"Blundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorant and fanatical rulers, that the march of civilisation must progress, and its various elements of commercial prosperity must be developed. It is needless to observe that such will never be the case under the blundering and decrepit despotism of the Turks or the Egyptians. Syria and Palestine, in a word, must be taken under European protection and governed in the sense and according to the spirit of European administration. It must ultimately come to this. What a great advantage ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the red fir-pillars, in that rich subdued light. Now I plunge into a gloomy dell, wherein is no tinkling rivulet, ever pure; but instead a bog, hewn out into a chess-board of squares, parted by deep narrow ditches some twenty feet apart. Blundering among the stems I go, fetlock-deep in peat, and jumping at every third stride one of the said uncanny gripes, half hidden in long hassock grass. Oh Aira caespitosa, most stately and most variable of British grasses, why ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... all life is seen only in its relation to the divine; looked at from any other side, it has no meaning, and, looked at even with this light upon it, is but for the most part seen as a blundering in the dark, a wandering from the right path. In so far as it is natural, it is evil. In so far as it is corrected by divine grace, it leaves the human actors in it without merit; since all virtue is God's, though all vice ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... foul with thy clowning and folly, The food that is dressed for thy betters? Thou blundering archer, what ails thee To be aiming thy insults ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... half-hearted?" I went on. "That's the folly. It seems to me that some one among your generals must be blundering very badly if Antwerp is to be so scandalously neglected. The lesson that it might teach if properly handled! The enormous value of its example to those parts of the civilised world that are still on the fence!—Holland, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... be given, that the blacks were approaching, and a party, commissioned to repress them, would immediately advance; often blundering and incautious, shouting, smoking, and straggling about; carelessly firing their pieces, and affording abundant information of their approach. Thus, after a fatiguing march, the natives, whom they were sent out to meet, would be observed in their rear, having already committed the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... knowledge she was eavesdropping, peered about for a means of slipping out. But the only door, portiere-hung, was the one leading into the parlour. And now this concealed poor blundering Missy from the speakers while it allowed their talk to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... but always nerve-racked, proudly and tensely strung up. Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with the agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry her lightly through all physical adventures, much as her arrowy strength and skill carried her through the breakers without blundering or mishap and let her now ride buoyantly on each ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... leader of the little wretches seemed furious at the idea. "No, no," he screamed, making a dash at Rudolf's leg with his sharp teeth. "We're Fidgets, Fidgets, Fidgets! Don't you know the Fidgets when you see 'em, you great blundering human, you? An old, old family, that's what we are. Guess Methuselah had the Fidgets sometimes, guess he did, did, did!" With every one of the last three words he made a snatch at Rudolf, trying his best to bite him, and at the same time dodging cleverly ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... sent for sir Ralph. Come with me, Margaret: you and Mary must keep your old father from blundering. Run, Dorothy, and tell Mr. Delaware and Mr. Andrews that I desire their presence in my closet. I miss the rogue Scudamore. They tell me he hath done well, and is sorely wounded. He must feel the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil, 229), "and open one's eyes. Almost everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty.... Then, to be sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others; there is an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... several types of Buddhism, and Mongolia, Thibet, Nepaul, Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam present each some special features of the system. How important that one should understand these differences in order to avoid blundering, and to wisely adapt his efforts! In India, under the common generic name of Hinduism, there are also many sects: worshippers of Vishnu, worshippers of Siva, worshippers of Krishna. There are Sikhs, and Jains, and devil ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... have learned wisdom. As a rule, your parents and your teachers are your best counsellors. They have traveled the road before you, and have your highest interests at heart. Listen to them. Don't make your life a wild experiment in blundering; it doesn't pay. ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... with our disguises. It was necessary for us to practise until our assumed roles became real; until to be our original selves would require a watchful and strong exercise of will. Of course, at first, much was mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new art, and we had much to discover. But the work was going on everywhere; masters in the art were developing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being accumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Calpurnius Mordax Naso was the Governor of Britain under Pertinax. My name means 'biting'; and bite I can, whether my dinner is before me, or my enemy. In the present case I shall not bite yet, but prepare myself for doing so. I watch the proceedings of the government, who are sure to be slow, as well as blundering. There has been no appointment to this command as yet, because of so many people wanting it. This patched-up peace, which may last about six months (even if it is ever signed), is producing confusion everywhere. You have an old fool ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... encouraged, and yet even now we haven't a free hand. You and I, who control the secret service of the army, denounce certain men, upon no slight evidence, either, as spies, and we are laughed at! One of those very blatant idiots whose blundering is costing the country millions of money and thousands of brave men, has still enough authority to treat our reports as ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wisdom to the proof? Was it not their duty to do so? And when, in result, the trial has proved the defect of his wisdom, did they not perform a useful public service? In truth, I cannot see the Model Man in his rebuke.—Let not my friend say that the error was merely intellectual: blundering self-sufficiency ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... do, indeed,' and he shakes her with a ferocity that would have startled any sudden visitor. No wonder, then, that it is a shock to Cosmo, who comes blundering in. Alice is the first to see him, and she turns the advantage to ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... thwarting his career. And, after all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observation, that ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... a mere ghost of a start. Was there something in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there WAS something under the words and behind his professedly flattered grin—something which must be ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Rogers and Mr. Rogers's friends are perfectly assured that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a line ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Sage flower the stamens swing round their loosely-connected anther cells against the back of any blundering bee who is in search of honey, just as in olden days the bag of sand caught the shoulders of a clumsy youth when tilting at ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... energy with which she determined to take the chance she used it. Quite contrary to her expectations, her leap was the best thing she could have done. Most of the barges were upset and the great beasts were blundering across the river ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... on his feet, sucking in his breath for the blast that would hurl his blundering Science Officer back out of the office. What halted him was an odd, choked exclamation from Commissioner Sanford. The colonel's gaze flicked over to the visitor, then followed Sanford's stare to the object ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... trail of the men that were seen on the spot! You say they came in a machine to the bank and you never so much as tried to trace it, or to get the license number even, I'll bet a month's salary you didn't! It was a moving-picture stall, and so you come blundering out here to the only picture company in the country, thinking, by gravy, that it was all straight goods—oh, can you beat that for a boob?" He shook back his heavy mane of gray hair and turned to his ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... airfield by the town of Bootstrap, but as they landed a black car came smoothly out and stopped close by the transport. Joe got down and climbed into it. Sally Holt was inside. She took both his hands and cried, and he was horribly embarrassed when the Chief came blundering into the car after him. But the Chief growled, "If he didn't kiss you, Sally, I'm going to kick ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... red, had turned pale; he did not lift his eyes from the floor; he was feeling more ashamed of himself than he had ever thought to feel in his life. Poor blundering Oscar whom he had despised had conquered his horror of snakes to do a service to a boy who had never given him a pleasant word; while he—he had tried to steal Lady Margaret's pet! Now Oscar was avowing his carelessness without a ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... reading by firelight, or studying with a glare of sunshine on my book," said Mac, peering solemnly at a magnified eye-ball; then, pushing it away, he added indignantly, "Why isn't a fellow taught all about his works, and how to manage 'em, and not left to go blundering into all sorts of worries? Telling him after he's down isn't much use, for then he's found it out himself ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened herself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... but the men. I don't tease father or mother or you,—but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering creatures, and we can confuse ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and earnestly on this point; I cannot do much, but I think you might, for in fact they might unintentionally compromise us seriously. The Government are rather shaky; Disraeli has been imprudent and blundering, and has done himself harm by a Speech he made about the Duke of Wellington, which was borrowed from an eloge by Thiers on a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... in Aristotle's thought, connected with two different ways of regarding the hierarchy of existences. We say that one existence is higher than another. Does this mean that what we call the lower are only so many blundering attempts to reach the higher? That every creature, for example, which is not a thinking man is, on the whole, a mistake? Aristotle often does speak like that. Woman, he says in one passage, is only a mutilated male.[22] ...
— Progress and History • Various
... more serious than those old troubles which had oppressed him. This was something far different from those old perplexities—the entanglements with three engagements. Amid all those he was nothing but a big, blundering baby; but now he seemed like a sorrow-stricken man. Where was the light of his eyes, the glory of his brow, the music of his voice? Where was that glow that once used to pervade his fresh, open, sunny face? ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"—the old, old game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted—it was this he charged them ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the opening movement, he was not rightly awake to what he was doing. His fingers, like well-drilled soldiers, went automatically through their work, neither blundering nor forgetting; but the mind which should have controlled them was unable to concentrate itself: he heard himself play as though he were listening to some one else. He was only roused by the burst of applause that succeeded the final chords. As he struck the first notes of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Penrith, and there are one or two notes concerning his journey tither. The next letter is dated 24th Aug., 1856. He wrote therefore when the Crimean War was still going forward. That war which, amongst mistaken policies, blundering Government tactics, and aimless ambitions, holds a foremost place. It was not till the end of the year 1855 that it came to an end. After the attack on Sebastopol, the French—whose army had suffered quite as much from the terrible winter and from ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... That stupid, blundering fellow bumped squarely into her at last. And how he escaped is still a mystery. The old cat always claimed that when she found Benjamin wasn't a bird she was so surprised that she let him go. And as for Benjamin himself, he never would discuss his adventure with anybody. Kiddie Katydid was ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... upsetting cups and rattling spoons in violent efforts to be quiet and helpful; but it suited Mrs. Jo, because just then her heart was very tender; and remembering that many of her boys were fatherless or motherless, she yearned over them, and found comfort in their blundering affection. It was the sort of food that did her more good than the very thick bread-and-butter that they gave her, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... worthless: desiring back my Direction to my Heirs that he should keep on the lugger in case of my Death. But I will wait for what you say about all this. I am really sorry to trouble you over and over again with the matter. But I am so fearful of blundering, where a Blunder may do so much harm. I think that Posh ought to be made to feel this severely: and, as his Wife is better, I do not mind making him feel it, if I can. On the other hand, I do not wish to drive him, by Despair, into the very ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... his fists clenched, as if about to strike, but the intention was stronger than the power, and resulted in the sailor blundering up against his mate, and both going down together, and then sitting up and staring at each other in a puzzled way as if they found it impossible to ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... on the present occasion at supper, for, in his blundering way, now that circumstances had occurred which made him feel pretty safe, he thought it would be good form to show Mary what a fine, magnanimous side there was in his character, and how, far from looking upon John Grange as a possible rival, he treated him as a poor, unfortunate being, for whom ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... she had said; it was all his fault that she had got this to bear. With the best intentions in the world he had proved himself a blundering fool. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... wish Shaw even an inch less contemptuous, for the people who call compassion "sentimentalism" deserve nothing but contempt. In this one does not even regret his coldness; it is an honourable contrast to the blundering emotionalism of the jingoes and flagellomaniacs. The truth is that the ordinary anti-humanitarian only manages to harden his heart by having already softened his head. It is the reverse of sentimental to insist that a nigger is being burned alive; for sentimentalism ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... The blundering fellow leaned close to my uncle's ear. "If 'tis turn-tail or chokee for you, along o' them jools," says he, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat watching him, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... of the milk of human-kindness in the frozen husk he had for a time become. But he must be blamed for icily rejecting the Turk's blundering attempts to make peace. He courteously—courtesy, between these two!—declined the Turk's offer to help him carry his suit-cases to the station. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a dozen clumps of sheltering trees, two hundred yards of the run of a clear, unfailing brook, and a warm shed for refuge against the winter storms, the giant buffalo ruled his little herd of three tawny cows, two yearlings, and one blundering, butting calf of the season. He was a magnificent specimen of his race—surpassing, it was said, the finest bull in the Yellowstone preserves or in the guarded Canadian herd of the North. Little short of twelve feet in length, a good five foot ten in height at the tip of his humped and huge ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... you, Mother Medicine, have not many years ago applied to Parliament for increase of forcible hindrance of antipharmacopoeal drenches, pills, and powders. Who ever heard of my asking the legislature to fine blundering circle-squarers? Remember that the D in dogma is the D in decay; but the D in demonstration is ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... that evening, and after dinner, the affair being fresh in my mind, I talked about it. I am not sure, but I think it was in connection with a discussion on Maeterlinck. It was that sudden lifting of the blind that had caught hold of me. As if, blundering into an empty theatre, I had caught a glimpse of some drama being played in secret. We passed to other topics, and when I was leaving a fellow guest asked me which way I was going. I told him, and, it being a fine ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... FitzJeames De La Pluche, as he is afterwards called, would be nothing but for his "orthogwaphy so carefully inaccuwate." As I have before said, Mrs. Malaprop had seemed to have reached the height of this humour, and in having done so to have made any repetition unpalatable. But Thackeray's studied blundering is altogether different from that of Sheridan. Mrs. Malaprop uses her words in a delightfully wrong sense. Yellowplush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an accurate writer, had he not made for himself special ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... are at the same time handicapped by an inability to comprehend the thing criticised. They are too differentiated; and for the purpose of the fable none of them is gifted with the power to study these insects with the sympathy of a Henri Fabre. We may find some quality of blundering stupidity in the Cossars and in young Redwood, they were too prejudiced by their physical scale; but the simple Caddles, born of peasant parents, uneducated and set to work in a chalk quarry, is the true enquirer. He walked up to London to solve his problem, and his fundamental question: ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... State," "the power of the State," "the absolute authority of the State," "the paramount allegiance due to the State," etc., etc. Not only the Public at large, but even those who assume to lead and direct public opinion, are constantly blundering on ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... he came, and descending the turret staircase, found a sentry standing at the outlet into the guard-chamber. It was dark, and Dick's person was not recognised. With a sort of blundering instinct he gave the word and passed on. This magic sound conveyed him safely through bars, bolts, and all other impediments. The drawbridge was lowered, and Dick, in a little time, found himself again upon the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... this to her even as she informed it, and afterward they stared at each other in a profound and tragic reception and acceptance of this great truth. Presently she began to consider the advisability of going to Marjdry with the whole story. Really, Harrison must not be allowed to go on blundering until the whole world heard that Marjory was trying to break her heart over that common scamp of a Coleman. It seemed to be about time for her, Mrs. Wainwright, to come into the ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Worlds; Foote's Health Monthly; Psychic Theories; Twentieth Century Science, Dawning at the end of the Nineteenth; Comparative Speed of Light and Electricity; Wonderful Photography; Wooden Cloth; The Phylloxera; Falling Rents; Boston Civilization; Psychic Blundering; Beecher's Mediumship; A Scientific Cataract; Obstreperous and Pragmatic Vulgarity; Hygiene; Quinine; Life and Death; Dorothea L. Dix; The Drift of Catholicism, Juggernaut The Principal Methods of Studying the Brain Responses of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... a word if Brooke were a widower. Although I don't like him, I acknowledge that he is the sort of big blundering brute that suits some women. But there's no chance with him, so why should you make ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... these killed and wounded, we had accomplished nothing—except to obey orders—which was to await further orders. The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down the trail, and stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry, and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring parties. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... bowed assent, saying that in all his general remarks the party present, of course, was not included. All the ladies, who were well acquainted with his absent and blundering conversation, very good-humouredly laughed, and Madame Murat assured him that if he would give her the address of the belle in France who had transformed a gallant Frenchman into a chevalier of British beauty, she would attempt to make up their difference. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... the blundering, pseudo-picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the Renaissance landscape-painters, wholly missing Homer's practical common sense, and equally incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines,—fastened on his ports ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... just as in private life he was not known to indulge in them. When he reports what was said in conversation he gives the very words. Lauderdale 'was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham called him to me, of a blundering understanding'. Halifax 'hoped that God would not lay it to his charge, if he could not digest iron, as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him'. It is the directness and actuality of such things as these, and above ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... continued to see many perfections in George, and contrived, by the force of his belief, to impress the same on the others, and to make them think his great talent for silence such a proof of his discretion, that they were not staggered, even by his shy blundering exclamation that his wedding would be a great nuisance—a phrase which, as Dr. May observed, was, to him, what Est-il-possible was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... After blundering through marshy and boggy hillocks for miles, I found myself at last in the locality indicated to me. Arriving at a roadside public-house, I entered it, and on inquiry was vexed to find that I had again been misdirected. I slept there, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Marian felt as if she was guilty of all, and was extremely provoked with herself for that blundering way of driving at her point, which made things worse when she most wanted to set them right. She had not comforted Caroline, and she had led poor Lionel to fancy his confidence betrayed, and himself discussed and—as ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... have had a shrill voice, and his action was animated, but not ungraceful. He has left behind him some speeches, among which are ranked a few that are not genuine, such as that on behalf of Quintus Metellus. These Augustus supposes, with reason, to be rather the production of blundering short-hand writers, who were not able to keep pace with him in the delivery, than publications of his own. For I find in some copies that the title is not "For Metellus," but "What he wrote to Metellus;" whereas the speech ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of blundering to his feet, checked abruptly, as if arrested by something in the peremptory tone. "What for?" he ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... and then directing the attention of the spectators to his own, by the way of a triumphant contrast. "Here have I cut the throats of two lively does, and a scampering fawn, without spot or stain; while you, blundering dog as you ar', have made as much work for Eester and her girls, as though butchering was your regular calling. Come, boys; it is enough. I am too old not to know the signs of the frontiers; no Indian has been here since the last fall of water. Follow me; and I will make a turn that shall give us ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more fierce and coarse than ever. To hear him, then, one would have supposed that they were actually plotting to make away with him, and that in self-defence he must smite them hip and thigh. Then, beside their moral offensiveness, they were such 'idiots,' and: 'noodles,' and botching and blundering right and left, so palpably to the danger and ruin of their employers, that no man of conscience could sit easy and see it going on; and all this simply because he had fixed his affections upon the practice of the one, and the agency of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the resident landlords in his neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... was broadly comic. It was cunningly interwoven with the texture of the play, sometimes loosely, and by way of variety or relief, as in the episode of {115} Touchstone and Audrey, in As You Like It; sometimes closely, as in the case of Dogberry and Verges, in Much Ado about Nothing, where the blundering of the watch is made to bring about the denouement of the main action. The Merry Wives of Windsor is an exception to this plan of construction. It is Shakspere's only play of contemporary, middle-class English life, and is written almost throughout in prose. It is his only pure comedy, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... prey, from another. But the bad feeling, if there was really any, quickly passed, and some other day I fell to the cabman who had been wronged of me. I had not always the fine sense of being booty which I had one day on coming out of a church and blundering toward the wrong cab. Then the driver whom I had left waiting at the door seized me from the very cab of an unjust rival with the indignant cry, "E roba mia!" (He's my stuff!). It was not quite the phrase I would have chosen, but I had no quarrel, generally speaking, with the cabmen ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... that supple, rounded form! Her very touch ought to put life into these trees; I know it would into me. How young she looks in that comical old dress which barely reaches her ankles! Yes, Hal Minturn; and remember, that trim little ankle can put a firm foot down for or against you—so no blundering." ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... after blundering about like this for many days, getting their clothes torn and their faces covered with mud, they walked right into the King's back-garden by mistake. The King's men came running up at ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... pray you take your time." At this I ventured to glance down at her, but saw no more than the curve of a cheek and the tip of a little ear; and staring at this came very near blundering into a rock. So I bore her into the rocky cleft already full of shadow, taking due heed in my going yet mighty conscious of all the yielding softness of her none ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... English wars in general, disastrous. We seldom make due preparation. Fleets inferior to the enemy in equipment and number, are sent out on the emergency; detachments of troops are sent where armies should have gone; and thus victory itself is without effect. Thus for a year or two we continue blundering if not beaten, and angry with our generals and admirals for failing to do impossibilities. At last the nation becomes fairly roused; the success of the enemy makes exertion necessary; their insolence inflames the popular indignation; a great effort is made; a triumph ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... is the ordinary practice of experiment, which is either a mere repetition or variation of experiments already devised (as ordinary story-tellers re-tell the stories of others), or else a haphazard, blundering way of bringing phenomena together, to see what will happen. To invent is another process. The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... and ill-timed concession of rights, if only backed by energetic police action, is not a prompter, surer cure for public disorder than whole batteries of artillery without the concession of rights. I believe the most blundering effort for the prompt undoing of a grievous wrong is safer than the shrewdest or strongest effort for its continuance. Meanwhile, with what patience doth God wait for man to learn his lessons! The Holy Cross still glitters on the bosom of its crystal ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... proper to chastise by throwing staves at the Krooman's head. The negro fled, seeking refuge on the other side of his canoe; but the enraged officer continued the pursuit, and, in his double-sighted blundering, ran against an oar which the persecuted black suddenly lifted in self-defence. I know not whether it was rage or blindness, or both combined, that prevented the American from seeing the blade, but on he dashed, rushing impetuously against the implement, severing his lip with a frightful ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... forgotten the commotion made by the newspapers in connection with this case, nor how they jumped at the opportunity once more to accuse the police of carelessness and blundering. Was it conceivable that a pick-pocket could play the part of an inspector like that, in broad daylight and in a public place, and rob a respectable ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... The little fruit-stand at the entrance had a fascination for me. I found myself there time and again, till I got afraid I might actually try to get of with a peach or a bunch of grapes. That thought haunted me. Fancy Nance Olden starved and blundering into the cheapest and most easily ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... a positive denial of unimaginable periods of time for Mr. Darwin's evolution to try its blundering experiments. We are empowered to say positively, No! There is no such length of time for you, Mr. Darwin, on this little globe at least. This rotating world had a beginning; so had our moon; and our sun, too, began to burn one day. And there are data ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... have some difficulty in finding such a person," said the duke. "If, indeed, the blundering affair of 1834 had not occurred, and things had taken their legitimate course, and we had seen a man like Lord Stanley for instance at the head of affairs, or leading a great party, why then indeed your ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that, you blundering spalpeen," said he, with a cuff on the ear. "I'll learn you to meddle, so I will. Go and clean the pots, and ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Director. I convinced him that I knew much about Egypt. In my eagerness I said too much. He remarked that a Professor's chair would suit me better than a seat in the Conciergerie. I knew more, he said, than he did. It was only by blundering, and letting him think that he had over-estimated my knowledge, that I prevailed upon him to let me move the few effects which I have retained into this chamber. It is my first and my ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and reported loss of the day express east on the Pennsylvania Railroad Friday afternoon. Soon the station was thronged with an anxious crowd, and the excitement became intense as the scant news came slowly in. Saturday the anxiety was relieved by a telegram from Ebensburg, which a blundering telegraph operator made "three hundred lost," instead of "three thousand." That was soon corrected by later news, and the citizens immediately were called upon to meet for action. The Mayor presided, and at once $2,600 was subscribed ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... hallway to the stairs and the long walk to the darkened street below, into a city that had suddenly been cut off from its very life-energy. A city that had put all its eggs in one basket, and left the basket in the path of any blundering foot. ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... He ran blundering down the hall, tangled his feet in the fragments of the broken chair, and came sprawling a thundering cropper, which knocked every breath of wind out of his capacious body. He lay flat on his face for a couple of minutes, his broad back wriggling ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... sad and stern in its expression, and when Marian asked, "Papa, is it so bad as the papers say?" he replied: "God only knows how bad it is. For a large part of our army it is as bad as it can be. The most terrible feature of it all to me is that thick-headed, blundering men are holding in their irresolute hands the destinies of just such brave young fellows as Mr. Lane here. It is not so dreadful for a man to die if his death furthers a cause which he believes to be sacred, but to die from the sheer stupidity and weakness of his leaders is a bitter thing. Instead ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... COLLEGE it will give a method of accurate diagnosis which will supersede the blundering methods now existing—a method of RAPIDLY enlarging and perfecting the materia medica—a method of exploring all difficult questions in Biology and Pathology, and a complete view of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... the Atlakvia, is here suppressed or dropped. The gold of the Niblungs is not in the story at all; the motive of Attila appears to be anger at the death of his sister Brynhild, Gunnar's wife, but his motive is not much dwelt on. It is as if the author had forgotten the run of events, like a blundering minstrel. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Emeline, as soon as they had stepped beyond the street-door, on leaving the house of Mrs. Allender, "why did you say any thing at all about Mr. Erskine, and especially after blundering so in the matter of apology? She'll see through it all, as clear as daylight. And won't we look beautiful in her eyes? ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... mother from recurring to the great piece of news, and uttering continual exclamations of wonder and surprise. But with that one exception we were all disturbed out of our natural equanimity, more or less. Every day, every hour, I was reproaching myself more and more for my blundering officiousness. If only I had held my foolish tongue for that one half-hour; if only I had not been in such impatient haste to do something to relieve pain! I could have knocked my stupid head against the wall in my remorse. Yet all I could do now was to second the brave girl in her efforts ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... air with their shouts," his printer made the line read "the crowd rent the air with their snouts." However, this error was a natural one, since it occurs in the "Catechism of the Swinish Multitude." Royalty only are privileged when it comes to the matter of blundering. When Louis XIV. was a boy he one day spoke of "un carosse"; he should have said "une carosse," but he was king, and having changed the gender of carosse the change was accepted, and unto this day ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Corruption, and kick out the knavish Contractor, Without piling Pelion on Ossa (of rates) on my back, till my legs with the "tottle" limp, I shall "learn to love him" as Giant Beneficent, not a big, blundering Bottle-Imp! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... to retain him in the family, offering him the choice of being his personal attendant, or porter at Castle-Bellingham. Jobson's joy and gratitude were unbounded. He preferred the former office. "Because," said he, "such a blundering fellow as I, who cannot tell rebels from honest men, may let pickpockets and gamblers into a true Lord's house, if they happen to have smooth tongues, and shut plain honesty out of it, which I hope ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... at length, but each in turn, after making the most of the accidental upset of a barrow-load of earth among their crops, or the blundering of a steer into a trench, harked back to the broken sluice. When amid some laughter they concluded, others who favored Savine described the precautions Thurston had taken. Then the inquirer turned over his papers, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... never found this out. They might have changed horses in five minutes, and proceeded, without having wakened a single person in the place; instead of which, the carriages actually stood five-and-thirty minutes on the top of the hill, while this blundering was going on. The king argued with the postilions about proceeding another stage: but their horses were so tired, they would ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... to make amends for the mental torture she had unwittingly caused me the previous evening. So it happened that when she questioned me as to how I managed to get into such a predicament, I told her as clearly as I could of the state of my feelings. It was a blundering, halting statement I made, of that I am certain, and before I had completed it Colonel Maitland's entry closed my mouth. But I think she understood, for there was a little flush on her cheek when we went into dinner which had not been there when I greeted her, and a pretty air of seriousness ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... in by a competent trained agent, rather than by the friendly visitor, whose relations with the family render searching inquiry difficult and often undesirable. But the mercifulness of a thorough investigation is that, once well done, it need not be repeated, and by saving endless blundering it also saves a family from much charitable meddling. Its seemingly inquisitorial features are justified by the fact that it is not made with any purpose of finding people out, but with the sole purpose of finding out how ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... had not been in such a blundering hurry," lamented Shag, "I might have saved him for your eating; but ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... intelligible, if one did not make allowance for the Calvary that the faithful royalists travelled through so many years, each station of which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new order towards a caste which for so many centuries ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... on: "You see, I don't lose sight of her so easily. As for you, you could only shut her up in Rome and leave her there; but I knew how to go to work to rid ourselves of this obstruction. The dogs of Jezebel were howling under her very windows, when there came a man blundering on to the scene and spoiled everything,—a man who is a man, who is more than a prince, a man from top to toe, in short, who carried off the woman from Rome. I hoped they would take flight to some foreign land, whence we might have obtained an official announcement of her death. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... by German organization and co-ordination, and may also help them to gauge the chances of success, military, diplomatic and economic, on which the Allies, with their easy-going ways, their hope of somehow "blundering through," and their lack of combination and of plan—can rely when pitted against a mighty organism, disposing of the most redoubtable forces ever created by human science and skill, directed by a single mind, and served with ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... you must go," said Mildred, with a shade of vexation in her voice and a good many shades upon her face, "or she will be blundering down here. I will come, too; ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... that retreat before our merciless enemy became to me at last like a dream, during which I have some recollection of staggering along with my arm in Mr Raydon's, and the people about us tottering and blundering along as if drunk with horror and exhaustion. Every now and then men went down, but they struggled up again, and staggered on, a crew of wild, bloodshot-eyed creatures, whose lips were parched, and white with foam; and then something cool was being ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... not less formidable than the historic revolt which bears that name—is an insurrection of free spirits against Christianity. It is much rather a reversion to a humane and classic reasonableness as opposed to mob-stupidity and middle-class philistinism—things which only the blundering of centuries of popular misapprehension could associate with the sublime and the imaginative figure ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the Corina, To replenish the flood Over seas disappearing; The second, without injury It will fall on us, When there is rain abroad. Through the whelming sky; The third will appear Through the mountain veins, Like a flinty banquet. The work of the King of kings. You are blundering bards, In too much solicitude; You cannot celebrate The kingdom of the Britons; And I am Taliesin, Chief of the bards of the west, Who will loosen Elphin Out of ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... two little girls, and hospitable offers showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, and tender motherliness. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... planned it," continued De Gollyer, artfully blundering; "boat to Tangier, from Tangier bang across ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... bump—I mean the blundering old chump?" spluttered Harry Rattleton. "Didn't stop to say a word? Well, somebody ought to say something to him! I'd like the privilege. It would do me good to give him an unvarnished piece ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... Lieutenant Halley, there was another scene very like the one which has been described. The Major and Carter insisted that all the men had not joined rank, and that there were more of them in the rear, clicking and blundering among the dead men's cairns. Lieutenant Halley told off his own troopers again and resigned himself to wait. Later ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... time to hear his father's blundering, and, in his jovial humour, in his delight over the new conception of his father that he had acquired after the toast, he said, ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... He knows. Canst thou not trust Him? 'Dieu est ton Berger.' The Shepherd takes more care of the sheep, Phoebe, than the sheep take care of themselves. Poor, blundering creatures that we are! always apt to think, in the depth of our hearts, that God would rather not save us, and that we shall have to take a great deal of trouble to persuade Him to do it. Nay! it is the Shepherd that longs to ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... do right for Mitch and—these folks," she warned almost commandingly as the old heli landed in the desert a few miles from the Station. "What would you do—if outsiders came blundering into your world by the hundreds, making trails, killing you with fire? At first, they ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... till you try. You may become the rage on the continent. Yet, you go into the enemy's country. It isn't the same as going to London, among tolerant cousins. In Italy and in Germany there is always so much red tape, blundering, confusing red tape, custom duties, excessive charges. But your manager must know ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... putting their oar into the other tunes and bothering the choir. There is nothing more annoying to the choir than, at some moment when they have drawn out a note to exquisite fineness, thin as a split hair, to have some blundering elder to come in with a "Praise ye the Lord!" Total abstinence, I say! Let all the churches take the pledge even against the milder musical beverages; for they who tamper with champagne cider soon get to Hock and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... is to manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case a crocodile ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... old globe, wherever aiming, Go blundering down the endless slopes of space: As far away the prospect of reclaiming ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... here. What more can be done to prove it than has been done? That blundering fool will swear my life away." Then he threw himself on his bed, and gave way to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... blundering old world is always searching for learning and riches, and everlastingly crushing underfoot all new riches and learning. It tried to make Fabre, a born lover of nature, desert her; it forced him to teach mathematics for decades instead. The first thing the ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... a shy fish and the blundering sportsman who goes stumbling through the underbrush, who allows his shadow to fall upon the pool, or who in other ways announces to the fish lurking under the bank that he is present with homicidal intent often wonders why it is that the results ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... first requisite being that he shall be a very good and high timber jumper. Quite a number of crack English and Irish hunters have at different times been imported, and some of them have turned out pretty well; but when they first come over they are utterly unable to cross our country, blundering badly at the high timber. Few of them have done as well as the American horses. I have hunted half a dozen times in England, with Pytchely, Essex, and North Warwickshire, and it seems to me probable that English thoroughbreds, in a grass country, and over the peculiar kinds of obstacles ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... was eager to give all possible help. That day, while Karl was busy, she had been reading a book Dr. Parkman had given her. He would keep her supplied with the best things for her to read, he said, selecting that which was vital, so that she would not waste time blundering through Karl's library at random. Dr. Parkman was being so splendid about it all. He was a man to give himself to a thing without reservations; if he helped at all he made his help count to the uttermost. She felt him back of her as a force ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... like that—let me help you. If it had not been for my bar you would have had plenty. I want you to take this; it's the deed of a half-section of land near Brandon—it will keep you in plenty. I'm a blundering fellow—I've put it roughly, but God knows ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... is an exceedingly unfavorable verdict. Apart from the great truth which it enforces, that everything has evolved somehow, and apart from the inevitable stimulating effect of any such universal picture, I regard its teachings as almost a museum of blundering reasoning. Let me try to indicate briefly my grounds for ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and Shields were hovering about the flanks of the devoted Army of Manassas; and the decisive blow was evidently to be aimed at that point. But the clear-sighted and cool-headed tactician at the head of the bulwark of Virginia saw far beyond the blundering war-chess of his antagonist. He prepared to checkmate McClellan's whole combination; and suddenly—after weeks of quiet preparation, of which the country knew no more than the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Inez was less affected by the smoke than those who were taller. The blundering policeman who essayed to follow her into the doorway, came staggering back, choking and blinded. Walter himself, springing forward when he thought the way was clear, was met by the rolling volume of pungent smoke, which filled his ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... surrender of the post into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton when the unfortunate young adjutant was taken, and the papers criminating Arnold found upon his person. No one, I am sure, can read unmoved Dr. Thacher's eye-witness account of the execution of this officer, lost through Arnold's cowardly blundering. The gravity of his offence against a flag of truce need not prevent our admiration of his soldierly conduct after his arrest, the perfect truthfulness to which he adhered during his examination, and the noble resignation with which he met his dreadful fate. Arnold had here a fine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... at the key in his hand. "Well I am damned," he muttered. Then added, in savage and—as it seemed to the artist—exaggerated wrath, "I'm a stupid, blundering, irresponsible old fool." Nor was he consoled when the painter innocently assured him that no harm ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... can escape, and the only defence against progress is stolid preoccupation with trade or trifles. Yet this persistency is holding the breath, and can no more be continued in the mind than that in the body. Blundering and falsehood become intolerable to the blunderers; they must return to thought, and that is proper in a single direction, is approached by ten thousand avenues toward the One. It is religious, not ignorance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... was smitten with little girls, and I found myself embarrassed in their company after my ninth year; yet I thought well enough of their looks and ways to enjoy their company at dances. The girls liked me in a platonic way, for I was accounted a good, big, kind, blundering boy with a helping hand for the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... fell upon his knees and groped about blindly, but the ground was hard. There was no sign of the gold anywhere, and not another stone in the quarry that answered to the boy's description. Possessed with a stupid blundering fury against Dick, Rogers turned back towards the Piper. He breathed horrible blasphemies as he ran, and struck at the scrub in his insensate rage. He was a man of fierce passions, and meant murder during those first ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... face to face with her, to refuse. She had expressed herself still more insistently on "happiness"— (on hers, his, theirs; the two were one, in her view)—and on a future shared together. In just what inadequate way had he tried to fend her off? Had he said, "I shall have to wait?" Or had his blundering tongue said, instead, "We should have to wait?"—or even worse, "We shall have to wait?" In any event, he had used that cowardly, temporizing word "wait"—for she had instantly seized upon it. Why, yes, indeed; she was willing to wait; she ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... she did not offend his intellectuality with prudish or conventional notions. Loving and foolish as she was in some ways, she would stand blunt reproof or correction. She could suggest in a nebulous, blundering way things that would be good for them to do. Most of all at present their thoughts centered upon Chicago society, the new house, which by now had been contracted for, and what it would do to facilitate ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... fallen brothers, a sickening spectacle to behold. Around them, too, were scattered the bones of comrades who fell in the first battle, three years before, a melancholy reminder of the defeat and death which followed the blundering of conceited officers. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... by "the squire's" was meant Mr. Egan's. Here, before the mistake was found out by the victim, Mr. Furlong was unburdened of much important information. While this process was going on at Mr. Egan's, a hue and cry was on foot at Mr. O'Grady's, for the lost Mr. Furlong, and poor, blundering Andy was arrested ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... and sun; he was not a celestial body, he had no definitely shaped form, but resembled an aggregation of gods rather than a single deity. By the addition of Ramman to the triad, the void occasioned by the removal of Ishtar was filled up in a blundering way. We must, however, admit that the theologians must have found it difficult to find any one better fitted for the purpose: when Venus was once set along with the rest of the planets, there was nothing left in the heavens which was sufficiently ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Committee, or the Faithful Irishman, was written by Sir Robert Howard soon after the Restoration, with for its heroes two Cavalier colonels, whose estates are sequestered, and their man Teg (Teague), an honest blundering Irishman. The Cavaliers defy the Roundhead Committee, and the day may come says one of them, when those that suffer for their consciences and honour may be rewarded. Nobody who heard this from the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... began I, losing my head and blundering I scarcely knew whither, "when you saw me talking to Crofter—" ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon might frolic with the jolly country girls, but he himself must sit all evening in a plush parlour where conversation dragged so perceptibly that the father often came in and made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere. On his way home from his dull call, he would perhaps meet Tony and Lena, coming along the sidewalk whispering to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... My blundering deck hand came promptly at my call, and I gave him the steering oar, bidding him keep the raft steady before the current. I took the long lines, which I used as mooring ropes, and tied them together, ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... that man's own voice. I dare protest the man no thief, but in all things a madly honourable gentleman. My poor bruised, puzzled boy," said Melicent, with an odd mirthful tenderness, "how came you to be blundering about this miry world of ours! Only be very good for my sake and forget the bitterness; what does it matter when ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... intention than by the result—the Chief himself had not really seen how far his achievements were below his possibilities. And if the Chief was at times deceived by the superficial, how was he, a self-willed, blundering boy, ever likely to be able to come to a ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of Bismarck and William II. might have had of winning over Alsace-Lorriane—and it could never have been a good one—was ruined by the daily and tyrannous blundering of the German Government. The prohibition of the teaching of French in the primary schools, the immediate imposition of German military service on the newly-annexed territories, the constant espionage on all those known to hold strong ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one of them at least had no patience with her. To Captain Osborn her existence and presence in the near neighbourhood were offences. He told himself that she was of the particular type of woman he most disliked. She was a big, blundering fool, he said, and her size and very good nature itself got on his nerves and ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... week it was "Mass' George," and in a month, in a blundering way, he could begin to express what he had to say, but only to break down and stamp, ending by bursting ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... had arisen between all complications of descent from three original strands, European, American, African, the distinctions of social consideration founded on them bred names so many, that a court calendar was necessary to keep you from blundering. As yet, the varieties were few. Meantime, the word creole has always been misapplied in our English colonies to a person (though of strictly European blood,) simply because born in the West Indies. In this English use, it expresses the same difference as ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and well-tailored; but come you from Oxford or Bow, You're a flaring offence when you lounge, and a blundering pest when you row; Your 'monkeyings' mar every pageant, your shindyings spoil every sport, And there isn't an Eden on earth but's destroyed when ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... now and then getting entangled among strands of broken wire; blundering down into some trench-mortar hole and up again at the other side, Wetherby and Hawke at length came upon Bob Dashwood and Dennis, where the trench ended abruptly without any ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... first right is to be protected from her friends while she considers the man whom she contemplates loving. The well-meant blundering of vitally interested friends has spoiled many a promising love affair, which might have resulted in a marriage so much above the ordinary that it could be termed satisfactory even by ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... College, to recite badly; to make a poor recitation. From the substantive bull, a blunder or contradiction, or from the use of the word as a prefix, signifying large, lubberly, blundering. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall |
