"Fiasco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... report that after the fiasco of the rotary model these timers were a financial success, but the facts indicate otherwise. They were well built and reliable, so that the trade was pleased to stock and promote them. The public responded well when in the market for a timer, as might be ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... bushman himself. In fact the journal of the trip reads to a man accustomed to bush life like the fable of The Babes in the Wood; yet he managed to blunder through. On his second expedition he was amply provided, and most of his companions were experienced men, but it proved a miserable fiasco. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... said they had colds or they wanted to go to their grandmothers' funerals, or some such excuse. Back comes the Mater almost in tears and says she really doesn't know whatever she's going to do about it, and there never was such a fiasco, etc. Then Babbie suggested 'Send for Mavis and Merle, they'll help you out.' Mother jumped to it like a drowning man at a rope. So I trotted off immediately after breakfast to ask if you'll ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... before she is aware of the new masters on board, have captured her too. Then, scalps flaunting at the prows of their canoes, the Nor'west fur traders gayly go their way. Down at Lake Champlain occurs the great fiasco of the war,—the blot on Canada's escutcheon. Prevost with ten thousand reenforcements has been ordered by the English Governor to proceed from Montreal against the Americans by both water and land. While an English fleet attacks the Americans, Prevost is to lead ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... indifferent in themselves, from which the esthetic product is to be put together with easy, calm mastery. If you care too much about what you have to say, if your heart beats too warmly for it, you can be sure of a complete fiasco. You become emotional, you become sentimental; something unwieldy, awkwardly serious, uncontrolled, unironical, unspiced, tedious, or banal takes form under your hands, and the end is simply indifference in your public, simply disappointment and lamentation ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... three hours thus flew swiftly by while I listened to her lively prattle, which, like the lark's singing, had scarcely a pause in it, her attempt at being still and moonlight having ended in a perfect fiasco. At length, pouting her pretty lips and complaining of her hard lot, she said it was time to go back to her prison; but all the time I was engaged in forcing back the bolt into its place she chattered without ceasing. "Adieu, Sun, husband of the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... learning steadily in the Quarter that the attitude of the public had no importance whatever. She suffered from the delusion that the public was staring at her and saying to her: "You, you silly little thing, are responsible for this fiasco. We condescended to come—and this is what you have offered us. Go home, and let your hair down and shorten your skirts, for you are no better than a schoolgirl, after all." She was really self-conscious. She despised Musa, or rather she threw to him a little condescending ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer. "Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... expectant of the best news, or at least in a fever of impatience, and that therefore 'twould be the more painful to tell her the truth. But when the captain's servant let the three of us in at the front door (Tom and I had waited while Falconer briefly reported our fiasco to General Clinton) and we found her waiting for us upon the stairs, her face was pale with a set and tragic wofulness, as if tidings of our failure had preceded us. There was, perhaps, an instant's last flutter of hope against hope, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... him particularly for being such a good loser. She had always been a good loser herself, and the quality was one which she admired. It was nice of him to dismiss from his conversation—and apparently from his thoughts—that night's fiasco and all that it must have cost him. She wondered how much he had lost. Certainly something very substantial. Yet it seemed to trouble him not at all. Jill considered his behavior gallant, and her heart ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... as possible with Terry. He had lived about nine months among the "Colonels" when he made that outburst; and with no chance at any more strenuous excitement than our gymnastics gave us—save for our escape fiasco. I don't suppose Terry had ever lived so long with neither Love, Combat, nor Danger to employ his superabundant energies, and he was irritable. Neither Jeff nor I found it so wearing. I was so much interested intellectually ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... bitter memories to every Briton, and of natural exultation and pride to the Boers; and on Colley's grave, the unfortunate commander, whose unhappy and most unaccountable military blunder led to the lamentable and fatal defeat, which cost him his life, and resulted in the miserable fiasco—the retrocession of the Transvaal to the Boers. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to British influence, prestige, and power by the political consequences ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young
... willing to put the stigma of slander on his native city in order to gain his ambition; Krebs had made a failure of his profession, of everything save in bringing shame on the place of his adoption; and on the single occasion heretofore when he had been before the public, in the School Board fiasco, the officials indicted on his supposed evidence had triumphantly been vindicated—, Guptill was gaining money and notoriety out of his spleen; Perry Blackwood was acting out of spite.... I returned to Krebs, declaring that he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Bill fiasco was the most important party measure of Cleveland's Administration, yet it served only to accentuate the difficulties in tariff legislation which had been experienced in 1883, and to provide an issue for the campaign of 1888. The laws ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... at his own cost, sailed from Plymouth in March, and on 6th June laid siege to the city of San Juan, which he proposed to clear of Spaniards and establish as an English stronghold. Although the place was captured, the expedition proved a fiasco. A violent sickness broke out among the troops, and as Clifford had already sailed away with some of the ships to Flores to lie in wait for the treasure fleet, Sir Thomas Berkeley, who was left in command in Porto Rico, abandoned the island and ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... stimulated, the lecturer said, the heart would act in certain ways which he described. But the poor heart was too far gone and, although it stopped duly when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was the final end of its life's tether. Presiding over the performance, I was terrified at the fiasco, and found myself suddenly acting like one of those military geniuses who on the field of battle convert disaster into victory. There was no time for deliberation; so, with my forefinger under a part of the straw that ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... erratic, and his weeks of jealous wrath, culminating in the shock of the sudden tragedy, and the realization that he had brought it all on himself, were too much for him. He was a broker and one of the most prominent financiers in the city, but with the divorce fiasco and the death of Mrs. Armstrong, he began to brood. He shunned the friends who were left to him, neglected his business and ultimately failed. Sinking lower and lower in the scale of things, he finally disappeared from Illington. You can understand now why I thought it best when you told me of the ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Another fiasco was that of the British expeditionary force which was sent from India by way of the Persian Gulf and up the Tigris river to Bagdad. General Townsend succeeded in getting within 15 miles of Bagdad, but he was defeated by a superior Turkish force and compelled to fall back to Kut-el-Amara. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... naturally selected Menezes to bear these dispatches. You may remind him that Menezes is a brother of the man Perrault, whom he had hanged some years ago. Here is the man's history, which you can look over at leisure. The Duke has forgotten all this in his impatience to remedy the Yvard fiasco. It will serve, however, to make him think you even more ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... tears into the eyes of many women and evoked hoarse cheers from the old men. I spoke from my infernal chair, and I think I was quite a success with the good fellows in khaki. But the only men we wanted to appeal to had studiously refrained from being present. The whole affair was a fiasco. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... catches were held, and one or two of the harder as well. Given this form on the day of their appearance in public, and Henfrey might be disappointed when he came to watch and smile sarcastically. A batting fiasco is not one half ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... knocking had been resumed under more favorable auspices, word came from the unseen world that the fiasco in the church was ascribable to the very good reason that Knight had caused his wife's coffin to be secretly removed. "I will show them!" cried the desperate man. With clergyman, sexton, and undertaker, he visited the vaults once ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... these uplands; it began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived we took refuge in a small hut of stone and there opened the heavy basket which gave forth all that heart could desire—among other things, a large fiasco of strong white wine which we drank to the dregs. It made us both delightfully tipsy. So passed an hour of glad confidences in that abandoned shelter with the snowflakes drifting in upon us—one of those hours that sweeten life and compensate for ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the navy-yard. When I found out I was entirely correct in my supposition I had him sent here, and I looked forward with the most joyous anticipations to being present when you first saw him. But it was all a fiasco! I suppose some people might think I was unwarrantably meddling in the affairs of others, but as it was in my power to create a most charming romance, I could not let ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... from Bear Cat after the fiasco of the bank robbery, Houck must have stumbled somehow into the hands of the Ute band still at large. They had passed judgment on him and executed it. No doubt the wretched man had been tied at the heels of a horse which had been lashed into a frenzied gallop by the Indians in its rear. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... mean. He not only refuses the money, but addresses some personal considerations to your comrade which sicken him to the heart. He returns to your employer with a tale of failure well tinged with his own morbid feelings and wounded vanity. Your employer is irritated, and attributes the fiasco to the ambassador. To satisfy his own views of things, he prophesies that your comrade never will amount to anything, anyhow. Now, to see this prediction verified is, unfortunately for your comrade, just as necessary to your employer's ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... day's issue of the local Mereury contained a thrilling description of the capture of the Waddy gold-stealer—a description that created an unprecedented demand for the Mercury, and quite compensated the gifted editor for, the heartburnings he had endured over the bushranging fiasco. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of Heinrich Conried Season 1903-1904 Mascagni's American Fiasco "Iris" and "Zanetto" Woful Consequences of Depreciating American Conditions Mr. Conried's Theatrical Career His Inheritance from Mr. Grau Signor Caruso The Company Recruited The ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "this seems satisfactory. Now what about this L. W. Lockhart? In our meeting this morning he showed such a contemptible weakness that—now Jepson, that was very careless of you! Why didn't you find out before that fiasco how Miss Fortune intended to vote? It must have been perfectly evident to her, from the way Mr. Lockhart talked, that he had been—well, over-persuaded, to say the least. It was very awkward, and if I ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... pardon me for calling you up, Mrs. King, but I wanted to be sure that you can come on the seventeenth. We want so much to have the Prince and his friends with us. Mr. Blithers has taken a great fancy to Prince Robin and Count Quinnox, and he declares the whole affair will be a fiasco if they ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... loomed the menacing figure of Father. He wished he could induce Billie to allow him to waive the formality of thawing Father. Eustace Hignett had apparently been able to do so. But that experience had presumably engendered a certain caution in her. The Hignett fiasco had spoiled her for runaway marriages. Well, if it had to be done, it must be done, and that was all ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... slightly carried away by seeing the large audience, played her touching part as the neglected wife very passably. This was a great relief to Mme. Bourjot, who was seated in the front row anxiously watching her daughter. Her vanity had been alarmed by the thought of a fiasco. The curtain fell, and amid the applause were heard shouts for "All the actors!" Her daughter had not made herself ridiculous, and the mother was delighted with this great success and gave herself up complacently to listening to that ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... cannot decide whether they wish to fight or be friends. For ten minutes, regardless of the jeers of the spectators and the proddings of their handlers, the great brown beasts rubbed heads as amicably as a yoke of oxen. Then, just as we had made up our minds that it was a fiasco and that there would be no bull-fight pictures, there was a sudden angry bellow, the two great heads came together with a thud like a pile-driver, and the fight was on. The next twenty minutes Hawkinson and I spent in alternately setting up his camera ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... night, but not captured, although the valiant attackers forced some of their prisoners to stand in the line of fire, between them and the building. The police had closed the windows with feather beds and mattresses, and these the Fenian bullets could not penetrate. Within a few days the fiasco of a rising was at an end. I do not think any of the people in our neighborhood joined it. When the rebels retreated along the Wicklow road, they threw several pikes over the wall close to our lodge gates. The preference on the part of the Irishman of the last generation for the pike ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... start off self-conscious, with sex in the head. We find a woman who is the same. We marry because we are "pals." The sex is a rather nasty fiasco. We keep up a pretense of "pals"—and nice love. Sex spins wilder in the head than ever. There is either a family of children whom the dissatisfied parents can devote themselves to, thereby perverting ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... affecting Mr. Marrowfat's honour, or my esteem for him—had occurred, which obliged me to forego my intimacy with him; and accordingly we met and gave each other the cut direct that night at the Duchess of Monte Fiasco's ball. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray |
