"Blear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the witch!" cried a merry girl, As they rounded the point where Goody Cole Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. "Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave to-day! But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 'The broth will be cold that waits at home; For it 's one to go, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... turn-out, male and female, of a German free-town, in the shape of scenes from the lives of the Virgin and saints; here are short fat burghers, with enormous blotchy, bloated faces and little eyes set in fat, their huge stomachs protruding from under their jackets; here are blear-eyed ladies, tall, thin, wrinkled though not old, with figures like hungry harpies, stalking about in high headgears and stiff gowns, or sitting by the side of lean and stunted pages, singing (with dolorous ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... What they saw was a small fire built upon the earth floor in the center of the building and around the warming blaze the figures of six men. Some reclined at length upon old straw; others squatted, Turk fashion. All were smoking either disreputable pipes or rolled cigarets. Blear-eyed and foxy-eyed, bearded and stubbled cheeked, young and old, were the men the youth looked upon. All were more or less dishevelled and filthy; but they were human. They were not dogs, or bulls, or croaking frogs. The boy's heart went out to them. Something that ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the false modesty left his face, his tall form straightened itself, and he stared round with his blear, evil-looking eyes. ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... The blear eyed 'scapes the pits * Wherein the lynx eyed fall: A word the wise man slays * And saves the natural: The Moslem fails of food * The Kafir feasts in hall: What art or act is man's? ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... keep thy five wits; Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear!" The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,— Said, "Who taught thee me to name? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow; Of thine ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his dame you never saw, Where reigned by custom old a Salic law; Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak, And every tongue paused midway if he spoke. Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe; No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here; 390 "Measure was happiness; who wanted more, Must buy his ruin at the Deacon's store;" None but his lodgers after ten could stay, Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day. He had his favorites and his pensioners, The same that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "The blear-eyed sorcerers of the north Their vile enchantments sung and wove, And in the night they sallied forth, A ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... detain such a rabble for the mere amusement of his wife, chose ten only of the best of the city who appeared to him most capable and eloquent. These were Bushy-haired Zeza, Bandy-legged Cecca, Wen-necked Meneca, Long-nosed Tolla, Humph-backed Popa, Bearded Antonella, Dumpy Ciulla, Blear-eyed Paola, Bald-headed Civonmetella, and Square-shouldered Jacova. Their names he wrote down on a sheet of paper; and then, dismissing the others, he arose with the Slave from under the canopy, and they went gently to the garden ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen, superstitious, and papists, or such as know no religion, in whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... turned suddenly to the left into the new road. Alice emitted a sigh of relief. There was a sense of luxury—of exclusiveness—in passing over its smooth surface. Morrison and his common hotel, with its blear-eyed windows, were now well out of sight. Presently the camp lay ahead of them—an orderly settlement of trim buildings. Margaret was too excited to do more than gaze ahead ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... the Black Country, from a little window, Before I slept, across the haggard wastes Of dust and ashes, I saw Titanic shafts Like shadowy columns of wan-hope arise To waste, on the blear sky, their slow sad wreaths Of smoke, their infinitely sad slow prayers. Then, as night deepened, the blast-furnaces, Red smears upon the sulphurous blackness, turned All that sad region to a City of Dis, Where naked, sweating ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... having been attended to, the travellers entered the house, where they found Pierre, the proprietor, dozing on his bar; a bloated, blear-eyed creature, who evidently would have much preferred making them drunk with his vile whisky to preparing them any pretence for a dinner. But they firmly declined his liquor, so muttering unintelligibly ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... made him halt with her at the kerb, where they were necessarily jostled by the press of squalid people, lurching with drink or merely with rough manners, that streamed up and down this street of topless houses whose visible lower storeys were blear-eyed with windows broken or hung ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Sitting in his cart, He makes his meal; before him, for long miles, Alive with bright green lizards, And the springing bustard-fowl, The track, a straight black line, 175 Furrows the rich soil; here and there Clusters of lonely mounds Topp'd with rough-hewn, Grey, rain-blear'd statues, overpeer ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... ringing with applause. There is no doubt whatever that the man whose name is in every mouth did the work; but because our personal impressions of him do not correspond with our conceptions of a powerful man, we abate or withdraw our admiration, and attribute his success to lucky accident. This blear-eyed, taciturn, timid man, whose knowledge of many things is manifestly imperfect, whose inaptitude for many things is apparent, can HE be the creator of such glorious works? Can HE be the large and patient thinker, the delicate humourist, the impassioned poet? Nature seems to have ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the city, where I had the opportunity of observing what may be called the charitable side of politics. For a whole month, or more, the burden of existence had been lifted from the shoulders of the homeless. No church or organization, looked out for these frowsy, blear-eyed and ragged wanderers who had failed to find a place in the scale of efficiency. For a whole month, I say, Mr. Judd Jason and his lieutenants made them their especial care; supported them in lodging-houses, induced the night clerks to give them attention; took the greatest pains to ensure ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the contemplation of the mountain peaks which glowed rich orange in the last lingering sun-rays, but really watching which way the sheep on the moor were taking, stood the innkeeper, a brawny, sodden-visaged, blear-eyed six feet of brutishness, holding up his hose with one hand, for want of points, and clawing with the other his elf-locks, on which a fair sprinkling of feathers might denote: first, that he was just out of bed, having been out sheep-stealing all the night before; and secondly, that by natural ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of Galen, these quack oculists were very numerous, and Galen inveighs against them. Martial satirized them: "Now you are a gladiator who once were an ophthalmist; you did as a doctor what you do as a gladiator." "The blear-eyed Hylas would have paid you sixpence, O Quintus; one eye is gone, he will still pay threepence; make haste and take it, brief is your chance; when he is blind, he will pay you nothing." The oculists of Alexandria ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... guard for an hour, till I call you down the hill. You can pull down a score of Volunteers apiece, if they dare to come after me. I have an hour to spare, and I know how to employ it. Jerry, old Jerry Bowles, stir your crooked shanks. What are you rubbing your blear eyes at?" ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... she doesn't know, she can't know what she's talking about! A decent woman! a lady! talking of driving girls on the street. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You aren't fit to show your face.... It's these damned papers and pamphlets, all this blear-eyed stuff, these decadent novels and things putting narsty thoughts, narsty dirty thoughts into decent women's heads. It ought to be rammed back down their throats, it ought to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... one for you to wrestle with, Asa Thor," said the King. Thor looked round and saw an old woman hobbling toward him. She was blear-eyed and toothless. "This is Ellie, my ancient nurse," said the Giant King. "She is the one we would have you ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... old crone; hunchbacked, toothless, blear-eyed, bearded, halt, with huge gouty feet swathed in flannel. As she cast in the ingredients one by ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sold or mortgaged,—in either case lost,—and his seed of a new life crushed in its cotyledon by the physician who might be short-sighted himself, or even blind. But the law must be enforced for the sake of the clear-sighted citizens of the Republic. We will have nothing to do with these poor blear-eyed foreigners. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Prue, gently; "you have no right to say 'girls' do so, because some poor victims have been deluded. Would Aurelia surrender to a blear-eyed foreigner in a moustache?" ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... place where a refined young lady would care to find herself alone, even in the cheery daylight. If she came at all, she would be attended by a trusty escort. She would not get too close to people on the doorsteps, and she would shrink away in disgust and fear from a blear-eyed creature careering down the sidewalk on many-jointed legs. The delicate damsel would hasten home to wash and purify and perfume herself till the foul contact of Wheeler Street was utterly eradicated, and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... whiskey-barrel, his stunted features betraying the hardened avarice of his character. He smokes his black pipe, folds his arms deliberately, discoursing of the affairs of the nation to two stupefied negroes and one blear-eyed son of the Emerald Isle. Three uncouth females, with hair hanging matted over their faces, and their features hidden in distortion, stand cooling their bared limbs at a running faucet just inside the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... out, sir,' said old Milsom, wistfully looking up at Elsmere with blear eyes, 'there'll be nothing left but the House for us old 'uns. Why, lor' bless you, sir, it's not so bad but we can ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise—maire or no maire—not. I asked whether they meant half a bed; but they said no, that would not be necessary at present; and I accepted the offered moiety of accommodation, as it was ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... shall wink?" "Not know myself!" he answered, "you say true: I do not: so I take a stranger's due." Self-love like this is knavish and absurd, And well deserves a damnatory word. You glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: You eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, Like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry Into your frailties with as keen an eye. A man is passionate, perhaps misplaced In social circles of fastidious taste; His ill-trimmed ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... idiot who would be For profitless belief to sell himself? Yet disbelief not less might work our bane! For, I remember, once a sickly slave Ill shepherded my flock: I spake him plain; 'When next, through fault of thine, the midnight wolf Worries my sheep, on yonder tree you hang:' The blear-eyed idiot looked into my face, And smiled his disbelief. On that day week Two lambs lay dead. I hanged him on a tree. What tree? this tree! Why, this is passing strange! For, three nights since, I saw him in a dream: Weakling as wont he stood beside my bed, And, clutching ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... than England," said an ugly, blear-eyed lad, about a head and shoulders taller than myself, the leader of a gang of varlets who surrounded me in the play-ground, on the first day, as soon as the morning lesson was over. "Scotland is a far better country than England, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... man, with a curling, grizzled head, and a well-featured face. It is possible that in his youth the word 'dapper' may have applied to him; a forgotten fact which perhaps accounted for his nickname. He gazed with an open mouth and puzzled, blear eyes at ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... this afternoon. If he asks who it is that wishes him here, say the person sent no name," continued the stranger, sitting up from his indolent posture, as the feet of old Joe were about leaving the door-stone, and his blear'd eyes turned to eaten the last ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... defendant's whole herd, though he generously says he will not insist on his refunding those cows which do not resemble the original heifers, and are not, as they were, dun and red and white. This sounded magnanimous, and met with grunts of approval until the blear-eyed defendant remarked, hopelessly, "They are all of those colors," which changed the sympathies of the audience once more. Tevula saw this at a glance, and hastened to improve his position by narrating an anecdote. No words of mine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... fire [Hamlet]. render dim &c adj.; dim, bedim^, obscure; darken, tone down. Adj. dim, dull, lackluster, dingy, darkish, shorn of its beams, dark 421. faint, shadowed forth; glassy; cloudy; misty &c (opaque) 426; blear; muggy^, fuliginous^; nebulous, nebular; obnubilated^, overcast, crepuscular, muddy, lurid, leaden, dun, dirty; looming &c v.. pale &c (colorless) 429; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... person in his tribe had been alive when he was a young boy in the village. He remembered the days when some of the old men, still alive, had been born; and, unlike him, they were now decrepit, shaken with palsy, blear-eyed, toothless of mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed. All his own faculties remained unimpaired. He even boasted a dozen worn fangs of teeth, gum-level, on which he could still chew. Although he no longer had the physical endurance of youth, his thinking was as original ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... voice had changed too, and was equally piteous. She asked for another. 'No, don't,' I begged, for the pretty girl I had flattered myself I had passed a summer's night with that most young men would envy, showed signs of changing, like some siren, into a flabby, blear-eyed boozer. That ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... half-asleep, when I felt a heavy weight stealthily creeping over me, from head to heel, so that I could not move a finger—my tongue only was unbound. I perceived, methought, a man upon my chest, and above him, a woman. After eyeing him carefully I recognised by his strong odours, dewy locks and blear eyes, that the man was no other than my good Master Sleep. "I pray you, sir," cried I, squeaking, "what have I done to you that you bring that witch here to torment me?" "Hush," said he, "it is only my sister Nightmare; we twain are going to pay our brother Death ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... will tear it up, and its soil shall be divided after the victory between the wives of the sergents de ville!' They are beginning to understand all the insanity of their plan. Why, it is Paris that will take Versailles, that will take all those blear-eyed old men who, because they cannot look steadily at Monsieur Thiers' face, fancy that it is ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... suspected—whether justly or not will be presently shown—that Henry III. "was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew." As the letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cultivate the taste and the sentiments, let him look into Salmasius's Responsio. There he will see the first scholar of his age not thinking it unbecoming to taunt Milton with his blindness, in such language as this: "a puppy, once my pretty little man, now blear-eyed, or rather a blindling; having never had any mental vision, he has now lost his bodily sight; a silly coxcomb, fancying himself a beauty; an unclean beast, with nothing more human about him than his guttering eyelids; the fittest doom for him would be to hang him on the highest gallows, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... fact! Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight Able to face an owl's, they still are dight 10 By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, And crowns, and turbans. With unladen breasts, Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, Their tiptop nothings, their ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... in the night I awoke; what woke me I suppose I shall never know. But when I awoke I sat up suddenly as if I had never been asleep. I was face to face with the worst-looking creature I had ever seen in my life, black and blear-eyed and ugly, on his hands and knees in the tunnel beyond the lantern drawing my gun toward him by the stock. Then Kaiser sprang up like any wild beast; but I held him ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... flute music.] Jesus came from out the court-house door, Stretched his hands above the passing poor. Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there Round and round the mighty court-house square. Yet in an instant all that blear review Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new. The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled And blind eyes opened on a new, ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... very cold morning, with a grey, cold, choppy sea on, the spray from which dashed over the boat, wetting me thoroughly, and making me feel pinched, blear-eyed, and miserable. I even envied the seals I saw cosily asleep in dry, sandy caves, at the foot of the black and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... man and a woman—a teamster out of work or with his wages for the day, and with him a creature—a blear-eyed, slatternly looking woman, in a filthy calico gown. The man clutches her arm, as they sing and stagger up past the cafes. The woman holds in her claw-like hand a half-empty bottle of cheap red wine. Now and then they ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... a battered, blear-eyed reprobate. "He pisoned my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke 'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... ancestors, you ought also to listen to the accusers, if they prove that the defendants have committed many crimes against you, and their ancestors did much harm. 25. For this man, when a youth, at the house of Archedemus the blear-eyed, who had stolen much of your money, while many eyes were upon him, drank, lying at full length under the same rug, and caroused at midday, having a mistress while a mere boy, imitating his ancestors, and thinking he could not be an illustrious man, unless he were a ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... refined expression of keenness without cunning. And after these canine noblemen of the old regime, whither has vanished the countless rabble of mongrels, curs, and pariah dogs; and last of all—being more degenerate—the corpulent, blear-eyed, wheezy pet dogs of a hundred breeds? They are all dead, no doubt: they have been dead so long that I daresay nature extracted all the valuable salts that were contained in their flesh and bones thousands of years ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... procured from its hiding place under the flooring, banished the make-up stain from his face, his neck, his wrists, and hands as if by magic. It was a strange metamorphosis that had taken place—the coarse, brutal-featured, blear-eyed, leering countenance of Larry the Bat was gone, and in its place, clean-cut, square-jawed, clear-eyed, was the face of Jimmie Dale. And where before had slouched a slope-shouldered, misshapen, flabby creature, a broad-shouldered form well over six feet in height now ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... selfishness of unsanctified intelligence, has that selfishness ever had more valuable allies and tools than the mental torpor that cannot think and the conscientious stupidity that will not? Moral laws, indeed, are intellectual facts, to be investigated as well as obeyed; and it is not a blind or blear-eyed conscience, but a conscience blended with intelligence and consolidated with character, that can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the door while the young man was speaking, and now stood eyeing her visitors with a blear-eyed look ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded porpoises, their mouths gaping ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... which made a cheap substitute for buffalo-robes. Perched, as we were, upon the crown of the height, we looked completely down into the sleigh, and during the whole course of my life I never saw three uglier mortals collected into such a narrow space. The man was blear-eyed, with a hare-lip, through which protruded two dreadful yellow teeth that resembled the tusks of a boar. The woman was long-faced, high cheek-boned, red-haired, and freckled all over like a toad. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... not return at all that night, but showed up next morning at the diggings, looking blear-eyed and sleepy. He told us he had slept with a friend, and replied rather curtly that he was a "little behind the game." I believe myself that he was cleaned out; but that was none of our business. Every night we divided the dust into five parts. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews) Puss ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... there dashed in pieces over those falls,"—but, for all that, we glide over those threatened catastrophes in a very commonplace manner, and are aware of what we have been passing only upon looking back at them. So no one sees the great light shining from Heaven,—for the people are blear-eyed, and Saul is blinded. But as I left Cairo in the greatening distance, floating onward to the heart of the mysterious river, I floated also into the twin current of thought, that, flowing full and impetuous from the shores of the peopled Mediterranean, follows the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and downwards, full of instances of such strange inexplicable passions? Was not Helen, by the most moderate calculation, ninety years of age when she went off with His Royal Highness Prince Paris of Troy? Was not Madame La Valliere ill-made, blear-eyed, tallow-complexioned, scraggy, and with hair like tow? Was not Wilkes the ugliest, charmingest, most successful man in the world? Such instances might be carried out so as to fill a volume; but cui bono? Love is fate, and not ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he presently gave his name, thirty-two years of age, born at Amsterdam, looked such a sluggish, slouching, blear-eyed creature that M. Flocon began ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... story. I went aft, and mounted the small poop, and looked towards the aforesaid moon, a glorious resplendent tropical moon, and not the paper lantern affair hanging in an atmosphere of fog and smoke, about which your blear—eyed poets haven't so much. By the by, these gentry are fond of singing of the blessed sun—were they sailors they would bless the moon also, and be—to them, in place of writing much wearisome poetry regarding ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... little she had won over all who had cause to love the dead woman,—all human creatures, that is to say: a dog was more faithful and had resisted her. Alison's dog was a terrier, old, shaggy and blear-eyed: he had been young with his dead mistress, and had seemed to grow old when she died. He had fretted incessantly during that year of her husband's widowhood, whimpering and moaning about the ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... several noted personages were influenced in the right direction. Chief among these was sodden, blear-eyed, disreputable Sloper, whose trembling hand scrawled a hieroglyphic, supposed to represent his name, which began indeed with an S, but ended in a mysterious prolongation, and was further rendered indecipherable by a penitent ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... wildly.—A moment more, and he would have leapt into the stream. The sight recalled me to my senses—say, rather, it reawoke in me the spirit of manhood. I seized him by the arm, tore him down upon the pavement, and held him, in spite of his frantic struggles. It was Jemmy Downes! Gaunt, ragged, sodden, blear-eyed, drivelling, the worn-out gin-drinker stood, his momentary paroxysm of strength gone, trembling ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... could have brought themselves to believe that it was such a very broad part of the road leading to destruction: but the landlord had some hazy notion on that point. He sat there day and night, and saw the destruction going on. He saw the blear-eyed, fuddled men that came to drown conscience in his stalls, and the slatternly women who came and went. Nevertheless he was a rosy, jocund fellow who appeared to have a good deal of the milk of human kindness about him, and would have looked on you with great surprise, if not scorn, had you ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... is Rue! it makes the sight of eyes both sharp and clear; With help of Rue, oh! blear-eyed man I thou shalt see far ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... says the Brat, comfortingly, "he will never find out that we are there: do you suppose that his blear old eyes will see all across that big room, economically lit up by ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... blear-eyed tramp, of low-toned, rowdy style, Give an interductory hiccup, an' then swaggered up the aisle. Then thro' that holy atmosphere there crep' a sense er sin, An' thro' thet air of sanctity the odor ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... cried he, "who raise sinful hands on the army of his holiness (may the worms devour you)! Ye will perish like lice under the nail of a pious Egyptian, if ye do not tell this minute where your leader is, may leprosy eat off his nose and drink his blear eyes out!" ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... such consolations of delusion remain to us, as we stand face to face with the Power which holds our destinies in its hand. None of these blear illusions can cheat our eyes with any such false presentments. No antiquity hallows, no public services consecrate, no gifts of lofty culture adorn, no graces of noble breeding embellish the coarse and sordid oligarchy that gives ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... hotel. It took Mahony the best part of the day to rouse him; to make him understand he was not to be horsewhipped; to purchase a fresh suit of clothing for him: to get him, in short, halfway ready to travel the following day—a blear-eyed, weak-witted craven, who fell into a cold sweat at every bump of the coach. Not till they reached the end of the awful journey—even a Chinaman rose to impudence about Johnny's nerves, his foul breath, his cracked lips—did ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... it blooms in the blear dayfall, That flower of passionate wistful song! How it blows like a rose by the iron wall Of the city loud and strong. How it cries "Nay, nay" to the worldling's way, To the heart's clear dream how it whispers, "Yea; Time comes, ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... a sudden sound of uneven footsteps made the poor widow start to her feet, and Sally to cry out. The next moment the door was rudely shaken, and then Jim staggered into the room, haggard, blear-eyed, muttering to himself savagely. The sight of his mother and sister seemed partially to sober him, for the spirit within him bowed instinctively before the beauty of holiness, which neither poverty nor terror could obliterate from the face of those whom he used to love so dearly. ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... clearness of head. What part he had in the brilliant effusions of Mirabeau, and in the French Revolution, may be seen by his posthumous work, just published at Paris, entitled Souvenirs de Mirabeau. He was a short, thick man, of coarse features, blear eyed, and slovenly in his dress; but of mild manners, hospitable, an excellent story-teller, and much beloved. I think he had been at one time librarian to old Lord Lansdowne. He died at Milan, in 1829, aged about 70. The French cannot contain their rage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... dull bricks and mortar where everybody, man woman and child, is a worker, this England without a "leisure class"; poetry in the thud of the steam-engine and the white trail of steam from the tall sugar refinery, in the blear eyes of the Spitalfields weaver, or the hungering faces of the group of labourers clustered from morning till night round the gates of the docks and watching for the wind that brings the ships up the river: poetry in its past, in strange old-fashioned squares, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... one stroke the constitution that is to be a basis of their laws—are we not provided with a mirror that reflects every lineament with the true disposition of light and shade? If it is a stern, it is yet a truthful, mirror. It flatters neither those who made it nor those blear-eyed maskers, who, forgetful of their own distorted visages, look in askance, and are able to see nothing to admire in the sober, bright-eyed faces of their fathers who gaze down upon them ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... entertained by howling blasts, till a fresh engine comes up from Blair Atholl. Such an experience was once mine, and I always think of it when I read the ninth ode of Horace's first book. Outside were the great snow-sheeted mountains, and the moon was gazing in blear-eyed compassion through a screen of haze. From end to end of the train resounded the rhythmic beat of cold-footed passengers striving to bring some warmth of blood ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... drinking shops, with such shocking odors issuing from doors and windows; and red-faced, blear-eyed men, half drunk, leaning against the barrels, and sitting on the side-walks; and decayed fruit, in windows so thick with dirt that one could scarcely see through them; and second-hand, faded dresses and bonnets ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... their commands, but made straight onward. Then one blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap with a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and strode away. But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty at the door of the mosque. Its ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Certain folk were there Sick in the body, dragging painful limbs, To the physician. These he solaced first, With healing touch, with simples from his pouch, Warming and lulling, best with promises Of constant service till their ills were cured. And some, gray-bearded, bald, and curved with age, Blear-eyed from poring over lines obscure And knotty riddles of the Talmud, brought Their problems to this youth, who cleared and solved, Yielding prompt answer to a lifetime's search. Then, followed, pushed by his obsequious tribe, Who ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... fire and to sleep under your roof for the night," I had announced on entering old Ebbits's cabin; and he had looked at me blear- eyed and vacuous, while Zilla had favored me with a sour face and a contemptuous grunt. Zilla was his wife, and no more bitter-tongued, implacable old squaw dwelt on the Yukon. Nor would I have stopped there had my ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... wretch entered who, appearing opportunely in Gavin's Hotel, had cured Dennis of his desire to drink, when weary and despondent, for the sake of the effects. For a moment they looked at the blear-eyed, trembling wreck of a man, and then Dennis asked, "Had God any hand in making that man ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... their own attitude in the matter affords painful proof that it is one of the latest. They will understand some day that a steatopygous "Hottentot Venus" is no more beautiful because an African finds her attractive, than an ugly, bloated, blear-eyed harlot is beautiful because she ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... cased in silken hose of a pale lavender hue, and silver buckles fastened the tufted purple ribbons on his shoes. On his breast was the red cross of St. James—patent of nobility; had it not been for that and his fine attire he might have passed for a blear-eyed and ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... a blear-eyed man demanded, thrusting his whiskey-reeking mouth up close to Reynolds' face. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... drink, blear-eyed and ill, Her battered bonnet nodding on her head, From a dark arch she clutched my sleeve and said: 'I've sold no bunch to-day, nor touched a bite ... Son, buy six-pennorth; and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the hail, but promised the blear-eyed sentinels in the bows of the ship a lively five minutes when the watch was relieved. Slowly the Andromeda swung to the west. Even more slowly, or so it appeared to the anxious man on the bridge, a red eye peeped ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... of, Mrs. Austin," I replied. "To be more than half a hundred years old! It is so many years to live; and then to be such a sinner, too—how hard it must be! I always thought you were very good before; and I am sure you are not gray and wrinkled and blear-eyed, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... inside the cabin, and an old negro woman hobbled presently to the daylight and stood peering from under her hollowed palm. She was palsied with age and blear-eyed with trouble, and time had ironed all the kink out of the thin gray locks that straggled across her brow. She peered dimly at the child as one who looks from ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... cease, COFFEE'S a speedier Cure for each Disease; How great its Vertues are, we hence may think, The Worlds third Part makes it their common Drink: In Breif, all you who Healths Rich Treasures Prize, And Court not Ruby Noses, or blear'd Eyes, But own Sobriety to be your Drift. And Love at once good Company and Thrift; To Wine no more make Wit and Coyn a Trophy, But come each Night and Frollique ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... that is to say, of all vices. Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indefeasible investiture, And that right round thy locks are native to; The heavens upon thy brow imperial, This huge terrene thy ball, And o'er thy shoulders thrown wide air's depending pall. What if thine earth be blear and bleak of hue? Still, still the skies are sweet! Still, Season, still thou hast thy triumphs there! How have I, unaware, Forgetful of my strain inaugural, Cleft the great rondure of thy reign complete, Yielding ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... in a long single file, for it was quite impossible to keep the tail up with the leaders. I shall try to give my reader some slight idea of them, if description is sufficiently palpable to do so. The real leader was an old black mare, blear-eyed from fly-wounds, for ever dropping tears of salt rheum, fat, large, strong, having carried her 180 pounds at starting, and now desperately thirsty and determined, knowing to an inch where the water was; on she went, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of learning were not destined for me. I found, at length, that the glass coach drove up the inn-yard of some large coachmaster; but few words were said, and I was consigned to the coachman of one of the country stages, with as little remorse and as little ceremony as if I had been an ugly blear-eyed pug, forwarded in a basket, labelled "this side uppermost," to an old maiden ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... came, this old man, bent and blear-eyed, was swept along the gangway like a chip on the tide. In pure lightness of heart a sailor, posted at the head of the plank, expedited him with a kick. "That'll do for good-bye to ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the old man on the beach—a short patriarch, with his baldness covered by a kind of bloated woolen sock—a blear-eyed sage, and a bare-legged. He waded through the surf toward the boat, and when we asked him whether the Grotto was to be seen, he paused knee-deep in the water, (at a secret signal from Antonino, as I shall always believe,) ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... policemen returned from the Cowgate with a motley assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief who feared ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... swart and shaggy, or pale and bloated beast-men, or white-haired, toothless, blear-eyed satyrs grown venerable in vice. But beautiful, youthful profligates, limbed like the gods and fauns of the old Greek sculptors; soft of skin, golden of hair, with sleepy eyes like green jewels, soft persuasive voices ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... an apprentice from an acquaintance with the dealers of both sorts, is somewhat like Laban's usage of Jacob, namely, keeping back the beloved Rachel, whom he served his seven years' time for, and putting him off with a blear-eyed Leah in her stead; it is, indeed, a kind of robbing him, taking from him the advantage which he served his time for, and sending him into the world like a man out of a ship set on shore among savages, who, instead of feeding him, are indeed more ready to eat him up ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of the first two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbing ways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed and racked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, and watered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkingly he swears by Zeus—from ancient habit—and then quakes with fright; for a fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they strike it, somethin' awful pretty in the face o' rocks, an' clay an' alkali. Oh, Lord, what a life it is anyway! They eat dirt, they sleep in dirt, they breathe dirt 'til their backs are bent, their hands twisted an' warped. They're all wind-swept an' blear-eyed I tell you, an' some o' them jest lie down in their sweat beside the sluices, an' they don't never rise up again. I've seen 'em there!" She paused reminiscently; then, pointing to the keg, she went on haltingly: "I ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... bow did fear[13] me, While thy pomp did blear me; Fa la la! But now I do perceive Thy art is to deceive; And every simple lover All thy falsehood can discover. Then weep, Love! and be sorry, For thou hast lost thy glory. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... and woe's me, For the secrets of her eyes! In my visions fearfully They are ever shown to be As fring-ed pools, whereof each lies Pallid-dark beneath the skies Of a night that is But one blear necropolis. And her eyes a little tremble, in the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... never say "O God" for the matter: Thou art the cause; thou bad'st her to my house, Only to blear the eyes of Goursey, did'st not? But I will send him word, I warrant thee, And ere I sleep too, trust upon it, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... my extremities, being giddy, and doubtful what to do, at least it was put into my labouring thoughts, to make happy use of this paper; and to blear their unlettered eyes, I told them there was a Device for a Mask drawn int', and that (but for their interception,) I was going to a Gentleman to receive my reward for't: they, greedy at this word, and hoping to make purchase ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... witnessed. The ceremonies during our brief visit consisted of grotesque dancing, beating of drums, and blowing upon a shrill fife before a rude altar, upon which incense was burning. There was also marching, by these musicians, around the altar, led by a dirty, blear-eyed priest. The scene was strongly suggestive of a powwow as performed by the Digger Indians of California. So great was the din, we were quite willing to take for granted the presence, in another part of the temple, of the tooth of Buddha, without personal inspection, and hastened to get ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... attentive, chin in hand, and his eyes upon the sunny road, started violently. "Two horses instead of one," he repeated, with a catch of the breath. In a moment he was upon his feet, and the innkeeper, had he looked up and had he been less blear-eyed and dull, might have seen an approach to the old Fairfax Cary—colour in cheek ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... animals from their slumbers in the straw— the wingless apteryx, like a little armless man with a very long nose; the huge misshapen earthy-looking ant-bear, and those four-footed Rip Van Winkles, the quaint, rusty, blear-eyed armadillos. But the giant ant- eater was the most wonderful, for he walked on his knuckles, and strode majestically about, for all the world like a mammalian peacock, exhibiting his great tail. They also ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Lingwold that gave me shelter, whence in the morning, equipped with purchases, I set out to find their shepherd. And there he was on the edge of Mallington Moor standing motionless, gazing stupidly at his sheep; his hands trembled continually and his eyes had a blear look, but he was quite sober, wherein ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... grievance) was a kindness vouchsafed to her by Providence. Had she seen the pretty boy of twenty years ago as he now is she would not have recognized him. The change from the merry, blue-eyed, daring lad of the past to the bloated, blear-eyed, reckless-looking man of to-day would have been a shock too cruel for her to bear. But this she was not allowed to realize, and so remained true to her belief in him, as ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... away from school. So six weeks' was all the schooling I ever got. And I say this to let parents know the value of it; for though I have met more learned book-worms in the world, especially a great hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson, and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty soon silenced him in an argument (at 'Button's Coffeehouse'); and in that, and in poetry, and what I call natural philosophy, or ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doth so blear us that we cannot distinguish the usage of things.... Certes, chastity is an excellent virtue, the commodity whereof is very well known; but to use it, and according to nature to prevail with it, is as hard as it is easy to endear it and to prevail with it according to custom, to laws and precepts." ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... fat, ruddy host, open-mouthed, blear-eyed, and the frolicking slender page, who delights in his tricks and covers his victim with jesting compliments, is extremely well described. Wilton finds his man "counting his barrels, and setting the price in chalke on the head of everie one ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... landlady accustomed to dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs. Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could be brought round again by ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... performance is ended. The story itself is interesting, though I had heard it many times before; but never, perhaps, under circumstances more effective. Stretched beneath tall, somber pines; a great camp fire; by the fire, men, old, wrinkled, and ugly; deformed, blear-eyed, wry-faced women; lithe, stately young men; pretty but simpering maidens, naked children, all intently listening, or laughing and talking by turns, their strange faces and dusky forms lit up with the glare of the pine-knot fire. All ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... raised no objection to this proposal. There was ever something grand about these Eustaces. Sir Florian was a grand gentleman; but surely he must have been dull of intellect, slow of discernment, blear-eyed in his ways about the town, when he took Lizzie Greystock,—of all the women whom he could find in the world,—to be the purest, the truest, and the noblest. It has been said of Sir Florian that he did not believe in virtue. He freely expressed ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the woods a few miles away. But we had no thought of danger as we tumbled out of our car. We should have known that bombed villages don't just grow that way! Something causes the gaping holes in roofs, the shattered walls, the blear-eyed windows and battered out-buildings! Generally it is German shells, but we had been seeing bombed towns for days, and we forgot that sooner or later we must meet the bombs that did the miserable work. As we stood by ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... pitiful. It struck him that Nature is cruel not to fit us for love and marriage as soon as we are born—cruel to make us wait twenty or thirty years before she lets us really begin to live. He looked with eyes more full of pity than usual at blear-eyed, delicate little Jennie, as to whom he could never tell whether it was the multiplication-table that made her deathly sick, or sickness that kept her from multiplying. His eye lit upon a wee, chubby-cheeked urchin on the end of a high, hard bench, and he fell to counting how many ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... weary tendrils, and bow'd branches green, She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen: And by my power is her beauty veil'd 100 To keep it unaffronted, unassail'd By the love-glances of unlovely eyes, Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear'd Silenus' sighs. Pale grew her immortality, for woe Of all these lovers, and she grieved so I took compassion on her, bade her steep Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep Her loveliness invisible, yet free ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... was lolling against one end of the counter, isolated from his fellows by reason of his utterly stupefied condition. He was in a state when he no longer had interest for his companions. He rolled about blear-eyed and hopelessly mumbling, with a half-emptied glass in his hand, which he waved about uncertainly. Suddenly an impotent spasm of rage seemed to take hold of him. With a hoarse curse he raised his glass and hurled ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... That horrible hole!—it seems to say, 'I'm a grave that gapes for a living prey!'" And my heart grew sick, and my brow grew sad— And I thought of that wink at the Gardener-lad. Ah me! ah me!—'tis sad to think That maiden's eye, which was made to wink, Should here be compelled to grow blear and blink, Or be closed for aye In this kind of way, Shut out forever from wholesome day, Wall'd up in a hole with never a chink, No light,—no air,—no victuals,—no drink!— And that maiden's lip, Which was made to sip, Should here grow ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... have blown, sir, Hard for your worship; thrown by many a coal, When 'twas not beech; weigh'd those I put in, just, To keep your heat still even; these blear'd eyes Have wak'd to read your several colours, sir, Of the pale citron, the green lion, the crow, The peacock's tail, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... walks, the low rookeries, the unshaven, blear-eyed men sitting on the thresholds of the saloons, the slattern squaws wandering abroad like bedraggled hens, made the girl stare with wonder and dismay. She had remembered the town street as a highway ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... science, give us anything in place of it! Blear-eyed bigotry in his cloistered den, mumbling unintelligible prayers, and believing that man is to be saved, not by what he does, but by a credo only, is far preferable to it. But oh, how unspeakably preferable the simple faith ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... substance will then bespatter the pavement with their blood and brains. I will begin by disguising you so that no human being shall know you; I will cover your body with wrinkles; you shall lose all your yellow hair; I will clothe you in a garment that shall fill all who see it with loathing; I will blear your fine eyes for you, and make you an unseemly object in the sight of the suitors, of your wife, and of the son whom you left behind you. Then go at once to the swineherd who is in charge of your pigs; he has been always well affected towards you, and is devoted to Penelope and your son; ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... flame, Fang, or flood' goes Death on drum, And storms bugle his fame. But we dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same, Wave with the meadow, forget that there must The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come. ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... felt in the House of Commons from his first entrance. All parliamentary bodies are swayed by a few persons—the working members are the exception. The horse-racing and cockfighting contingent in the House of Commons is well represented; the blear eyes, the poddy pudge, the bulbous beak—all these are in evidence. If one man out of ten knows what is going on, it is well; and this is equally true of Washington, for our representatives do not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... you wish me to die?" he asked, coming up close to my stool, and regarding me with a shrewd though blear-eyed gaze; "many ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... costs. It was really suicide for an attorney to throw away business so excellent as this. And now it had gone to Bearside whom Nickem remembered as a junior to himself when they were both young hobbledehoys at Norrington,—a dirty, blear-eyed, pimply-faced boy who was suspected of purloining halfpence out of coat-pockets. The thing was very trying to Nat Nickem. But suddenly, before that Wednesday was over, another idea had occurred to him, and he was almost content. He knew ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... City to buy leather for cobbling, and there his devil, for no apparent reason at all, leaped upon him and flung him. For a week he saw or knew nothing but a whirling vision of the world seen through rum-crazy eyes; then at last he awoke to find himself hatless, coatless, filthy, unshaved, blear-eyed, palsied. Not a cent of money was left, and so that day and night, in spite of the deadly nausea that beset him and the trembling weakness that hung like a leaden weight upon every limb, he walked all the thirty-eight ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... omnibus, which for fourpence took him to one of the little alleys near Gray's Inn, and there he got down, and threading the well- known locality, through Bedford Place and across Theobald's Road, soon found himself at the door of his generous patron. Oh! how he hated the house; how he hated the blear-eyed, cross-grained, dirty, impudent fish-fag of an old woman who opened the door for him; how he hated Mr. Jabesh M'Ruen, to whom he now came a supplicant for assistance, and how, above all, he ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Cynthia, choking; and Christopher, glancing round, saw several decrepit Negroes leaning against the wall—Uncle Boaz, Docia (pressing her weak heart), and blear-eyed Aunt ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... largely on the numbers you received, and it might not be safe to trust to your discretion in limiting the number. Your sympathies would be so wrought on, Oaklands would soon swarm with blear-eyed specimens of humanity, and Mrs. Flaxman and I would be compelled to ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... fauld as he dow, Wi' his teethless gab and his auld beld pow, And the rain rains down frae his red blear'd e'e; That auld man shall never daunton me. To ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... person of singularly equable temperament. But to have an offer which he had made only with self-sacrificing effort thus cavalierly received by a red-nosed, blear-eyed, impudent little chittermouse (thus, I must reluctantly admit, did he mentally characterize his new acquaintance), was just a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thoughts, She would have dropt away herself in tears, Till she had all turn'd water; that in her, As in a truer glass, thou might'st have gazed And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection, But self-love never yet could look on truth But with blear'd beams; slick flattery and she Are twin-born sisters, and so mix their eyes, As if you sever one, the other dies. Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form, And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it? Why do I ask? 'Tis now the known disease That beauty hath, to bear too deep ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... meagre face, too, with its infinity of anxious yet meaningless lines, and its dim spectacled eyes, so plainly overtaxed by the effort to discern anything clearly, might have belonged to any old village priest grown childish and blear-eyed in the solitude of stupid books. Even the blotches of tell-tale colour on his long nose were not altogether unclerical in their suggestion. A poor old man he seemed, as he stood blinking in the electric light of the strange, warm apartment—a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of disease among the seventeen persons who inhabited the tents, except that the eyes of the old couple were rather blear, and a very young infant looked pale and sickly. The old man had a large scar on one side of his head, which he explained to us very clearly to be a wound he had received from a nennook (bear). Upon the whole, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... lip—tears to the eye, In looking on the gifts that lie Like broken playthings scattered o'er Imagination's nursery floor! Did these old hands once click the key That let "Jack's" box-lid upward fly, And that blear-eyed, fur-whiskered elf Leap, as though frightened at himself, And quiveringly lean and stare At me, his ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... her with blear eyes, "it's a queer thing how ye favour your mother, miss. She had just they beautiful shoulders and arms, as firm an' as white; but you're taller, I think, and may be so, to speak, a stouter make altogether. Eh, dear, you were always a fine child and the poor ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... cunning skill. Here Geth, who to the Slaves cried "Onward go," And Mundiaque and Ottocar—Plato And Ladislaeus Kunne; and Welf who bore These words upon his shield his foes before; "Nothing there is I fear." Otho blear-eyed, Zultan and Nazamustus, and beside The later Spignus, e'en to Spartibor Of triple vision, and yet more and more As if a pause at every age were made, And Antaeus' fearful ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... a low or moist place, because it will prove unhealthfull. You shall judge of the good air by the people; for some part of that coast where the lands are low, have their people blear eyed, and with swollen bellies and legs: but if the naturals be strong and clean made, it is a true ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... knowledge comes when the Day Star rises in the heart."[63] We pass from "notions" and "words" to an inward power and a bubbling joy. He calls the period of law and letter a "baby-stage," "when we see truth as blear-eyed beholders." Legal religion compared with the religion of the Spirit is "like a spark struck from flint at midnight" compared with the sun; it is like "drawing the waters of Grace, a bucketful at a time," when we might have "the Spirit ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... globe dean craze creed tribe drone bean shape steep brine stone bead state sleek spire probe beam crape fleet bride shore lean fume smite blame clear mope spume spite flame drear mold fluke quite slate blear tore flume whine spade spear robe dure ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... rope for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre. The thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Greve, bark, Greve! To see the dissolute wench hang on the blear-eyed gibbet, windows are eyes. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... teakettle to commence their housekeeping with. A little girl had pressed close to her breast a shapeless and dirty rag baby, her most valued possession. A boy of twelve had saved a well-used pair of skates, for which he had traded the day before, while an old woman, blear-eyed and wrinkled, hobbled about, groaning, holding in one hand a looking-glass, an article the most unlikely of all, one would think, to be of ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... Ku, look forth! Huh! Ku is blear-eyed! Aye, weave now the wreath— A wreath for the dog Pua-lena; 5 A hala plume for Kahili, Choice garlands from Niho-ku. [Page 226] There was a scurry of clouds, earth, groaned; The sound of your baying reached Hawaii ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... country with libels much more dishonourable to their country than anything that he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in the newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had been proved in the Journey ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has not a keen sight for many reasons. To begin with, its eyes are set too prominently on the skull, and the eyelids are clipped and blear, (41) and afford no protection to the pupils. (42) Naturally the sight is indistinct and purblind. (43) Along with which, although asleep, for the most part it does not enjoy visual repose. (44) Again, its very ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... Lucile!" cried Gannette, his apoplectic face becoming more deeply purple, and his blear eyes leering angrily upon the calm woman. "I ain't a-goin' to stand this! What have I done? I'm as sober as any one here, an'—" William took the heavy man gently by the arm and persuaded him to his feet. The other guests suppressed their ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... I adore still, is the wife of a fat Marquis—a lop-eared, blear-eyed, greasy Marquis. A man without soul. A man without sentiment, who cares naught for moonlight and music. A low, practical man, who pays ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... persecution remain with the living. They are not screwed down in the coffin and buried with the dead. They become part of the pestilential atmosphere of cowardice and hypocrisy which saps the intellectual manhood of society, so that bright-eyed inquiry sinks into blear-eyed faith, and the rich vitality of active honest thought falls into the decrepitude ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... vegetables: a couple of fishermen, who were tramping along the road with a basket of mackerel: and even old lame Jacques, who had risen from the bench on which he usually sat as though he had taken root there, and leant tottering on his stick, as he strained his blear eyes against the sunbeams: all stopped as if by one impulse: all seemed absorbed by one expectation, and stood gazing up the long, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... answer to the summons an old, wrinkled, blear-eyed hag made her appearance with the liquor. This old wretch was the 'landlady' of the house; she had been a celebrated and beautiful courtezan in her day, but age and vice had done their work, and she was now an object hideous to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and grin Horrid with bloody jaws. Scaled reptiles crawl From slum and sewer, slimy, coil on coil— Danton, dark beast, that builded for himself A monument of quicksand limed with blood; Horse-leech Marat, blear-eyed, vile vulture born; Fair Charlotte's dagger robbed the guillotine! Black-biled, green-visaged, traitorous Robespierre, That buzzard-beaked, hawk-taloned octopus Who played with pale poltroonery of men, And drank the cup of flattery till he reeled; Hell's pope uncrowned, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... air-whistle. But it was too rough for any little choo-choo boat to be battling around. It was 9.30 that night before they could safely be taken off. They were a moderately good-natured lot; but that was the blear-eyed trouble with making sub trial trips with bad weather coming on—a man never knew ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... not been scrapping with third- and fourth-rate heavies, and sparring with real, live ones for nothing. The mate's fist whistled through empty air; the blear-eyed hunk of clay that had seemed such easy prey to him was metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlike bundle of steel sinews, and Billy Byrne swung that awful right with the pile-driver weight, that even The Big Smoke himself had ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nothing unusual. You reason like a reader of too many novels. Burglars are not all escaped convicts, blear eyed and hideous; nor do they all go about in fustian. It's the burglar in broadcloth that makes us the trouble. Fustian starves, and steals, and is soon found out; runs away with its booty, as a dog runs away with its ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... with duties and studies, he had no leisure; he read in his slippered morning gown, he read at meals, he read by his evening lamp; probably, if Mrs. Bower would have confessed it, he kept a volume under his pillow. No wonder he was a blear-eyed, poking, muttering old man, for he was much more interested in Hannibal than in Bonaparte, and regarded Leslie, like the house, the yearly income, the rector, the students, the janitors, as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... you have a simple servant here, that crowns your beauty with such encomiums and devices; you may see what it is to be the mistress of a wit, that can make your perfections so transparent, that every blear eye may look through them, and see him drowned over head and ears in the deep well of desire: Sister Kitely. I marvel you get you not a servant that can rhyme, and ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... many girls of respectable parentage, belonging to the middle class, are not much better. The men, of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed—and yet, where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would be scandalised at the idea of allowing such a thing. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... it but a few lines, just to tell me how that good, sagacious man your father is,—that kind, dainty body your mother,— that strapping chiel your brother Douglas-and my friend Rachel, who is as far before Rachel of old, as she was before her blear-eyed sister Leah. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the stairs.... In the streets of the place to which she hurried, there were flaming lights, the laughter of men and flaunting women, the crash and rumble and clang of night-traffic, the blatant clamour of the pleasures of night; shuffling, blear-eyed derelicts of passion, creeping beldames, peevish children, youth consuming itself; rags and garish jewels, hunger, greasy content—a confusion of wretchedness, of greed and grim want, of delirious gaiety, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... blear old dame Who nurs'd me; you have heard her name, No doubt, at Compton, Sarah Salways; There are twelve groats at once, beside The frying-pan in which she fried Her pancakes. Madam, I am always, etc., Sir THOMAS ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... the stifling interior straggled the unhappy inmates. They looked again upon the unbelievable: a smiling, dancing sea of blue under a canopy clean and spotless. It was unbelievable. Even the stouthearted Captain and the faithful mate, blear-eyed and haggard from loss of sleep, were filled ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... misshapen creature such as we find in Velasquez, in the Gobbo of Verona, or in the gargoyles of Notre Dame. There is no deformity about it, probably very little exaggeration. It is sheer uncompromising ugliness; rendered by the cavernous mouth, the blear eyes, the flaccid complexion, the unrelieved cranium—all carried to a logical conclusion in the sloping shoulders and the simian arms. But the Zuccone is not "revenged of nature": there is nothing to "induce contempt." On the other ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford |
