"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the whip-hand of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... complicated. She showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... is "ratey," as has been explained in an earlier volume, is a much greater offender than a midshipman who is merely touge. For a ratey fourth classman makes the foolish blunder of considering himself as good as an ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... months' siege since October, but it did not redound to the credit of its defenders. They were superior in numbers to the besiegers, were amply provisioned, and well supplied with heavy artillery and all the munitions of war. Every sort of blunder seems to have been committed by the commander, who apparently regarded the siege as a relief from more arduous work in the field, and capitulated because the repulse of the rescuing expedition foreboded an increase ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... may say, this in itself is a great advantage. One can see from his "Education" that his material difficulties were so slight that he could take them cheerfully, even in our world where poverty is both a blunder and a crime. This in itself tends toward happiness. Henry Adams, it is true, suffered terribly in his heart. His description of the death of his sister is heart-rending; he does not dwell on the worst of his griefs. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... my day," said Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the burdens the clergy lay on them—yet their blind devotion to the Church is ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... yourself still deeper in my estimation, of annoying 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
... in a doctrine, means, that we understand what the propositions are, and accept them. But if through blunder we accept a wrong set of propositions, so as to believe a false doctrine, we nevertheless have Implicit (or Virtual) Faith in the true one, if only we say from the heart: "Whatever the Church believes, I believe." Thus a person, who, through blundering, believes ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... all the sun, and on a fine summer's morning grows drowsy with the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look as though they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... safest of jumpers pulled into their fences and caused to fall by the adoption of such tactics. A lady should remember that when her mount is going straight for a fence, with the intention of getting safely to the other side, any interference on her part will cause him to either blunder badly, or, if the jump is a fixture, to fall. If a horse slackens speed when near a fence, and suddenly runs out, his rider should let him refuse and take him at it again. I once got a very bad fall through turning a horse quickly at a fence which he was in the ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... 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 he ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Bismarck for the first time; they were discussing the conduct of the Austrian Government in shooting Robert Blum, a leading demagogue who had been in Vienna during the siege. Beust condemned it as a political blunder. "No, you are wrong," said Bismarck; "when I have my enemy in my ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... irony of the truth. For he bestows those withering words on the nation that has the fifty religions, and attributes "ideas"—as the antithesis of "convenience" and "practical sense"—to the nation that has the fifty sauces. And not for a moment does he suspect himself of this blunder, so manifest as to be disconcerting to his reader. One seems to hear an incurably English accent in all this, which indeed is reported, by his acquaintance, of Matthew Arnold's actual speaking of French. It is certain that he has not the interest of familiarity with the language, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... nature to a 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
... entrusting me with any message you may have to send," replied Hsiao Hung with a laugh. "I'll readily go and deliver it. Should I not do so faithfully, and blunder in fulfilling your business, my lady, you may visit me with any punishment your ladyship may please, and I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... pardon, young gentleman," and for a moment her words were drowned in a shout of delighted laughter, as the listening rogues appreciated the blunder she had made. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he said, "but at the moment, I could not but think of you; how you suit it out here." Now she coloured and drew back. Then she heard close by her: "You must not be angry, it always happens that when we wish to repair a blunder, ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Madam Budd—there are such accidents truly, and serious things be they to encounter," answered Spike, hemming a little to clear his throat, as was much his practice whenever the widow ran into any unusually extravagant blunder; "yes, serious things to encounter. But the land-fall that I mean is a different sort of thing; being, as you well know, what we say when we come in sight of land, a'ter a v'y'ge; or, meaning the land we may happen first to see. The departure ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Monday morning she sent a person to Captain Watson's, to know if Mrs. Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry; and sent her word, that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunder of a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each floor in turn and ask everybody ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... its interest after the battle of Leutzen, when the Swedish hero laid down his life in defense of his Protestant brethren, so the Theban contest with Sparta has no great significance after the battle of Mantinea. The only great blunder which Epaminondas made was to encourage his countrymen to compete with Athens for the sovereignty of the seas. That sovereignty was the natural empire of Athens, even as the empire of the land was the glory of Sparta. If these two powers had been contented with their own ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services and lives of such ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere—she would only resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the result was reassuring. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... air as he stepped by her reaching out for butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder. Meaning a man." ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... reckless, 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
... prick his nerves with a needle of suggestion where all his passions, ambitions and sentiments are at white heat, will readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle prick him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds, and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... allies, that Mr. Venizelos made his defence in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... Leech—might be wiped out in a dinner given by himself to the confraternity. And they all came to his house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and Thackeray was duly chaffed and teased—"and who can doubt," says Trollope, "but they were very jolly over the little blunder?" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... made some comment; but Hamilton, who now perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the attitude of these men toward him, hastened to make a ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... your pardons," he said, faintly, as though he had committed some blunder. "I—I fear I am not ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I feel that I shall blunder, and do ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... the minister, hesitatingly, supposing he had not heard aright, and yet doubting if this could be the correction of his auricular blunder. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... indeed. What a blunder it was to let them slip through their fingers, when they might have seized them with two or three hundred ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... think I am going to let you off so," said he; "you must give me half-a-dozen kisses at least to prove that you have forgiven me for making so great a blunder." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... watched them with anxiety. I do not know how far Jevons was aware that the house in Mayfair was a blunder; I think he wouldn't have acknowledged that it was a blunder at all. His own attitude to it was not in the least disturbed by his humorous perception of other people's. With his dexterity in adjustments he was quite capable of reconciling them, quite capable of enjoying the effect ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... been unnoticed all the previous part of the morning till now, when the Doctor put him on to construe in a Greek play. He did not know a word of it, though little Timmins, his form-fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had made a sad blunder or two, when the awful chief broke ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... war of 1812 between the United States and England; and the general revolt of the Spanish colonies. The world was learning new lessons, adopting new policies, in which the Spanish colonial system was a blunder the folly of which Spain did not even then fully realize. Yet from it all, by one means and another, Cuba benefited. Spain was fortunate in its selection of Governors-General sent out at this time. Luis de Las Casas, who arrived in 1790, is credited with much useful ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... the French were heavily burdened by the venality of La Barre, who subordinated public policy to his own gains. We have now to record his most egregious blunder—an attempt to overawe the Iroquois with an insufficient force—an attempt which Meulles declared was a mere piece of acting—not designed for real war on behalf of the colony, {98} but to assist the governor's private interests as a trader. From whatever ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... poems to the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence. His Charge of the Light Brigade, at Balaclava, while it gave undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as one of the finest battle-lyrics in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... he said, "You know that the splendour is enacting behind. You guess the opening of the rose. One stalks this earth agog for miracles. It is full of hints—you catch a moment—for flashed instants you are God. Then the mist wraps you, and you blunder forward, two-legged man swaying for a balance. Translate the oracle as you will— with your paint-pans, with your words—we get broken lights, half-phrases. But we guess the rest, and so we strain and grow. Who are you or I, that we ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... "It is a matter of equality. In fact, it would be hard to tell which of the two is the more indebted to the other—the employer or the employee. It is in this spirit that I try to run this great plant. I blunder, it is true; I suppose we all do that. But I sincerely believe labor should have an honored place, and so far as I am concerned I give it one. If I had a boy," Mr. Croyden's voice faltered, "If I had a boy," he repeated more firmly, "he should be brought ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... that 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 ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to know the full value of symptoms under medication, as well as the full value of the symptoms when not under medication. This knowledge I am using in analyzing this medical classic and from my standpoint I can see how very easy it was for the author of the article under consideration to blunder along as he did. The doctor should not feel lonesome, however, for he has a ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... of employment." The answer is, of course, that the state of things here contemplated is a permanent and normal one wherein production is correctly adapted to human desires. If A is found not to be wanted, after the production of it, an industrial blunder has been committed, and wealth is wasted just as when burned up. It is ill-assorted production. The trouble is not in a lack of demand for what A may produce (of something else), but with the producers of A in not making that for which there were desires, from ignorance or lack ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... enfranchisement. To this proposition my friend, Susan B. Anthony, never consented, but was compelled to yield because no one stood with her. I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder, and, ever since, I have taken my beloved Susan's judgment against the world. I have always found that, when we see eye to eye, we are sure to be right, and when we pull together we are strong. After we discuss any point together ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... very nearly. And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... on the propriety of using me himself that evening at the chateau of the King of the French. Fortunately, his monitress, though by no means of the purest water, knew better than to suffer her eleve to commit so gross a blunder, and I escaped the calamity of making my first appearance at court under the auspices of such ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... many Californian towns. It was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking saloons, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in vain to clear matters up. Your aunt would insist that I took her to be forty, and the fun that my blunder made rather drew us together, and gave me a start over the other fellows at the station, half of whom fell straightway in love with her. Some months went on, and when the mutiny broke out we were engaged to be married. It is a proof of how completely the opium dreams had passed out ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... feet, including the plainly agitated Mr. Harper himself. But who is this, in the lunar cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard—so firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will eventually cost him his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... replied; "it was more perplexing than that Even if the police had not made the usual blunder of arresting him for intoxication instead of sending him immediately to the hospital, it would have made no difference. The doctors simply could not have saved him, apparently. For the truth is, Professor Kennedy, we don't even know what ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light. Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right Rumbling and bumping; and the ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... and women do as a matter of fact usually make this choice hastily and on wofully imperfect information of one another's characters, that is no warrant for a resort to unlawful expedients to remedy the blunder. If a woman cares ardently enough about religion to feel keen distress at the idea of dissent from it on the part of those closely connected with her, she surely may be expected to take reasonable pains to ascertain ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... trying to figure out what SC meant! And, if it weren't so late, I'd start right out now to find my mine! If it weren't for that a. b. part I could ride right to it, and snap my fingers at the prowler. But, it may take me a long time to blunder onto the meaning of these letters, and anyway, I want to know 'who's who,' as Mr. Christie says." She continued her work, and a half-hour later examined the result critically. "SC 1 NW 1 N [up arrow] ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Spaniard, puzzled Marryat and his shipmates. It is not wonderful that he did not understand its meaning, since in spite of campaigning in Spain, and many visits to Spanish ports, he never learnt to avoid the absurd blunder of putting the title Don before a surname. But if the steersman is drawn from life, so are not either the carrack, which is a fragment of the sixteenth century, out of its place, nor 'Don' Ribiera and his sons, nor the bishop, nor anybody else in that ill-fated ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... very sorry to hear that," said Lionel, sharply. Fairthorn looked frightened. "I 'm afraid I have made a blunder. Don't tell Mr. Darrell." ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good; but, in another quarter, Allcraft suddenly discovered that he had committed an egregious blunder. He had entrusted Planner with the secret of his critical position—had made him acquainted with the dishonest transactions of his father, and the consequent bankruptcy of the firm. Not that this disclosure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... always been this way, I wonder, Did editors always display The same disposition to blunder O'er the weight of the news of the day? When simpler was war and directer, Was Athens accustomed to see In the sheets of its Argus how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... your turn. My friends are fond of ascribing my success in my various missions to the possession of peculiar qualities. No such thing: I owe everything to the simple habit of always waiting till it is my turn to speak. And believe me, that he who plays before his turn at whist, commits as great a blunder as he who speaks before ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... splintered condition, into which some person had cut up the controversy with a view to his own more convenient study of its chief elements, Heber had misconceived as the actual form in which these parts had been originally exchanged between the disputants—a blunder of the worst consequence, and having the effect of translating general expressions (such as recorded a moral indignation against ancient fallacies or evasions connected with the dispute) into direct ebullitions of scorn or displeasure personally against his immediate antagonist. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... began the rite which was to unite Amyas Belamour to Aurelia Delavie. He intended to shorten the service, but his nervous terror and the obscurity of the room made him stumble in finding the essential passages, and blunder in dictating the vows, thus increasing the confusion and bewilderment of poor little Aurelia. Somehow her one comfort was in the touch of the hand that either clasped hers, or held the ring on her finger—a strong, warm, tender, trustworthy hand, neither as white nor as soft as ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... execution. If our authorities and people view the present European War with indifference and without deep concern, merely devoting their attention to the attack on Kiaochow, neglecting the larger issues of the war, they will have brought to nought our great Imperial policy, and committed a blunder greater than which it can not be conceived. We are constrained to submit this statement of policy for the consideration of our authorities, not because we are fond of argument but because we are deeply ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... given to be able to say it off from beginning to end, exceptions and all, without a blunder! But he could only stand and hang his head; he did not know a word of it. Then through the hot pounding in his ears he heard the master's voice; it was quite gentle; not at all the scolding voice he expected. And it said, "I'm not going to punish you, little Franz. ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... deficiency of eight and a quarter millions that he hands over to the new Parliament, from the surplus of six millions which the former Parliament handed over to him. I cannot, I think, state the matter more fairly than that. You are—deluded I was going to say, but I could not make a greater blunder, for deluded you are not; and deluded the people of England are not, and the people of Scotland will not be, but you are flattered and inveigled by compliments paid to the existing Administration in various newspapers abroad. Is not that a ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues," said Cecil, as he settled himself in his saddle. "They have come northward and been sweeping the country like a locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on some of them sooner or later. If they cut me down, don't wait; but slash my pouch loose ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in no haste—Fabius Cunctator about to be named—with 60,000 men; does come to Kolin. Frederick attacks; but a blunder of too-impetuous Mannstein fatally overturns the plan of battle; to which the resulting disaster is imputed: disaster seemingly overwhelming and irretrievable, but Daun does not follow up. The siege of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... raised by authority above what it will yield with a profit to the buyer, that commodity will be the less dealt in. If a second blundering interposition be used to correct the blunder of the first, and an attempt is made to force the purchase of the commodity (of labour for instance), the one of these two things must happen, either that the forced buyer is ruined, or the price of the product of the labour, in that proportion, is raised. Then ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... "It was a blunder," whispered Storms, when the captain stepped beside him. "Those wretches mean mischief, and it ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... reflected, in eliminating formal discipline as far as possible in the shipboard routine. It had seemed the best course for a long cruise under the present conditions. But now I had a morale situation that could explode in mutiny at the first blunder on ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... supernal, were at work here no man can tell. Philosophers stumble, fools blunder, and the truth dances on ahead through Life's woodland of mysteries—one instant revealing itself in a golden shaft of sunlight, hiding the next with smothered laughter in the black shadow of a fern, while seekers after it tramp past in ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... wonder Was some heart-chord snapped asunder When the threads were soft and silken? Did some fatal boyish blunder Plant a canker in my bosom That hath ever ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... ending with an implied question lent a subtle meaning to his utterance, and he helped it with covert glance and sour smile. Thus might Caesar Borgia ask some minion if he could use a dagger. But Royson was too humiliated by his blunder to pay heed to hidden meanings. He grasped the card in his muddied fingers, and looked towards Miss Fenshawe, who was now patting one of the horses. Her aristocratic aloofness was doubly galling. She, too, had heard what he said, and was ready to classify him ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... thither. Marius did not understand, and committed this error. "The father" began to grow inexact, and no longer brought "his daughter" every day. Sometimes, he came alone. Then Marius did not stay. Another blunder. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I am afraid, Captain, that I have made a blunder. Mrs. Dillon came to me—most kindly of course—and made an offer to take care of a booth at the bazaar, and I refused her. You know my feeling against giving these Americans any ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... piece of Heine's prose, and as dangerous. He would run over a man's pockets while he spoke with him, returning what he chose to discard without the lightest breath of suspicion. 'A good workman,' his contemporaries called him; and they thought it a shame for him to be idle. Moreover, he did not blunder unconsciously upon his triumph; he tackled the trade in so fine a spirit of analysis that he might have been the very Aristotle of his science. 'The keek-cloy,' he wrote, in his hints to young sportsmen, 'is easily picked. If the notes are in the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... to-day made another sad blunder— What can be come over me lately, I wonder? The Prince was as cheerful as if all his life He had never been troubled with Friends or a Wife— "Fine weather," says he—to which I, who must prate, Answered, "Yes, Sir, but changeable ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... blunder, misapprehension, falsity, misconception. Associated Words: fallibility, infallibility, fallible, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... special knowledge as well as a sufficient training in Roman institutions generally. Each of these Roman subjects is like a language with a delicate accidence, which is always presenting the unwary with pitfalls into which they are sure to blunder unless they have a thorough mastery of it. I could mention a book full of valuable thoughts about the relation to Paganism of the early Christian Church, by a scholar at once learned and sympathetic;[4] who when he happens to deal for a moment with the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... my haste. "You are right—but don't be brutal. Don't kill the child. Listen. Instead of writing to Jack Marston, let him come. Let him tell her himself. Give her a chance. Give him one, even. It is a cruel business, anyhow. Don't let's blunder into making ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and blest the well-directed blow that had deprived him of life, I suddenly checked myself when I heard her say—Amen! knowing that him whom she reviled was my very self. A little reflection taught me silence—a little practice enabled me to speak of that frightful night without any very excessive blunder. The wound I had given myself was no mockery of one—it was long before I recovered—and as the benevolent and generous Torella sat beside me talking such wisdom as might win friends to repentance, and mine own dear Juliet hovered near me, administering ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... that the case should be heard at their bar; and Westminster Hall was prepared to be the scene of a great public trial. At first Defoe, in heaping contemptuous ridicule upon the High-flying Doctor, had spoken as if he would consider prosecution a blunder. The man ought rather to be encouraged to go on exposing himself and his party. "Let him go on," he said, "to bully Moderation, explode Toleration, and damn the Union; the gain will ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... sure of one thing for to-morrow," said I, "and that is the certainty that if there's blunder to be made one or other of my following will make it. Still, I'm not complaining, for it's good to be ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... girl in love. Rachel is in love. She would not say with whom—naturally. At least, naturally for Rachel. I felt rather helpless, but as I knew that all she wanted was an intelligent sympathizer, not verbal assistance, I was willing to blunder a little. I knew she would ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... fairway. Much labour had been expended and considerable rude skill shown by the enemy in building bastions and other defensive works at various places on the river,—particularly in the Shabluka gorge and before Omdurman. Why the Khalifa committed the blunder of making no adequate preparation for defending the pass at Shabluka it is difficult to understand. Only one conclusion suggests itself. He was probably afraid to trust his followers so far from his sight, lest the negroes ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... collocation, till there steal forth that horrible Papce! which means more on your lips than I am sure it ever did when Latin was a live language, and Papce a natural and unpedantic ejaculation!—no, I would sooner blunder through the dark by myself a thousand times than light my rushlight at the lamp of that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who else to call upon—of course I could not go out into the audience to find some one, and thus betray my predicament to everybody; neither could I take one of the housemaids, because she would have been sure to blunder and be so awkward. Oh! isn't ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... accuracy, the result of incessant watchfulness and of orderly habits. Yet it is his accuracy which has been called in question by some modern writers, on the ground of passages in his letters which they have misinterpreted, or failed to understand. In every instance the blunder has not been committed by ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... former French government when assailed with difficulty? It was at once as if struck motionless, or, the little animation that was left was just sufficient to enable it to go from one blunder to another. How different has England been on every emergency? In place of the arm of government seeming to slacken in the day of danger, it has risen superior to it. We have never seen the same scenes happen here, that have taken place in Poland, Sweden, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... don't wonder; I spoke too fast again; But you'll forgive one blunder, For you are like most men: You are,—or so you've told me, So many mortal times, That heaven ought not to hold me ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... New Testament itself might well be read simply as literature. The words, the phrases, the ideals which literature offers so lavishly, unconsciously stir the mind to lofty motives and the true perception of the meaning of life. We must not, of course, commit the fatal blunder of making a didactic lesson out of what is read. We take care that it is understood and illustrated, and then leave it to have its ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... as I can see, you are not to blame. Apologize to the lady for the blunder of your godfathers and godmothers. Stupid old parties! They ought to have thought of Hyacinth;" and Carrol threw his cigar into the fire and began ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl about the dear Northland they both loved and then ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet Lakers "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was in the habit ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the poet, had just preceded him, and it seemed a moment aptly chosen for his so-different theme. "And then," to quote Howells, "the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... husband, and a bond of mutual sympathy drew the composer to her. After the death of her husband, she persuaded Haydn to sign a promise to marry her if his wife should die, but the composer afterward repudiated the agreement, very likely not wishing to repeat his first matrimonial blunder. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... idea of a definite task, fanatically followed to the exclusion of all minor considerations, breaks down. When the work is good, when we are sure we are all right, then we may carry off things with a high hand. But the work isn't always good, we aren't always sure. We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued. Then the sacrificed affections come in as accusers. Then it is that ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... a political blunder. It stirred up the embers of Napoleonism. Ten years later they blazed into a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... kind of you to put so much faith in me," said the middy; "but don't say any more, please, and don't believe in me too much for fear I should make some horrible blunder, ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... seldom read, even it may be suspected in Mr. Arber's excellent reprint of it, or in that of Mr. Bond. It gave a word to English, and even yet there is no very distinct idea attaching to the word. It induced one of the most gifted restorers of old times to make a blunder, amusing in itself, but not in the least what its author intended it to be, and of late years especially it has prompted constant discussions as to the origin of the peculiarities which mark it. As usual, we shall try to discuss ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... sturdy old Commodore Jones will blunder along with the American liners, CYANE and UNITED STATES, and haul down that proud Mexican ensign. He will hoist for the first time, on October, 19, 1842, the stars and stripes over the town. Even though he apologizes, the foreigners will troop back there ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... that draft treaty was a weapon in our hands; to-day it is a weapon against us. It was a gigantic blunder. If its terms were made public, it would mean disaster.... It might possibly bring about another war—not with Germany this time! That is an extreme possibility, and I do not believe in its likelihood ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... place. On the day following that of your departure from Windermere, I was duly inducted by Cleon into my new duties. They are few in number, and by no means difficult. So far I have contrived to get through them without any desperate blunder. Another thing I have done of which you will be pleased to hear: I have contrived to ingratiate myself with the mulatto, and am in high favour with him. You were right in your remarks; he is worth cultivation, in so far that he is all-powerful in our little establishment. M. Platzoff never interferes ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Christy Minstrel choruses by people who had developed vocal talent for this occasion only, and a screaming display of conjuring tricks by an amateur of legerdemain who had forgotten the art, if ever he had mastered it. At every new mistake or blunder, and with each fresh change of expression on the entertainer's streaky face, conveying the idea of his being under the influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Mr. Morris. "Does the King, then, not realize that he is no longer the power in the state? The National Assembly will not tolerate Necker's dismissal. Will you not go instantly to Versailles and try to undo this fatal blunder of the King?" he asked. Monsieur de ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... seem to us worse than the glaring inconsistency at the end of the sixth book of the Aeneid, where Aeneas is dismissed by the gate of the false visions. That incident, whether ironical or not, is unquestionably an artistic blunder, since it destroys the impression of truth on which the justification of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a clown!— Should only contend that Adam slipped down; While you—you Supralapsarian pup!— Should nothing aver but that Adam slipped up. It's all the same whether up or down You slip on a peel of banana brown. Even Adam analyzed not his blunder, But thought he had slipped on a peal ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... blunder of the Critical Reviewers who supposed the "harp of Aeolus" to be meant led Gray to insert this note: "Pindar styles his own poetry with its musical accompaniments, [Greek: Aiolis molpe, Aiolides chordai, Aiolidon pnoai aulon], Aeolian ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... go to the devil their own way, not laying the blame of their own folly on others! But having got you—would I ever have let you go for any power under Heaven? Why (as soon as you were free) did I marry you? I knew that, politically, it was a blunder: that over there it would go against us— prove the case. Half Ireland cared nothing for the verdict of an English jury. But when we married, they had to believe it then.... Well, I wanted them to believe it. I know my love would have waited, had I asked ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... doesn't blunder," answered Jose, "he can sweep us all into his net. The only thing that saves us now is Miller's skill and reputation. Every one believes he is going to show fight somewhere ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... and I too frequently gave unsatisfactory answers to the questions with which he assailed me. Owen, hovering betwixt his respect for his patron, and his love for the youth he had dandled on his knee in childhood, like the timorous, yet anxious ally of an invaded nation, endeavoured at every blunder I made to explain my no-meaning, and to cover my retreat; manoeuvres which added to my father's pettish displeasure, and brought a share of it upon my kind advocate, instead of protecting me. I had not, while ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Martha, taking courage, and laying a timid hand on his arm. "Sure, I don't know what 'tis all about. I don't know what blunder he've made. But I'm thinkin', zur, you'll be sorry if you acts in haste. 'Tis wise t' count a hundred. Don't be too hard on un, zur. 'Tis like the blunder may be mended. 'Tis like he'll do better next time. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... others advanced. Then a party of a couple of dozen rose from the ground near to hand, with a young man in a European officer's uniform at their head. They ran to us, while we stood and waited. At last they saw who I was, and when they came near they apologized very gracefully for their blunder. "It was fortunate that you shouted when you did," said one ugly-faced young rebel, as he slipped his cartridge back into his pouch; "I had you nicely covered and was just going to shoot." Some of the soldiers ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... Fleecing Gideon, but of his daughter Lucy, which has never yet been seen in any exhibition or loan collection. "Oho," says Master, "then I won't fight a chap who has a daughter like that." Ha! Mad bull "heard without"—one of the "herd without,"—Master picks up blunderbuss, no blunder, makes a hit and saves a miss; i.e., Lucy. What shall he have who kills the bull with a bull 'it? Why, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... she thinks she has; but it 'aint true. He's made a blunder, though, not announcin' his engagement, and I'm goin' to tell him so the first chance I get. I don't see why he should air his private affairs all over the town, but if he don't announce his engagement before long, Virginia Bascom'll make an ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... you don't mind, I'll sit here a while longer and think things over, Lester. Perhaps I'll blunder on to the ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... books was adversely criticised by the public he received the judgment with open mind, and often analyzed it with much acuteness. The introduction to The Monastery is a good example of frank, though not servile, submission to the decree of public opinion. That he was deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an atmosphere ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Samvarta a nominative. I have adopted the Bengal reading. If the Bombay reading be accepted, the meaning would be that Samvarta himself, piqued with Vrihaspati, caused Marutta to perform a sacrifice. K. P. Singha makes a ludicrous blunder in supposing Samvarta to have been a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... regale of hams and Florence wine, I had dropped it." My Lady Granville said, "You was afraid of being thought interested."—"Yes," said the queen-mother, with all the importance with which she used to blunder out pieces of heathen mythology, "I think it was very ministerial." Don't you think that the Minister word came in as awkwardly as I did into their room? The Minister is most gracious to me; he has returned my visit, which, you know, IS never practised ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was then known of the geography of the Atlantic or of true longitude, that Columbus attributed these islands to the east coast of Asia. He therefore named them "Indian Islands," as if close to Hindustan, a blunder that has now been perpetuated for four hundred and ten years. The natives were called "Indians" for the same reasons. As the knowledge of geography advanced it became necessary to say "West Indies" or "East Indies" ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... crowd,' he said with high assumption of carelessness. 'But here is what I can't understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn't make a blunder like that!' ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... no class of puzzle over which people so frequently blunder as that which involves what is called the theory of probabilities. I will give two simple examples of the sort of puzzle I mean. They are really quite easy, and yet many persons are tripped up by them. A friend recently produced five pennies and said to me: "In throwing these five pennies at the ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... words, or perhaps just the intonation of that phrase, induced me suddenly to make all possible allowances for him. I ceased to be annoyed at my unexpected predicament. It was some mistake on his part; he was blundering, and I had an intuition that the blunder was of an odious, of an unfortunate nature. I was anxious to end this scene on grounds of decency, just as one is anxious to cut short some unprovoked and abominable confidence. The funniest part was, that in the midst of all these considerations ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not the country, Her evenings full of stars, Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars— The city for my wonder, Her glory and her blunder, And O the haunting thunder ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... sympathized with her son in his desire to see every man, woman, and child, that loved the old Union, served in this fashion, felt in her own writhing and bleeding flesh the stings of that inhuman vengeance. Terrible blunder, for which she had only herself to thank! Robbery of her neighbor's house—the dishonest "borrowing," not of these ill-gotten goods only, but also of her neighbor's name—had brought her, by what we call fatality, to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... of the late Sir Thomas Hanmer, a magnificent set of Large Paper Hearnes for about 40 Guineas. Many of these are now in the choice library of his Grace the Duke of Grafton. The copies were catalogued as small paper. Was there ever a more provoking blunder?!] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... complicated than would, on the first consideration of them, be imagined. The Veterinary Surgeon has a long list of them, suited to the wants and dangers, imaginary or real, of his patients; and he who is not scientifically acquainted with them, will occasionally blunder in the choice of remedies, or the application of the means of cure which he adopts. Little attention may, perhaps, be paid to the medical treatment of the dog; yet it requires not a little study and experience. I will endeavour ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Squadron sometimes only one-fourth could be used. To professional readers it may seem unnecessary to enter on such familiar and obvious details; but a military man, in making his estimate, has fallen into the curious blunder of making a fleet fire every gun, bow, stern, and both broadsides, into one fort, a hundred yards square; a feat which only could be performed by landing a ship in the centre of the works, in which case it could enjoy an all-round fire. The nine gunboats carried one heavy and one light gun, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... North Star whispers: "You are one Of those whose course no chance can change. You blunder, but are not undone, Your spirit-task is fixed ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... Bonaparte were to retrieve the only very great blunder he has made, and were to succeed, after repeated trials, in making an impression upon Ireland, do you think we should bear anything of the impediment of a Coronation Oath? or would the spirit of this country tolerate for an hour such ministers and such ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... he to himself, "I have been only once robbed in the course of my life. It was then a little my fault; for before I took to my pistols, I should have been certain they were loaded. To-night I shall be sure to avoid a similar blunder; and my pistols have an eloquence in their barrels which is exceedingly moving. Humph, another milestone! These fellows drive well; but we are entering a pretty-looking spot for Messieurs the disciples of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beggar had the impudence to spoon on my sister Zoe. That was my fault, not hers. He was an old college acquaintance, and I gave him opportunities—I deserve to be horsewhipped. However, I am not going to commit the same blunder twice. My sister is in your neighborhood for ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... was sent to the Spanish Consul in Hongkong, also a cablegram directing him to give it publicity that "Spain's good name might not suffer" in that colony. By his blunder, not knowing that the Lusitania Club was really a Portuguese Masonic lodge and full of Rizal's friends, a copy was sent there and a strong reply was called forth. The friendly editor of the Hongkong Telegraph devoted columns to the outrage by which a man whose acquaintance ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... he will. I don't mean that we should repeat the blunder of last night. You may be sure he won't keep it in his cabin ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... Sloughman was waiting for some one to admit him, and she had no more time to think over the recent conversation, or to determine whether or not Mr. Linton was aware of her blunder. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... brushing them aside, let us put the question in the simplest form—Has the movement of alliterative verse got the initial or the final beat? In the middle of the 18th century Bishop Percy decided this question with sufficient accuracy, though he mixed up his statement with a blunder which it is not easy to account for. He points out how the poets began to introduce rhyme into alliterative verse, until at length rhyme came to predominate over alliteration, and "thus was this kind of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unnerved by the presence of a couple of Times reporters, or perhaps my knowledge of shorthand was not then all that it should have been. Be this as it may, I have to confess with regret that in reporting my turn of the great statesman's speech I made one woeful blunder. Lord Russell said (I quote from memory) that we saw now in the New World that which had so often been seen in the Old—a struggle on the one side for empire and on the other for independence. Now in the system of shorthand which I had learned, the word "independence" is represented by an ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... pardonably grand excess Of pity, through our people's will was bought Free indolence for Isles of Western slaves: And now, when thousands blandly would deny The proven murderer his rope, the thief Due chastisement; and when a General May blunder troops to death, yea, and receive His Senate's vote of thanks and all made smooth; And when, as much from universal trust In other states' goodwill as from the pinch Of blinking parsimony, we our fleets Let rot, and regiments shrink to skeletons.— From those fell ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the, and it own in place of his as the possessive of it. The first appearance of the new coinage its is placed in 1598. Long after its introduction many looked askance at its, because of the grammatical blunder it contains—the t in its being a nominative neuter ending, and the s a possessive ending. But no one thinks now of shunning what was then ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of that boy yet? There's no counting on what he'll do next. I don't know how he'll ever get through the world, I'm sure, but I'll look after him while he's here at least. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good just ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... blunder his impetuous conclusion had led him into; what an awkward situation! Pretty as she was, he didn't want to serve this woman, no matter for her embarrassments and distress. He could not remain there a week ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... with long lashes, the haunts of tender shadows; her mouth of gracious lips unsmiling, a little triste. Compunctions smote him; with his crude and clumsy banter he had contrived to tune her thoughts to sadness. He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering him and willingness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers. For ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... hart shool blunder, Mine horshes Ill do vaggon yoke, Und ghase him quickly by mine dunder, I vly zo zwift ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... to a few. Morris claimed that the worm that brought the Internet to its knees was a benign experiment that got out of control as the result of a coding error. After the storm of negative publicity that followed this blunder, Morris's name on ITS was ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Mr. Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery belonging to Constance and in which that young lady had made a great blunder which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying. The conversation went gayly forward among the others; Fleda taking no part in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... admitted that he had never behaved toward them as if he were displeased with them, and that he had no project of substituting any other administration for the present one.[81] And his temperate treatment of them was the more remarkable, because a flagrant blunder of Burke (who filled the post of Paymaster), in reinstating some clerks who had been dismissed by his predecessor for dishonesty, had manifestly weakened the ministry in the House of Commons;[82] while ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... catch a United States judge, or a commissioner of six or eight in a whole State. Truly a hard case, and yet the slaveholders themselves set the very trap in which they have been caught, and thus it is that, through their folly, and your generosity in not pointing out to them the blunder they were committing, the new law is more favorable to the fugitive than the old one. Surely, Sir, it could not have been more perilous to the young West Indian judge to meddle with "reasons," than it is for you. Either, Sir, you voted for the law without reading it, or you have ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... fearful peril before him, out of the smell of the desert and the ghostly glow of the Libyan hills there came a memory—the memory of a mistake he had made years before with a woman. She had never forgiven him for the mistake—he knew it at last. He knew that no woman could ever forgive the blunder he had made—not a blunder of love but a blunder of self-will and an unmanly, unmannerly conceit. It had nearly wrecked her life: and he only realised it now, in the moment of clear-seeing which comes to every being once in a lifetime. Well, it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion to mention immediately. Meantime it was justly thought that, in a dispute loaded with such prodigious practical consequences, good sense and prudence demanded a more extended enquiry than had yet been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic this side ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... systematic and seaman-like manner that had, from the first, marked him as a thorough sailor. He was always considerate to the men under him, and many times when I expected an outburst of fierce anger, such as nine out of ten deep-water mates would indulge in at a stupid blunder of a lazy sailor, he simply gave the fellow a quiet talking to and impressed him with the absolute necessity of care in his work. We had plenty of men aboard, and the crew of the Sovereign were turned to each watch and made to do ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... fit for society," said Dennis, all out of sorts with himself. "It seems that I can only blunder and give pain. But I am indeed grateful ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... of Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for "child." It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak—in-fans. This conjecture, however, was only made to explain the blunder of the Greeks, who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph of Horus (the) son, "Hor-(p)-chrot," the gesture familiar to themselves of a finger on the lips to express "silence," and so, mistaking both ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Jean-Baptiste, who takes his judgments generously, gratefully. Can it be that, after all, he despises and is no true lover of his own art, and is but chilled by an enthusiasm for it in another, such as that of Jean-Baptiste? as if Jean-Baptiste over-valued it, or as if some ignobleness or blunder, some sign that he has really missed his aim, started into sight from his work at the sound of praise—as if such praise could hardly be ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater |
