"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conviction that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, "Oh, business gin'rally." Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, "How long will ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... its point. But as I have said, this is the one Dickens work of which the date is essential. It is really an important part of the criticism of this book to say that it is his first book. Certain elements of clumsiness, of obviousness, of evident blunder, actually require the chronological explanation. It is biographically important that this is his first book, almost exactly in the same way that it is biographically important that The Mystery of Edwin Drood was his last book. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... tried—yes, anything. Perhaps you know the Marquis thought so too, and even today I believe we were nearly right. We saw you in Brussels later, and in Holland, and then at Blanzy this year. I have known of a dozen commissions you have performed without a single blunder. Indeed, I know of only one thing in which ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... sometimes happen even in an easy passage. A difficult passage attracts more than usual of a translator's attention, and if he fails there, it is either because the difficulty cannot be overcome, or because he cannot overcome it. Mere inadvertence or sleepiness may sometimes cause a translator to blunder, when he would not have blundered if any friend had been by to keep ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... of woman,' soliloquized Percy, as he saw the carriage drive off. 'Gentleness, meekness, and a dash of good sense, is the recipe for a rational female—otherwise she is a blunder of nature. The same stamp as her sister, I see; nothing wanting, but air and the beauty, which, luckily for Arthur, served ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Harry, with Oscar and his sister, started for the party. Our hero, having confessed his inability to dance, had been diligently instructed in the Lancers by Oscar, so that he felt some confidence in being able to get through without any serious blunder. ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... as she rose to her feet. Durrance rose with her. He was still not so much disheartened as conscious of a blunder. He had put his case badly; he should never have given her the opportunity to think that marriage would be an interruption of ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... with Egypt's darkness in his head Thinks Wit the devil, and curses books unread. For twice ten winters has he blunder'd on, Thro' heavy comments, yet ne'er lost nor won: Much may be done in twenty winters more, And let him then learn English at threescore. No sacred Maro glitters on his shelf, He wants the mighty Stagyrite himself. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... your relations and friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. A cake which has caught in baking, or a pudding with the sugar left out, will probably afford them an inexhaustible subject of mirth. Make up your mind, however, not to be discouraged by any of these things. Practice will give nimbleness ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... truly, Should not be confounded unduly. Fanatics here blunder; As far they're asunder As ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... the past has disturbed you. We can stand war, and it is possible that we might win, even against Jugendheit; but war at this late day would be a colossal blunder. Victory would leave us where we began thirty years ago. One does not go to war for a cause that has been practically dead these sixteen years. And an insult to Jugendheit might precipitate war. It would be far wiser to let me answer the prince regent, saying that your highness ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... was "expressly pretermitted" in the June Platform! Mr. Watkins was in such a hurry to join the Forney, Pierce, and Catholic Democracy, that he did not stop to examine even the Platform which most disgusted him! But this is not the worst blunder which he committed in that speech. He turned to the new Platform, and asked, with an ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and my companions were full of glee. Even the ennuye skipped up and down the room like a school-boy: I never shall forget Richard's happy and relieved expression, when I laughed aloud at somebody's amusing blunder. ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... than an outrage," replied Ahenobarbus; "it's a sheer blunder of the Fates. Remind me to tell you about Drusus and his fortune, before I have ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... ahead. I deserve it," urged Mr. Jennings self-depreciatively. "How I blunder! Anyhow I've found you can laugh as well as cry, and that's something. Perhaps now," he continued, "seeing I'm such a failure as a Sherlock Holmes, you will be so kind as to tell me yourself who you are. Do you live here? I never saw you before. I'm sure you're a ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too late that this was a blunder. ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... crying heart of Helen. But not so Kassandra views him pray, that well of woe Kassandra, she whom Loxias deceived With gift to see, and not to be believed; To read within the heart of Time all truth And see men blindly blunder, to have ruth, To burn, to cry, "Out, haro!" and be a mock— Ah, and to know within this gross wood-block The fate of all her kindred, and her own, Unthinkable! Now with her terror blown Upon her face, to blanch it like a sheet, Now with ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... shiver. "Oh, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... quarrel with the old man, so I listened politely to all he said. But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous as to be a nuisance. He was Colonial-born and was always airing the fact. He rejoiced in my rawness, and when I made a blunder would crow over it for hours. 'It's no good, Mr Crawfurd; you new chums from England may think yourselves mighty clever, but we men from the Old Colony can get ahead of you every time. In fifty years you'll maybe learn a little about the country, but we know all about it before we start.' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... suppose you must wed, and make no blunder, And either would love you, and let you win her — Which of the two would you choose, I wonder, The stolid ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... nosing, his greasiness. We don't know what we may think, what we may say, he does his silly utmost to prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one sort of discussion we find—quite naturally and properly—supremely interesting. So we don't adolescence; we blunder up to sex. Dare—dare to look—and he may dirt you for ever! The girls are terror-stricken to silence by his significant whiskers, by the bleary ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... the old Long Parliament did nothing but blunder and talk, so he marched into the House one day with a company of soldiers, and sternly ordered the members all off, calling out, as he pointed to the mace that lay before the Speaker's chair, "Take away that bauble." After that he called together a fresh ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a will, and he stuck at it for six months, off ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... afterward. They used their eyes and critical faculties after marriage instead of before. The romance exhaled like a morning mist; and the facts came out distinctly. They learned what kind of man and woman they actually were, and two idealized creatures were sent to limbo. Because I don't blunder upon the woman I wish to marry, but pick her out, that's no reason I can't and won't love her. Your analysis and judgment were correct only up to date. You have now to meet a suit honestly, openly announced. This may be bad policy on my part; yet I have so much faith in you and respect ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of the Venetian churches is a blunder for which the Austrians will pay dearly in loss of international good-will. A century hence these shattered churches will be pointed out to visitors as the work of the modern Vandals, and lovers of art and beauty throughout the world will execrate the nation which permitted the sacrilege. They ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... patriotism is extinct in his soul. He has now but one thought, one ferocious desire: to avenge himself upon those who have denied him—and even upon all mankind! Really, Mr. Hart, your governments of Europe and America committed a stupendous blunder in refusing to pay Roch the ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... may be, I have been making up my mind for some days past that the embassy on behalf of Elvira, which I thrust upon you, and which you so generously undertook, was a blunder on my part which it would be delightful to repair, and which no artistic considerations whatever need prevent me from repairing. You cannot think how divine she was in Juliet the other night. Imperfect and harsh, of course, here and there, but still a creature to build many and ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sedentary life, he is fit to live among women or in their fashion. Let him adopt one of their trades if he likes; and if there must be eunuchs let them take those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it. Their choice proclaims a blunder on the part of nature; correct it one way or other, you will ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Appendix to the "Battle of Agincourt." "Rege praesente, pedes ejus tergente post extremam unctionem propriis manibus,"—words which can only be translated so as to represent the King, "after extreme unction, wiping the feet" of the Bishop,—the Editor of that work, by the careless blunder of an amanuensis, or some unaccountable accident, is made to render by the strange sentence, "covering his feet with extreme unction;" and he is then led, as a comment upon that text, to observe, that "the Bishop received ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... dreariest group I ever saw,—ragged, gaunt, and pale, mud to the knees, with bloody bandages untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in blankets, coats being lost or useless, and all wearing that disheartened look which proclaimed defeat more plainly than any telegram, of the Burnside blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them. I yearned to serve ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... ignorant with Lieutenant Loti but uninstructed evidently, marries a geisha whose father had made the happy dispatch at the request of the Son of Heaven after making a blunder in his military command. She is Cio-Cio-San, also Madama Butterfly, and she comes to her wedding with a bevy of geishas or mousmes (I do not know which) and a retinue of relations. All enjoy the hospitality of the American officer while picking him to ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'for life in general there is but one decree. Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret. Do not suppose,' he added, smiling, 'that I hold that youth is genius; all that I say is, that genius, when young, is divine. Why, the greatest captains of ancient and modern times both conquered Italy at five-and-twenty! Youth, extreme ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of Viele was a blunder. He told the Onondagas that the English governor was master of their country; and that, as they were subjects of the king of England, they must hold no council with the French without permission. The pride of ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... ever. Why on earth should the doctor want a photograph of the Dane Oxbye to show the friends of Lord Harry? Could he have made a blunder as stupid as it was uncalled for? No one could possibly mistake the dead face of that poor Dane for the dead ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the purpose of his abduction; nor did he fail to guess that now, with the chief witness out of the way, the trial would be hurried where before it had been delayed. Personally he had little to fear beyond a detention—unless he should attempt to escape, or unless a searching party might blunder on his traces. Bob had already made up his mind to use his best efforts to get away. As to the probabilities of a rescue blundering on this retreat, he had no means of guessing; but he shrewdly concluded that Saleratus ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... exhausted by this effort, and paused for breath, whereupon Mr. Tubbs, anxious to retrieve his recent blunder, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... was her bonnet. She had to walk out and hang it up, while the class, and even the babies tittered at her blunder. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... it was to see Dick's mother and sister rise, also, and turn to Nell with dark, proud, searching eyes. Belding vaguely realized some blunder he had made. Nell's white, appealing face gave him a pang. What had he done? Surely this family of Dick's ought to know his relation to Nell. There was a silence that ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... scratch on his hand, and when he automatically touched it with his lips, it made them burn. The lit lamps in the Gray's Inn Road seemed to him a little unsteady, and the passers-by showed a disposition to blunder into him. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the case of North Carolina. The proposed arrangement is wicked. It will not bear the test of intelligent and impartial examination. We believe in this case, as in that of Louisiana, that the Federal Constitution has been violated, and we hope that the people of North Carolina will repudiate the blunder at the polls. ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... loss.' Fifteen years after this was written Scott began the composition of 'Marmion,' and it is interesting to note that, so early in life as the date of this letter indicates, he was so keenly alive to the great blunder in military tactics made by James IV and his advisers, and so manifestly stirred to eloquent ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... announced the servant, who knew that his mistress's young sister was expected, and who had not asked Hetty for her name. In the excitement of the moment Hetty heard, but hardly understood the announcement. She thought the servant had made a curious blunder. ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... Post has made another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked upon as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... advantages had been limited to a knowledge of reading, writing and ciphering, with a something of grammar. Miss Brown's childhood had passed under the tutilage of accomplished masters. She could dance, execute a few showy pieces upon the piano without a blunder, utter glibly French and Italian phrases, and had, with the help of her teacher, finished, creditably, a landscape, a gorgeous sunset, of amber and crimson, and purple-tinted clouds, which hung in the most conspicuous position in her mother's drawing-room. Melinda read novels, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... beat deliriously at the very thought. If release came this way—by Roger's own decision—she would be free to take it! The price of the blunder she had made when she pledged herself to him—a price which was so much heavier than she could possibly have ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... a moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I no longer have a choice ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... expected, found its contents were not of a kind to give her much satisfaction. In fact, in her emotion of anger and indignation she made a false step in her state-craft of a nature one can hardly imagine a person so astute as the Princess making. This blunder led ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Zeus was superseded by the air, Poseidon by the water; and while some of the philosophers received in silence the popular legends, as was the case with Socrates, or, like Plato, regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith, others, like Xenophanes, denounced the whole as an ancient blunder, converted by time into ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a fact. Perhaps it would be safer to wait. I've made enough trouble for one day by my blunder-headed thoughtlessness." ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that part of his idea, which is still beyond the bounds of that large duration he represents to his own thoughts, is very obscure and undetermined. And hence it is that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any other infinite, we are very apt to blunder, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... interview in a New York paper with the Chief of Staff of the German Army opposite the British in which he must have been correctly quoted, as his remarks passed the censorship. He said that the loss of Pozieres was a blunder. I liked his frankness in laying the blame on a subordinate who, if he also had spoken, might have mentioned the presence of the Australians as an excuse, which, personally, I think ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and leaned upon his chair, with his eyes fixed on Festing. "When I told you I was going to be married, you showed your confounded supercilious pity! You thought I was making a fatal mistake. Well, you're not a clever fellow, Stephen, but that was the worst blunder you ever made. Marrying Sadie is perhaps the only wise thing I have done. She has borne with my follies, hustled me when I needed it, and helped me to fight my weaknesses; and if there's any hope of my being a useful man, I owe it to her. Now it's obvious that I can't draw comparisons, but ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... buffet first on one paddle-wheel and then on the other from the angry guardian breakers, which seem sworn foes of boats and passengers. Again and again are we knocked aside by huge billows, as though the poor little tug were a walnut-shell; again and again do we recover ourselves, and blunder bravely on, sometimes with but one paddle in the water, sometimes burying our bowsprit in a big green wave too high to climb, and dashing right through it as fast as if we shut our eyes and went at everything. The spray flies high over our heads, G—— and I are drenched over and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... blunder of this world is in thinking that there are certain persons put into the world to govern and certain others to obey. Everybody is in this world to govern and everybody to obey. There are no benefactors and no beneficiaries ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... taken "all in a heap;" she had heard many a love-tale, but never one with so manly a note. Shrewd, sensitive Mistress Betty was bewildered and confounded, and in her hurry she made a capital blunder. She dismissed him summarily, saw how white he grew, and heard how he stopped to ask if there were no possible alternative, no period of probation to endure, no achievement to be performed by him. She waved him off the faster because she became affrighted at his humility; and got ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... point. The scale, moistened with a frothy liquid, became glutinous, and was drawn out like a riband. This bee then attached all the wax it could concoct to the vault of the hive, and went its way. A second now succeeded, and did the like; a third followed, but owing to some blunder did not put the wax in the same line with its predecessor; upon which another bee, apparently sensible of the defect, removed the displaced wax, and carrying it to the former heap, deposited it there, exactly in the ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... said his mistress, "you voted your tax receipt, so your first vote has counted nothing." Do you think, gentlemen, said Mrs. Stewart, that such women as attend our conventions, and speak from our platform, could make so ludicrous a blunder? I think not. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... by sending for d'Arthez's books, of which she had never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to maintain a twenty minutes' eulogism and discussion of them without a blunder. She now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books with the best that contemporary literature had produced. By the time d'Arthez came to see her she was having an indigestion of mind. Expecting this visit, she had daily made a toilet of what may be called ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... in from without and became entangled with her hair, which was in some ways so curiously like it. McTosh, whose eye was everywhere, promptly lowered a shade two inches—the one blunder he made that day. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Jimmy Kinsella, came towards them from the boat He was bent on being particularly polite to Miss Rutherford, feeling that he ought to atone for his unfortunate blunder with the boat He took ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... alarm first. He had been furtively repairing the viewscreen and thinking dark thoughts the while. There was sick dread for him in the contemplation of the future, for after this last unfortunate blunder DeCastros would be certain to keep his promise and have him examined. This might very well be his last voyage, and Mr. Wordsley had known for quite a long time that he could not live anywhere except out ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... his ridiculous blunder, and it was a long time before he heard the last of his midnight adventure and his raid on his own mule. But he always liked to tell the "balance of the story," as he termed it, and this is his version: "I had not slept any the night before, for I stayed awake watching to get a shot at the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... follow directly across the plain, for at this time the Carthaginians greatly outnumbered them in cavalry, and they would, therefore, have to take the road round the foot of the mountains, which was nearly seventy miles long; and yet, by some unaccountable blunder, they neglected to place a sufficient guard over their great magazines at Cannae to defend them for even a few ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... a woman like me, a woman who can't pretend to stupidity, and who has lived for years in the diplomatic world, to blunder in what she undertakes?" ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... education to which a green race-horse is subjected were unknown on the Rancho Palomar. Panchito was a trained saddle animal, wise, sensible, courageous and with a prodigious faith that his rider would get him safely out of any jam into which they might blunder together. The starting-gate bothered him at first, but after half a dozen trials, he realized that the web, flying upward, had no power to hurt him and was, moreover, the signal for a short, jolly contest of speed with his fellows of the rancho. Before the week was ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... encircled the globe when reports were printed that over a thousand people lost their lives on the Lusitania, found a sympathetic echo in the Berlin Foreign Office. "Another navy blunder," the officials said—confidentially. Foreign Office officials tried to conceal their distress because the officials knew the only thing they could do now was to make preparation for an apology and try to excuse in the best ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the college graduate, making him incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some blunder ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... very distressing—a terrible and horrible blunder," she said, with a desperation that must have ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent. from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... post or pillar, especially a house-post, should be set up according to the original position of the tree from which it was hewn,—that is to say, with the part nearest to the roots downward. To erect a house-post in the contrary way is thought to be unlucky;—formerly such a blunder was believed to involve unpleasant consequences of a ghostly kind, because an "upside-down" pillar would do malignant things. It would moan and groan in the night, and move all its cracks like mouths, and open all its knots like eyes. Moreover, the spirit of it (for every ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... society of New England, there to become a boy again, to enter Harvard College, and come under all its at that time rigid and petty regulations. It almost seems a mistake, but it was not. Already he was too ripe and too wise to blunder. He himself gives us his ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... more actively intelligent man. Deep in his soul Dubois had hidden his one profound discovery about the modern art of warfare, the key to his career. And this discovery was that NOBODY KNEW, that to act therefore was to blunder, that to talk was to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above all silently, had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the Department of the South, for instance, must be set the more disastrous mismanagements of the Department of the Gulf,—the only place from which we now hear the old stories of disease and desertion,—all dating back to the astonishing blunder of organizing the colored regiments of half-size at the outset, with a full complement of officers. This measure, however agreeable it might have been to the horde of aspirants for commissions, was in itself calculated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder. Whilst he was biding his time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not, awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something more than mortal, that they respected his ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... the impishness of childhood, climbed up in the auto. It was a simple matter to even blunder on pushing the button that would set the self-starter in operation. The car had been left standing on a level bit of road, but, just ahead of it, was a rather steep slope. Mollie had neglected to leave ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... and blew his nose. The sisters saw with regret that there was no recurring to the attractive subject of that interview in Chicago, though their minds were beset with a thousand questions they wished to ask him about it. They realized that to do so would be a blunder. They had stumbled upon a gold mine and were obliged to leave its rich hoard untouched. They returned to Phil, who, as a topic, offered safer ground than ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... toothpick. He was sure that those Neapolitans were recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; on the track of the Guidascarpi, possibly. As he was not unlike Angelo Guidascarpi in figure, he became uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixt him and La Scala; and the notion of any human power stopping him short of that destination, made Ammiani's hand perfectly firm. He drew on his gloves, and named the place whither he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,' said the waiter, while taking up and pretending to reckon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sometimes anything but accurate; in this case he errs almost as greatly as when he venerates himself as the prince of freemen, with gyveless wrists and flashing eyes. As for the foreigner, what he falls into is the typically Freudian blunder of projecting his own worst weakness into another. The fact is that it is he, and not the native American, who is the incorrigible and unimaginative money-grubber. He comes to the United States in search of money, and in search ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... conversation with the temporary skipper of the Chih' Yuen, during which he ascertained that the vessel had fortunately struck only very lightly; and, as she had been considerably sheltered from the seas by the part of the reef through which she had somehow managed to blunder before striking, she had not bumped to any extent, and was making but little water. It was therefore to be hoped that her bottom was not so badly injured as Wong-lih had at first anticipated, and that, at the rising of the tide, it might be possible, with the assistance of the San-chau, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... questions and Annie's answers were related quickly enough, and the cause of Michael's blunder was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... administration for doing that very thing. "How would you like," he said to me, "when you get to be engineer-in-chief to have your errors dragged forth by your subordinate? Before long your engineer-in-chief will be made a divisional inspector. As soon as any one of us commits a serious blunder, as he has done, the administration (which can't allow itself to appear in the wrong) will quietly retire him from active duty by ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... the winner, but only signalizes that that side is his." The evasion came too late; persons who had inconvenient memories saw through the shuffling of a pseudo-prophet, who only managed to cast a retrospective gleam of insincerity over his fortune-telling, to convert blunder into bad faith, and to stultify his present along with his past position. The leek had to be eaten at last: why, after so many "prave 'ords" of superiority and defiance, confess that the eating of it had been more than half ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... I begin to feel tired of her already; I felt I should when I was persuaded to order her: and that is the Folly of it. They say it is a very bad Thing to do Nothing: but I am sure that is not the case with those who are born to Blunder; I always find that I have to repent of what I have done, not what I have left undone; and poor W. Browne used to say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone than done. You know how glad I should be if you came here: but I haven't the Face to ask it, especially after that ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... was quite perfect, and Timothy Ruddel, who was called up before me, was also able to say his lesson without a blunder very much to the disappointment of Mr O'Gallagher, who observed, "So you've slipped through my fingers, have you, this time, Master Timothy? Never mind, I'll have you yet; and, moreover, there's Master Keene to go through the fiery furnace." Just ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... she muttered to herself, "I have made a grievous blunder; it may be I have ruined Cornelius, the tulip, and myself. I have given the alarm, and perhaps awakened suspicion. I am but a woman; these men may league themselves against me, and then I shall be lost. If I am lost that ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... but not until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to him than it was possible for us to be in 1849. He was not firm in his seat. He was but a temporary chief ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... will help me out," she said to John as he bowed and seated himself. "'Some one has blundered,' and here is a whole bottle of champagne which must be drunk to save it. Are you prepared to help turn my, or somebody's, blunder into hospitality?" ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... in person. Death or victory Was his device, "and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die, A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies— For this all vulgar flights ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... with him. He knew the land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters. He had walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the cars, and back the same day. I asked him about the flies and mosquitoes, etc. He said they were all gone except the "blunder-heads;" there were some of them ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... carelessness, and an error crept into one of the reports she was copying. The error was slight, but it brought her a sharp reprimand from Mr. Troy. It was the second time, he reminded her, that she had made that blunder. At the reproof the girl's face flushed painfully, and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Musky Bay, the name of the little settlement where I am stopping, they think I am just a city man up for the fishing. I do not use my right name there. By an inadvertence, I suppose it was habit, I wrote it on the hotel register to-night. That was a sad blunder, for it is practically certain that these men will not rest till they have found out where ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... way. But to do this, of course, would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all her might. Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him an arm. His eyes were half-closed and his gaze absolutely dulled. The dressed and waxed moustache, which ran to a needle-like point, looked doubly tasteless against his wax mask of a face. He was the incarnation of walking decrepitude, vapid and slack. Quite evidently he had committed the blunder of trusting to a split in Germany. In his blindness he explained that he had come to free the Germans, who had, against their will, been incorporated into Prussia, and all Germany rose like one man against him. And in his foolish proclamation ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... something definite, something that would settle once for all the question that filled his mind. But what could he do? That little point was still unsettled. Knock at the girl's door, pretend that it was a blunder, and trust to inspiration to discover in the brief encounter if anything was wrong? Or put money in an envelop and push it under her door? If he did that, she would probably give the money to Sam, as she had ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... blunder, as Kathleen, the daughter of the Earl of Elsmore, is referred to as Lady Kathleen. Her father would have had to be a Duke or a Marquess for that address to be correct. Her actual title does not sound so good, so perhaps Perkins can be forgiven for this solecism. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... mean, after Tennyson's death," I myself wrote to Philip Hamerton, "to be Poet-laureate!" From these samples of our callow speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Well, it all happened just as we planned, only otherwise! Through some blunder of arrangement we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew nothing of the other's exodus. I arrived at King's Cross Railway Station with the conventional ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... have considered the RUDIMENTS of COOKERY quite unworthy of attention. These little delicate distinctions constitute all the difference between a common and an elegant table, and are not trifles to the YOUNG HOUSEKEEPERS who must learn them either from the communication of others or blunder on till their own slowly accumulating and dear-bought ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... ago I could have counted on hitting him where I liked. I trust I shall not blunder against his vitals now. However, if I do, he has ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... I write politics for my own sake, I must put in love and intrigue, social incidents, with perhaps a dash of sport, for the benefit of my readers. In this way I think I made my political hero interesting. It was certainly a blunder to take him from Ireland—into which I was led by the circumstance that I created the scheme of the book during a visit to Ireland. There was nothing to be gained by the peculiarity, and there was an added difficulty in obtaining sympathy and affection ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... in Malone's Shakspeare.—Has any notice been taken of the following odd blunder in Malone's Shakspeare, Dublin ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... nothing the parent can do right. You would think that now and then he might, if only by mere accident, blunder into sense. But, no, there seems to be a law against it. He brings home woolly rabbits and indiarubber elephants, and expects the Child to be contented "forsooth" with suchlike aids to its education. As a matter of fact, the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... is an obvious blunder here, for this account of the trade must be understood as follows: "That the trade in silks and spices from the East, which now come by way of Syria, came over land by way of Astracan to Tanna, whence it was transported by sea to Venice." The concluding sentence, "That no other nation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... right mood, or in the nick of time. How he envied those fortunate mortals who always arrived at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing! That talent had never been his. With him it was blunder. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
