"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rebel artillery did them very little harm, as having to point upwards, most of their balls flew too high, whereas if the royalists had advanced only twenty paces farther, they would have been exposed to point blank shot. The infantry indeed of the royalists suffered materially at this time, as they were more directly exposed to the shot, insomuch that by one ball a whole file of seventeen men was brought down. This made a wide gap in the battalion, which the officers took care ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... window was filled with the armorial bearings of many generations of the Outram family, wrought in stained glass and placed in couples, for next to each coat of arms were the arms of its bearer's dame. It was not quite full, however, for in it remained two blank shields, which had been destined to receive the escutcheons of Thomas Outram ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... of Berlin had been speedily subdued by the discovery that he must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pennsylvania Avenue. If it be not, I should recommend him to pay no attention to the summons. Even in those streets with which he will become best acquainted, the houses are not continuous. There will be a house, and then a blank; then two houses, and then a double blank. After that a hut or two, and then probably an excellent, roomy, handsome family mansion. Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... certain Captain Alvaros, belonging to one of your infantry regiments, who had the confounded impudence to propose his marriage with Senorita Isolda, although the young lady is only about sixteen years of age, I believe; and Don Hermoso, very rightly, would not hear of it, refused the fellow point-blank, I understood, and ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... me here by myself,' he said, 'to think over the mischief I have done, and the sacrifices I have forced on you—you will break my heart. You don't know what an encouragement your presence is to me; you don't know what a blank you will leave in my life if you go!' I am as weak as Oscar is, when Oscar speaks to me in that way. Against my own convictions, against my own wishes, I yielded. I should have been ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that he looked about rather apprehensively when he arrived, at the station yesterday? No wonder, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... [The woman thought it was a visiting-card, and guessed that doubtless it would begin with the words Monsieur or Madame.] M. Cornac, unknown to the magnetiser, who alone put the questions, passed a perfectly blank card to M. Dubois, who substituted it quietly for the one on which he had written the word Pantagruel. The somnambule still persisted that she saw a word beginning with an M. At last, after some efforts, she added doubtingly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... off. Mademoiselle, after a moment's blank pause, laughed ripplingly. "Now where is he going in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and told her funny stories, but at most she received only a faint smile in response, and sometimes a blank stare. ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... kidney, five brains. Derringer, four hearts, two brains. This has seldom been excelled. Among th' minor casualties resultin' fr'm this painful but delightful soiree was th' followin': Erastus Haitch Muggins, kilt be jumpin' fr'm th' roof; Blank Cassidy, hide an' pelt salesman fr'm Chicago, burrid undher victims; Captain Epaminondas Lucius Quintus Cassius Marcellus Xerxes Cyrus Bangs of Hoganpolis, Hamilcar Township, Butseen County, died iv hear-rt disease whin his scoor was tied. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... pieces of paper folded up in the same way. He gave one to the lady to write her question on; she placed it in a cleft stick and burnt it in a lamp; but the stick was cleft at both ends, and Mike managed it so that she burnt the blank sheet, while he read what she had written. Very trivial; inferior of course to Casanova's immense cabalistic frauds, but it bears out my contention ... Have you ever read the Memoirs? What a prodigious ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that all her pent-up passion broke out. She overwhelmed him with her affection, she told him that her life had been a blank while he was away, she reproached him with the scarcity and coldness of his letters, and generally went on in a way with which he was but too well accustomed, and, if the truth must be told, heartily tired. His mood was an irritable one, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the country it does not matter," she said. "Wait till I get you to New York, under Madam Blank's supervision, and then we shall see a transformation such as will astonish ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... Miss Evelyn, from the first moment of my seeing you. I feel that my future happiness hangs on your lips, for without your love, my life would now be a blank. I am here to-day to offer you my hand and fortune. If I have not yet your heart, I seek to be allowed to cultivate your society, that I may try to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... kept on we'd have got them! Now we have to do it all over again!" growled Fracasse distractedly as he looked around at the faces hugging the cover of the shoulder—faces asking, What next? each in its own way; faces blank and white; faces with lips working and eyes blinking; faces with the blood rushing back to cheeks in baffled anger. One, however, was half ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... telegram just as her train was about to leave Denver. The looks of blank surprise changed to relief as the family heard the cause of the other two girls' non-appearance. They all entered the house together, delighted with each other. Mrs. Brewster felt that she was going ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Blank terror gleamed in the eyes of the men who had been witnesses of this grim holocaust. All work was suspended for the day, and Job Hesketh was led home, dazed and trembling in every joint, by his two eldest sons, who worked in another part of the forge. Huddled together ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... will furnish countless parallels to thoughts like these. How is it that no similar poem could be quoted from the whole range of ancient literature? How is it that to the Greek and Roman poets that morning of life, which should have been so filled with "natural blessedness," seems to have been a blank? How is it that writers so voluminous, so domestic, so affectionate as Cicero, Virgil, and Horace do not make so much as a single allusion to the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good education"; and so knew dancing, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... bullet lodged somewhere about the brain, and it has produced, by its pressure, this peculiar form of imbecility. The past is an utter blank to him, and it is only for a short time every morning that he has the power of expressing himself ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... his turn to look blank now, and catch his breath. He whistled, and stared at me from head to foot, and whistled again. Then he found words, and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds,—namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written in a very delicate and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... captain reddened and bit his lip, as he gave the order to load the guns with blank cartridge, and made preparation to fire this harmless broadside on the village. The word to "fire" had barely crossed his lips when the rocks around seemed to tremble with the crash of a shot that came apparently from the other side of the ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions that are carried on without this reflection—a near and essential reflection, I mean—such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them before themselves, such actions, I say; are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... noble poets should disappear. Apart from Byron, who, of course, stands a head and shoulders above all his brethren, there is that Henry, Earl of Surrey, who ranks highest of all poets between Chaucer and Spenser, and who did so much to popularize in England both blank verse and the sonnet. But for Surrey both those accomplishments, since so popular among us, might have been long in establishing themselves in English poetry. The other poet-peers of the sixteenth century were admittedly not of the first class. Yet Buckhurst's share in 'The Mirror for Magistrates' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... standing in your way. Of course I wouldn't do that. I—(rather bashfully) I love the Hill. I was thinking about it in jail. I got fuddled on direction in there, so I asked the woman who hung around which way was College Hill. 'Right through there', she said. A blank wall. I sat and looked through that wall—long time. (she looks front, again looking through that blank wall) It was all—kind of funny. Then later she came and told me you were out there, and I thought it was corking of you to come and tell ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... supposed—he would want looking after; as for her mistresses, they were no good—they had no gumption! They would be ill too, he shouldn't wonder. She had better send for the doctor; it was best to take things in time. He didn't think his sister Ann had had the best opinion; if she'd had Blank she would have been alive now. Smither might send to Park Lane any time she wanted advice. Of course, his carriage was at their service for the funeral. He supposed she hadn't such a thing as a glass of claret and a biscuit—he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would have it, a certain Prince Maktuev, a wealthy man but an utterly insignificant person, had paid his addresses to her when she was living at her aunt's in Moscow. She had refused him, point-blank. But now she was fretted by the worm of repentance that she had refused him; just as a peasant pouts with repulsion at a mug of kvass with cockroaches in it but yet drinks it, so she frowned disdainfully at the recollection of the prince, and yet she would say to me: "Say what you like, there is ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... noted, I swept the dust smooth around our shanty each night to make a sort of visitors' book. Then each morning I could go out and by study of the tracks get an exact idea of who had called. Of course there were many blank nights; on others the happenings were trifling, but some were full of interest. In this way I learned of the Coyote's visits to the garbage pail and of the Skunk establishment under the house, and other interesting facts as in the diagram. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "Somewhat confused at this point-blank shot, uttered in a voice so loud as to attract the attention of those in immediate proximity, I made a random reply, and took the occasion to ask if I could see him in his study at the close of ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... stared at the newcomer with blank amazement. The latter was blinking in the bright light of the corridor, and peering at us and at the smouldering fire. It was an odious face—crafty, vicious, malignant, with shifty, light-gray eyes ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at him with a sort of blank despair on his saffron face, but a low moan was his only reply. Then he turned his face to the wall and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... about half a mile beyond the town, and then between two rolling banks of vapour I saw the high walls and higher towers of the castle looming through the grayness. A little later I distinguished the dull water of the very wide moat, and the three connected bridges, which were formerly blank spaces between low towers, unless the drawbridges happened ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Sisters were playing the Columbia at Cincinnati; Mama Blank traveled with the act; Mama was about five feet long and four wide; and she was built too far front; she was at least fifteen inches out ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... will always be blank in Christopher's mind; moments and moments, like islands of clarity, remain. He brings back one vivid interval when he found himself seated on his father's gravestone among the whispering grasses, staring down into the pallid bowl of the world. And in that moment ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and as he heard us enter, turned half way to us, while we stared in blank wonder from Elaine to the weird ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... corners, searched the next courtyard, and drew blank. Then I asked Ismail, and he ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... that marriage seems very much like a lottery," answered Ella. "We may get a prize, but there are ten chances to one of our getting a blank." ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... produced the Odyssey was not a great literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper, whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the Iliad is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the window, and drew the curtain across it. She was afraid of hearing more of those voices of the night that frightened her. I thought with a smile that candles would burn about her bed till she woke to rejoice in the sun's new birth. Ah, well, I myself do not love a blank darkness. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... were not happy. There was a large man with slanting eyes. There was Oriental blood in him. You could see that. He called himself Quint. But his eyes were Jap, or Chinese; and he had their calm, blank screen across his countenance, to hide what may have been his thoughts. Quint, he called himself. And he was a big man, and very much of a man ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... do to pass my time. My philological studies had become distasteful, and I had never taken any pleasure in the duties of my profession. I sat behind my desk in a state of torpor, my mind almost as blank as the paper before me, on which I rarely traced a line. It was always a relief to hear the bell ring, as it afforded me an opportunity of doing something which I was yet capable of doing, to rise and open the door and stare in the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... we to live here?' asked Mrs. Hale in blank dismay. Margaret's heart echoed the dreariness of the tone in which this question was put. She could scarcely command herself enough to say, 'Oh, the fogs in London are sometimes ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was our guide, entered the Shereef's grounds to prepare for our introduction; and now the ladies, who had insisted on coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they would not salute the Shereefa as "Your Highness." They were impatient to see her, but they declined to give countenance to a Christian who had demeaned ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the manner in which the offer was made. Parrish had approached him as he was supervising the departure of the guests. Waving aside the footman who offered to help him into his overcoat, Parrish had asked Bude point-blank what wages he was getting. Bude mentioned the generous remuneration he was receiving from Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, whereupon Parrish ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... for relief You're off to scale the Alps; Say, do you, like some Indian Chief, Look back and count your scalps? Does someone rue your broken vows, And sigh he has to doubt you; Yet felt withal the week at Cowes Was quite a blank ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... live in great state; his retinue and his trappings formed a part of his personality; he fails in doing himself justice if these are not as ample and as splendid as he can make them; he would be as much mortified at any blank in his household as we with a hole in our coats. Should he make any curtailment he would decline in reputation; on Louis XVI undertaking reforms the court says that he acts like a bourgeois. When a prince or princess becomes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was standing in the vestibule as the two approached. A look of blank amazement swept across his face at sight of the boy in such company. He said no word, however, only stepped aside with a bow, but his eyes followed the two as they passed into the church together, and he muttered a few angry ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... a second, blank silence. Neither dared to touch that deeper stage question that lay next their hearts. But when Keith Macleod, in many a word of timid suggestion, and in the jesting letter he sent her from Castle Dare, had ventured upon that dangerous ground, it was not to talk about ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Robert gives me this blank, and three minutes to write across it. Thank you, my very dear Sarianna, for all your kindness and affection. I understand what I have lost. I know the worth of a tenderness such as you speak of, and I feel that for the sake of my love for Robert ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... delusions, is cheerful, and employs herself usefully with her needle. She converses rationally, and tells me she recollects the impulse by which she was led to hang herself, and remembers the act of suspension; but from that time her memory is a blank, until two days subsequently, when her husband came to see her, and when she expressed great grief at having been guilty of such a deed. Her bodily health is now (June 30, 1884) more robust than formerly, and she is on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... and those on which the designs are embroidered. The former are the more difficult to weave; but as there is no decoration to be added, they are the cheapest mats obtainable, the prices for the ordinary grades ranging from P0.80 to P3 each. Some weavers turn out only blank mats of one color and do neither designing nor decorating. Straw used on these is usually dyed, very few mats of natural colors being made. They are worth from P0.50 to P2 each and are generally sold to girls who are skillful in ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... a good deal about plains and woods, and animals and birds, but was rather in awe of trains. He gazed at Whitey's face, which wore the same blank look as his own, and ventured no opinion. Two sharp, faint sounds came from the east—something between the crack of whips and the popping of corks. They were ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... never vouchsafed a word until driven to the last extremity. A tete-a-tete put him in the one embarrassment of his vegetative existence, for then he was obliged to look for something to say in the vast blank of his vacant interior. He usually got out of the difficulty by a return to the artless ways of childhood; he thought aloud, took you into his confidence concerning the smallest details of his existence, his physical ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... day full of courage, fruitful in plans and resources, and the next day cast down into the pit of despair. Now she clung to her first hope, believing that time, patience, kindness, would soften Mildred's resolution; then, seeing the blank indifference with which she treated Hugh, she racked her invention to provide other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the cause of the plurality of radicles in certain species of Lemna, and their blank in others? It will be necessary on this point to examine well the sheaths of Azolla, and to look at ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... which seemed composed of many elements. Sir Meyville Worth stood with his eyes fixed upon his daughter and an expression of blank, uncomprehending dismay in his features. Granet, a frown upon his forehead, was looking towards the floor. Thomson, with the air of seeing nobody, was studying them all in turn. It was he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... boat to the mill landing in safety, and Ben appeared, having returned from town and put up the mules. He gazed in blank amazement at the condition of his employer ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... deal. He has sworn point-blank that there was no such marriage at the time named. He and Caldigate were living together then, and for some weeks afterwards, and the woman was never near them during ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... who killed him made no attempt to escape, but, waiting to see that the three shots he had fired point-blank at the Attorney General had done their work, he deliberately turned the pistol on himself. He placed it at his right temple and fired, dropping dead ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... be compelled to return within the circle of knowledge, we are demanding what is impossible, and our scepticism can never be refuted. For all refutation must begin with some piece of knowledge which the disputants share; from blank doubt, no argument can begin. Hence the criticism of knowledge which philosophy employs must not be of this destructive kind, if any result is to be achieved. Against this absolute scepticism, no logical argument can be advanced. But it is not difficult ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... over Katie's face; it was a sudden, swift glance, and one full of subtle questioning and caution. Katie saw it all, and perceived too, at once, that whatever Dolores might know, she would not tell it in that fashion in answer to a point-blank question. As for Dolores, her swift glance passed, and she went on with hardly ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... was wet, you stuck where you were until wind and sun dried it for you. Wherefore Casey plunged out upon five miles of blank, baked clay with neither road, chart nor compass to guide him. It was the first time he had ever crossed at night, and a blanket of thin, high clouds hid ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Notwithstanding this change in him the Colonel insisted that he was perfectly happy and contented, but the truth was, his heart was aching with the knowledge that Clive had occupations, ideas, associates, in which the elder could take no interest. Sitting in his blank, cheerless bedroom, Newcome could hear the lad and his friends making merry and breaking out in roars of laughter from time to time. The Colonel longed to share in the merriment, but he knew that the party would be hushed if he joined it, that the younger men were happier and freer ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the thought that she must propitiate the man who had so wounded her. All love for him had in the instant passed from her; or rather she realised fully the blank, bare truth that she had never really loved him at all. Had she really loved him, even a blow at his hands would have been acceptable; but ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... not see it was his little nephew's school trunk he had opened by mistake, and that the packet which he held reverently in his reminiscent clasp was merely a bundle of blank, empty envelopes. ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... repeated. "And so your Northern eyes can't see it, after all!" At these words my intelligence sailed into a great blank, while she continued: "Frankly—and forgive me for saying it—I was hoping that you were one Northerner who ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... old copy has a blank here; but whether it was so in the original MS., whether a line has dropped out by accident, or whether it was meant that Much should be suddenly interrupted by Robin Hood, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... On a blank face of the rock, sheltered by a jutting ledge above it, was an inscription, a little faint, but he ascribed that to the poor quality of the pencil and roughness of the tablet. This is what ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington. He saw the gilded weathercock Swim in the moonlight as he passed, And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, Gaze at him with a spectral glare, As if they already stood aghast At the bloody work they would ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was aggravated by making the son the instrument of robbing his mother, and by refusing to revise his proceedings, in obedience to the orders of the directors. Pitt's explicit declarations made conviction certain, and though some members of administration looked blank and disappointed, upon a division Sheridan's proposition was carried by one hundred and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... saying Mass," he told her, and poor Miss Hatchett must pretend with a forced smile that her blank look had been caused by the prospect of being deprived of Mass when ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... root and seeds of sin. That children are permitted to grow up From infancy to youth without instruction, Is a grave wrong, and ne'er to be redeemed By penal statutes and the prisoner's cell. We leave the mind unfortified by Truth, And wonder it should fill with wayward Error. There's no blank ignorance, as many dream; Each soul will have its growth and garnering. As the uncultured prairie bears a harvest Heavy and rank, yet worthless to the world, So mind and heart uncultured run to waste; The noblest natures serving but to show A denser growth of passion's ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... I did not dare. She would never have forgiven me. So I slipped down to the post-office at Bar-sur-Aube and stole a telegraph blank. It was ten days before my furlough was out. I wrote a message to myself calling me back to the colors at once. I showed it to her. Then I said good-by. I wept. She did not cry one tear. Her eyes were stars. She embraced me a dozen ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... keep track of all the prisoners, with the idea of making them good citizens when they get out. He has them all fill out a card. Well, when this man Kinney turned in his card, he had written 'Ben' on it, but the rest was absolutely blank. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... to a ridiculous fiction, established a colony in Britain. The subject, therefore, was of the fabulous age; the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great imprudence, and, I think, without due consideration of the nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by Ruffhead, by which it appears that Pope was thoughtless enough to model the names of his heroes with terminations ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... this awkward business to his chancellor, Peter Flotte; for he had fallen at Courtrai, in the battle against the Flemings. William of Nogaret undertook it, at the same time obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission authorizing and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances, he might consider it advisable to do. Notification of the appeal had to be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had gone for refuge, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... objecting, denouncing, scoffing, rending all to pieces in his bold, reckless, ironical, manner—but teaching nothing. The most docile pupil, when he opens his tablets to put down the precious sum of wisdom he has learned, pauses—finds his pencil motionless, and leaves his tablet still a blank. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the crises in which I was made to feel the murder madness leaping alive in blood and brain; but the publicity of the place and the blank hopelessness of escape in a strange city made any thought of ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... eyes and stared incuriously up into a blank, indeterminate expanse of white. It was quite without interest—conveyed no meaning to her whatever. Moreover, her eyelids felt inexplicably heavy, as though they were weighted. So she let them fall again, and the placid, reposeful sense of nothingness which had ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... there, living things seeming there, Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night; Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe, Throats blank of sound, but ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... me,' cried Mr. Grewgious, breaking the blank silence which of course ensued: though why these pauses SHOULD come upon us when we have performed any small social rite, not directly inducive of self-examination or mental despondency, who can tell? 'I am a particularly ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... syllables do you find as a rule in each line? How are the lines rhymed? Find several blank verse lines. What variations from the normal line do you note in the number of syllables and in ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... displayed to the uttermost by a standing collar scarcely taller than the band of a shirt. He directed at Susan one of those obtrusively shrewd glances which shallow people practice and affect to create the impression that they have a genius for character reading. He drew a pad of blank forms toward him, wiped a pen on the mat into which his mouse-colored hair was roached above his right temple. "Well, miss, what's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... other side, and that something an eternal life, then misfortunes and losses on this side are, as nothing. 'I am content to die,' says Renan, 'but I should like to know whether death will be of any use to me.' And philosophy replies, 'I do not know.' And man beats against that blank wall, and like the bedridden sufferer fancies, if he could lie on this or on that side, he would feel easier. What is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... seven and six slithered down the glossy linen cover of the bridge table toward Karen Marshall. "Now if you don't make your little slam, infant, don't dare say I shouldn't have jumped you to five!... I figured you for a blank or a singleton in Diamonds, and at least the Ace of Hearts, or you—cautious as you are—wouldn't have made an original three Spade bid without the Ace.... Hop to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... though suddenly wounded. If Maryllia were to die!' He shuddered as the mere thought passed across his brain. 'If Maryllia were to die!' Why then—then the world would be a blank— there would be no more sunshine!—no roses!—no songs of birds!— nothing of fairness or pleasure left in life—not for him, whatever there might be for others. Was it possible that her existence meant so much to him? Yes, it meant ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine Heathcliff," and again "Catherine Linton." There were many books in the room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined them. Some of them bore the inscription "Catherine Earnshaw, her book"; and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a regular diary. I read: "Hindley is detestable. Heathcliff and I are going to rebel.... How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry so! Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ridicule. Knowing that he was being laughed at, he became ashamed to collect his taxes. This had a bad effect on his character, which was already bad enough. People used to give him documents upside down to see him pretend to read them. He would make a show of doing so, and then, on the first blank space he found, would fill in some sprawling characters which, I may say, represented him very accurately. The natives continued to pay their taxes, but kept on ridiculing him. He fairly raved with anger and worked himself up to such a frame of mind that he ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... for Isaak), that he was sprung from a race more honored now than a hundred years ago. But the women declared that it could not be; and the rector desiring to christen him, because it might never have been done before, refused point-blank to put any "Isaac" in, and was satisfied with "Robin" only, the name of the man who ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... made a point-blank shot at Alfieri. He is more remarkable than enjoyable. His works are explained by his life. He torments his readers and listeners, just as he torments himself as an author. He had the true nature of a count and was therefore blindly aristocratic. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... three months ago being suddenly reborn, reincarnated, by all these people, before we had even breathed the air of freedom. It was for this that we had been rescued by the main body of the troops: merely because had we been all killed and all recent Peking history made an utter blank, there would have been a terrible gulf which no protocols could bridge. It would have meant an end, an absolute end, such as governments and their distinguished servants do not really love. We were mere puppets, whose rescue would set everything merrily dancing again—marionettes ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... atlas, 1 dictionary of the different Polynesian idioms, 1 dictionary of natural science, in six volumes; 3 reams of white paper, 2 books with blank pages. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... one who has but little time and knows exactly what to say. By chance he glanced towards Desiree, who sat at her own table near the window. She was stroking her cheek with the feather of her pen, looking with puzzled eyes at the blank paper before her. Each time D'Arragon dipped his pen he glanced at her, watching her. And Mathilde, with ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... forms consist merely of wooden panels, one for each face of the wall, constructed to fit the spaces to be walled up. Where these spaces are duplicated from bay to bay or story to story the same form panels will serve repeatedly. For residences and other buildings having greater proportionate area of blank wall the builder has a choice between continuous forms carried by ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... Forrester, and often went to see them at the studio which they had temporarily hired. Lorraine's principal branch of art was sculpture, and she was modelling a bust of Morland, who came readily for sittings, though he had refused point-blank to act ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... it was my purpose never to see her again. From the moment of my leaving the woman's house—that last straw of surrendering my baby was more than my heart and brain could bear—everything, with one exception, was a blank to me until I awoke to consciousness, five weeks later, to find myself being tenderly cared for in the home of a young man, who was spending the winter in Rome for his health. His sister—a lovely girl, a few years his senior—was with him, acting both ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... delightsome, and I know when I was as much given to them as ever thou art. But there be sorrows to which there is no last time that you may know,—no clasping of loving hands, no tender farewell: only the awful waking to find that you have dreamed a dream, and the utter blank of life that cometh after. Our worst sufferings are not the crushing pain for which all around comfort you and smoothe your pillow, and try one physic after an other that shall may-be give you ease. They are those for which none essayeth to comfort you, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was without comic power of any kind. Parts of his Macbeth, Lear, Othello, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse defective, and painful to persons better endowed in that respect. It may have been his consciousness of his imperfect declamation of blank-verse that induced him to adopt what his admirers called the natural style of speaking it; which was ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... the bungalow. Gradually their voices died away in the distance, but the boy never moved, never shifted his blank stare from the cards in front of him. It was a curious tableau. In the midst of the darkness it was as though a lime-light had been thrown on to a theatrical representation of despair, while beneath, hidden by the shadow, a lonely spectator, to ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... fill up this blank with your imagination, for no words can convey any idea of the scene. They far surpass anything we could have believed of them. This, however, I write after a thorough study of them from various points of view; for when we first caught a glimpse, in our drive to-day, of the Fall on the American ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... stele of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche of Khephren in the middle of a blank. We have here, I believe, an indication of the clearing of the Sphinx effected under this prince, consequently an almost certain proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time of Kheops and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... women," without Timothy running in and out every day. And some day she would be old and grey like Miss Eliza, busy farming it herself, and wearing plain black dresses and scolding the servants when they did not do just as she wanted. It was a blank future that contained no Timothy. But Arethusa could not very well put Timothy into the future when he refused to be in the present. She would always live alone, she decided, and when she was quite old she would wear a locket like ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... away into the distance. Naive as his dreams were, they were uttered in such a genuine and heartfelt tone that it was difficult not to believe in them. The tramp's little mouth was screwed up in a smile. His eyes and little nose and his whole face were fixed and blank with blissful anticipation of happiness in the distant future. The constables listened and looked at him gravely, not without sympathy. They, too, believed in ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... see, in the arrangement of the battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat square and blank; then the next two higher and richer, the tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last battlement, therefore, is a little higher than ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... cried the ruffian, and levelled the gun, drew the trigger, and recoiled in blank dismay when he missed fire, and saw the athletic figure of Berville distended to its full size with rage, and a pistol pointed with deadly aim within a yard of his heart. He raised the but-end of his gun; but his daughter, rushing forward, clung ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... other way. They ought to have been very close, and . . . Ah! He wouldn't fight, he wouldn't resist, he wouldn't defend himself! A cur! Evidently a cur! . . . He was amazed and aggrieved—profoundly, bitterly—with the immense and blank desolation of a small child robbed of a ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad |
