"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Parliament, by large majorities in both Houses, accepted the company's plan for paying the national debt, and after that a frenzy of speculation seized the nation, and the stock rose to L300 a share, and by August had reached L1,000 a share. Then Sir John Blunt, one of the leaders, sold out, others followed, and the stock began to fall. By the close of September the company stopped payment and thousands were beggared. An investigation ordered by Parliament disclosed much ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... The Americans were surveying the lands north of the Ohio, and Brant now desired to know whether the tribes were still to be regarded as "His Majesty's faithful allies" and whether they were to have that support and countenance such as old and true friends might expect. In other words, the blunt savage wanted to know whether England would now support the Indian tribes in beginning ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... horse, stumbling with a dull blunt sound among the graves, was cropping the grass; at once deriving orthodox consolation from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last Sunday's text that this was what all flesh came to; a lean ass who had sought to expound ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... village next my father's. He was a naik in the Tirah in '97 when he came to the rescue of an officer, splitting the skull of an Orakzai, wounding three others, and making prisoner a fourth who sought to interfere. Thus he won promotion, and he held it after somewhat the same manner. A blunt man. A fairly good man. A very good man with the saber. A gambler, it is true—but whose affair is that? A ready eye for rustling curtains and footholds near open windows, but that is his affair again—until the woman's husband intervenes. And they say he can look after himself in ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... a person has to proceed to adopt a baby," was the blunt and surprising remark that came from the one who held the infant. Bansemer felt himself ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... insanity," said the old merchant leaning his head upon his hands. "It seems unkind of the lad to say so when he is so far away, but he was always plain and blunt. 'If the affair did not come off'—he must have some doubts about the matter, else he would not even suppose such a thing. God knows what I should do then. There are other ways—other ways." He passed his hand over his eyes as he spoke, as ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Kirsty's tale. Wee Davie had taken no harm, for he was fast asleep with his head on her bosom. Allister was staring into the fire, fancying he saw the whorls of the wimble heating in it. Turkey was cutting at his stick with a blunt pocket-knife, and a silent whistle on his puckered lips. I was sorry the story was over, and was growing stupid under the reaction from its excitement. I was, however, meditating a strict search for the wimble carved on the knight's tomb. All at ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Capting Pink of the Peppermint, Though kindly at heart and good, Had a blunt, bluff way of a-gittin' 'is say That we ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... year dawned on Las Palomas rich in promise of future content. Uncle Lance and I had had a long talk the evening before, and under the reasoning of the old optimist the gloom gradually lifted from my spirits. I was glad I had been so brutally blunt that evening, regarding what Mrs. McLeod had said about him; for it had a tendency to increase the rancher's aggressiveness in my behalf. "Hell, Tom," said the old man, as we walked from the corrals to the house, "don't let a little thing like this disturb ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... porch, a little affair made to shelter the doorway, I saw Beverly Clarenden and Little Blue Flower. He was speaking gently, but with his blunt frankness, as he patted the two brown hands clinging to his arm. The Indian girl's white draperies were picturesque anywhere. In this dramatic setting they were startlingly beautiful, and her face, outlined in the dim light, was a thing ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... taste which long keeping in the damp occasions, and which also affects the stuffing. If an old hare is to be roasted, it should be kept as long as possible, and well soaked. This may be judged of, in the following manner. If the claws are blunt and rugged, the ears dry and tough, and the haunch thick, it is old. But if the claws are smooth and sharp, the ears easily tear, and the cleft in the lip is not much spread, it is young. If fresh and newly killed, the body will be stiff, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... proceeded, "I am going to tell you, at once, in my own plain, blunt, downright language, that I have discovered your secret—without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr. Hartright, you have thoughtlessly allowed yourself to form an attachment—a serious and devoted attachment I am afraid—to my sister Laura. I don't put you to the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... spurious moment he had scaled the valley-rim, and came out upon the huge plain where it was rumored the little three-toed horses roamed. And he had seen them, he had seen them! He pursued, armed only with blunt shaft and a few of the throw-stones such as Otah used; but he was less swift than the tiny horses, and his throw-stones fell wide, and it was rumored that here roamed the long-tusked shaggy ones that were ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... impulse, of course, was to follow them. But, as they went up the steep way, Sturdy came down on his old knees, and John got off his back to let him recover himself the easier. When they reached the level, where the moon, showing a blunt horn above the horizon, made it possible to see a little, the white horse and his rider had disappeared—in some shadow, or behind some knoll, I fancy; and John, having not the least notion in what part ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... of horse breeding I have been deeply interested in for forty years past. Let me quote to the reader from one of many letters I have received from Sir Wilfrid Seawen Blunt during the past seven years. His practical knowledge of the English thoroughbred race horse and his blood cause, the Arabian, is the equal if not superior to any other one man of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... had said about coming straight to the point, and he appreciated the value of the advice. Particularly in speaking to a man like McTee, for he recognized in the Scotchman some of the same strong, blunt characteristics of Harrigan. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California. This commission was composed of Majors Ogden, Smith, and Leadbetter, of, the army, and Captains Goldsborough, Van Brunt, and Blunt, of the navy. These officers, after a most careful study of the whole subject, selected Mare Island for the navy-yard, and "Benicia" for the storehouses and arsenals of the army. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company also selected Benicia as their depot. Thus was again revived ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... had failed to please, though he looked spruced and his manners were beautiful. The Premier of Leichardt's Land, a red-faced gentleman of blunt speech, was grumbling audibly to the Attorney-General. Mrs Gildea caught snatches of discontent as she passed from one ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently without its frill; the Pouter with shorter legs, and in every ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... writings—later than this—is found the following plain, blunt statement of what continued long to be true of Welsh society, as represented in the common ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... lost her mind, said the neighbors; but she was sufficiently like her former self to be a source of unspeakable joy and comfort to Amanda, who nursed and petted her as if their positions were reversed, and protected her from the blunt criticism of the literal-tongued neighborhood with a reverential awe belonging to the old days when the fifth commandment was ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... doubt of this. He was the child of the only intrigue of Henry VIII. of which any credible evidence exists. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blunt, an accomplished and most interesting person; and the offspring of the connection, one boy only, was brought up with the care and the state of a prince. Henry FitzRoy, as he was called, was born in 1519, and when six years old was created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... mountains lie slanting downwards, and one or two or more of the external strata not reaching to the summit when the mountain was raised up, the second or third stratum or a more inferior one is there exposed to day; this may be well represented by forceably thrusting a blunt instrument through several sheets of paper, a bur will stand up with the lowermost sheet standing highest in the center of it. On this uppermost stratum, which is colder as it is more elevated, the dews are condensed in large quantities; and sliding ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... beautiful. The valley was green and level, and a meandering stream formed many little lakes. On one side was a steep hill of sage and aspens, and on the other a black, spear-pointed spruce forest, rising sheer to a bold, blunt peak patched with snow-banks, and bronze and gray in the clear light. Huge white clouds sailed aloft, making dark moving shadows ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... attacks in succession on every measure which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what must be adopted if the war is to be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dream nor ecstasy, I cannot help it that the forms grow so much plainer and more definite in the words than they were in the revelation. Words always give either too much or too little shape: when you want to be definite, you find your words clumsy and blunt; when you want them for a vague shadowy image, you straightway find them give a sharp and impertinent outline, refusing to lend themselves to your undefined though vivid thought. Forms themselves are hard enough to manage, but words are unmanageable. I must therefore ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... were used on Ishi's arrows. One was the simple blunt end of the shaft bound with sinew used for killing small game and practice shots. The other was his hunting head, made of flint or ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... who were executed with him. After Eagles had mounted the ladder, and been turned off a short time, he was cut down, before he was at all insensible; a bailiff, named Wm. Swallow, then dragged him to the sledge, and with a common blunt cleaver, hacked off the head: in a manner equally clumsy and cruel, he opened his body and tore ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the press, they are folded to page size. Sometimes this is done by hand, but more often by a folding machine through which the sheet of paper travels, meeting blunt knives which crease it and fold it. If you look at the top of a book you will see that the leaves are put together in groups or "signatures." These signatures usually contain eight, sixteen, or thirty-two pages. If the paper is very thick, not more than eight ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... cannot have the pleasure to dine with you to-day," was the civil excuse I was preparing. Never was expectation more beside the mark. My "guess" was altogether wrong. "What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?" was the gentleman's blunt salutation. "What have you to propose, sir?" was my reply. "I am the superintendent," he said, "of a German Sunday-school in the upper part of the city, and I should like you to come and address the children this afternoon." I promised to go, and he ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... gentleman is, in point of being an unscrupulous superprig and fool, worse than Caesar Borgia and General Von Bernhardi rolled into one, and in foreign affairs a Bismarck in everything except commanding ability, blunt common sense, and freedom from illusion as to the nature and object of his own diplomacy. And the permanent officials in whose hands he is will probably deserve all that and something to spare. Thus you will get that amazing contrast that confronts us now between the Machiavellian Sir ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... his bright bald crown, curtained with locks that pended snowy over his coat collar; his weeping, watchful eye; his tottering mien; his high and furrowed brow, lengthening a sharp, corrugated face; his blunt, warty nose, made more striking by a sunken mouth and the working motion of his lower jaw; and his crutch, for he was a cripple. They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer—when pale blue spots bespread his hands, and his ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... risk a blunt query, without actually giving away any facts, in case his hunch about the ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... were an indescribable relief to us. The skull of our poor Oscar was not injured. There was concussion of the brain, and there was a scalp-wound—inflicted evidently with a blunt instrument. As to the wound, I had done all that was necessary in the doctor's absence. As to the injury to the brain, time and care would put everything right again. "Make your minds easy, ladies," said this angel of a man. "There is no reason for feeling the slightest ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... ancestors, calls them, in blunt and plain Latin "Barbari." Now Caesar was a disappointed man; he knew but little of this land, he invaded it wantonly, and left it gladly. The Briton was by no means so luxurious as the Roman, but it is wrong to call him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not intend to begin a new experience. So he waited, waving his head from right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side where a blunt tusk could sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was the badge of his authority; but for all that, he swung wide of Moti Guj at the last minute, and tried to appear as if he had brought the chain out for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... caution that might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... like a generous friend, The ills which Error caused, she strove to mend, And having brought Lothario forth to view, To save her credit, brought forth Sandwich too. Gods! with what joy, what honest joy of heart, Blunt as I am, and void of every art, Of every art which great ones in the state Practise on knaves they fear, and fools they hate, To titles with reluctance taught to bend, Nor prone to think that virtues can descend, 420 Do I behold (a sight, alas! more rare Than Honesty could wish) the ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... usefulness. One becomes known to fame, and her friends, as being above all others, "such a comfort to her mother." She interviews the cook, she arranges the dinners, she devises light and favourite dishes to blunt the edge of paternal irritability by tickling the paternal palate, she writes out invitations, presides at the afternoon tea-table, and, in short, takes upon herself many of those smaller duties which are as last straws ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... passed through the fight unhurt. He had been almost bewildered as he crossed the fatal path, running at top speed, with men falling thickly around him. Halfway across Lieutenant Blunt, who was one of his great chums, and had joined just before him, fell. Lisle sheathed his sword and threw himself down beside him, pressing him to the ground to prevent him from moving; while he himself remained perfectly still. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... Poland, the frozen marshes of Lithuania; and beside the majesty of their boundless distances this view shrank to littleness. But it spoke to more than his eyes; it spoke to the heart, to feelings and memories which time had not blunted, nor could blunt. The tower on the shoulder behind him had been raised by his wild forefathers in the days when the Spaniard lay at Smerwick; and, mean and crumbling, still gave rise to emotions which the stern battlements of Stralsund or of Rostock ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... above the sea, it faces Etna with its crown of snow: below, the coast sweeps onward to Catania and the distant headland of Syracuse. From the back the shore of Sicily curves with delicately indented bays towards Messina: then come the straits, and the blunt mass of the Calabrian mountains terminating Italy at Spartivento. Every spot on which the eye can rest is rife with reminiscences. It was there, we say, looking northward to the straits, that Ulysses tossed between ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... references are convincingly explained by Mr. Justice Madden in his Diary of Master Silence, pp. 87 seq., 372-4. Cf. Blunt's Dursley and its Neighbourhood, Huntley's Glossary of the Cotswold Dialect, and Marshall's Rural Economy of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... presence should have made him feel better, but it did. There was something solid and tranquilizing about Keggs. He had noticed it before. For the first time the sensation of having been smitten over the head with some blunt instrument began to abate. It was as if Keggs by the mere intonation of his voice had said, "All this no doubt seems very strange and unusual to you, but feel no ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fear of a general catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... to open, the howling of the wolves without grew louder and angrier. Their red jaws, with champing teeth, and their blunt-clawed feet as they leaped, came in through the opening door. I knew than that to struggle at the moment against the Count was useless. With such allies as these at his command, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... served she removed her gloves very leisurely and laid them beside her. Then she picked up a magazine and glanced through it, cutting the pages with a blunt edge of her knife. It was all very agreeable. The damask was even more spotless than it had seemed through the window, and the crystal more sparkling. There were quiet ladies and gentlemen, who did not notice her, lunching at the small tables like her own. A soft, pleasing strain of music ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... her set who had never had any especial attention. Perhaps it was because she was no flirt. Bell Masters said no girl could get along who did not flirt. Perhaps because in her excessive truthfulness she was sometimes blunt and almost brusque; it is dreadfully out of place not to be able to lie a little at times. Even Mrs. Upjohn, the female lay-head of the Presbyterians, who was a walking Decalogue, her every sentence being a law beginning with Thou shalt not, admitted practically, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... was a new life to me. I never looked twice at any girl before. It is not your beauty only—oh, no! it is your goodness—goodness such as I never thought was to be found on earth. Don't turn your head from me; I know my defects; could I look on you and not see them? My manners are blunt and rude—oh, how different from yours! but you could soon make me a fine gentleman, I love you so. And I am only the first mate of an Indiaman; but I should be a captain next voyage, Miss Lucy, and a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... confirms Dr. Middleton's conclusions, which received the approval of Gibbon, and those of later writers. "As I descended from the Alps," writes the Rev. W. H. Blunt in 1823, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... swords of the Caledonians in the first century were, according to Tacitus, long, large, and blunt at the point, and hence in all probability made of iron, whence came the sharp-pointed leaf-shaped bronze swords so often found in Scotland, and what is the place and date of their manufacture? Were they earlier? And what is the real origin of the large accumulation of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... question is of a very different nature. I don't know just exactly how to put it. You may have noticed that I am rather awkward when it comes to saying the right thing at the right time. I have not been much accustomed to society, and I am rather a blunt man." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... court it, was alike cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian martyr's, cheered ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... quietly produced her sticking-plaster, as if it was quite an ordinary matter; nay, would not follow up the suggestion that he should not have so sharp a knife, saying that it was much better to cut one's finger with a sharp knife than a blunt one. He had cut about twenty bits of wood to waste, to say nothing of hands, but he persevered with amusing energy, and before the end of the visit had achieved a capital old man's head for the top of a walking stick, which he presented to Edmund. He promised Agnes a ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dreams that are colourless and sombre, that press upon all the faculties, and yet have no real meaning, that stifle all intentions, and put an end, for the moment, to all active desires. People talk of the vicious as "living," but half their time they are curiously dead, for their sins blunt their energies and lull them into a condition that resembles ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of happiness to her heart, wearied with jealousy, to find one to whom old times were precious, and who took her up where he had last seen her. His blunt ways, and downright attacks, were a refreshment to a spirit chafing against the external smoothness and refinement of her way of life, and the pleasure of yielding to his arguments was something new and unexampled. She liked to gain ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all new language to Jake and he scarcely knew how to answer this rather blunt question. "Wu-wu-well, ye-yes," he answered. "I try to be a Christian. I belong to the church and have belonged for twenty-seven years and accordin' to the preachin' we have I think I'll get to heaven. I s'pose you fellers ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... manner, and at length perceived a man running from the bottom of the avenue. The servant peered through the wicket, and making out in the twilight a very ill-appointed traveller, with a crushed hat, dusty clothes, and no sword, asked him what he wanted, receiving a blunt reply that the stranger wished to see the Count de Saint-Geran without any further loss of time. The servant replied that this was impossible; the other got into ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... reaching a reasonable conclusion from the premises established was futile. The envoy treated also with the estates, and received from them in return an elaborate report, which was addressed immediately to the King. The style of this paper was bold and blunt, its substance bitter and indigestible. It informed Philip what he had heard often enough before, that the Spaniards must go and the exiles come back, the inquisition be abolished and the ancient privileges restored, the Roman Catholic religion renounce its supremacy, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... woman to save me. I forced myself to see her as I wished to see her. Her tepidities became infinite delicacies, her mental vagueness an atmospheric realism. The harsh precisions of the Baileys and Altiora's blunt directness threw up her fineness into relief and made ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... which I pursued very steadily in spite of my impending trial. On the day of my first appearance I had no rehearsal, for fear of over-fatigue, and spent my morning as usual, in practicing the piano, walking in the inclosure of St. James's Park opposite our house, and reading in "Blunt's Scripture Characters" (a book in which I was then deeply interested) the chapters relating to St. Peter and Jacob. I do not know whether the nervous tension which I must have been enduring strengthened the impression made upon me by what I read, but I remember being quite absorbed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they could n't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had resolved upon flight, and he fled to Washington because the business of the "committee of one" offered a legitimate excuse for going there. The blunt message he had intrusted to Georgianna would, he believed, arouse Phoebe's indignation. She would not call again. And when he returned to Bos'n, it would be to take up the child's fight alone. If he lost that fight, or WHEN he lost it, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... well-nigh from the first the big Englishman won her demi-Roman, semi-Grecian heart, and that while he was so smitten with her as to do her will in that business of Arezzo and Messer Simone, she, on her side, was so won by his willingness and his bulk and his blunt love-making, that she cared no longer for the winning of that wicked old wager, and had but one thought in her head, which was to become the lawful wife of Messer Griffo of the Claw. This was an arrangement of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... There was some official display of rigour in investigation by the Procureur; there was much play with some mysterious papers found a good time after the first discovery half-burned in the fireplace of the Prince's bedroom; there was a lot put forward to support the idea of suicide; but the blunt truth of the affair is that the Prince de Conde was murdered, and that the murder was hushed up as much as possible. Not, however, with complete success. There were few in France who gave any countenance to the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... old man, suthin' busted there," remarked the sailor, taking the pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end of his blunt forefinger. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... science of stellar chemistry should not only have become possible, but should already have made material advances, is assuredly one of the most amazing features in the swift progress of knowledge our age has witnessed. Custom can never blunt the wonder with which we must regard the achievement of compelling rays emanating from a source devoid of sensible magnitude through immeasurable distance, to reveal, by its distinctive qualities, the composition of that source. The discovery of revolving double stars ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... politeness with politeness, and patience with patience. They understand each other's character thoroughly, because they are so closely alike." Michie went on to say that "when either a Russian or a Chinese meets a European, say an Englishman, he instinctively recoils from the blunt, straightforward, up-and-down manner of coming to business at once, and the Asiatic either declines a contest which he cannot fight with his own weapons, or, seizing the weak point of his antagonist, he angles for him until he wearies him ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Mr. George thus threw the responsibility upon Rollo seemed sometimes to be a little blunt. One would suppose, in some of these cases, from the way in which he spoke and acted, that he did not care at all what became of Rollo, so coolly and with such an air of unconcern did he leave him to ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... now, and fresher blew the breeze. As they rounded the blunt point of the "Isle" the fog banks went swirling past them astern, and the lights on either shore showed clearly ahead. A ship's siren began to roar somewhere behind them. The steamer which they had passed was about to pursue ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... yet another kind of experiment. I got a quantity of cast iron garden nails, an inch and a quarter long and 1/8 in. thick in the middle. These I weighed, and selected such as were nearly of the same weight. I then arranged matters so that by removing a prop I could cause the blunt edge of a steel chisel weighted to 4lb. 2oz., to fall from a given height upon the middle of the nail as it was supported from each end, 1-1/16 in. asunder. In order to secure the absolute fairness of the trials, the nails ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... not a little alarmed now, for his huge forepaws were on a level with the eaves, while his blunt, black snout was quite several inches above the sod roof. What if he could manage to spring on to it after all! He opened his mouth, and she could see his cruel yellow jagged teeth and the grey-ribbed roof of his mouth. He moved his ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... is not dependent on Vedic injunction. Hence, although imperative and similar forms referring to the knowledge of Brahman are found in the Vedic texts, yet they are ineffective because they refer to something which cannot be enjoined, just as the edge of a razor becomes blunt when it is applied to a stone. For they have for their object something which can neither be endeavoured after nor avoided.—But what then, it will be asked, is the purport of those sentences which, at any rate, have the appearance of injunctions; such as, 'The Self is to be seen, to be ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... the letter locked in her desk, not having the courage to take it out again and read it. Then she sent for Captain Holt, the only one, beside Martha, with whom she could discuss the matter. She knew his strong, honest nature, and his blunt, outspoken way of giving vent to his mind, and she hoped that his knowledge of life might help ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was an affair which ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest the hand of another writer, possibly Mrs. Haywood, but more probably William Bond, in whose name ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... unfaithfulness to conviction and to Christ, are put by the Apostle here in a very blunt fashion—'For fear of the Jews.' That is not what we say to ourselves; some of us say, 'Oh! I have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough to be united to Christ. The Christian communities are very imperfect. There is not any of them that I quite see eye to eye with. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... bush, dear Senor Caceres. It's a subject that calls for plain dealing; and I don't mind a blunt word or two. It saves such a lot of time! Come on. You want money, I suppose? Or, rather, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... haven't met very many yet, but on the whole I'm favorably impressed by them. They're direct, blunt, perhaps ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... fit themselves for life, and with a special eye to acquire the art of smoking, it was even common for the boys to harbor there; and you might have seen a single penny pickwick, honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, bestrew the glen with these apprentices. Again, you might join our fishing parties, where we sat perched as thick as solan geese, a covey of little anglers, boy and girl, angling over each other's head, to the much entanglement of lines ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... he laughed at the recollection. "Fairbain met us coming out of the dining-room,—you know what a delightful, blunt, blundering old fellow he is! Well, Miss Christie must have made an impression even on his bachelor heart, for he actually requested the privilege of escorting her to the Trocadero, and back to the hotel after the performance ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... required three or four of them to furnish anything like a meal. He soon, however, gave over shooting, for he found that Luka was at least as certain with his bow as he was with the gun, with the advantage that the blunt arrow did not spoil the skins. These, as Luka told him, were valuable, and they would be able to exchange them for food, the Siberian squirrel furnishing ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... was an active, stoutly built man (though far too energetic to be fat), with blunt rounded features, eyes a little protruding, and sandy hair and a reddish complexion which made his age an unguessable secret. He might have been in the thirties or he might have been ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Quarrels and misunderstandings had arisen so often, that he himself had been obliged to exert an influence on his behalf, which he feared might make him obnoxious to the accusation of partiality. He considered that the lad had worth, substance, and promise far beyond his fellows; but his blunt, haughty manners, impatience of rough jokes, and rude avoidance of the unrefined, made him the object of their dislike, so that it was probable that he would thrive much better abroad and in authority; and at his age, he ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these opinions, notably those that are harsh, I need scarcely say; and after his release from prison he lost much of his admiration for certain writers. I would draw special attention to those reviews of Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Alfred Austin, the Hon. John Collier, Mr. Brander Matthews and Sir Edwin Arnold, Rossetti, Pater, Henley and Morris; they have more permanent value than the others, and are in accord with the wiser critical ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... relative to the subject. For, if any one ignorantly commends the troublesome riches of Aurelius, he thus begins: "On a time a country-mouse is reported to have received a city-mouse into his poor cave, an old host, his old acquaintance; a blunt fellow and attentive to his acquisitions, yet so as he could [on occasion] enlarge his narrow soul in acts of hospitality. What need of many words? He neither grudged him the hoarded vetches, nor the long oats; and bringing in his mouth a dry plum, and nibbled scraps of bacon, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... is very little the worse. The teeth of the trap had grown blunt, although they were strong enough to ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... diameter, stipitate; stipe short, one-third the total height, pale brown or yellow; hypothallus none; capillitium loose, freely expanding, not deciduous, honey-yellow, the threads generally wide, 4-5 mu, toward the periphery more narrow, 2.5 mu warted, marked with blunt spinules, which not infrequently pass into distinct transverse, narrow plates or half-rings, free ends clavate and numerous; spore-mass yellow, spores by transmitted light smooth, granular, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... to-night there was an added stimulus. He believed the strange Mexican to be Juan Alvarez, who was so clever that the Government had never been able to convict him. Alvarez was fearless to recklessness and Martin, eager to test him, addressed the group with the blunt terseness for which he was ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... with the witcheries of romance, she would rather have been sought by blandishments than blows, which, from his known prowess in the latter accomplishment, the youthful aspirant had no necessity to detail in the ears of his mistress. She liked not the coarse blunt manner of her gallant, nor the hard gripe and iron tramp for which he was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... heard this with pleasure. The blunt, half-blustering declaration assured her that Northway's "conscience" was on ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... of its head, and flighted of its feathers; abundle of arrows is a sheaf; with a blunt head, ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... day she visited every spot associated with Trennahan,—not once, but many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confuse them somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time. She was determined to succeed. She had no right to love the husband of another woman, and suffering ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... said Clarence to himself, "that I travelled this road, on exactly the same errand that I travel now, I do remember that I was honoured by the company of one in all respects the opposite to mine honest host; for, whereas in the latter there is a luxuriant and wild eccentricity, an open and blunt simplicity, and a shrewd sense, which looks not after pence, but peace; so, in the mind of the friend of the late Lady Waddilove there was a flat and hedged-in primness and narrowness of thought; an enclosure of bargains and profits of all species,—mustard-pots, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with you that the law is well calculated to draw forth the powers of the mind, but what are its effects on the heart? Are they equally propitious? Does it inspire benevolence, and awake tenderness; or does it, by a frequent repetition of wretched objects, blunt sensibility, and stifle the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Even the later and more imitative examples profess little more than picturesque vigor or ingenious intricacy. The oak leaves and acorns of the Beauvais moldings are superbly wreathed, but rigidly repeated in a constant pattern; the stems are without character, and the acorns huge, straight, blunt, and unsightly. Round the southern door of the Florentine duomo runs a border of fig-leaves, each leaf modulated as if dew had just dried from off it—yet each alike, so as to secure the ordered symmetry of classical enrichment. But the Gothic ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a bit drowsy. I managed to make away with the second without inhaling much of the smoke, for my head was in a whirl by this time. It wasn't so much that I was afraid I couldn't take care of myself as it was that I was afraid that it would blunt the keenness of my observation ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators, adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly detracting from their ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... from the back of her, but there was something in Charles Westmacott's clumsiness of speech which was more moving than the words of the most eloquent of pleaders. He paused, he stammered, he caught his breath between the words, and he blurted out in little blunt phrases all the hopes of his heart. If love had not come to her yet, there was at least pity and sympathy, which are nearly akin to it. Wonder there was also that one so weak and frail as she should shake this strong man so, should have the whole course of his life ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she bade her pause and tell what the gods were doing to provoke such great hilarity. The old woman was none other than Loki in disguise, and he answered Frigga that the gods were throwing stones and other missiles, blunt and sharp, at Balder, who stood smiling and unharmed in their midst, challenging them to ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... her mother, was taking a short stroll just before sundown. As they were about to return they espied the largest and strangest lizard they ever saw. It was nearly two feet long, with a perfectly round body, a broad, flat head, short legs and a short, blunt tail. It was a chunky little animal, all covered with a rough skin like an alligator and dotted with square warts. It seemed very tame and followed Mary into the tent where she made a warm nest for it in the corner near her bunk. It was very ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... A large syringe or a piece of rubber hose 4 or 5 feet long, with a funnel attached at one end, affords the best means by which to give them. The pipe of the syringe or the hose introduced into the rectum must be blunt, rounded, and smooth; it is to be thoroughly oiled and then carefully pushed through the anus in a slightly upward direction. Much force must be avoided, for the rectum may be lacerated and serious ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... whatever be the object of pursuit, are very, very different from what we think them at first sight, and so it was with Mr. O'Leary, and I have more than once witnessed the triumph of his homely manner and blunt humour over the more polished and well-bred taste of his competitors for favour; and what might have been the limit to such success, heaven alone can tell, if it were not that he laboured under a counter-balancing infirmity, sufficient to have swamped a line-of-battle ship itself. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... jovial Bearnois by the Fair Gabrielle.[1] Beaufort inherited his unfortunate grand-dame's beauty—had a Phoebus-Apollo style of head, set off with a profusion of long, curly, golden locks; was a young, brave, and flourishing gallant, and somewhat later (during the Fronde), from his blunt speech and familiar manners with the Parisian mob, became the idol of the market-women, and was therefore dubbed Roi des Halles. But this scapegrace suitor withdrew his pretensions in order to gratify, it ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... it, and the basket hanging from the roof. But not one of these accessories would have been admissible in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. "Why?" you probably feel instantly inclined to ask me.—You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment I apply it. "Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures?" Even so: I would not ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... As I have said, he was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thickset, like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... glance studied him. "He has fallen in love with you, Becky Bannister," was her blunt assurance, "but you needn't let it worry you. As yet it is only an aesthetic passion. But there is no telling what may come ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Sam had helped them on, but it was not a ride much sought for, because Hips was not a mollusc. Quite the contrary: she was a vertebrate animal, very vertebrate indeed, and a ride on her back represented a journey upon the edge of a Brobdingnagian blunt saw, set up along a kind of broad lattice covered with ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... answer this question. Early in the struggle to get munitions for our soldiers a meeting of all the principal manufacturers of armaments was held in Whitehall with the object of persuading them to pool their trade secrets. For a long time this meeting was nothing more than a succession of blunt speeches on the part of provincial manufacturers, showing with an unanswerable commercial logic that the suggestion of revealing these secrets on which their fortunes depended was beyond the bounds of reason. All the interjected arguments of the military and official gentlemen ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... silently, and Sir Jasper called out in his hearty, blunt way, as if nothing was amiss with his cousin, "Maurice, I've an honor for you. ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... was a medium-sized vessel, and Jack in particular was pleased with his visit. Though not outwardly so demonstrative, Aunt Rachel also seemed to enjoy the expedition. The captain, though blunt, was attentive, and it was something new to her to have such an escort. It was observed that Miss Harding was much less gloomy than usual during the remainder of the day. It might be that the captain's cheerfulness was contagious. For a stranger, Aunt Rachel certainly conversed with ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr. |
