the society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or emperor, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted, or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... condition showed no improvement on that of the savage warrior of two thousand years ago, except in that civilisation had developed finer weapons to kill with and be killed by. The finer instincts had been blunted by the naked and unashamed horrors of war. But the lessons taught him before war scourged the world came back to him on getting his first view of the Holy City. He felt that sense of emotion which makes one wish to be alone and think alone. He was on the ground ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... says of the great, of fashionable people and of women, his rude and cutting tone, provoke and irritate, but are not displeasing. On the contrary, after so many compliments, insipidities and petty versification all this quickens the blunted taste; it is the sensation of strong common wine after long indulgence in orgeat and preserved citron. Accordingly, his first discourse against art and literature "lifts one at once above the clouds." But his ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... another, a more mature, and heavier, but not less personable, couple, who proceeded to make love in their own somewhat different way. The lyrical notes seemed to be missing in them. But maturity, though it had stripped away magic, had not blunted their passion—had, rather, sharpened the edge of it, and made it a stronger and more formidable instrument. Throughout the evening, indeed, in the long succession that there was of amorous encounters, it seemed to be the encounters ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... by her previous agitation, she seems to have given way under this last shock, tenderly and carefully as Mr. Philip Nicholson broke the bad news to her. All her feelings appeared to be strangely blunted at the examination to-day. She answered the questions put to her quite correctly, but at the same time quite mechanically, with no change in her complexion, or in her tone of voice, or in her manner, from beginning to end. It is ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... butcher. And this worth in exchange not only absorbs a large quantity in that use,[35] but greatly increases the effect on the imagination of the quantity used in the arts. Thus, in brief, the force of the functions is increased, but their precision blunted, by their unison. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... if the natural instincts of men and women will not guide aright in the selection of a consort, and my answer is yes, if the instincts of men and women were natural. But when we reflect that the sexual instincts of the present generation are blunted, warped and paralyzed by the sexual sins of a long line of ignorant and depraved ancestors, they cannot be trusted. But they can be educated, and every man of refined sensibilities can, by learning to recognize his true affinity, so educate his sexual instincts ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... ludicrous. And what shall we say to performances such as the explosion of nitro-glycerine? Much may be urged in extenuation of the offences of the German students in the seventeenth century. Their sensibilities were blunted by the horrors of a Thirty Years' War; they had been born and reared amid bloodshed and rapine; some of them must have served in the campaigns of Baner, Torstenson and Wrangel, where human life went for nothing, and honor for less than nothing. Some ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... his ascetic character. He had a hard pragmatic countenance, and one of those noses which though large and bony come suddenly short and blunted. His eyes, small, gray, and inscrutable, seemed unfriendly, so baffling, introspective, unnoting was their inattentiveness. His hair was of a sort of carrot tint, which color was reproduced in paler guise in his fringed buckskin shirt and leggings, worn on a sturdy ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... stoop to be a slave. Your rules will never do for me, I'd rather learn the rule of three— "And since I find it is the plan, To make me an automaton, I'll case my heart in triple mail, And fence it so completely round, That all this vaunted skill shall fail, Those blunted arrows back rebound; For know, usurper! from this hour, I scorn thy laws, abjure thy power! From this dear moment I despise The whole artillery of eyes; Reason alone shall be my guide, And Reason's voice shall ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... outline, the face of the mountain being precipitous with escarped cliffs. In other parts of the line, the summits were sharply serrated. Northward it was lost in the far distance among clouds and mist, but to the south-west of Monte Asto a similar, but more blunted peak towered above all the others. I observed on our maps that several of the summits in this range have the name of Monte Rosso; and the centre of the group was indented by a deep gorge richly wooded, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... would have understood it, had she known to what base deeds a mind blunted by selfishness and ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... forever spoiled for him many pictures and books once cherished and dear. Approved by the mob, they began to reveal imperceptible defects to him, and he rejected them, wondering meanwhile if his perceptions were not growing blunted. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband, filled him with some remorse and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been ill, produced an irresoluteness and wavering ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... my bold Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... his hand. "I mustn't speak about it," he said. "Silence helps me to bear my misfortune as becomes a man. I have had some hard blows in my time: they don't seem to have blunted my sense of feeling as I thought they had. Thank God, she doesn't know how she has made me suffer! I want to ask her pardon for having forgotten myself yesterday. I spoke roughly to her, at one time. No: I won't intrude on her; I have ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... work, Harry," he said, "though we were only at it about a quarter of an hour, at a time. My wrists and arms and shoulders are aching, as if I had been beaten with sticks. Tomorrow I will take up a good supply of firewood. The chisels got blunted before we had worked an hour; and we should get on a deal faster, if we could sharpen ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... undergo intolerable insults. They are tarred and feathered and spat upon. Is it possible that Republicans, Democrats and Socialists clip the wings more than free spirits can allow? Is civilization perhaps too tightly organized? Have the irreconcilables a soul audacious and less blunted than our domesticated ones? To put it mildly, is it ever safe to ignore them entirely in ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... taught her to expect in Europe, but now her patriotic vanity feasted full. Fat highhotes of her own sex levelled their lorgnettes at Miss Triscoe all around the horseshoe, with critical glances which fell blunted from her complexion and costume; the house was brilliant with the military uniforms, which we have not yet to mingle with our unrivalled millinery, and the ardent gaze of the young officers dwelt on the perfect ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... President, this is how the matter stands. They imagine they can ruin England with their submarines—they 're probably wrong, but that's their notion—but if they give way to America this illegitimate weapon is blunted and they lose the war. Sooner than suffer that catastrophe they will defy America. And they don't believe as yet that America means what she says and is determined to fight rather than suffer these outrages to continue. The Germans will try to throw ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... family of Stephens, and Nathaniel represented Gloucestershire in Parliament at the time of the conviction of Charles I.: it is related that he was only persuaded to agree to the condemnation by the impetuous Ireton, who came there and sat up all night in urgent argument "to whet his almost blunted purpose." Stephens died in May, 1649, expressing regret for having participated in the execution of his sovereign. We are further told in the traditions of the house that when all the relatives were assembled for the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of experimental physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisection. They are always ready to repudiate any implied want of tender feeling, but I must say that they seldom show much pity; on the contrary, in practice they frequently show the reverse. Hundreds of times I have seen, when an animal ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the young lady, with a grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner. But the force of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales. Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ask you, Roger, to try a bout of sword play with some of us; but I will not do so now. After what we have seen of the strength of your arm, I should be sorry, indeed, to stand up against you, even with blunted weapons or with sticks; for there would be no resisting a downright blow. The news came to us of the terrible blows struck by the Spaniards, and how they clove through sword, helmet, and head. I scarce credited them before, but now I can well believe ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... ran, 'carrying so infectious a fear with them, that the whole body of troops was seized by it and fled.' Colonel Digby followed, with all the horse at his disposal, 'till,' says Clarendon complacently, 'their swords were blunted with slaughter.' Perhaps the Royalists were more anxious to impress a salutary warning against the sin of rebellion than to kill the fugitives, for Clarendon finishes the account by saying that the rebels 'were scattered and dispersed all over ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... supplications to God: that were a divine channel. Again, the marrow of other men's spirits is exhausted in the pursuit of things in the world. The edge of their desires is turned that way, and it must needs be blunted and dulled in spiritual things, that it cannot pierce into heaven, and prevail effectually. I am sure, many of us useth this excuse, who are so cold in it, that we do not warm ourselves. And how shall we think to prevail with God? Our spirits make little noise when we cry all the loudest. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... all. He came into my old heart like a son. We are not all brute, gentlemen. I have waded in blood and plunder like the rest, but in every heart there is some spot that beats for things better. I divided my love between him and my captain. This man"—he pointed to his old master with his blunted finger, drawing himself up until he looked taller than he was, his one eye flashing with anger and hatred, as with a stern, rude eloquence he recited his wrongs, the grim indictment of a false friend—"this man betrayed us at Panama. With what he had robbed his ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the chisel with which they pursue their purpose become blunted ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... her anxiety, moved into the range of the Maccabee's vision. The next instant he had thrown away his sword and had caught her in a crushing embrace to him. His voice, blunted and repressed as if something had him by the ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... fighting teeth are blunted runs from the field before his foe. With many an afterthought ran Gisli. Gone is ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... his purpose. The wine made her rosy and pretty, and it also made her forget her poses and affectations. She was more charming to him than ever before, partly because of the change in her, and partly because his own critical faculties were blunted by alcohol. He was almost in love with her and he felt sure that he was about to win her. But presently she began wheedling him in the old vein. She wanted him to take her to the dance at ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... the enrichment of tawny wine or blood oranges, and the blue of peacocks or the sea. In short these people are artistic in the sense that used to be called aesthetic; and it is a nameless instinct that preserves these nameless tints. Like all such instincts, it can be blunted by a bullying rationalism; like all such children, these people do not know why they prefer the better, and can therefore be persuaded by sophists that they prefer the worst. But there are other elements emerging from the coloured crowd, which ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... one shoulder against the roof, reaching up into the hole he had made, still cutting away with this once keen knife, which was now dulled and blunted. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... of the American army. The Anarchiad was followed by the Echo and the Political Green House, written mostly by Alsop and Theodore Dwight, and similar in character and tendency to the earlier series. Time has greatly blunted the edge of these satires, but they were influential in their day, and are an important part of the literature of the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to the settle, and takes up her knitting. Maire takes her shawl off, and hangs it on the rack. Maire Hourican is over twenty. She is tall, and has easy, graceful movements; her features are fine and clear-cut; the nose is rather blunted, the mouth firm. Her gaze is direct and clear. She has heavy auburn hair, loose now, and falling. Maire comes down to the table, opens basket, and takes some flowers from top. She turns to dresser and arranges some of the ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... spread over so many years, did not vanish away as they were gathered in, and had not all been scattered and spent by the time that years had multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown dim, and mind become blunted and worn."[239] This was his own case. His earnings were never thriftily husbanded. Diderot could not deny himself a book or an engraving that struck his fancy, though he was quite willing to make a ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... general public, I have no doubt that the feeling of shame and sympathy, are blunted by these repeated military calamities, and by Mr. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... intimacy, the liaison takes a more serious character and there is a certain degree of affection or even love. However, all these concubinages are generally limited to a few weeks or months, so that the natural love of the woman becomes blunted by successive polyandry. It is always more or less a question of "an ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... thirty—no,—she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... it till after a few enjoyments had numbed and blunted the sense of the smart, and given me to feel the titillating inspersion of balsamic sweets, drew from me the delicious return, and brought down all my passion, that I arrived at excess of pleasure through excess of pain. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... my dear, I don't know if they have or they haven't," a harassed grocer-woman acknowledged. Her conscience was becoming blunted in the stress and strain of business life. "She took a pound of it as usual, and that's all I can ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... iv. 6 postulates the exile,[1] and the prophecy of exile to Babylon, iv. 10, would be unnatural in Micah's time, when Assyria was the dominant power.[2] Again it is exceedingly improbable that Micah would have blunted the edge of his terrible threat in iii. 12 by following it up with so brilliant a promise as iv. 1-4, especially as not a word is said about the need of repentance. The story in Jeremiah xxvi. 17ff. raises the legitimate doubt whether Micah's prophecy, which was certainly one of threatening, iii. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... Arab. "Jinn" spirit or energy of a man, which here corresponds with the Heb. "Aub"; so in the Hamasah the poet says, "My Jinn have not fled; my life is not blunted; my birds never drooped for fear," where, say commentators, the Arabs compare an energetic man with a Jinni or Shaytan. So the Prophet declared of Omar, "I never saw such an 'Abkari amongst men," 'Abkar, in Yamamah, like Yabrin and Wabar near Al-Yaman, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of tobacco-juice aimed at a passing cat, when he checked himself hastily at sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and the lady's—not ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Captain ——, together with its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having awakened within me, in a form of peculiar solemnity, those patriotic remembrances of past glories, which all boys feel so much more vividly than men can do, in whom the sensibility to such impressions is blunted. Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see; he had died about a year before. Another death there had been, and very recently, in the family, and under circumstances peculiarly startling; and the spirits ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... manufacturer ground, but not sharpened. As the student must in any case learn how to sharpen his tools, it will be just as well to get them in that way rather than ready for use. As this process of sharpening tools is a very important one, it must be reserved for another place. Should tools be seriously blunted or broken they must be reground. This can be done by the carver, either on a grindstone or a piece of gritty York stone, care being taken to repeat the original bevel; or they may be sent to a tool shop where they are in the habit ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... two years before the boy got any chance to "py" her for her kindness, and when the chance did come, he would have given his sturdy young life to avert it. By this time, much mixing with Canadians had blunted his London street-bred accent. To be sure he occasionally slipped an "h," or inserted one where it should not be, but he was fast swinging into line with the great young country he now called "home." He could eat Indian corn and maple syrup, he could skate, toboggan, and ply a paddle, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... was so weary and sleepy that her curiosity and capacity for any other emotion was blunted. She had become simply a little, tired, sleepy animal. She let herself be undressed; she was not even moved to much self-pity when the lady discovered the cruel bruise on her delicate knee, and kissed it, and dressed it with a healing salve. She was put into a little night-gown which ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... flat in Half Moon Street, and high up in one of those tall, discreet-looking houses. The windows were wide open on this hot July afternoon, and the bourdon hum of London, where Piccadilly poured by at the street end, came in blended and blunted by distance, but with the suggestion of heat, of movement, of hurrying affairs. The room was very empty of furniture; there was a rug or two on the parquet floor, a long, low bookcase taking up the end near the door, a table, a sofa, three or four chairs, and a piano. Everything was ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of the tomahawk and scalping knife; and in practising cruelties upon every thing that chanced to fall into his hands, which was susceptible of pain. In that way he learned to use his implements of war effectually, and at the same time blunted all those fine feelings and tender sympathies that are naturally excited, by hearing or seeing, a fellow being in distress. He could inflict the most excruciating tortures upon his enemies, and prided himself upon his fortitude, in having performed the most barbarous ceremonies and tortures, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... divine passion in strong and tender natures. The calculating sensualist can never comprehend this swiftly exalted emotion, this immediate radiation of light through all life, which is like the sun breaking through clouds on a dark day. The sensualist has by self- indulgence, blunted the edge of feeling, and it is impossible for him to experience this delicate sensation of exquisite delight,— this marvellous assurance that here and now, face to face, stands the One for whom all time shall be merged into a Song of Love, and upon whom all the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... king is no longer the warrior Thane whom we first encounter upon the 'blasted heath', and whom we afterwards see haunted by horrid visions of 'air-drawn daggers', as he turns his hand to crime. He has gotten far beyond all this. Murders to him are become but 'trifles light as air'; use has blunted his sensibility, and to bring back all that agony and horror needs a vastly stronger excitement than a mere deed of blood. We see this in the cool way he tells the murderer, 'There's blood upon thy face', as if it simply made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... for a gift, then,' said Creighton, tossing it over. 'There is a good spirit in thee. Do not let it be blunted at St Xavier's. There are many boys there who ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... no particular joy in having your eyes hammered at by a blunted sharp instrument, like a herring-gull's beak, for instance, even if those eyes happen to be shut, as I think the skua's were, and the instrument wielded with the extreme clumsiness of the half-trained, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... resistance, and having married, more or less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that had haunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, that came in the train of the years, drove them ever further into the background. Want of sympathy in his home-life blunted the finer edges of his nature; of a gentle and yielding disposition, he took on the commonplace colour of his surroundings. After years of unhesitating toil, it is true, the most pressing material needs died ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... champion of the truth, as he had been taught to think himself, when bearing his first arms under his father in what was esteemed the Provencal Crusade. Alas, when honorable and devout minds have the fine edge of conscience blunted! Thus did the gallant and beloved "Sir Simon the Righteous" become a traitor ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... then what had caused the fire. It was stupid of Archie to understand her so badly—she was not blaming him for the fire. She turned her face again to the wall, but suddenly, as if a light had struck through her blurred and blunted consciousness ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... ox has pushed a man, by pushing has made known his vice, and he has not blunted his horn, has not shut up his ox, and that ox has gored a man of gentle birth and caused him to die, he shall pay ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilized life; a creation ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... holy feet devolv'd I cast me, praying him for pity's sake That he would open to me: but first fell Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times The letter, that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead with the blunted point Of his drawn sword inscrib'd. And "Look," he cried, "When enter'd, that thou ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... miscreants—fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching opportunities to plunder—made a dash at the camp, but the women defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they deemed a very short mourning necessary before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... forget to feign surprise when the alarm of murder was raised was very natural, and so was the fact that a woman with a soul so blunted to all delicate instincts, and with a mind so intent upon perfecting the scheme entered into by the murderer of throwing the blame upon the man whose dagger had been made use of, should persist in visiting ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... they were friends; their relations changed wholly. He looked at her with all his eyes; hung upon her with all his ears. And she—she forgot that he was vulgar and a clown; such breathless pleasure, such a humble absorption in superior wisdom, would have blunted ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Milton, and with it another missile which often appears on these battle-fields—the epithets of 'blasphemer' and 'hater of the Lord.' Of course, in these days these weapons though often effective in disturbing the ease of good men and though often powerful in scaring women, are somewhat blunted. Indeed, they do not infrequently injure assailants more than assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo. These weapons were then in all their sharpness and venom. The first champion who appears against him is Bellarmine, one of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... had become increasingly apparent in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.[23-18] With that decision, the judicial branch finally lined up definitively with the executive in opposition to segregation. But the effect of this united opposition was blunted by the lack of a strong civil rights law, something that President Kennedy had not been able to wrestle from a reluctant legislative branch. The demands of the civil rights movement only underscored ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Jerome, and other translators, is founded upon the erroneous derivation of the word from [Hebrew: qvh]. In the other passage (Prov. xxx. 17), where the LXX. translate, "the age of his mother," they have confounded the root [Hebrew: iqh] with [Hebrew: qhh], "to be blunted." ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... that the head of a family had a right to do what he liked with the members of his household. There were muttered protests from the few women and some of the older men who were present, but most of the young men, in whom a sense of chivalry had been blunted by hard lahour and penury, found a pleasure in goading the farmer on. No magistrate was at hand to put a stop to the traffic in human life, and the single policeman, realising that he had no written instructions to deal with such a case as this, had discreetly withdrawn ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... had found their way to the studies. The disgraceful and deadly habit of tippling had already told physically on both Eric and Wildney. The former felt painfully that he was losing his clear-headedness, and that his intellectual tastes were getting not only blunted but destroyed; and while he perceived in himself the terrible effects of his sinful indulgence, he saw them still more indisputably in the gradual coarseness which seemed to be spreading, like a grey lichen, over the countenance, the mind, and the manners of his younger companion. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... before the North-Eastern Railway put their black lattice girder bridges across the mouth of each valley. But now that familiarity with these bridges, which are of the same pattern across every wooded ravine up the coast-line to Redcar, has blunted my impressions, I can think of the picturesqueness of East Row without remembering the railway. It was in this glen, where Lord Normanby's lovely woods make a background for the pretty tiled cottages, the mill, and the old stone bridge, which make up East Row, that ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... on, and he grew thicker and sturdier and more furry. He was never graceful, like his cousin the red vole, for his face was blunted, his eyes small, and his tail ridiculously insignificant. Nor could he cover the ground with the easy swinging jump that makes one suspect relationship between the red vole and the wood-mouse. Still for a common, vulgar, agrarian vole, he was passable enough, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... the less divinely fair and kind. Her great love for her child had so moulded her that she seemed the very incarnation of motherhood. So might Ceres have appeared as she wandered forlornly in search of her lost Persephone, gentle, weary, her fineness a little blunted by her woes. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... think of how I and my daughter might, in our sleep, have been attacked by these animals. It is not to be wondered at, when surrounded by myriads of obnoxious animals, how any tender feelings towards that part of creation become blunted. At the moment of which I speak, valuable books, dried plants, papers containing the data of scientific observations, concerning the survey of the river Gambia to a considerable distance, were destroyed during the illness of the ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... tapes, with the dull liver pain gnawing into his right side and his head throbbing and aching after Canteen? He thought over this for many nights, and the world became unprofitable to him. He even blunted his naturally fine appetite with beer and tobacco; and all the while the parrot talked at and made ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... a course against each other with blunted spears, since they won't grant us sharp ones, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... was the evening, that the window remained open, until Ponto erected his crest as a footfall came steadily along, nearer and nearer. Uplifting one of his pendant lips, he gave a low growl through his blunted teeth, and listened again; but apparently satisfied that the step was familiar, he replaced his head on his crossed paws, and presently Robert Fulmort's head and the upper part of his person, in correct ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... off the steel head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it—whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... a sneer of much bitterness, and pointing to the blunted and useless implements, "are the peetiful theengs on which hong the lives of our brave fallows. Nae doot the next dispotches will say a great deal aboot the eexcellent arrangements for attock; but if ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a horse and a guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His companions spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried out savagely, "Shall we never be ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that on Mr. Kennedy announcing his decrees, Charley and Kate should hasten to some retired spot where they could commune in solitude; the effect of which communing was to reduce them to a somewhat calmer and rather happy state of mind. Charley's sorrow was blunted by sympathy with Kate's joy, and Kate's joy was subdued by sympathy with Charley's sorrow; so that, after the first effervescing burst, they settled down into a calm and comfortable state of flatness, with very red eyes and exceedingly pensive minds. We must, however, do Charley the justice ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather opposite character, the connoisseur noticing the manner of working over the surface by the old Italians as being different to that pursued now; the assistant sees nought but rough gougings and scratchings as with a notched or blunted tool, and concludes that the old makers were not as good workmen as the moderns. "Now, James," says the other, "you have been doing little else than repairing since you took up with this business, and have ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! —The door-bell jingles,—enter Richard Fox, And takes this letter from his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... motion: it heaved and rolled in countless places. Rounded shapes in myriads were emerging. Plants—mushroom growths—poured up from the earth to drink in the sunshine of their brief summer. They burst the earth to show unfolding leaves or blunted, rounding heads, that grew before the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... commenced, innocently at first, with races on foot, on horseback, and in chariots; then followed a grand hunting of beasts turned loose in the arena; and next a sword dance. But after the sword dance came the arraying of swordsmen, with no blunted weapons, but with sharp spears and swords—a gladiator combat in full earnest. The people, enchanted, applauded with shouts of ecstasy this gratification of their savage tastes. Suddenly, however, there was an interruption. A rude, roughly robed man, bareheaded and barefooted, had sprung into ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction. He continued to the end of his life a teacher of a congregation, and no reader of ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... For baseness of the spirit scorns, Saint Priest, who every album's page With blunted pencil-point adorns. Another tribune of the ball Hung like a print against the wall, Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84) Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim. The traveller, bird of passage he, Stiff, overstarched and insolent, Awakens secret ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... related that Col. Tarlton once asked a lady in Charleston, the name of the Camomile blossom. "It is called," answered the noble woman, "the Rebel flower, because it flourishes best when most trampled on." The influence of woman prevailed, the sword seemed sharpened, instead of blunted by the blows it had taken, and the spirit of '76 again animated the soldiery. The arrival of Lafayette about this period, was most welcome: he brought encouraging news, and instilled into the colonists hopes which ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... when he said, "Except I see in His hand the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe"; and in so far as the world-spirit is permitted to hold sway within us, our powers of spiritual perception will be blunted, and become infected with the tendency to make our intellect or imagination our sole means of apprehending ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... of the old chap," laughed a sottish-looking man, whose age ought to have inspired him with some respect for the relation between father and son, and doubtless would, had not a long course of drinking and familiarity with debasing associates blunted his ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... as a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less today, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... way in which he mentioned each trifle concerning her. Little circumstances connected with her daily life were described as one would describe the traits of some rare animal. His career of degradation seemed to have blunted every idea of responsibility. He looked upon her as a superior being, and her adornment as a sacred duty. The richness of her toilet, the magnificence of her equipage, the glory of her beauty, became an inexhaustible ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the other hand, grovels in the dust and never rises to higher thoughts or nobler aims. Men could, if they would, distinguish the worthy from the unworthy, just as with a healthy palate they can tell good food from bad. But men's moral discernment has been blunted by a life of sensuality and sin, just as the physical palate loses its power of tasting when in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... was divided, when a great sea came and the vessel trembled from her keel to her truck, and all hands had to hold on for life. Down again came the axe, as the sea went by. But its edge was blunted and it cut slowly, as the wielder doubled his efforts in reply to the shouts, 'Cut the hawser, or ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... of his being thus employed were conveyed to the camp, when the Mungas, stout and fierce warriors, who never shrunk from an enemy, yielded to the power of superstition, and felt all their strength withered. It seemed to them that their arrows were blunted, their quivers broken, their hearts struck with sickness and fear, in short, that to oppose a sheik of the Koran, who could accomplish such wonders, was alike vain and impious. They came in by hundreds, bowing themselves to the ground, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... little savings bank for the benefit of our employees which pays 3 per cent., yet I believe we have you not among our depositors." There was the slightest possible burr to his speech as though it were blunted by ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... feeling, which wears away after a time; but at last, your own sense of indignation becomes blunted, and becoming indifferent to it, you forget also that you wound the feelings of others, and carry the habit with you, to the great injury and disgrace of the service. But it's time to dress for dinner, so you'd better make yourself scarce, Peter, while I tidivate myself ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... supper, at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely a word was spoken—heads down, hands and jaws at top ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... instinctively knelt while the child poured forth her humble adoration, and she prayed most earnestly, that the deep feeling of reverence she had just witnessed in her adopted one, might never be displaced or blunted by contact with an ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... affected by what passed before him, however dreadful, however sudden, however afflicting. Habitual danger, with unbounded confidence in his own strength and sagacity, had rendered him indifferent to fear, and the lawless and precarious life he led had blunted, though its dangers and errors had not destroyed, his feelings for others. And it was to be remembered that I had very lately seen the followers of this man commit a cruel slaughter on an ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... longer than any furnished by mere barbarians. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.[244] Similarly, in various parts of Europe, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... described was visible in his horror-stricken countenance. He had been formerly a man of a sordid worldly disposition and hard unyielding temper, on whom the mild Christian persuasions of Dr. Beaumont had occasionally made good impressions, though these were as often blunted by the power of long indulged habits. But when such a man was roused from his stupor by the cauteries of Calvinism, despair was more likely to take possession of his mind than the pious energy and humble hopes which follow true repentance. Priggins indeed boasted of Humphreys as a ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... know the name refers to you, not some one else, shows that that blunted memory of yours has begun to function in some degree. Now think. What do ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... "come, Sam, speak the truth now." Well, Squire, I only brag when I have a right to boast, though you do say I am always brim full of it, and I won't go for to deceive you or myself either, I know I couldn't, that's a fact. I have mixed too much with the world, my feelings have got blunted, and my heart ain't no longer as soft as it used to did to be. I can give, and give liberally, because I am able, but I give what I don't want and what I don't miss; but to give as this poor woman did all she had of these two indispensable articles, tea ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Mr. Griffin's proposal that I should edit such a Cyclopaedia, I had it in my mind that I might make the scissors eminently effective. Alas! on narrowly examining our best Cyclopaedias, I found that the scissors had become blunted through too frequent and vigorous use. One great exception exists: viz., the Penny Cyclopaedia of Charles Knight.[470] The cheapest and the least pretending, it is really the most philosophical of our scientific dictionaries. It is not made up of a series of treatises, some good and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... nodules there is a nucleus of whiter iron-earth surrounded by many concentric strata of darker and lighter iron-earth alternately. In one, which now lies before me, the nucleus is a prism of a triangular form with blunted angles, and about half an inch high, and an inch and half broad; on every side of this are concentric strata of similar iron-earth alternately browner and less brown; each stratum is about a tenth of an inch in thickness and there are ten of them ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... loved him best—fears for his eternal salvation, dread of the Divine wrath upon him. Of course, in these days these weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo; they were then in all ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... knowledge of the under side of life—yes, but her father had a greater knowledge still. He had used his greater knowledge. Craftily and with a most ingenious subtlety he had destroyed her power, he had blunted her weapons. Hine was attracted by Sylvia, fascinated by her charm, her looks, and the gentle simplicity of her manner. Very well. On the other side Garratt Skinner had held out a lure of greater attractions, greater fascination; and ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... thronged with joyful faces; but the appearance of a stranger blunted many a gibe which had been prepared on Hobbie's lack of success in the deer-stalking. There was a little bustle among three handsome young women, each endeavouring to devolve upon another the task of ushering the stranger into the apartment, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... landscape, the thousand phenomena, instruments and beauties connected with them. I should suffer a great diminution of the wonder and delight in attaining knowledge; also—more dreadful loss—my emotions would be blunted, so that I could not ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... well-shaped head, and the clipped beard glinted vividly when he passed across a narrow strip of sunlight, as if every hair in it had been a wavy and attenuated gold wire. His mouth was lost in the heavy moustache; his nose was straight, short, slightly blunted at the end; a broad band of deeper red stretched under the eyes, clung to the cheek bones. The eyes gave the face its remarkable expression. The eyebrows, darker than the hair, pencilled a straight line below the wide and unwrinkled brow much whiter ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... even if the worst penalties are escaped, indulgence brings at least satiety, the "heart high cloyed," a blunted capacity for enjoyment, ennui, restlessness, and depression of spirit. Keen as its zest may be at the outset, it is short-lived at best; and with the ensuing emotional fatigue, pleasures pall, life seems empty, robbed ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... yet look at him, he is the picture of health. Scoundrels are very often acquitted nowadays in Russia on grounds of abnormality and aberration, yet these acquittals, these unmistakable proofs of an indulgent attitude to crime, lead to no good. They demoralize the masses, the sense of justice is blunted in all as they become accustomed to seeing vice unpunished, and you know in our age one may boldly say in the words of Shakespeare that in our evil and corrupt age virtue ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... by my side, and even the prison was mingling with other memories as I drifted from earth and all its thorns and tears. All was blunted but the Christian's faith and trust ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... morning of Easter Eve we sallied up-stream again, snow falling and driving heavily, and the wind still strong but with yesterday's keen edge blunted. By the time we had beaten around the long bend up which we had fought our way the day before, the snow had ceased, and by noon the wind had dropped and the sun was shining, and in a few moments of his unobscured strength ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... "whatever debility of the constitution exists, it is to be cured by the usual medicinal means which are employed to restore weakened organs. But the great difficulty in these attempts to cure inebriety is in satisfying the mind, and in whetting the blunted resolutions of the patient; and this is, doubtless, more easily accomplished by a gradual ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... habituated and naturally vigorous, returns from his exercise draggled, faint, and exhausted, to begin the digestive labors of the day, and take his food with hunger rather than appetite. Abstinence has blunted the nicer perceptions of taste, and the jaded organs lose the power not only of discriminating flavors, but of knowing when to cry, "Enough!" "Brushing away the morning dew," like "love in a cottage," is very pretty in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Paoli, and of Baylor on the Hudson,—the scenes of Germantown and Monmouth,—the reduction of the forts at Verplanck's Ferry, and the forays led against New Bedford and the Vineyard,—all these familiarized him with the bloody fruits of civil strife. But they never blunted for one moment the keenness of his humanity, or warped those sentiments of refinement and liberality that always distinguished him. Within the limited range of his narrow sphere, he was constantly found the friend and reliever of the wounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... we not a right to say in his defence, that the true lover of knowledge is always striving after being—that is his nature; he will not rest in the multiplicity of individuals which is an appearance only, but will go on—the keen edge will not be blunted, nor the force of his desire abate until he have attained the knowledge of the true nature of every essence by a sympathetic and kindred power in the soul, and by that power drawing near and mingling and becoming ...
— The Republic • Plato
... not without a pang that any one can be told that she who is of all the dearest has some other one who to her is the dearest. Such pain fathers and mothers have to bear; and though, I think, the arrow is never so blunted but that it leaves something of a wound behind, there is in most cases, if not a perfect salve, still an ample consolation. The mother knows that it is good that her child should love some man better than ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... police force appeared to prevent the possibility of accident or robbery. All gambling booths and thimble riggers had, of course, been necessarily excluded, but we fear it was not possible to shut out all those persons whose recollection of the laws of meum and tuum was somewhat blunted. We heard of numerous losses of small sums, and of handkerchiefs and other trifles, but, throughout the day, we gained no information of any robbery which was of sufficient extent to produce more than a temporary inconvenience to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange paths with uncertain ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of his wonderful career being morally blunted, but his own belief in the sanctity of the verbal arrangement was sound to the core, and he hazarded the opprobrium of our stern conventional system. To him, Lady Hamilton had an enduring charm which influenced ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... The contrast between the plain dealing of the North and the refined Machiavellism of the South, between Protestant earnestness in religion and Popish scepticism, between the homely virtues of England and the courtly libertinism of Venice or Florence, blunted the moral sense, while it stimulated the intellectual activity of the English travellers, and too often communicated a fatal shock to their principles. Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... powerfully attracted him.[2] To derive delight from what inflicts pain on any sentient creature revolted his conscience and offended his reason, because he perceived that the character which does not shrink from associating its own joy with the anguish of another, is either found or left mortally blunted to the finest impressions ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... during the secession war the cases of mark' d suffering or agony in extremis were very rare. (It is a curious suggestion of immortality that the mental and emotional powers remain to their clearest through all, while the senses of pain and flesh volition are blunted or even gone.) ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... daughters, kept her in occupation, and her days were passed in one perpetual, unceasing current of dissatisfaction and ill-temper with all around, that formed a heavy counterpoise to the fascinations of the young ladies. The repeated jiltings to which they had been subject had blunted any delicacy upon the score of their marriage; and if the newly-introduced cornet or ensign was not coming forward, as became him, at the end of the requisite number of days, he was sure of receiving a very palpable ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the labours of spring and of autumn. In fact, it is "the backwoods," the listlessness of the backwoods, which, like the opposite extreme, the fatuity and blase life of a great metropolis, causes men to rush into insane extremes to avoid reflection. The mind is dulled and blunted. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... this morning of his son. The tenacious old merchant was wondering whether he had done right in accepting the young man's sacrifice. In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic offspring about him, perhaps he had taken a delicate instrument and blunted it by setting it at coarse work. Well, it was not too ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... same, he was gone out of her life, and through the strain and the unconscious progress to other planes and phases of being, wrought by sickness and convalescence, her own passion for him even was now a changed and blunted thing. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
