"Botch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spreads mankind which weakens the defence of a nation, and lessens the comfort of living. Men, thinly scattered, make a shift, but a bad shift, without many things. A smith is ten miles off: they'll do without a nail or a staple. A taylor is far from them: they'll botch their own clothes. It is being concentrated which produces ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... a ghastly laugh; "this passes my most sanguine expectations, even of Godolphin. Good Heaven! Fancy the botch he will make ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... she ain't nothin' like him," confided Peter. "She's all fuss an' feathers an' he is jest as simple as you er me. Nothin' fluffy about him, I c'n tell ye. Course, he must 'a' had a screw loose some'eres when he made sich a botch of that house up there, but it's his'n an' there ain't no law ag'in a man doin' what he pleases with his own property." He sighed deeply. "I'm jest as well pleased to go as not," he went on. "Mrs. Collier's got ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... show him how to choose and mix his pigments, and use as models to copy from some of the colored prints of architectural subjects which are to be picked up in the stores. There is a good deal of choice among these. We have ourselves published one or two, from originals by Mr. Botch, which will answer as well as anything we know, being admirable in color and architectural feeling, and just sketchy enough. Pains should generally be taken not to make an elaborate picture of an architectural ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... Mexico. The United States had been cut out when the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table, when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington corvette, on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata, and some of the officers, who had been on shore and had just joined again, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... man? An exemplar, a light upon the path of duty, as others also had been. Had the world gone wrong, escaped from its mysterious Maker, and did it need to be redeemed by any such dramatic remedy? No, his God, the God who made, could not botch a job and be disconcerted at the continuing bad results of His handiwork. The only doubt about his God was whether He was in any degree benevolent. When he reflected that He had made a world full to the brim of its cup of bitterness, he sometimes, nowadays, thought not. All this swept through ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... them, and flee seven ways before them, and shalt be moved into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, the scab and the itch, with madness and blindness, that thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness. Thou shalt not prosper in thy ways, and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... bonnie, pretty, beautiful. Bonilie, prettily. Bonnock, v. Bannock. 'Boon, above. Boord, board, surface. Boord-en', board-end. Boortress, elders. Boost, must needs. Boot, payment to the bargain. Bore, a chink, recess. Botch, an angry tumor. Bouk, a human trunk; bulk. Bountith, bounty. 'Bout, about. Bow-hough'd, bandy-thighed. Bow-kail, cabbage. Bow't, bent. Brachens, ferns. Brae, the slope of a hill. Braid, broad. Broad-claith, broad-cloth. Braik, a harrow. Braing't, plunged. Brak, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... hang your father, because I believe in my bones you'd rather we'd hang him than not. Mr. Gholson, you're our most pious believer in obedience to orders; well, I'm going to give you one, and if you don't make a botch of it I sha'n't have to make ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... of economy, surely it is better that Emma, who knows how, should mend the clothes, than that I should botch them up in any way, when I can earn more than she ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be taken, in properly forming a road at first, otherwise you may botch it for a whole century, and at the end of that long period, it will be only a ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... doubled their number. With Ramsey was the commodore. With the actor was Watson. With Mrs. Gilmore came old Joy, and, strange to tell, due to some magic in the tact of the senior Courteneys, the senator, no longer making botch work of his guile, walked with Hugh, displaying a good-natured loquacity which he was glad to have every one notice and from which he ceased reluctantly as they parted, finding no place to sit together. The player and his wife, over-looking the throng, complacently discovered standing-room ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... that spot too. I had seen hundreds of them go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times, and it WAS the sweetest place. Seeing what I had done, I stopped breathless. You have to beat most everything you teach a child right into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of things as that. I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I did, she took my breath worse than the mistake ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... slightly. She was dazed. Hatred for the moment, hatred for self and the world, for him, imperiously pinning her to the old sorrow; his failure to make a child of her, as a lover of less integrity might have done—it was all a sickening botch, about Wordling's pretty taunting face. She had not the strength of faculty to tear down and build ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... patience. I was afraid if I turned her again Dick she might marry this Hawthorn thing, an' if I turned her again him too soon she might run off with Dick on the rebound; so I was purty much hobbled, an' made a botch of it. Finally she turned on me. "We've been good pals, Happy," sez she, "an' we'll be good pals again some day; but you're not playin' square now—I can tell by your actions. I almost believe 'at ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... ask you to close my eyes; that is a hard thing to do, and I will take it off your hands. I will do that final service of love for you. But you must grant me time, understand, to harden and prepare myself for it, so that I won't make a botch of it. It would have been ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... child, she wanted to help me; I knew 'twas the best she could do; But oh, what a botch she had made it— ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... replied. "But the worst botch is their waiting till we had just passed the Arizona line. It they had held us up an hour earlier, it would only have ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to," sniffed Mrs. Updyke, fitting on a huge steel thimble open at the top; "they ain't much arternoons to these short days, anyhow. I'll take this star, an' you, Sairay, may work on the next, so't I kin kinder watch ye. 'Twon't do to hev any botch-work on ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... him; send for a bricklayer, and see the stumps driven into the ground yourself. The four outside lines being laid down with perfect truth, it must be a bungling fellow indeed that cannot do the rest; but if they be only a little askew, you have a botch in your eye for the rest of your life, and a botch of your own making too. Gardeners seldom want for confidence in their own abilities; but this affair of raising perpendiculars upon a given line is a thing settled in a moment: you have nothing to do but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... happiness, don't you understand? and it's a big stake. You must pocket your pride for a while. Nobody will know. We've made a botch of things so far, and there is only one way ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the average. We are not surprised at this. The success of every appliance depends mainly upon the intelligence with which it is used. It is a trite remark that, having the choicest tools, an unskilful artisan will botch his work; and bad teachers will fail even with the best methods. Indeed, the goodness of the method becomes in such case a cause of failure; as, to continue the simile, the perfection of the tool becomes in undisciplined hands a source of imperfection in results. A simple, unchanging, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... boy who gave no signs of genius or unusual ability was consigned to the farm, and the brilliant boy was sent to college or to the city to make a career for himself. But we are now beginning to see that man has made a botch of farming only because he looked upon it as a sort of humdrum occupation; as a means provided by nature for living-getting for those who were not good for much else. Farming was considered by many people as a sort of degrading occupation ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... stroking her head clumsily with his large hand. "I've made a botch of it. I'd ought to 'a' let your mother ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... make, like thoughtless men, 480 A strong nativity—but for the pen! Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink. I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain, For treason botch'd in rhyme will be thy bane; Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck, 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck: Why should thy metre good king David blast? A psalm of his will surely be thy last. Dar'st thou presume in verse to meet thy foes, 490 Thou whom the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... more sceptical generations might deny them. Perhaps the most remarkable of these directions, given under the heading of "Medicines External," was the following: "Pull off the feathers from the tails of living cocks, hens, pigeons, or chickens, and holding their bills, hold them hard to the botch or swelling, and so keep them at that part until they die, and by that means draw out the poison. It is good to apply a cupping glass, or embers in a dish, with a handful of sorrel upon ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... be uneasy. "Both of them have made a botch of their errand," said he, "and are causing the bride to wait in vain!" Once more he looked at a sorcerer and said: "Do you go and hunt them up!" But the sorcerer flung himself on the ground and begged for mercy. And all the rest of the sorcerers ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the Convention or the (National Union) League have concluded to decide that I am the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is best not to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it trying ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... without meaning is a very insipid botch. The subject of the composition should always be strictly connected to the dances, so as that they should be in equal correspondence to one another. And, where a dance is expletively introduced in the intervals of the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... city's participation in the late national festival as a great step in advance,—the first of many like steps soon to follow. The day after the Fair was late; but better to be late than never. Really, there was hope for the Big Black Botch. More and more he felt inclined to lessen still further its lessening enormity. After all, this town was the town of his birth: and a fundamental egoism cried out that it should be more worthy of him. He recalled a group of American women—Easterners—whom, during his first trip ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... neighbors, and to Nancy he vouchsafed little more. A handshake, with no thrill of love in it such as might have furnished her palm, at least, some memories to dwell upon; a few stilted words of leave-taking; a halting, meaningless sentence or two about his "botch" of life—then he walked away from the Wentworth doorstep. But halfway down the garden path, where the shriveled hollyhocks stood like sentinels, did a wave of something different sweep over him—a wave of the boyish, irresponsible ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mercy, Dr. Gibbs: My helpless soul reject: Do not, I pray thee, paper stain 2 For how shall I sustain With rhymes retail'd in (2)Those ills, which now I bear! dribbs. My vitals are consumed with pain, (3)My soul oppress'd with care: (1)That bit is a most glorious botch. (2)The squeaking of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... scowled at the same time. He was not satisfied with the answer. But there were still other things on his mind. He was used to analyze everything to shreds and tatters. "Are you not afraid that you might make a botch ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... secret passage similar to the one by which I entered your room just now. We are to await a signal from my master—the raising of his sword—and then we are to fall upon you and make sure of our work. He warned me that if we made a botch of it you would probably send us all to Heaven, and if we let aught be known about it, we should all be hanged; and so, methinks, I ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... departed, "how foreign parts do spoil a gentleman! so mild as he was once! I must botch up the accounts, I see,—the squire ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that would take the place of Meyer and the other big parasites. It wouldn't do for every journeyman to sit down and botch away on his own account, like a little employer; he had seen that plainly enough in the little town at home; it ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... adventure upon which he sets out, be he prince or pauper, university graduate or 'inmate' of St. Peter's, is one which cannot be delegated by him, or taken from him, for it is his own life; his and his alone, to make or to mar, to perfect or to botch, to cherish or to waste, to convert into a fruitful garden, or to relinquish, when his time comes, a sour and derelict plot ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... be sure!" says I, mighty doleful, but, conscious of her regard, strove to look happy yet made such a botch of it that, getting to her knees, she takes my hang-dog ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... in and there was nothing left for him to do but to compass his own disappearance, Broffin went away, telling himself with many embellishments that for once in his professional career he had made an ass of himself. He had made a sorry botch of a measurably simple detail, to say nothing of letting his temper push him into the final foolish boast which ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the guy with the fishy eye And the think tank filled with dope. My work is to watch the beautiful botch That's known as the Clark ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... had been drinking and had made a botch of it inside the bank. Instead of carrying out the plan originally formed, seizing the cashier at his window and getting to the safe without interruption, they leaped right over the counter and scared Heywood at the very start. ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... botches, by mere kneading and baking! Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin! Of an idle unrevolving man the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch; let her spend on him what expensive coloring, what gilding and enameling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch,—a mere enameled vessel of dishonor! Let ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... that role? . . . He makes a filthy, repulsive, drunken shoemaker of the lowest order. That is their art! . . . And Piesh? . . . Piesh is also not much better, although he bears the stamp of a good artist . . . but his acting is a miserable and an everlasting botch; he has a humor on the stage, like that of fighting dogs, but not human and noble . . . and not ours! ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Translator of Soles—A disciple of St. Crispin, alias a cobbler, who can botch up old shoes, so as to have the appearance of being almost new, and who is principally engaged in his laudable occupation by the second-hand shoe- sellers of Field Lane, Turn Stile, &c. for the purpose of turning an honest penny, i.e. to deceive ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... despairing it is to view the loveliness of nature towards sunset, and know the impossibility of imitating it!—at least in a satisfactory manner, as one could do, would it only remain so long enough. Then one feels the want of a life's study, such as Turner devoted to landscape; and even then what a botch is any attempt to render it! What wonderful effects I have seen this evening in the hay-fields! The warmth of the uncut grass, the greeny greyness of the unmade hay in furrows or tufts with lovely violet shadows, and long shades of the trees thrown athwart all, and melting away one tint into another ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... botch of this description; it is no description, but merely an attempt to preserve something of the impression it made on me, and in this I do not seem to have succeeded at all. I liked the contrast between ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford |
