"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caught this day some little transparent shells (Cuvieria) of a cylindrical form, and blunt at the end; they put out two little fins ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... state; the usual clatter that attends any important personage in a trivial scrape ensued; Mr. Gladstone's explanations, simple and veracious as the sunlight in their substance, were over-skilful in form, and half a dozen blunt, sound sentences would have stood him in far better stead. 'There was on my part in this matter,' he says in a fugitive scrap upon it, 'a singular absence of worldly wisdom.'[214] To colonial policy ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hardships and dangers, yet they loved the life with a love which is strange to view and hard to understand. In the oil made from these "royal fish" the colonists found a vast and cheap supply for their metal and glass lamps; while the toothed whales had stored in their blunt heads a valuable material which was at once used for making candles; it is termed, in the most ancient reference I have found to it in ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... suthin' busted there," remarked the sailor, taking the pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end of his blunt forefinger. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... from South Africa, and the northern aard-vark (O. aethiopicus) of north-eastern Africa, extending into Egypt. In form these animals are somewhat pig-like; the body is stout, with arched back; the limbs are short and stout, armed with strong, blunt claws; the ears disproportionately long; and the tail very thick at the base and tapering gradually. The greatly elongated head is set on a short thick neck, and at the extremity of the snout is a disk in which the nostrils open. The mouth is small and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. Few of these things were the lot of the Southern black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... are thus very simple in form, there are a few other slight variations in detail which assist in distinguishing them. The rods are sometimes very blunt at the ends, almost as if cut square across, while in other species they are more rounded and occasionally slightly tapering. Sometimes they are surrounded by a thin layer of some gelatinous substance, which forms what is called a capsule (Fig. 10). This capsule may ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... militant. There was a feline smoothness about the visitor which had been jarring upon him ever since he first spoke. Billy was of the plains, the home of blunt speech, where you looked your man in the eye and said it quick. Mr. Parker was too bland for human consumption. He offended Billy's ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Mr. G.F. describes this whale as being about twelve yards long, having an oblong blunt head, on which there were two longitudinal furrows, and as many upright ridges. It had small eyes, two semi-lunar apertures, from whence it occasionally spouted the water, and it was mottled all over with white spots. It had two large fins ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... for worship. Did he really think that possibly Jesus would actually worship him? The first flush answer is, surely not. Yet he is putting the thing in a way that has secured actual worship from many a'one who would be horrified at such a blunt putting of his conduct. We must shake off the caricature of a devil with pointed horns, and split hoof, and forked tail, and see the real, to understand better. From all accounts he must be a being of splendor and beauty, of majestic bearing, and dignity. His appeal in effect is this:—These ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... reserved, coy and discreet women much more than blunt, shrewd and boisterous. Falsehood, false hair, false curls, false forms, false bosoms, false colors, false cheeks, and all that is false, men naturally dislike, for in themselves they are a poor foundation on which ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... human affection for which her heart had starved. The love she had hitherto known had been unsatisfying, too impersonal, too restrained, too interwoven with mystical devotion. Mass Craven's affection was of a hardier, more practical nature. Blunt candour and sincerity personified, she did not attempt to disguise her attachment. She had been attracted, had approved, and had finally co-opted Gillian into the family. She had, moreover, great faith in her own judgment. And to justify that faith Gillian ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... too blunt for us all," cried King Media. "His devil is even more subtle than yours, Babbalanja. Let ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... bold, blunt compliment, yet it was uttered with evident sincerity; but she had turned the locket so that she could see the likeness and did not catch the double meaning of his words. So she only answered calmly and earnestly, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... I saw not far from me a meteor—a cloud divided into smaller clouds, some of which were of an azure color, some opaque, and as it were in collision together. They were streaked with translucent irradiations of light, which at one time appeared sharp like the points of swords, at another, blunt like broken swords. The streaks sometimes darted out forwards, at others they drew themselves in again, exactly like combatants; thus those different colored lesser clouds appeared to be at war together; but it was only their manner of sporting with each other. And as this ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... laden with brown catkins, its blunt foliage stained with innumerable shades of lovely colour. Near it was a horse-chestnut, with but a few leaves hanging on its branches, and those a deep orange. The limes, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... vppermost part, and the extreme coldnesse of the earth in the bottome, the sea there being but of small depth, whereby the one accidentall coldnesse doth meet with the other, and the Sunne not hauing his reflection so neere the Pole, but at very blunt angels, it can neuer be dissolued after it is frozen, notwithstanding the great length of their day: for that the sunne hath no heate at all in his light or beames, but proceeding onely by an accidentall reflection, which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... people are very bad, their swords being short and blunt at the points. They have arquebusses also, but they shoot very badly with them. The king keeps great state, sitting in public twice every day, having all his nobles, which they call shemines, sitting on each side at a good distance, and a numerous guard ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... a few blunt words, unsoftened by excuse or justification, he told her, not the fact only, but his dread of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... are not often those which most readily strike our blunt senses. We see the shell first. To the undeveloped mind the material is all there is. But looking deeper into life there comes an awakening to the fact and the significance of the spiritual, the feeling that the reason, ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... obovate-cuneate leaflets; in front rounded, or truncate, or retuse, or sometimes 3-toothed, flat at the margin; rachis dilated; fruit-bearing pedicels solitary; capsules 3 to 4-celled; valves cymbeo-semiorbicular, all around broadly winged; the wing rounded-blunt on both extremities; dissepiments persistent with the columella. On the ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... certain points in their appearance should also be noted. If eggs of the best quality are desired, medium-sized ones that are uniform in size and color should be selected. With regard to shape, they should have a comparatively long oval shell, one end of which is blunt and the other, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... hotter than it is here now. I was prepared for intelligent criticisms but I thought they would be so wrapped up in the cotton wool of politeness that no one would be very much impressed. On the contrary, he stated his opinions in the most direct, blunt, telling way. The fact was noted in my report and now his conduct out here has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... thus furnished with workers capable of taking a share in her task. The Vespa sylvestris builds a paper nest of this kind, hanging to the branch of a tree, like a great grey sphere prolonged to a blunt neck. (Fig. 33.) The Hornet's nest is ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a few blunt pronouns wherewith to state this idea while the Japanese has both numberless pronouns and many other delicate ways of conveying the same idea, that the latter is far in advance of the European in the development ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of unkempt appearance, cooking his rice. When Yue-ts'un perceived that he paid no notice, he went up to him and asked him one or two questions, but as the old priest was dull of hearing and a dotard, and as he had lost his teeth, and his tongue was blunt, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hurried to sea without clearing at the custom-house from Boston, Bangor, Portland, and Gloucester. She had carried local authority in the persons of distressed United States marshals to sea with her from three other ports, and landed it on some outlying point before the next meal-hour. With her blunt jib-boom she had prodded a hole in the side of a lighthouse supply-boat, and sailed away without answering questions. The government was taking cognizance, and her description was written on the fly-leaves of several revenue cutters' log-books, while Sunday newspapers in the large ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... time there is the skeleton of a house, which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered. For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly; then, with a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins to cover the roof; and they make a perfectly water-tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime busy hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... renewal of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... liking loved. The sight could jealous pangs beguile, And charm Malbecco's cares a while; And he, the wandering squire of dames, Forgot his Columbella's claims, And passion, erst unknown, could gain The breast of blunt Sir Satyrane; Nor durst light Paridel advance, Bold as he was, a looser glance. She charmed at once, and tamed the heart, Incomparable Britomarte! So thou, fair city! disarrayed Of battled wall, and rampart's aid, As stately seem'st, but lovelier far Than in that panoply ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... dropped some dreadful hints Of One whose sole decree Governed the views of various prints Not to be named by me; He disapproved of paper rings; In language almost rudely blunt he Dilated on the puppet-strings Pulled by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... much produced, the anterior margin and the tips of the mandibles ferruginous; the cheek with long whitish pubescence. Thorax: the sides of the metathorax, the floccus on the posterior femora and the postscutellum with whitish pubescence, the latter produced in the middle into a blunt tooth; the legs fusco-ferruginous, with the anterior tibiae and apical joints of the tarsi brighter; wings hyaline and iridescent. Abdomen shining and punctured, the apical margins of the two basal segments broadly depressed, ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... insignificant, and laid at the height of a table, like the dead warrior's, would look lumbering and tumid. Thus, again, the head of Donatello's Poggio, which is visible and intelligible placed high up in the darkness of the Cathedral of Florence, looks as if it had been gashed and hacked with a blunt knife when seen in the cast at the usual ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... houses of the quai and the wing, topped by a balustrade with great grey stone urns of a domed building of which he did not know the name. Barges were coming upstream, the dense green water spuming under their blunt bows, towed by a little black tugboat with its chimney bent back to pass under the bridges. The tug gave a thin shrill whistle. Andrews started walking downstream. He crossed by the bridge at the corner of the Louvre, turned his back on the arch Napoleon built to receive ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... halo, without which it must have speedily become a prey to the opposition. The right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the glitter of the naked blade—the edge of it, which they feared, they took care to blunt. Besides the check involved in the nature of the office—under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years —and besides the limitations resulting from the right of veto vested in the colleague ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... prodigious a tumult, that I verily thought half the administration would have run away to Harrowgate. The north Briton was ordered to be burned by the hangman at Cheapside, on Saturday last. The mob rose; the greatest mob, says Mr. Sheriff Blunt, that he has known in forty years. They were armed with that most bloody instrument, the mud out of the kennels: they hissed in the most murderous manner: broke Mr. Sheriff Harley's coach-glass in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the uncle you brought that letter from. He was my godfather, you know. This is my sister, Connie." Connie, who was a pretty, fair girl, looked embarrassed at her brother's blunt method of introduction, but he rattled on. "Rather good for a girl. Not so slow as most of them. Can take a turn with the bells or clubs"—by bells and clubs was meant dumb-bells and Indian-clubs—"and she can scout at cricket. Didn't I hear ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... entire inability to hold to the salient points; but he still kept his hand on the rudder of the discussion, avoided the fogs of the supernatural and religious on the one side towards which the little old man persisted in pushing, and, on the other, the blunt views of the butcher and the man who had told the foul stories; and contented himself with watching and learning the opinion of the company rather ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... his hands should be Austerely clasped in front, With both thumbs pointing toward the ground," Said Reverend Doctor Blunt. ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... ye must know, I'll tell ye point blunt to kape out av it. It's an awful thing whin it gits the best ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the mistress of the house, spoke of him as M. de Rubempre; for his formidable audience he was M. Chardon. Lucien's courage sank under their inquisitive eyes. He could read his plebeian name in the mere movements of their lips, and hear the anticipatory criticisms made in the blunt, provincial fashion that too often borders on rudeness. He had not expected this prolonged ordeal of pin-pricks; it put him still more out of humor with himself. He grew impatient to begin the reading, for then he could assume ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... A poll of young educated Negroes conducted by the NAACP revealed that 71 percent of those of draft age would support the civil disobedience campaign. So impressive was Randolph's support—the New York Times called it a blunt warning from the black public—that one news journal saw in the campaign the specter of a major national crisis.[12-41] On the other hand, the Washington Post cautioned its readers not to exaggerate ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... the letter slowly, line by line, word by word. To tell the truth it was absorbingly interesting to her. Already there had come rumours of the daring and blunt, resistless force with which this new-made millionaire had confronted a gigantic task. His terse communications had found their way into the Press, and in them and in the boy's letter she seemed to discover something Caesaric. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Hawley had returned to town. No sooner was I apprised of the fact, than I sent him the following blunt and somewhat rude epistle—for I felt too keen a thirst for vengeance on my enemies to admit of my being very choice or respectful in my language, even to ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... of Adrienne that Vaudrey thought while Lissac was giving vent to his ironical, blunt complaint. Was Guy mad to speak of Marianne aloud in this way, and in this place, a few feet away from his wife, who could hear everything? Yes, Lissac was over-excited, furious and apparently crazy. He did not lower his tone, in spite of the sudden terror expressed by Vaudrey, who seized ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... writing on the pyramids. And if you will only promise to treat me en bon camarade, without reference to the conventionalities of 'ladies and gentlemen,' taking no thought for your sentences (nor for mine), nor for your blots (nor for mine), nor for your blunt speaking (nor for mine), nor for your badd speling (nor for mine), and if you agree to send me a blotted thought whenever you are in the mind for it, and with as little ceremony and less legibility ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... treble my venture, would have helped me out. And besides, I had some idea that the Phoenicians had in former times wrought copper in that very spot. That cunning scoundrel, Dousterswivel, found out my blunt side, and brought strange tales (dn him) of appearances of old shafts, and vestiges of mining operations, conducted in a manner quite different from those of modern times; and Iin short, I was a fool, and there is an end. My loss is not much worth speaking about; but Sir Arthur's engagements ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... tribe. As I have said, he was brindle, and gray like Rubislaw granite, his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set, like a little bull— a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head, his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wooden steps and single rotten planks. At 8000 feet I met with pines, whose trunks I had seen strewing the river for some miles lower down: the first that occurred was Abies Brunoniana, a beautiful species, which forms a stately blunt pyramid, with branches spreading like the cedar, but not so stiff, and drooping gracefully on all sides. It is unknown on the outer ranges of Sikkim, and in the interior occupies a belt about 1000 feet lower than the silver ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... adopted the rule of the wise man: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do with all thy might." They speculated, dug, or gambled, with an almost reckless energy. All old forms of courtesy had given place to hearty, blunt good fellowship in their social intercourse. They reminded our traveler of the Jarls and Norse sea-kings, and in the noisy and almost fierce revelry of these bearded gold-hunters around their mountain tires, he seemed to see the brave and jovial ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... lives on fish, but there the resemblance happily ends. In every other respect he presents a pointed antithesis to the man-o'-war hawk; and that is the only pointed thing about him, for he consists wholly of a comfortable body, a blunt neb, and a pair of small, sleepy eyes. He has no neck, for he never requires to look round; no wings, for he never requires to fly; no feet, for he stands firmly on one end, like a 50lb. bag of flour, which, indeed, he closely resembles. His life is unadventurous; some might call it monotonous. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Eustace as they called him (to distinguish him from an elder brother, Eudo Count of Saint-Pol), was a blunt copy of his sister, redder than she was, lighter in the hair, much lighter in the eyes. He seemed an affectionate youth, and clung to the great Count Richard like ivy to a tree. Richard gave him the sort of scornful affection one has ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... repeated. "How do you propose to secure them? By crushing my fingers or dragging me about by my hair? I want to tell you something, Duane: these blunt, masterful men are very amusing on the stage and in fiction, but they're not suitable to have ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... if I be blunt in discovering my affections, and use little eloquence in levelling out my loves, I appeal for pardon to your own principles, that say, shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves with few subtleties: to frame myself, therefore, to your ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... mistaken; perhaps his dislike of the work had got upon his nerves, and showed him everything in the darkest colours. It could scarcely be as bad as he thought, or human society would be impossible. But argument could not blunt the poignancy of his feelings; he preferred, therefore, to leave them inarticulate, striving to forget. In any case, the ordeal would soon be over; it had to be endured for a few hours more, and then he would plunge into his books again, and enjoy ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... likewise draws). Demon! and no half-god! Thou blunt'st the spear; but here's a sword ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... recommended to the commons the consideration of proper means for lessening the national debt, was a prelude to the famous South-Sea act, which became productive of so much mischief and infatuation The scheme was projected by sir John Blunt, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility, and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislaby, the chancellor of the exchequer, as well as to one of the secretaries of state. He answered all their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... The doctor, Mr. Blunt, came, and he too felt the heat, having spent hours in going his rounds in the closeness and dust. He was a rough man, and his temper did not always hold out; he told Alfred sharply that he would have no whining, and when ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and a dog tracing his master's steps over the city pavement is supposed to be a feat no other animal can equal. No doubt the artificial life a horse lives in England, giving so little play to many of his most important faculties, has served to blunt them. He is a splendid creature; but the noble bearing, the dash and reckless courage that distinguish him from the modest horse of the desert, have not been acquired without a corresponding loss in other things. When ridden by night the Indian horse—and sometimes the same habit is found ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Bronte genius. It would not have been wonderful—in those days—if the quiet Fox How household, with its strong religious atmosphere, its daily psalms and lessons, its love for The Christian Year, its belief in "discipline" (how that comes out in all the letters!) had been repelled by the blunt strength of Jane Eyre; just as it would not have been wonderful if they had held aloof from Miss Martineau, in the days when it pleased that remarkable woman to preach mesmeric atheism, or atheistic mesmerism, as we choose to put it. But there was a ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the Filipino forthrightly review, La Solidaridad, of Madrid, in five installments, running from July 15 to September 15, 1890. It was a continuation of Rizal's campaign of education in which he sought by blunt truths to awaken his countrymen to their own faults at the same time that he was arousing the Spaniards to the defects in Spain's colonial system that caused ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... travel, one returns to England one can taste, smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral—the curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of "It'll ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... who will curtail their consumption if the price has fallen and it is they who constitute the seller's problem, and help to keep down prices for the rest of us. The rest of us—it is well to be quite blunt about it—simply do not count in this connection. We have no cause then to plume ourselves that we have disproved the truth of economic laws when we declare that we seldom weigh the utility of anything against its price. All that this shows is that our ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... he had had the good sense to keep company with one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy, cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... pointed instruments, as a nail, or in lacerated wounds, as those made by forcing a blunt instrument, as a hook, into the soft parts, there will be no direct and immediate union. In these cases, apply a soothing poultice, as one made of linseed meal, and also keep the limb still. It is judicious to consult a physician immediately, in punctured ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man; handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of the genus hobo. So I ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey and went back into the railing. Then you had to feel for it with your finger. It fitted the hollow of your hand, cool and hard, with a blunt nose that ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... it only remains for me to offer apologies for my blunt way of writing. I can but say in excuse of it that I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels—for sometimes I like to read a novel. I suppose they—the flights and flourishes—are ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... very blunt," he said contritely. "I came here to find you; what do you want me to talk about,—Stewart's engagement to Miss Polot? It was given the chief place in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... rugged, cragged, scraggy; rude, inurbane, burly, unrefined, discourteous, uncivil, blunt, bluff, brusque, austere, abrupt, gruff, boorish, uncourtly; boisterous, tumultuous, tempestuous, stormy; harsh, hard, severe, inclement, drastic, violent; harsh, grating, raucous, discordant, inharmonious; unkempt, disheveled, shaggy; incomplete, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... rather gouty and very choleric old gentleman, prepared to tear down his bell-rope if dinner were not served that minute); then his podgy little fore-legs would double up, and the next few inches of progress would be made on blunt little pink nose, and round little stomach, his hind-legs being flattened out behind him in the exact position of a frog's while swimming. Several times Finn quite thought he had at length found a teat, and, in its infantile, impotent way, the blind fury he displayed was quite terrible, when ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Winona Penniman, a nurse with the forces overseas. During her months of training in New York the epistolary style of Winona had maintained its old leisurely elegance, but early in the year of 1918 it suffered severely under the strain of active service and became blunt to the point of crudeness. The morale of her nice phrases had ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... them can be taken but by their own consent in parliament. But that the parliament was instituted to check and control the king, and share the supreme power, would in all former times have been esteemed very blunt and indiscreet, if not illegal language. We need not be surprised that governments should long continue, though the boundaries of authority in their several branches be implicit, confused, and undetermined. This is the case all over the world. Who can draw an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... in haste, signior Baptista, I cannot come every day to woo. You knew my father: he is dead, and has left me heir to all his lands and goods. Then tell me, if I get your daughter's love, what dowry you will give with her.' Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and Baptista went to apprise his shrewish ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to come from a great distance as he said: "Here, you see, he was stabbed. The knife went to the heart. Here he was hit with something heavy and blunt; but it had enough of an edge to cut the scalp and lay the cheek open. The skull ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... extra intelligence. If he rises higher, he will sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on the whole. A sensitive child feels with a keen freshness that only years can blunt. To see some fool of a man crushing a clever child is heart-rending. By curious, misguided instincts, children always look up to their full-grown companions; and the result is, that any adult ass can nip ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and bliss. She seemed a combination of the most divine contradictions, one moment supremely conscious, and in the next adorably child-like and simple, now full of arts and coquettish innuendoes, then again naive, unthinking and almost boyishly blunt and direct; in a word, one of those miraculous New York girls whom abstractly one may disapprove of, but in the concrete must abjectly adore. This easy predominance of the masculine heart over the masculine reason in the presence ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... calling on her dear child, quite helpless at the moment, while Mary took the moaning child. Captain Carbonel, with his own knife (finding it more effective than the blunt old knife on the table), cut off the remains of the little garments which had become tinder, and then handed his wife the flour in a sort of scoop, and as she sprinkled it over the burnt surface, the shrieks and moans abated and gradually died away, the child ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Occidental service because he had fallen in love with a pretty girl, and thought it his duty to become a "regular," and thus have the chance of seeing her every three months in London. He had conceived a liking for me, reciprocated on my part; the more so, because I knew that behind his blunt exterior there was a warm and manly heart. When he left me I went to my cabin and prepared for dinner, laughing as I did so at his keen, uncompromising criticism, which I knew was correct enough; for of all official posts that of a ship- surgeon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a pretty face, Is pretty name enough' And Adelaide is fanciful, And Laura is too fine, But Emily is beautiful, And Mary is divine Maud only suits a high-born dame, And Fanny is a baby name Eliza is not very choice, Jane is too blunt and Bold, And Martha somewhat sorrowful, And Lucy proud and cold; Amelia is too light and gay, Fit for only a flirt; And Caroline is vain and shy, And Flora smart and pert; Louisa is too soft and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation. As young as she is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plain spoken in other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all strangers, male or female, with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who suits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself.' Nothing that Machiavelli wrote is more sincere, analytic, positive and ruthless. He operates unflinchingly on an assured diagnosis. The hand never an instant falters, the knife is never blunt. He deals with what is, and not with what ought to be. Should the Prince be all-virtuous, all-liberal, all-humane? Should his word be his bond for ever? Should true religion be the master-passion of his life? Machiavelli considers. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... are uniform for the resident population. Of course the summer people have the conventional manners, or lack of manners, of the city. So far as religion has shaped the manners of the old Quaker group, they are often gentle and refined; but as often blunt and imperious. The Irish have the best manners, I observe, and the more transient summer people and farm-hands the worst. In both the last two classes there is too often a pride in rudeness and vulgarity which the native of mature years never exhibits. The Quaker ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... the decade from 1880 to 1890 abounded with investigations on the reactions of bacteria to heat, so the following decade was remarkable for discoveries regarding the effects of other forms of radiant energy. The observations of Downes and Blunt in 1877 left it uncertain whether the bactericidal effects in broth cultures exposed to solar rays were due to thermal action or not. Further investigations, in which Arloing, Buchner, Chmelewski, and others took part, have led to the proof that rays of light alone are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... seamanship, and is, besides, a tolerably scientific navigator. He knows the color and taste of the water all along shore from Cape Farewell to the Horn, and can tell the latitude and longitude of any place on the chart without consulting it. Bowditch's Epitome, and Blunt's Coast Pilot, seem to him the only books in the world worth consulting, though I should, perhaps, except Marryatt's novels and Tom Cringle's Log. But of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... be your brother,' said he. 'You see if I don't. When I say a thing I mean it. I will be your brother.' And he took her hand, caressing it, and showing her that he was not in the least afraid of her. He was blunt in his bearing, saying things which her father would have called indelicate and heartless, as though they gave him no effort, and placing himself at once almost in a position of ascendency. This Clara ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... administer the affairs of this country through the support of a party sufficiently powerful to carry their measures. I do not think a Dissolution justifiable to strengthen a party. I think the power of Dissolution is a great instrument in the hands of the Crown, and that there is a tendency to blunt that instrument if it be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... in the breast of man. Soon, by a righteous judgment, in the line Of his descending progeny was found The first artificer of death; the shrewd Contriver who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel To a keen edge, and made it bright for war. Him Tubal named, the Vulcan of old times, The sword and falchion their inventor claim, And the first smith was the first murderer's son. His art survived the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Thursday we left Lalpura and marched to Kulgam, a short distance of some eight or ten miles. Mr. Blunt, the forest officer,[1] had most kindly placed the forest bungalows of the Lolab at our disposal; but, as they all lie on the other side of the valley, we are obliged to camp every night. We have been working along the north side of the Lolab, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... of grass with his hard, blunt fingers. Then he took up his pipe again and turned the stem about between his teeth. And the while he cast glances at ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... experiment. I got a quantity of cast iron garden nails, an inch and a quarter long and 1/8 in. thick in the middle. These I weighed, and selected such as were nearly of the same weight. I then arranged matters so that by removing a prop I could cause the blunt edge of a steel chisel weighted to 4lb. 2oz., to fall from a given height upon the middle of the nail as it was supported from each end, 1-1/16 in. asunder. In order to secure the absolute fairness of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... alternative of being with him on decent and distant terms, or of breaking off with him altogether. The first of these courses might perhaps have been the wisest, but the other was the most congenial to the blunt and plain character of Hartley, vol. 2, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... blunt a man as John Barclay. If Barclay desired no beating around the bush, the general would go the heart of matters. So he said, "I want to ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to forty, and they encamped on Major Ridley's plantation. An alarm took place during the darkness,—whether real or imaginary does not appear,—and the men became scattered again. Proceeding to make fresh enlistments with the daylight, they were resisted at Dr. Blunt's house, where his slaves, under his orders, fired upon them, and this, with a later attack from a party of white men near Captain Harris's, so broke up the whole force that they never reunited. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of the best, was printed. The press had only been recently started at Mr Lucas's expense, but it had put forth a reprint of Shakespeare's sonnets already, as well as his own poems. They were printed in blunt type on thick yellowish paper, the edges of which seemed as if they had been cut by the forefinger of an impatient reader, so ragged and irregular were they, and they were bound in vellum, the titles of these two slim flowers of poetry, "Flotsam" and "Jetsam," were printed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... connections; the time came when Walpole and he were destined to quarrel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remarkable forbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was an honest and respectable man, blunt of speech, and of rugged, homespun intelligence, about whom, since his day, the world is little concerned. Such name as he had is almost absorbed in the more brilliant reputation of his grandson—the spoiled child of the House of Commons, as Burke called him—that Charles ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... pencil out and began to think. I know it sounds an easy game to you now, as you sit at your desk surrounded by dictionaries; but when you are squeezed on to the edge of a sofa, given a very blunt pencil and a thin piece of paper, and challenged to write in five minutes (on your knees) all the words you can think of beginning with a certain letter—well, it is another matter altogether. I thought of no end of things which started with K, or even L; ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... the way: You dissent from some of these remarks? You've cut your eye-teeth, have you? Possibly you forget that trip in the cars, when you 'cutely passed by the swell in flashy waistcoat and galvanized jewelry, and took a seat by a 'plain blunt man' in snuff-color; and after he had left the cars at the first station, and the conductor came to you and demanded, 'Your ticket, sir!' you probably forgot how in fumbling for it in your pocket, you found it, but not your porte-monnaie. You perhaps set down in your mental ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... languish, decline, flag, fail, have one leg in the grave. render weak &c adj.; weaken, enfeeble, debilitate, shake, deprive of strength, relax, enervate, eviscerate; unbrace, unnerve; cripple, unman &c (render powerless) 158; cramp, reduce, sprain, strain, blunt the edge of; dilute, impoverish; decimate; extenuate; reduce in strength, reduce the strength of; mettre de l'eau dans son vin [Fr.]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile^; impotent &c 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... should have, including locks of gold. But the fact that the poet has slyly changed the word "amber" to "snary" in sonnet xiv., and "golden" to "sable" in sonnet xxxviii., looks as if he desired to shield her personality from too blunt a guess. However, many hints are given; she lives in the "joyful North," ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... on our long-wrapped senses strike the harsh, blunt-edged realities of every-day existence. The multiplied images which but yesterday peopled our brain and thronged on our notice, have "departed ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... he laughed at the recollection. "Fairbain met us coming out of the dining-room,—you know what a delightful, blunt, blundering old fellow he is! Well, Miss Christie must have made an impression even on his bachelor heart, for he actually requested the privilege of escorting her to the Trocadero, and back to the hotel after the performance to-night—hinted at a lunch, the gay old dog, and pranced about like ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... were full of eager attention and his eyebrows rose higher and higher with wonder. . . . From time to time he dropped back in his chair, gazed without interest straight before him for a minute, and then buried himself in his reading again. The council for the defence moved the blunt end of his pencil about the table and mused with his head on one side. . . . His youthful face expressed nothing but the frigid, immovable boredom which is commonly seen on the face of schoolboys and men on duty who are forced from day to day to sit in the same place, to ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... your word," hastened Colbert to reply with his blunt bonhomie. "And, apropos of Spain, you have not the 'Golden Fleece,' Monsieur d'Almeda. I heard the king say the other day that he should like to see you wear the grand cordon ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Hester. She shrank from him, frightened by his harsh, blunt manners; she was afraid he led a sinful life in London. Aunt Mary had few doubts on the subject, and her comments made her sister tremble. She spoke of him as a most desirable husband for Maggie. "He will be a peer, my dear James. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... last analysis, is not so much the possession of unusual vision—some of the most powerful geniuses have a vision quite mediocre and blunt—as the possession of a certain demonic driving-force, which pushes them on to be themselves, in all the fatal narrowness and obstinacy, it may be, of their ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... performed makes the joint the strongest part of the timber. Each member (A, Fig. 212) has a step diagonally cut (B), the two steps being on different planes, so they form a hook joint, as at C, and as each point or terminal has a blunt end, the members are so constructed as to withstand a longitudinal strain in either direction. The overlapping plates (D) and the bolts ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... he was so long getting the words out, and so slow in swinging the bottle of soda, that the ship was quite beyond his reach when he had finished his oration. He was not to be outdone, however, and, with a quick movement he hurled the bottle at the moving ship. It struck the blunt nose ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood |
