"Blundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... assistance was possible. I naturally pointed out that my battalion was composed of B1 men, most of whom had already done their "bit" on other fronts, and that a few weeks before I had had about 250 General Service men in my ranks, but on a blundering suggestion of the G.O.C. at Singapore they had been taken from my unit and transferred to others doing garrison duty in India. I had protested against this at the time, but had been over-ruled by London, so that my command was reduced to men of the lowest category. However, after making ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... she said. "She's been a better friend of yours than you'll ever know—you big, nice, blundering greenhorn!" ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Brigadier and raising canal oranges on Mars, but suddenly the memory of the Narakan Rifles rushing down the street with bugles blaring and flag waving right into the Rumi line of fire rose before him. The thought of O'Shaughnessy, even with his new lieutenant's commission, leading the blundering troops along the two hundred miles to Fort Craven was too much ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... squire's" was meant Mr. Egan's. Here, before the mistake was found out by the victim, Mr. Furlong was unburdened of much important information. While this process was going on at Mr. Egan's, a hue and cry was on foot at Mr. O'Grady's, for the lost Mr. Furlong, and poor, blundering Andy was arrested and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... half-a-dozen young fellows on half-made, heavy-weight four or five years old, go first. The results of this prudent and unplucky step were most satisfactory; while two or three, with a skill we admired, without venturing to imitate, went the "in and out" clever, the rest, some down and some blundering well over, smashed at least one rail out of every two, and let the "stranger" through comfortably at a fair flying jump. After three or four of these tremendous fields, each about the size of Mr. Mechi's ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... with the Morning Standard, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recall anything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. Poor Reggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourth desperate effort he gave it up. His memory, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... of Mr. Wilson's diplomacy against Germany was decreased by some German-Americans, and the fact that the United States is to-day at war with Germany is due to this blundering on the behalf of some of those over-zealous citizens who, being so anxious to aid Germany, became anti-Wilson and in the long run defeated what they set out to accomplish. Had the German Government not been assured ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... vessel sailed into the harbor as if she had been an ordinary merchantman, and managed to drift down close to the fine frigate which the Tripolitans had snatched from their blundering enemy. The crew on board the "Philadelphia" did not suspect the character of the little vessel which came so close to them, until she was made fast, and more than eighty men sprang up from the places where they had been lying concealed on deck, ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... the door and locked it again behind him, just balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... say," are words full of authority; I say it, I say unto you, says Christ, as he saith in another place, "It is I that speak; behold it is I!" The person whose words we have now under consideration was no blundering raw-headed preacher, 9 but the very wisdom of God, his Son, and him that hath lain in his bosom from everlasting, and consequently had the most perfect knowledge of his Father's will, and how it would ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... offers showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, and tender motherliness. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... entirely depend on whether inoculation is a successful experiment; that will depend entirely on quarantine regulations; that will depend on the early or late appearance of frost; that epidemic is pitched into the world, and it goes blundering across the continents, and it is all guess-work and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Mordax Naso was the Governor of Britain under Pertinax. My name means 'biting'; and bite I can, whether my dinner is before me, or my enemy. In the present case I shall not bite yet, but prepare myself for doing so. I watch the proceedings of the government, who are sure to be slow, as well as blundering. There has been no appointment to this command as yet, because of so many people wanting it. This patched-up peace, which may last about six months (even if it is ever signed), is producing confusion everywhere. You have an old fool ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... nose on the ground, I'll hurry him and worry him, and upset him, and cross him, and make him run his head against the wall, and butt his blundering brains out. What did he turn Fair Edith away for? Oh! I'll pay him off! I'll settle with him! Fair Edith shan't be in his debt for ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... once God's life and his; he is destroying the present possibility of attaining to that higher life which is the destiny of the soul. The Christ in him can find no expression. And yet, my friends, realise this, however startling it may seem, sin itself is a quest for God—a blundering quest, but a quest for all that. The man who got dead drunk last night did so because of the impulse within him to break through the barriers of his limitations, to express himself, and to realise more abundant life. His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted if only for a brief hour ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... ox, and blundering fretfully about the room]. How can I obey six different dictators, and not one gentleman among the lot of them? One of them orders me to make peace with the foreign enemy. Another orders me to offer ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... cubs, born with the instinct of caution, kept far away from the dangerous brink without having more than half realized that there was any danger there whatever. The other cub was one of those blundering fellows, to be found among the wild kindreds no less than among the kindreds of men, who only get caution hammered into them by experience. He saw a narrow break, indeed, between the berry patch and the bare steep above,—but what was a little ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... about 3:30 o'clock, and by that time the situation of our army had become so critical that nothing short of the grossest blundering on the part of the enemy could save it from a great disaster, and there was a fine possibility for ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... for sir Ralph. Come with me, Margaret: you and Mary must keep your old father from blundering. Run, Dorothy, and tell Mr. Delaware and Mr. Andrews that I desire their presence in my closet. I miss the rogue Scudamore. They tell me he hath done well, and is sorely wounded. He must feel the better for the one already, and I hope ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... carriage of Alderman Popkins, as it made its appearance at Terracina. The courier who had preceded it, to order horses, and who was a Neapolitan, had given a magnificent account of the riches and greatness of his master, blundering with all an Italian's splendor of imagination about the alderman's titles and dignities; the host had added his usual share of exaggeration, so that by the time the alderman drove up to the door, he was Milor—Magnifico—Principe—the Lord ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... had never shown him anything like such a concourse, and he could hear muttered exclamations from the archers, who walked by Sir Giles's orders in a double line on each side the horses, their pikes keeping off the blundering approach of bullocks or sheep. 'By the halidome, if the Scots were among them, they might victual their whole kingdom ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... both the works already existing of the same magnitude. Neither the spirit of Mitford nor the solid sense of Thirlwall could long preserve them from eclipse. The light of the former indeed has long grown dim. He is always blundering, and his blunders are always on the Tory side. Arnold's good word has kept him a few years longer on our bookshelves. Dr. Thirlwall has higher qualities, but, not to mention that he has damaged himself by writing against Mitford instead of ignoring ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Forgive a poor, blundering idiot! And don't worry, Patty, no one shall ever know from me that you and the Dashing Daisy ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... understand," he spoke simply as to a friend within the room, his earnest, drawling speech entirely natural. "But You know them as You do us. If things have got to go this way, why, we'll make out the best we can. But if they don't, and we're just blundering into trouble, please save Roger Locke and this poor girl. Because ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... author's masterly skill in giving life to the dry bones of a rhetorical definition. The Vidushaka is a stock character who has something in common with a jester; and in Maitreya the essential traits of the character—eagerness for good food and other creature comforts, and blundering devotion to his friend—are retained, to be sure, but clarified and elevated by his quaint humor and his readiness to follow Charudatta even in death. The grosser traits of the typical Vidushaka are lacking. Maitreya is neither a glutton nor a fool, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman. "Pope Pius," at the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for its vigor and look of life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic;—failed signally; and what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty years ago, he would have thrown the dementi in your teeth; or, at least, laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't know when we are beaten: they ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the doctrine of rent, now universally received by political economists, was propounded, almost at the same moment, by two writers unconnected with each other. Preceding speculators had long been blundering round about it; and it could not possibly have been missed much longer by the most heedless inquirer. We are inclined to think that, with respect to every great addition which has been made to the stock of human knowledge, the case has been similar; that without ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have as enlarging and educative an effect upon his character as her first love affair has upon a young girl. From this moment, in fact, you are to see a shell-bound tortoise blossom into a species of fretful porcupine, his shell splintering itself into points and erecting them with blundering effectiveness against his enemies. And you shall see by what unconscious and subterranean ways history gets ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... I, losing my head and blundering I scarcely knew whither, "when you saw me talking to Crofter—" He uttered ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... on to another. This was finished. It represented the well-known scene of the great Frederick blundering in upon the Austrian bivouac at the castle of Lissa, when he narrowly escaped capture. I said to him, "There at least is a picture which is finished.'' "Yes,'' he said; "but the man who ordered it will never get it.'' I saw ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Marquis bowed assent, saying that in all his general remarks the party present, of course, was not included. All the ladies, who were well acquainted with his absent and blundering conversation, very good-humouredly laughed, and Madame Murat assured him that if he would give her the address of the belle in France who had transformed a gallant Frenchman into a chevalier of British ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Von Deitz, blundering along in unwieldy fashion, "Christianity has enriched mankind with an imperishable boon, being the only system of morals that ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... enough when she chooses. She has insisted on our being friends, and I'll make use of the privilege to tell her the impression she conveys, before many weeks are passed. Allison is a shrewd fellow, and in his blundering fashion knocks many a ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... suspicion soon took possession of the minds of the English that a deliberate attempt was being made by the Spaniards to either run them down or disable them, for whenever, in the course of manoeuvring, they drew near a Spanish ship, the latter seemed to alter her course and come blundering headlong at them, when, if a collision had chanced to have occurred, the English ship must of necessity have been the greatest sufferer, because of her inferior size. But here again the nimbleness of the Nonsuch and the activity of her crew sufficed ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... could move aside, or go down a single step, someone came rushing along the passage overhead, blundering horribly, racing madly, at full speed, three steps at a time, down the very staircase where they stood. The steps were light and uncertain; but close behind them sounded the heavier tread of another person, and ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... manufacturing town, now determined to do the same thing. The people were warned not to assemble, but they persisted in doing so, on the ground that peaceful discussion, with the election of a representative, was no violation of law. The meeting was held in St. Peter's Fields, and, through the blundering of a magistrate, it ended in an attack by a body of troops, by which many people were wounded an a ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... held him she will never know, for at that inopportune time came blundering one of his men into the room with a call for his presence to take charge of ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... no doubt that the helpful influences of the Caucasian in every part of Africa so far outweigh his harmful influences that the latter are but a drop in the bucket in comparison. It is most unfortunate that a certain admixture of blundering, severity, brutality, and wickedness seems inseparable from the development of all the newer parts of the world. The demoralizing drink traffic, the scandalous injustice and cruelty of some of the agents of civilized governments, are not to be belittled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... painter, if any careful discipline had developed in him the instincts which, though unparalleled for narrowness, were, as far as they went, true. But as it is, he is nothing more than an industrious and innocent amateur blundering his way to a superficial expression of one or two popular aspects of ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... from Cadiz, run through the straits in the night, and was three miles from Carthagena when she was captured, which she certainly never would have been, but for Jack's fortunately blundering against the cape with his armed vessel, so that Captain Wilson and Mr Sawbridge (both of whom were promoted, the first to the rank of post-captain, the second to that of commander) may be said to be indebted to Jack for their good ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... rubbers well hidden, and Jo went blundering away to the dining room, which she found after going into a china closet, and opening the door of a room where old Mr. Gardiner was taking a little private refreshment. Making a dart at the table, she secured the coffee, which she immediately spilled, thereby making the front of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... "I'm a blundering fellow. Do come and spend an hour with me to-night. From eleven to twelve. I dine out with fools, and shall rejoice to see ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... story in connection with the country in question, but it sent a little thrill through the girl as she read it. The rising from the sick-bed and the blundering into the ambuscades were so characteristic of the man. He had recognized what was expected of him, and had immediately set about doing it, without any consideration for his safety, or, indeed, for that of his men. Gregory Kinnaird was not a man of marked ability, but he was, at least, one ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... considerable time before the date of that issue. And all the clear internal evidences of the play itself draw in support of the belief, that the Falstaff of Windsor memory was a continuation from the Falstaff of Eastcheap celebrity. And the whole course of blundering and exposure which Sir John here goes through is such, that I can hardly conceive how the Poet should have framed it, but that he was prompted to do so by some motive external to his own mind. That the free impulse of his genius, without suggestion or inducement from any other source, could ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... intrude himself now would be in offensively bad taste. Then, too, he began to reason that if Margherita had wished to see him she would have sent for him—all in all, the hour was decidedly unpropitious. He dared not risk his future happiness upon a blundering, ill-timed declaration; therefore he walked onward. But no sooner had he passed the house than a thousand voices urged him to return, in this the hour of the girl's loneliness, and lay his devotion at her feet. Torn thus by hesitation and by the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... made no answer to this, but he still felt the wave of anger that swept over him at the blundering words. "All the same, I wish Pearl were older"—he had admitted to himself that day. "If she keeps her wise little ways and her clever tongue, she'll be a great woman—she has ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... had begun to fit them for its exercise:—facts which it was equally in accordance with nature that the Fatherland should fail to perceive. For the causes which gradually determined American resistance we must look, (as regards us), not to the blundering English legislation after 1760,—to the formalism of Grenville, the subterfuges of Franklin,—but to the whole course of our commercial policy since the Revolution: As regards the Colonies, to the extinction of the power of France in America by the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... strung up. Nan's form of fearlessness, combined as it was with the agility of a supple body excellently trained, would carry her lightly through all physical adventures, much as her arrowy strength and skill carried her through the breakers without blundering or mishap and let her now ride buoyantly on each ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... no more poignant than that which I feel when God denounces me?" How trifling are the causes which make us blush before our fellows: a little awkwardness, the slightest accident which makes us appear blundering, some scarcely perceptible incongruity of dress, an infinitesimal error in manner or in accent—anything is enough to make us uneasy in the company of those we esteem. It is God's reasonable demand that for those gross iniquities and bold transgressions of which we are ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... home silently. They found the right path and walked without blundering. The evening darkness was coming on. They made haste. The warm, damp earth clung to their feet and seemed to ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... understanding: but it deals with the subject-matter of the moral virtues, pointing out the measure of temperance, the bounds of fortitude, or the path of justice. It is the habit of intellectual discernment that must enlighten every moral virtue in its action. There is no virtue that goes blundering and stumbling ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... really afraid of Anne and her ordered ambitions for him, he could have printed them under an assumed name. She need never have known at all. They wouldn't have been the books he could have written if he had been foot-loose and gone blundering along in strange trails over the earth, but they might have held something of the sort his inner man wanted to fashion. And if the secret of them had been kept, they needn't have interfered with his ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... colours, and can flood a scene in golden light, or the rose of dawn, or the crimson of sunset, or a pale silvery blueness that you would swear was moonshine. It has been used in all the Court ballets. I saw Madame once look as ghastly as death itself, and all the Court was seized with terror. Some blundering fool had burnt the wrong powder, which cast a greenish tint over the faces, and Henriette's long thin features had a look of death. It seemed the forecast of an early grave; and some of us shuddered, as ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... wonderful waste of time, and money!" cried the Colonel. "You rattle the keys, as blundering soldiers when commanded to fire: no taste, feeling, ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... often felt—wondered, rather," he answered carefully, "whether there might not be other systems of evolution besides humanity. Such extraordinary Forces come blundering into one's life sometimes, and one can't help wondering where they come from. I have never ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... despite my blundering behavior, When fortune seems to follow at my heels; Now and then I play supremely in her favor, And she lets me pull the rankest sort of steals; She'll give to me the friendliest assistance, I'll jump a ditch at times when I should not, I'll top the ball and get a lot ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... within the old cathedral grounds. Through the windows came up distantly the murmur of the throng in Paul's Yard. It was mid-afternoon, quite warm; blundering flies buzzed up and down the lozenged panes, and through the dark hall crept the humming sound of childish voices reciting eagerly, with now and then a sharp, small cry as some one faltered in his ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... it must be. If you don't get orders to land first, just let them as is in a hurry land afore you. I ain't been teaching all these lads to know something about the woods, for the last six months, jest to see them killed off like flies, because a blundering wrong-headed colonel sends them out with two hundred and fifty ploughmen, for the redskins to see and attack jest when ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... parents and honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, where the employer practises legal frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter among the better taught clerks. The master tells them that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he could not help. At first, it verily pains the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame a deliberate dishonesty, to ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... the whole theory would have collapsed at once, and McClellan's reputation and popularity with it. They did not have the authentic tables, and fought for a year under the awful cloud created by a blundering spy-system. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Good and Evil, 229), "and open one's eyes. Almost everything that we call 'higher culture' is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty.... Then, to be sure, we must put aside teaching the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others; there is an abundant, superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... chimney, she talks of life in the West Virginia hills. "There's a heap o' things happens around this country that are mighty skeery." Suddenly in the gloaming a bat wings overhead, darts inside the shack. You can hear it blundering around among the rafters. An owl screeches off in the hollow somewhere. "Do you believe in ghosts and haynts?" There are apprehension ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... red-headed, freckle-faced, blushing and blundering than usual, arrived, as the bearer of a verbal invitation to attend an informal party, to be composed mostly of young people, at Oldfield Lodge, on Thursday evening, the thirty-first, to dance the Old Year out and the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... "but I don't call them sharpers; I can admire a good, genuine piece of keen rascality, don't you know, for I can play just as sharp a game myself as the best of them, but w'en it comes to such downright, beastly work as this, so blundering and bungling you know, w'y it looks too much as though they thought we were all born idiots, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... ways between East and West. For the study of the material universe, our five senses, aided by the instruments invented by Science, may suffice. For all we can hear and see, taste and handle, these accustomed servitors, though often blundering, are the best available guides to knowledge. But it lies in the nature of the case that they are useless when the investigation is to be into modes of existence which cannot impress themselves on our nerve-ends. For instance, what we know as ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... gloves, handkerchiefs, and other loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage not a hundred miles from Fieldhead." In short, he seemed elate as any "midden-cock ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... from that absence of mind to which every man is at times subject, I told, in a blundering manner, Lady Eglintoune's complimentary adoption of Dr. Johnson as her son; for I unfortunately stated that her ladyship adopted him as her son, in consequence of her having been married the year AFTER he ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... blundering down the hall, tangled his feet in the fragments of the broken chair, and came sprawling a thundering cropper, which knocked every breath of wind out of his capacious body. He lay flat on his face for a couple of minutes, his broad back wriggling convulsively—a pathetic sight!—in ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... a shy fish and the blundering sportsman who goes stumbling through the underbrush, who allows his shadow to fall upon the pool, or who in other ways announces to the fish lurking under the bank that he is present with homicidal intent often wonders why it is that the results are so small for the ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... placed would have taken to drink, but Major Putnam Stone plainly was never born to be a drunkard and hard times couldn't make one of him. With a sort of gentle, stupid persistence he hung fast to his poor job, blundering through some way, struggling constantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade—the a, b, c's of it—and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... in the flush of his excitement he might thoughtlessly let his tongue wander in directions wherein it was not befitting it should venture. But he, being ever far wiser than I imagined, guarded himself craftily from any such blundering awkwardness. ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... to be a pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to be useful. See Young's Autobiography (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service in stimulating ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... tears and a cry of fervent thanksgiving relieved the Queen's heart, and James gave eager thanks instead of the reprimand the colonel had expected for his blundering. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... annoyed with the way the Med Service had been operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in the twelfth sector. But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... 1623, when he was in his twenty-fifth year, and having been introduced by the Prime Minister, Olivares, to the King of Spain, Philip IV., a king who was only known to smile once or twice in his lifetime, whose government was careless and blundering, but who had the reputation of being a man of some intelligence and very considerable taste,—Velasquez was received into the king's service with a monthly salary of twenty ducats, and employed to ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... If through inadvertence, blundering, or haste, you lose your support or hold, then you are admirable; you bend yourself in raising your back, and carry the centre of gravity towards the umbilical region, by which means you fall on your feet. My dear Cat, you are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... dudgeon, and he was left to curse his ill-timed jest. What a blundering fool he had been! Her first, timid little advance,—and he had met it with boorish, clownish wit! A scurvy jest, indeed! She was justified ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... you red-headed Connecticut fool," I commanded sharply, now thoroughly aroused. "Stop, or I 'll drive into you a leaden slug to silence that blundering tongue of yours for good and all. Get up from your knees there, and play the man. If needs be you must pray, keep grip on that bull ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... for provident prevision, For watchful eye, and for most wary hand. In mellow Autumn's interlude Elysian The old grim Shadow strikes across the land. May Heaven arrest its course, avert its terror, And keep the Statesman who this foe must fight From careless blindness and from blundering error, Such as of old lent aid to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... To keep the new year up they run away! [He soliloquizes as he begins tearing open the dispatches.] Nor Pitt nor Fox displayed such blundering As glares in this campaign! It is, indeed, Enlarging Folly to Foolhardiness To combat France by land! But how expect Aught that can claim the name of government From Canning, Castlereagh, and Perceval, Caballers all—poor sorry politicians— To whom has fallen the luck ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... What a blundering donkey I had been not to see it before! I was very thrifty in those days, and the thought of having been the cause of needless expense worried me. So instead of the crepe de Chine and miniver, which ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... pamphleteering Tolstoy's treatment of the second story, the national saga, is masterly at every point. If we could forget the original promise of the book as lightly as its author does, nothing could be more impressive than his pictures of the two hugely-blundering masses, Europe and Russia, ponderously colliding at the apparent dictation of a few limited brains—so few, so limited, that the irony of their claim to be the directors of fate is written over all the scene. Napoleon at the crossing of the Niemen, Napoleon before Moscow, the Russian ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... And that blundering doctor drew on his gloves, saying to himself, "I don't know but that is best," and went out, only ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... the critics were so blundering as this one, however, and in the middle of April, The Times said there was no mistake about the character of Adam Bede, that it was a first-rate novel, and that its author would take rank at once among the masters of the craft. In April, also, Blackwood's Magazine ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... novelist adopts towards the world of his creation.[16] But once admit that feeling is legitimate; once allow that tears are due to those who have been crushed and left bleeding by this great world of ours as it crashes blundering on its way; once grant that the writer's art can properly embrace what Shakespeare calls "the pity of it," the sorrows inwoven in all our human relationships; once acknowledge all this, and then I affirm, most confidently, that Dickens, working at his best, was ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... was first on his lips. Why was she unhappy? Why was she so unkind to the father she loved? Ah, if one could see right through her dark eyes into her sorrowful heart, one might have a chance of comforting her! But, as it was, one felt useless and blundering. ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... the finesse which he could command if he hoped to win a place in her confidence. He could not afford to throw away a single card. As the mysterious lady of the fog she had called him a "fresh Aleck," thanks to his idiotic blundering; but even before that she had chosen for some reason to exert her woman's prerogative and had informed him quite plainly that she did not desire his acquaintance. That ought to have been enough! Then as Miss Margaret Williams she naturally would ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the present instance M'liss and Clytie were preeminent and divided public attention: M'liss with her clearness of material perception and self- reliance, and Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and blundering. M'liss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number, and provoked the greatest applause, and M'liss's antecedents had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of the miners, whose athletic forms ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... mysterious announcement Moor ran off, blundering over the ottomans and slamming the doors as a true boy should. Sylvia pricked chestnuts, and began to forget her bosom trouble as she wondered what would appear with the impatient curiosity appropriate to the character she had assumed. Presently her husband ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... mischief!' Redworth blew again. 'I had no right to be championing Mrs. Warwick's name. Or the world won't give it, at all events. I'm a blundering donkey. Yes, she wishes to keep her liberty. And, upon my soul, I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in its dotage, or still worse. Burnside's unsoldierly blundering is compared to the great victorious splendors of Asperm, Esslingen, Wagram, and the tyrant-crushing three days of immortal Waterloo! The Tribune lauds the crossing and the recrossing of the river, as an act of superhuman bravery; and Lincoln sympathises with the heavily wounded, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... make but very blundering excuses for himself and, conscious of guilt, he turned pale, and appeared so much more terrified than butlers usually appear when detected in a lie, that Mrs. Pomfret resolved, as she said, to sift the matter to the bottom. Impatiently did ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... a reputation through their habitual blundering, carelessness in writing prescriptions, failure to give minute instruction. The world is full of blunderers; business men fail from a disregard of trifles; they go to the bank to pay a note the day after it has gone to protest; they do not pay their ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... cases whatsoever." The repeal caused great rejoicing in America; but neither king nor Parliament had changed policy respecting colonial affairs. There soon followed, in rapid succession, that series of blundering acts of oppression which completed the work begun by the Stamp Act, and drove the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the quick change that had come into his face at Diccon's blundering words gone, and his features sternly impassive again; then, very slowly, he raised his arm from his side and held out his hand. His eyes met mine in sombre inquiry, half eager, half ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... which is all that really matters. It would be perfectly feasible to ensure the sterilisation of the unfit, though a law to this effect would require the most delicate handling, and one can hardly imagine a parliament of men blundering through it with any degree of success. Perhaps it may come to pass in the day when we have the ideal Government that represents both sexes and all classes. A health certificate signed by doctors in the service of the State should certainly be compulsory before any marriage could be ratified. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... In a little while Desnoyers felt ready to retreat. Each to his own kind; he would never be able to understand such people. Exceedingly amiable, with an abject amiability and evident desire to please, but constantly blundering through a tactless desire to make their grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection. And they would accompany their affability with all manner of inopportune memories ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... enthusiasm of one who attains an object long desired, with the candor of a child, and the blundering foolishness of an old man utterly without worldly experience, he fell into the life of Mademoiselle Gamard precisely as a fly is caught in a spider's web. The first day that he went to dine and sleep at the house he was detained in ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is as follows: Between two players who thoroughly understand the play every game should be drawn. Neither player could ever win except through the blundering of his opponent. If Nought (the first player) takes the centre, Cross must take a corner, or Nought may beat him with certainty. If Nought takes a corner on his first play, Cross must take the centre at once, or again be beaten with certainty. If Nought leads with a side, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... that young, ardent, brilliant, happy life sacrificed to his sufferings! And then her poor, pathetic secret—how sweet and honest she had been about it! Only a pure and courageous woman could have done as she did; while he, in his blundering passion and mad wrath, had behaved like a foul-minded tyrant and a coward. What loud protestations of heroic love he had made when he imagined the matter affected another man! And when he had learned that it concerned himself, how his vaunted constancy had failed him, and he ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Providence, I will not praise, Neither for fear, nor joy of gain, Your blundering ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... allowed its entire sway, leads woman into many modes of Affectation. Rosseau affirms that "artifice is a talent natural to woman. Let," he says, "little girls be in this respect compared with boys of the same age; and if these appear not dull, blundering, stupid, in comparison, I shall be incontestibly wrong." Does this, if it be true, explain in any measure the strange fact that the servants of fashion must never be known as industrious, still less laborious in any useful avocation? that they must be always ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... that a fly would draw blood from him. The author of the "Imaginary Conversations" had the same infirmity. A very little thing would disturb him for hours, and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. I was present once when a blundering friend trod unwittingly on his favorite prejudice, and Landor went off instanter like a blaspheming torpedo. There were three things in the world which received no quarter at his hands, and when in the slightest degree he scented hypocrisy, pharisaism, or tyranny, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... starting backward so suddenly that she trod upon the foot of Lottie, who again sent forth an outcry, which Anna Jeffrey managed to choke down. "Is this bedlam, or what?" And stepping out upon the piazza, she looked to see if the blundering driver had made a mistake. But no; it was the same old gray stone house she had left some months before; and again pressing boldly forward, she took the lamp from the sideboard and commenced to reconnoiter. "My mother's wedding dress, as I live! and her scarlet broadcloth, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... leisurely. In a word, everything is done with a bounce, and a thump, and an air, and a flourish, and sharp and eager motions, and perpetual volubility of tongue. His image is that of a blind beetle in the twilight, which, with incessant hum and drone and buzz, flies blundering into the face of every ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... came about that three months later, when May was melting into June, Miss Ethel Lake arrived upon the scene as a result of the Colonel's blundering good intentions. She brought with her a kind disposition, a supreme ignorance of unordinary children, a large store of self-confidence—and a ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... continued to see many perfections in George, and contrived, by the force of his belief, to impress the same on the others, and to make them think his great talent for silence such a proof of his discretion, that they were not staggered, even by his shy blundering exclamation that his wedding would be a great nuisance—a phrase which, as Dr. May observed, was, to him, what Est-il-possible was to his namesake ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... natural energy of Affiffi, that when he was set to work beside the slow, dilatory, and stupid native workmen, he became greatly irritated. The contrast between the active energetic movements which he had seen at the Bridgewater Foundry and the ineffective, blundering, and untechnical work of his fellows was such that he could not stand it any longer. So one fine day he disappeared from the works, took refuge on board a British steamer, and at the risk of his neck made his way ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... picture I showed to him what would have been the great and glorious result; and what do you think was his reply to these views? He turned round, looked me coolly in the face, and said, 'Why, what a blundering old cuss you are!'" [Great laughter.] Gentlemen, if one of our New England ancestors were here to-night, expounding his views to us, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to turn round and say: "Why, what a blundering old cuss you ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... certainly heard the whine of a dog. He clambered down a little way, and called his loudest. The dog's whine answered him again. With a new hope in his heart, he called, and listened until the whine grew louder and louder, and he recognized Cham's bark. Catching at branches, stumbling, sliding, and blundering, he made his way down the hill-side, until suddenly the dog's bark was almost at his ears. And at last, there, farther round the side, on a ledge, just where a light motion would send her rolling down a steep declivity, lay Hetty; and Champion-stanch old ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... say a word if Brooke were a widower. Although I don't like him, I acknowledge that he is the sort of big blundering brute that suits some women. But there's no chance with him, so why should you ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... ma'am," said the gentleman mentioned, shaking his head despairingly. "That's Bill Brisket all over. I come blundering in, and the first thing I do is to blurt out secrets; then, when I try to smooth ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... publication of the runes. But as he pondered this course the inexpediency of sacrificing so fair a theory to this mere brute fact seemed indisputable. He thought also of ascribing the doubled consonant and the modified vowel to the illiterate blundering of the spearman who chiselled the letters. But as his fingers traced the sharp and purposeful strokes he realised that such a contention would be laughed out of the philological court. For a mad moment he thought ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... nebulosus, sometimes called Minister, from the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when drawn out of the water, is a dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his habits, and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as if about its business. They are taken at night with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which catches in their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, at one pull. They ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Saccente with me. I know where the devil keeps his tail as well as you do. What! he swallowed the bait whole? The prophetic nose didn't scent the hook at all?" he went on, lowering his tone a little, with a blundering ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... career. And, after all, he had not written a line since they had been together: his first desire to write had come from renewed contact with the world! Was it all a mistake then? Must the most intelligent choice work more disastrously than the blundering combinations of chance? Or was there a still more humiliating answer to her perplexities? His sudden impulse of activity so exactly coincided with her own wish to withdraw, for a time, from the range of his observation, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... very pretty. If we had had an interpreter, we might have saved it from the ruin. What I carried away was a memory of the blue above, the gliding river below, hot sun and stillness, and the hum of a large, irridescent black beetle that went blundering through scarlet poinsettia leaves into the white, scented blossoms of a ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... darken as the great beast grew more restive, and she shook her red curls viciously. "Some one shall lose a head for this blundering," said she. "I ordered to have this beast trained to stand indifferent to drums, shouting, arrows, stones, and fire, and the trainers assured me that all was done, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne |
