"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... darkness—a trace of light finds an entrance under the door and relieves the somber blank. It does more, for all at once John's eyes discover something that ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... cheapened himself in the estimation of Liane Delorme and Phinuit and Monk was really to his advantage; for to persuade an adversary to under-estimate one is to make him almost an ally. Also, Lanyard now had no more need to question the fate of the Montalais jewels, no more blank spaces remained to be filled in his hypothetical explanation of the intrigues which had enmeshed the Chateau de Montalais, its ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... ever with a book in his hand. At one time, we numbered many members, and sisters and brothers all lived together; but we had a distaste for wholesome books. Among my brothers, some were partial to verses; others had a weakness for blank poetical compositions; and there were none of such works as the 'Western side-House,' and 'the Guitar,' even up to the hundred and one books of the 'Yan' authors, which they hadn't managed to get. These books they stealthily read behind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... obliged to interrupt herself to shake hands with Violet, who came in with her little brother and sister. Jem laughed at the blank look in ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... flesh, one should come here. Had the excruciating operation of embalming been performed upon live men and women, their poses could hardly have been more multifariously agonised; and an aesthete may speculate as to how far such objects offend, in expression of blank misery and horror, against the canons of what is held to be artistically desirable. The nearest approach to them in human craftsmanship, and as regards Auffassung, are perhaps some little Japanese wood-carvings whose ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... superiority between Venus and Fortune, and that the first act (for the drama is regularly divided into acts, though the scenes are not distinguished) is a species of induction to the rest. It is the more remarkable, because it contains some early specimens of dramatic blank-verse, although it may be questioned whether the piece was ever exhibited at a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... were presented at the April town meetings, where each name was read in order and voted upon. A much later enactment provided twelve ballots, and forbade any one to cast more than twelve, whether for or against a candidate or in blank. If a man held any one of his slips in reserve for a more satisfactory candidate, he had none for the teller, and thus the secrecy of the ballot was almost destroyed. New candidates or those not up for reelection, whose names appeared at the foot of the list, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... were not made for wrinkles, their Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail! The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail, They were all summer; lightning might assail And shiver them to ashes, but to trail A long and snake-like life of dull decay Was not for them—they had too ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the evening and the night were a merciful blank to Mr. Dawson. His first conscious thought was when he awoke at dawn on a side-hill, a sharp rock prodding him in the small of the back and the bridle-reins of his dozing horse wound round one arm. Only it was not his horse. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... aloud, Tom sat there watching the houses and trees seem to glide more and more swiftly past the windows as the speed increased. For to him it was like being suddenly freed from prison; and instead of the black cloud which had been hanging before his eyes—the blank curtain of the future which he had vainly tried to penetrate—he was now gazing mentally ahead along a vista full of ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... lead her to the funeral of her firstborn; for he felt, in his sore perplexed heart, full of indignation and dumb anger, as if he must go and hear something which should exorcize the unwonted longing for revenge that disturbed his grief, and made him conscious of that great blank of consolation which faithfulness produces. And for the time he was faithless. How came God to permit such cruel injustice of man? Permitting it, He could not be good. Then what was life, and what was death, but woe and despair? ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the adjutant and was laughingly enjoying the latest arrival's tirade at the expense of the headquarters' staff, but at his closing words Lieutenant Billy's grin of amusement suddenly left his face, giving way to a look of blank amaze. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... blank face, but it must have looked troubled now, for Tosh was about to say, "Hendry, you're keeping something back," when the precentor said ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the instrument and resumed his blank stare into nothingness. Frederik was once more wholly engrossed in the book he was not reading. Hartmann broke in ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... of trouble, more than I meant: he did it cheerfully, and I feel myself really under obligations to him. That the tragedy might not want a proper catastrophe, the box, bones, and all, are lost; so that this chapter of Natural History will still remain a blank. But I have written to him not to send me another. I will leave it for my successor to fill up, whenever I shall make my bow here. The purchase for Mrs. Adams shall be made, and sent by Mr. Cutting. I shall always be happy to receive her commands. Petit shall be ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... to love thee? Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee? Whose high commands would cheer, whose chidings raise thee? Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind."] ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to their comrades in the boats below. High above the boats towered the black hulls; the topmasts overlooked sea and land; the bold figureheads, that had drunk the brine of many a storm and looked unmoved upon strange sights, gazed into the darkness with inscrutable, blank eyes. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... with a burnt stick, on a blank leaf torn out of a book. In the first moment of indignation, I felt disposed to seek Balty Mahu, the great enemy of my life, and wreak my vengeance on him for all his persecutions; but the conviction that such a course would extinguish the last spark of hope, restrained ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... all was a blank in his mind. In reality he returned to his room and sat down by his table with a candle before him. He never knew that after the examination he had begged another bottle of liquor of the butler on the ground that his nerves were upset by the terrible event. About ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the Chapter's lawsuit quite settled?" said Rosalie point-blank to the Vicar-General, during ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... bursting out into tumultuous falls and pools shadowed with foliage. The central artery of the city is not a street but a waterfall, and tales are told of the dark uses to which, even now, the underground currents are put by some of the dwellers behind the blank walls and scented gardens of those ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... spare hour was devoted to the camera, and there was not a person in the house, from the vicar himself to the boy who came in to clean boots and knives, who had not been pressed to repeated sittings. There were no more blank plates, but there were some double ones which had been twice exposed, and showed such a kaleidoscopic jumble of heads and legs as was as good as any professional puzzle; but, besides these, there ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... that Berlin is the capital of the country, and I can recall the names of many of their big towns,—Leipzig, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremburg; I have a sort of fancy that I have visited them; but I know nothing of the history of Germany,—that is all a blank. Funny, isn't it?' and then ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... until I came to the first blank leaf. Seeing that they were all blank leaves from this place to the end, I lifted the volume by the back, and, as a last measure of precaution, shook it so as to dislodge any loose papers or cards which might have escaped my ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... his podgy hand, who has descended from the motor-bus, starts stamping his feet. "I was knocked down by a taxi last year," he says fiercely. "But nobody took no notice of that! Are they going to stop here all the blank morning for a blank tyke?" And for all his respectable appearance, his features become debased, and he emits a jet of disgusting profanity and brings most of the Trinity into the thunderous assertion that he has paid his fare. Then a ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... The windows were blank. Thick, upholstered padding covered the spaces where openings should have been, and there was only the muffled vibration of the motor and the occasional curiously distinct ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... The most point-blank and authoritative criticism within my knowledge that Thoreau has received at the hands of his countrymen came from the pen of Lowell about 1864, and was included in "My Study Windows." It has all the professional ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... blank out his mind while the meditechs adjusted the neurocontacts to his head and torso. They finished at last and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the viewscreen before his eyes. The screen finally began to glow slightly, then ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... brought no letter from Bob. Cecilia asked for her mail when she went down to breakfast, and was met by a blank stare from her stepmother—"I suppose if there had been any letters for you they would be on your plate." She flushed a little under the girl's direct gaze, and turned her attention to Queenie's table manners, which were at all times peculiar; ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Often indeed it does; but oftener still perhaps it is discovered not in the helpless yet reluctant yielding to vice, but in the sadness and the despondency with which virtue is practised—in the dull leaden hours of blank endurance or of difficult endeavour; or in the little satisfaction that, when the struggle has ceased, the reward of struggle brings ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of the good date, and hurries away with it, leaving a hasty scrawl, "I have taken your Shelley," signed with initials. Perhaps the owner of the book never sees the note. Perhaps he does not recognize the hand. The borrower is just the man to forget the whole transaction. So there is a blank in the shelves, a gap among the orderly volumes, a blank never to be filled up, unless our amateur advertises ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... have caught the flash of a momentarily fluttering handkerchief. "Won't I? you fool!" I exclaimed, savagely smiting reason on the cheek, as I sprang up wildly to wave mine; but the road was already blank. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... done noo?" enquired Saunders, coming to a full stop, and turning to Buzzby with a look of blank despair. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... little boat, keeping the centre of the stream. It struck the rock, and all looked eagerly, though Tashmu and the Mohawk could hardly suppress an exultant smile. A little wave struck the canoe: it pivoted against the rock and drifted to the feet of Nessacus. A look of blank amazement came over the faces of the defeated wooer and his friend, while a shout of gladness went up, that the Great Spirit had decided so well. The young couple were wed with rejoicings; the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this 266:9 seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... that moment twenty miles away, busily engaged in chastising Glory, that had refused point-blank to cross a certain washout. His mind being wholly absorbed in the argument, he was not susceptible to telepathic messages from the Meeker ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... arrested her. Her beautiful eyes sank suddenly to the blank page he held. "Adam can do that—as well as I ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing —at least, what untattooed parts might remain —I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... whole military power of the Republic was put into the field to crush the rebellion before it could grow into a revolution. He was as disgusted as Washington had been in revolutionary times, with short-service enlistments, and refused point-blank to go to Ohio to enlist "three-months men," saying, in his blunt way, "You might as well try to put out fire with a squirt gun as expect to put down this rebellion with three-months troops." He was assigned to the command of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... fascination of the prospects of its hillside High Street, no town in Surrey, and perhaps only Oxford in England, is comparable with it. But between the railway station and the High Street it is desolation and blank walls. A few pretty old cottages jut out over a narrow pavement; beyond a huddled roof or two rises the tower of St. Nicholas' Church, umber and solid; nearly all else is tumbled down ugliness, broken brickwork, mud and shaggy grass. A clear space, a level green, a bed of flowers—what ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... to analyze this (so-called) dream, I was amazed to find with how many past longings and emotionally-colored experiences it was associated. I first took up the letters on the sidewalk, and as I repeated them, letting my mind be as blank as possible in order that the associations might be free, I gained an immediate response. "W. H."—"Which House"—came out as in answer to a question. With these words there was a definite visual ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 91 Mr. Bonsal speaks of "The foolhardy formation of a solid column along a narrow trail, which brought them (the Rough Riders) within point-blank range of the Spanish rifles and within the unobstructed sweep of their machine-guns." He also speaks as if the advance should have been made with the regiment deployed through the jungle. Of course, ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... dressed, and seated in the middle of a large lonely canvas, in the blank contemplation of a gilt console, had always seemed to Anna to be waiting for ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... filled with the armorial bearings of many generations of the Outram family, wrought in stained glass and placed in couples, for next to each coat of arms were the arms of its bearer's dame. It was not quite full, however, for in it remained two blank shields, which had been destined to receive the escutcheons of Thomas ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... skilled in the use of the crayon, and I amused my companion by sketches upon scraps of paper and the blank leaves of her music. Many of these were the figures of females, in different attitudes and costumes. In one respect they resembled each other: their ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... prison with her mother, and saw no method of escape, saw not so much as a locked door, saw nothing but blank walls. Even could she by a miracle break prison, where should she look for the unknown object of her desire, and for what should she look? Enigmas! It is true that she read, occasionally with feverish enjoyment, especially verse. But she did not and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... shape, appeared to be maliciously holding themselves askew, that they might shut the prospect out and baffle Todgers's. The man who was mending a pen at an upper window over the way, became of paramount importance in the scene, and made a blank in it, ridiculously disproportionate in its extent, when he retired. The gambols of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's pole had far more interest for the moment than all the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even while ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of solitude, and had acquired that habit of mind which makes a man find rich company on the bare hillside and leads him into the heart of the wood to meditate by the dark waterpools. But now in the blank interval when he was forced to shut up his desk, the sense of loneliness overwhelmed him and filled him with unutterable melancholy. On such days he carried about with him an unceasing gnawing torment in his breast; the anguish of the empty page awaiting him in his bureau, and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... arcade and window, and also the blank window or double arch, with two smaller arches within the clerestory wall, claims especial attention, as well as the ribbed roof rising ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... and was succeeded by Astyages, B.C. 593, whose history is a total blank, till near the close of his long reign of thirty-five years, when the Persians under Cyrus arose to power. He seems to have resigned himself to the ordinary condition of Oriental kings—to effeminacy and luxury—brought about by the prosperity which he inherited. He was contemporary ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamental also. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory, science by conjecture, than in Ptolemy's scheme of the world (c. A.D. 130). His chief predecessors, Eratosthenes and Strabo, had left much blank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, but they had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy. Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his inner consciousness, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... his study when Alexey Yegorytch had announced the unexpected visitor. Hearing the name, he had positively leapt up, unwilling to believe it. But soon a smile gleamed on his lips—a smile of haughty triumph and at the same time of a blank, incredulous wonder. The visitor, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, seemed struck by the expression of that smile as he came in; anyway, he stood still in the middle of the room as though uncertain whether to come further in or to turn back. Stavrogin succeeded at once in transforming the expression ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lips glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him with a point-blank question: ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... that produces an even better machining rifle blank, which practically stays straight through the different machining operations, was to rough-turn the blanks, then subject them to a heat of practically 1,0000 for 4 hr. Production throughout the different operations ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... passed the Baxters' fence. But when he had gone as far as the upper corner of the fence beyond, he turned his head and looked back, without any expression—except that of a whistler—at Jane. And thus, still whistling "My country, 'tis of thee," and with blank pink face over his shoulder, he proceeded until ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... shore, a good [many] however desired to sleep on board, curiosity was not their only motive, at least not with some of them, for the next morning several things were missing, which determined me not to entertain so many another night. At 11 A.M. anchored in the bay which is called by the natives [a blank, filled in by another hand, Karakakoa] in 13 fathoms of water over a sandy bottom, and a quarter of a mile from the North-East shore. In this situation the South point of the bay bore South 1/4 West, and the North point ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... of five asterisks surrounded by blank lines represents a thought break. All other asterisks indicate ellipses. Ellipses ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... to have been all wrong. But because he's both a great poet and a great dramatist, it's all right, you see. Look," she said, pointing to a passage that she dared not read. "Those are human voices. Could anything be simpler and more natural? But it's blank verse because it couldn't be more ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Braddock's chest swelled suddenly. "I suppose you think I'm fool enough to let you kill yourself with my gun and me right here where they could nab me. It's got blank ca'tridges, that's all. Somebody changed 'em on me last night—just before that— that sneak went away ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... her life felt when it ought to feel so rich. She had the three boys beside her, Pamela was next door, she had all manner of schemes in hand to keep her thoughts occupied—but there was a great want somewhere. Jean owned to herself that the blank had been there ever since Lord Bidborough went away. It was frightfully silly, but there it was. And probably by this time he had quite forgotten her. It had amused him to imagine himself in love, something to pass the time in a dull little town. She knew from books ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... wanted to go to Austria. But unless a gunboat came for the consul that was not now possible. Neither of them had any idea England would be dragged in, and assured me I should be all right anywhere. I asked the Italian point-blank: "Are you going to war as Austria's ally?" He replied: "The Triple Alliance is a secret one. I do not know its terms. But I have my own ideas about them. My opinion is that we are not obliged to fight, and in that case we certainly ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... also, her mind, having been undisturbed by any new circumstance of disgust, or alarm, recovered its tone sufficiently to permit her the enjoyment of her books, among which she found some unfinished sketches of landscapes, several blank sheets of paper, with her drawing instruments, and she was thus enabled to amuse herself with selecting some of the lovely features of the prospect, that her window commanded, and combining them in scenes, to which her tasteful fancy gave a last grace. In these little sketches ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... folded bit of white paper, which was little more than two inches square, and was covered on one side with writing almost microscopically small. The other side was blank, but the woman had no doubt that the letter was for her. As she read, the carrier-pigeon went on pecking at the seeds in the basket, and the doves of the mosque watched ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... on the 22d inst. being the birthday of WASHINGTON—and the first drawn blank will be ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... soil of that back yard full of the commonest objects, the humblest work, it set its little creepers in the crannies of the stone, and struggled up to find the sun and air, till it grew strong and beautiful,—making the blank wall green in summer, glorious in autumn, and a refuge in winter, when it welcomed the sparrows to the shelter of its branches where the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... in a moment, the whole starboard broadside was fired off, point blank across the water, in a line with the deck, as Captain Manter had ordered us to depress the guns, the old Amphitrite rocking to her keel with ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... ignored by all except a few old friends, and henceforth he devoted his attention to criminology and the evolution of crime. It was Bell's boast that he could take a dozen men at haphazard and give you their vices and virtures point-blank. He had a ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the one believed-in thing Is seen falling, falling, With all to which hope can cling. Off: it is not true; For it cannot be That the prize I drew Is a blank ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... blank came one who had gone a-scouting. He touched his cap to the girl and reported to her and to all ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... types. Their resemblance to Chinese block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other, and sometimes pasted together.... The impressions are not taken off with printer's ink, but with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Surrey's youth showed itself in whimsical satires, in classical translations, in love-sonnets, and in paraphrases of the Psalms. In his version of two books of the AEneid he was the first to introduce into England the Italian blank verse which was to play so great a part in our literature. But with the poetic taste of the Renascence Surrey inherited its wild and reckless energy. Once he was sent to the Fleet for challenging a gentleman to fight. Release enabled him to join his father in an expedition ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... on The World Factbook Web site are large and could take several minutes to download on a dial-up connection. The screen might be blank during the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lucky." The Marechal, surprised at a remark which seemed to be suggested by nothing, assented with a modest air, and, shaking his head and his wig, began to talk to some one else. But M. de Gesvres had not commenced without a purpose. He went on, addressed M. de Villeroy point-blank, admiring their mutual good fortune, but when he came to speak of the father of each, "Let us go no further," said he, "for what did our fathers spring from? From tradesmen; even tradesmen they were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... all round. The worst of it was, that when we come to unpack the sled—we did it with an ax because everythin' was frozen solid—the census pouch was missin'. Luckily there was no past work in it,—only blank schedules, information papers, an' things of that sort. So I made up the schedules on odd bits of paper and skins, as I told you, an' the supervisor copied them on the schedule to send in, an' that schedule you have in your hand is the ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... she but the gentle, beloved Undine? As often as they heard a door open, every eye turned involuntarily toward it, and when nothing ensued but the entrance of the steward with some more dishes, or of the cupbearer with a fresh supply of rich wine, the guests would look sad and blank, and the sparks of gayety kindled by the light jest or the cheerful discourse, were quenched in the damp of melancholy recollections. The bride was the most thoughtless, and consequently the most cheerful person present; ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... giant said this with a degree of roughness and decision that at any other time would have made the obstinate old grandfather refuse point blank; but as there was every probability of having to flee for his life ere the break of another day, and as his old heart trembled within him at the thought of the dreaded guns of the Indians, he merely shook his head and pondered ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... commands are a law unto his handmaiden," said Margaret demurely and icily, addressing him, but aiming point-blank at me. Her shot blew me clean out of the water, and I stood there guggling like a born idiot. "Curse you, will you never get out of your yokel's ways?" said I to myself. It was as if I had said to the sergeant, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... this—all we call 'progress' ends with death. What is that progress worth which is bounded by the grave? If progress in men and women is not united with faith in God, and hope in His eternal life and love, I would not lift my hand or speak one word to help either man or woman to such blank misery." ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... none too heartily and cast a glance toward Williams. But the latter's blank expression showed that the allusion meant nothing to him and proved that, as far as Williams was concerned, Miller had kept his ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... dispatching a note of excuse to Miss Brewster on the plea of personal business, he slipped out into the city. Wandering idly toward the hills, he presently found himself in a familiar street, and, impelled by human curiosity, proceeded to turn up the hill and stop opposite the blank door. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ancient formula, and proceeded to question her upon her symptoms. He soon discovered their gravity, and I could see by his manner that he was anxious to an extreme. The Muse had grown so weak as to be unable to dictate even a little blank verse, and the indisposition had so far affected her mind that she had no memory of Parnassus, but deliriously maintained that she had been born in the home counties—nay, in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge. Her every phrase was a deplorable commonplace, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Lyddite, three hearts, wan lung, wan kidney, five brains. Derringer, four hearts, two brains. This has seldom been excelled. Among th' minor casualties resultin' fr'm this painful but delightful soiree was th' followin': Erastus Haitch Muggins, kilt be jumpin' fr'm th' roof; Blank Cassidy, hide an' pelt salesman fr'm Chicago, burrid undher victims; Captain Epaminondas Lucius Quintus Cassius Marcellus Xerxes Cyrus Bangs of Hoganpolis, Hamilcar Township, Butseen County, died iv hear-rt disease whin his scoor was tied. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... more—I have resolved. The writings are ready drawn, and wanted nothing but to be signed, and have his name inserted. Yours will fill the blank as well. I will have no reply. Let me command this time; for 'tis the last in which I will assume authority. Hereafter, you shall ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... did not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put it as due to the lady governing his household; and his ultimatum was, that the Apology should be delivered in terms to satisfy him within three months of the date of the demand for it: otherwise blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the destitution of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the cell of one of those thus immured: "The abbot led us into a small courtyard which had blank walls all round it, over which a peach-tree reared its transparent pink and white against the sky. Almost on a level with the ground there was an opening closed with a flat stone from behind. In front of this window was a ledge eighteen inches ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... false? You're the King's chum. Here's your letter [showing a blank slip of paper]. Ha, ha, ha! ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... Charles the First and Second, and is founded on two French comedies—-viz., Moliere's Sganarelle, and Thomas Corneille's Don Cesar d' Avalos. The prologue is too bad to be quoted, and I doubt if it can ever have been spoken on any stage. This play is written partly in blank verse, partly in prose; though very coarse, it is, on the whole, clever and witty. Old Moneylove, a credulous fool, who has a young wife (Act ii., Scene I), reminds one at times of the senator Antonio in Otway's Venice Preserved, and is, of course, deceived by the gallant Stanley; ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... looked blank for a second, then recognition came into his face. "Wendell, eh? After all this time. Poor chap; he'd have been better off if he'd died twenty years ago." Then he paused and looked up. "But just who are you, Mr. Camberton? And what makes ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... though he still had much to suffer, he was becoming open to receive comfort; the blank dark remorse in which he had been living began to lighten, and the tone ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... check for the minister, with the sumlines blank, and begged him not to be a miser. They left with him a great doubt as to what the Church would do to him for doing what he had done for his chapel. But he was as near to a perfection of happiness as he was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... northern spheres Was his undoubted ancestor: 220 From him his great forefathers came, And in all ages bore his name. Learned he was in med'c'nal lore; For by his side a pouch he wore, Replete with strange Hermetic powder, 225 That wounds nine miles point-blank wou'd solder; By skilful chemist, with great cost, Extracted from a rotten post; But of a heav'nlier influence Than that which mountebanks dispense; 230 Tho' by Promethean fire made, As they do quack that drive that trade. For as when slovens do amiss ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... together. Even President Wilson's efforts to bring about an agreement proved futile. The roads agreed to arbitrate all the points, allowing the President to name the arbitrators; but the Brotherhoods, probably realizing their temporary strategic advantage, refused point-blank to arbitrate. When the President tried to persuade the roads to yield the eight-hour day, they replied that it was a proper ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... it out, in brief business-like words—how horrible they sounded! And the ship's people would be seen to come to her side, stand a while looking at the melancholy little steamer on its hopeless search—then pass on. All the world seemed passing on slowly, slowly—leaving them to that blank sea and sky, and to their ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... have suffered a sound drubbing with the ebony cane but for Peter Kenny's parlour-magic trick. For as Brian Shaynon started forward to seize Beelzebub by the collar, a stream of incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly wormed his way through the press to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the hotel suite's window at the street below. He peered absently at his thin wrist, looked blank for a moment, then realized all over again that his watch was being cleaned. He stared down at the street once more, his ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... other people look as if they thought them so, and as these reclining rows of visitors lay back doing nothing, not even reading, with an air of unconcern, it was not difficult for X. to assume one too. However, he could not but believe that he helped to fill in that vacant blank in which the sitters sank, as he passed along, himself clad in wondrous garments made of gaudy silks woven by the skilled natives of the Peninsula, while Usoof and Abu followed, bringing the towels and soap. Nor did he ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... and editor of one of the big New York dailies, and the boy always took along, on his trips, plenty of blank paper for "copy," but never sent in a line! His letters to his father's newspaper were usually addressed to the financial department, upon which he had permission to ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... occupation of every domain in creation, by some creatures who have the dominion, we cannot admit the probability that the earth is the only tenement with tenants: we must be confirmed in our judgment that the sun and the planets, with their moons, ours of course included, are neither blank nor barren, but abodes of variously organized beings, fitted to fulfil the chief end of all noble existence: the enjoyment of life, the effluence of love, the good of all around and the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Miss Evelyn, from the first moment of my seeing you. I feel that my future happiness hangs on your lips, for without your love, my life would now be a blank. I am here to-day to offer you my hand and fortune. If I have not yet your heart, I seek to be allowed to cultivate your society, that I may ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... really has something to him!" After that he took the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the "fool plot of ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... before her slender earnings were depleted. For a time she managed to keep the wolf from the door by selling some of her old finery, dainty creations in point lace and chiffons, which she would never wear again, but when these were gone, blank destitution stared her in the face. A brief engagement she was lucky enough to secure after unheard-of exertions, helped matters for a while, but the show came to grief, and then things were as bad as ever. Visits to the pawnshop ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... "plan" since his story of the trick he had played at the Savoy. She hated the necessity to talk with him; but it was a necessity. They ought to arrange something for the future—the blank and hateful future—before Parker came, and daily life began. There would be many things to settle, questions to ask and answer; a sort of hideous campaign would have to be mapped out in details not one of which defined itself clearly in ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of Milan, or those who, on a humbler scale, aspired to emulate her policy. Even so it was no easy matter to chastise the most insignificant of the contumacious communes; and Milan, who refused point-blank to give satisfaction for her lawless acts of conquests, or even to renounce what she had won, could not safely ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... blank of her eye the ground and not the horizon, the form divine deformed towards that of the four-footed animals, this woman had been in bondage eighteen years. Necessary as it is to one's faith to believe every trouble fitted for the being who has ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... sing is—I feel it! 10 This life was as blank as that room; I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed? Walls, ceiling, and floor,—not a chance for a weed! Wide opens the entrance: where's cold, now, where's gloom? No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it, Behold you ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... dear Duncan," she answered, "that in none of these trances, or whatever you please to call them, did I ever see a mirror. It has struck me before as a curious thing, that a mirror is then an absolute blank to me—I see nothing on which I could put a name. It does not even seem a vacant space to me. A mirror must have nothing in common with the state I am then in, for I feel a kind of repulsion from it; and indeed it would be rather ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... hath the force of a woman, it takes me down; I am for the baser element of the kitchen: I retire like a valiant soldier, face point blank to the foe-man, or, like a Courtier, that must not shew the Prince his posteriors; vanish to know my canuasadoes, and my interrogatories, for I serve the good ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... this time I heard footsteps coming round the corner of the house. I sat down on the rustic bench by the door. If it had been Bessie's self, I could not have stirred, I was so chilled, so awed by the blank silence. A brown sun-bonnet, surmounting a tall, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Taplin——" I began, when old Captain Warren burst in with—"Look here, Taplin, we haven't got much time to talk. Here's the ALIDA'S boat coming, with that (blank blank) scoundrel Motley in it. Take my advice. Don't go away in the ALIDA." And then he looked at ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had received a legacy overnight but this feeling gradually died away, and was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth. The whole story of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that there has never been any grumbling. One day, years ago, an old friend of mine broke out, in his most contemptuous manner, "What d'ye think Master Dash Blank bin up to now?" He named the owner of a large estate near the town. "Bin an' promised all his men a blanket an' a quarter of a ton o' coal at Christmas. A blanket, and a quarter of a ton o' coal! Pity ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... stopped suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his own grew ashy white. "Helen! For God's sake tell me! You ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... room to hedge, and in the newest journalism there is no room to hedge. So the critic refrains from the act of creation. He imitates the discretion of the sporting tipster, who names several horses as being likely to win one race. "Among the books of the year are Blank, Blank, and Blank," he says. (But what he means is, "The book of the year is to be found among Blank, Blank, and Blank.") Naturally he selects among the books whose titles come into his head with the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... hallmarking pewter on the strength of an infinitesimal tinge of silver therein. The point becomes at once clear if we imagine some obscure painter quoting the style of Raphael and fragments of his designs, and acknowledging his indebtedness by appending the master's signature. Blank forgery! And a flood of light was thrown on the matter by a chance remark of one of Euphemia's aunts—she is a great reader of pure fiction—anent a popular novel: "I am sure it must be a nice book," ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... be an aunt, Miss Fanny said there was so much to learn Of proper auntly methods she knew not where to turn. She'd never been an aunt before, and knew not how to be, And so she asked if I should mind her practicing on me? She bought a long thick blank book bound in leather, gold and brown. And first we did the lovely things, and ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... quickly to his feet; the others stood up also, though not as he did on their four feet, but on their hind-legs—that is to say, they stood up on their haunches—and looked at him in blank amazement; but as he approached them they bounded away so fast that it was useless to try to overtake them. When he stood still, they also stopped, and again stood upon their haunches, and peered at him over the tops of the weeds. Master Donkey did not try again ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Roger's old studio, except Louden and the doctor, and while we were there, talkin', one of Pike's clerks came with a basket full of tin boxes and packages of papers and talked to Miss Tabor at the door and went away. Then old Peter blundered out and asked her point-blank what it was, and she said it was her estate, almost everything she had, except the house. Buckalew, tryin' to make a joke, said he'd be willin' to swap HIS house and lot for the basket, and she laughed and told him she thought he'd be sorry; ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to him four arms with four hands; and that every time he prayed roses fell to him from out of heaven. He was a great conqueror, he held a large part of this earth under his dominion, he subdued ... (blank in original) kings, and slew them, and flayed them, and brought their skins with him; so that besides his own name, he received the nickname ... which means 'lord of ... skins of kings;' he was chief of ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... was cruising about fifty miles off Havana when the Frasquito, a two-master, came bowling along toward the Cuban capital. When the yellow flag of the enemy was sighted the helm was swung in her direction, and a blank shot was put across her bow. The Spaniard hove to and the customary prize-crew was put on board. It was found that the Frasquito was bound from Montevideo to Havana with a cargo of jerked beef. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... arbitrary principles, without the liberality of sentiment peculiar to the house of Bourbon. In proportion as they rose in their demands, Louis fell in his condescension. His secretary of state, the marquis de Torcy, posted in disguise to Holland, on the faith of a common blank passport. He solicited, he soothed, he supplicated, and made concessions in the name of his sovereign. He found the states were wholly guided by the influence of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough. He found these generals elated, haughty, overbearing, and implacable. He ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... upon him the first time he encountered it. She came to the cathedral regularly now, and always sat in the canon's pew; and always when he sang she looked at him, and he knew that the look was an expression of appreciation and thanks. He knew, too, that the day she did not come would be a blank day for him. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... intimacy, the careless gaiety, the casual humor, the equality of indifference, were sinking into the routine of office; the mind lingered in the Department; the thought failed to react; the wit and humor shrank within the blank walls of politics, and the irritations multiplied. To a head of bureau, the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... be of primary importance. The laws of Harmony are part of the curriculum of all schools, and all necessary paraphernalia for its proper exposition are provided. We have instruments for measuring tone vibrations of so delicate a pitch that the existence of these tones would be a blank to the gross material ears of ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... hang up the receiver, with a blank and uncomprehending look on his face, when Babe caught the black rubber earpiece ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... had a great loss, my Algernon; I will not chide these tears. The death of a kind parent leaves an awful blank in our existence, a wound which ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals. The accumulation of each great fossiliferous formation will be recognised as having depended on an unusual occurrence of favourable circumstances, and the blank intervals between the successive stages as having been of vast duration. But we shall be able to gauge with some security the duration of these intervals by a comparison of the preceding and succeeding ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Everything continued as usual. We went up past the place where we had left them, and there was no news, no sign. They just vanished. No one saw them again, and except for the "riddled" rumour of the poor old sergeant the whole thing was a blank. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... began to ask himself how much truth there was in Laura's resolve to go and attend upon his wife in what was no doubt a last agony. Seeing and hearing her put into his head remembrances of an actress, he could not remember which. Her demeanour was as lofty as any and her speech almost rose into blank verse at times; and he began to think that she had missed her vocation in life. It might have been that she was destined by nature for the stage. 'She's more mummer than myself or Kate,' he said to himself, and giving an ear to her outpourings, he recognized in them the rudiments of the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... said Strudwarden, "but unfortunately my brain is equally a blank as far as any lethal project is concerned. The little beast is so monstrously inactive; I can't pretend that it leapt into the bath and drowned itself, or that it took on the butcher's mastiff in unequal combat and got chewed up. In what possible guise could death come to a confirmed basket-dweller? ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... strangely set and blank; his eyes looking vacant. 'Miss Limmer is very kind to us. She loves us and we love her dearly. Ask Batsy,' he said in a monotonous voice, as if he were repeating a lesson. 'Batsy, come here,' he said in the same voice. 'Is ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... ate bread and grapes himself. Perhaps you call that nothing! He gave me his pistols and his horse and his despatches—most important despatches—and let me go away with them. (Triumphantly, seeing that he has reduced Napoleon to blank ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... causing a tortoise and a lamb to be drest in a vessel of brass, which was really the case. The emperor Trajan made a similar trial of the god at Heliopolis, by sending him a letter sealed up,(96) to which he demanded an answer.(97) The oracle made no other return, than to command a blank paper, well folded and sealed, to be delivered to him. Trajan, upon the receipt of it, was struck with amazement to see an answer so correspondent with his own letter, in which he knew he had written nothing. The wonderful facility with which daemons ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of Shelley, published in 1862. He says: 'Among Shelley's MSS. is a fair copy of the Defence of Poetry, apparently damaged by sea-water, and illegible in many places. Being prepared for the printer, it is written on one side of the paper only: on the blank pages, but frequently undecipherable for the reason just indicated, are many passages intended for, but eventually omitted from, the preface ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... sensitive gentleman by drawling the word after him, and declaring that he tossed that kind of thing into the women's wash-basket. Peterborough, not without signs of indignation, protesting, the squire asked him point-blank if he supposed that Old England had been raised to the head of the world by such as he. In fine, he favoured Peterborough with a lesson in worldly views. 'But these,' Peterborough said to me, 'are not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a trip to Germany, decided on in the spring of 1798. The bulk of the volume was Wordsworth's, and was typically Wordsworthian, ranging from such simple ballads of humble incident as "Goody Blake" and "The Idiot Boy" to the magnificent blank verse of "Tintern Abbey"; Coleridge's share consisted of a brief poem called "The Nightingale," two short extracts from "Osorio," and "The Rime ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fields of foam, At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped; Whereat by troops unto disease and death Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats, Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood; And the walled pathway of the voice of man Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue, The mind's interpreter, would trickle gore, Weakened by ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... watch hath she, Poor Miss 7, Not in some orchard sweet In April Devon - Just four blank walls to see, And dark come shadowily, No moon, no stars, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... acquired enough seamanship to ferry himself across the zoological divide, and to take his faithful dog with him on board his raft or dug-out. Until we have facts whereon to build, however, it would be as unpardonable to lay down the law on these matters as it is permissible to fill up the blank by guesswork. ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... cause of the ill health was not removed, and this necessitates an examination and special local treatment. For any advertising concern to assert that it can tell what ails a patient by simply filling out a symptom blank is utter nonsense. It is worse. It is obtaining money under false pretenses, and should be punishable by imprisonment at hard labor ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... school-boy, I used to gaze at the map of Alaska for hours. I'd lose myself in it. It wasn't anything but a big, blank corner in the North then, with a name, and mountains, and mystery. The word 'Yukon' suggested to me everything unknown and weird— hairy mastodons, golden river bars, savage Indians with bone arrow-heads and seal-skin trousers. When I left college I came as fast ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... promptly, pushing the portieres aside to make a passage for her, as he went ahead to scratch a match and light the long, one-armed flickering kitchen burner. The bare, deeply shadowed floor, the kitchen table, the blank windows, and the blackened range, in which the fire was out, came desolately into view. There was a sense as of deep darkness of the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... had arrived the evening before, with an old aunt, to remain for the whole spring! Monsieur de Langevy, who was not addicted to circumlocution in his mode of talk, told his son point-blank, that his cousin was a pretty girl, and what was more, a considerable heiress—so that it was his duty—his, Hector de Langevy—the owner of a great name and a very small fortune, to marry the said cousin—or if not, he must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further. "Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the British Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want is the present. It's about ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Kreisler. That will amuse me. It is a picture of his own sufferings at the esthetic Teas in Berlin, supposed to be written in pencil on the blank leaves of ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... gradually declined in the horizon, and the fiery clouds around were quenched in the vapours of the advancing night. Steadily she looked upon the sight beneath and before her; but even yet her limbs never moved; no expression relieved the blank, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins |
