"Blow off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rest there was only the house, silent at best, or, worse, sending out through its half-open door the long, scornful No-o-o! of the maiden's unseen spinning-wheel. No matter the fame or grace of the rider. All in vain, my lad: pirouette as you will; sit your gallantest; let your hat blow off, and turn back, and at full speed lean down from the saddle, and snatch it airily from the ground, and turn again and gallop away; all is in vain. For by her estimate either you are living in fear of the conscript officer; or, if you are in the service, and here only transiently on leave of absence, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... of stiffs' talk. "Oh, let them blow off steam," says he. "Big talk, small deeds; that's their caliber, Jack. They'll have their sauciness hammered out of them quickly enough when Swope plays his ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... great care must be taken to prevent destruction of young trees by snow-drifts. This is done by selecting locations, and by constructing or removing fences, to allow the snow to blow off; treading it down as it falls is also very useful, both in protecting the trees from breaking down by the settling of drifts in a thaw, and from the depredations of ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... was emphatic. "Shut it down and you'll make it a thousand times worse. No, sir. Let 'em shout. Let 'em blow off any old steam they need. Just sit tight. If it's the usual hot air there's nothing much coming of it up here on Labrador. There's this to remember. We're a thousand miles of hell's own winter, and a pretty tough sea, from the politicians ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the spindles become jammed in the guides, and from various other causes which it would be tedious to enumerate; but the inaction of the safety valves is at once indicated by the steam gauge, and when discovered, the blow through valves of the engine and blow off cocks of the boiler should at once be opened, and the fires raked out. A cone in the ball of the waste steam pipe to send back the water carried upward by the steam, should never be inserted; as in some cases this cone has become loose, and closed ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... brasswork of the engine shines brilliantly, the footboard has been newly scrubbed, and the driver and stoker stand waiting for the signal. The needle shows that the steam is just below the pressure at which it would begin to blow off; the water in the gauge glass is just where it ought to be; in fact, the engine is in perfect condition and ready for a start. The line is clear, the guard's whistle is answered by our own, and we glide almost imperceptibly past the last few yards of the platform. The driver ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... "I believe you're harmless enough to have the use of your legs and mouth." With a comic bow the little doctor added, "M'sieur, I'm going to ask you to drive us back to Fort Smith, and if you so much as look the wrong way out of your eyes I'll blow off your head. You and your friend are to answer for the killing of Pierre Thoreau and for the attempted murder of this young man, who will follow us to Fort ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... once a year, as a rule, Jack," said Toby Hopkins, exultantly; "and my stars! we've just got to blow off steam after that great ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... considerable force a few leagues out at sea, since it sometimes drove a prodigious sea before it into the bay, during which we rode forecastle in. Though the northerly winds are never to be apprehended in this bay, yet the southerly winds, which generally prevail here, frequently blow off the land in violent gusts and squalls, which seldom lasted, however, longer than two or three minutes. This seems to be owing to the high hills, in the neighbourhood of the bay, obstructing the southern gale; as the wind, collected by this means, at last forces its passage through the narrow vallies; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Now to settle accounts with you the very moment that Abercromby has reported back from Calcutta. I think I will just have a good old-fashioned talk with Ram Lal Singh. I need his evidence to hoodwink this old cask of grog, Abercromby. I must blow off' his vanity ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... listen to reason. When I read this piece in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he's so fired up about it that he is down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?" And Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... this until he had seen everything cleared up and heard "All fast the dory," from the waist. Then he looked up and took note of sky and wind. "Don't feel any too good. Maybe 'twill blow off, but we might's well run in. We'll have to wait for our other seine anyway and Wesley will be sure to put into the Breakwater for news on his way down, especially if it ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... ain't no business for a man who's got to blow off steam in public the minute he sniffs somethin' good! Things like that might bust up the whole business—and sixty a day ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... stars are bright, the night is silent, the country quiet—as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of them die—to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Parent, is just a blow off. I have been needlessly starved, and fagged to death and exasperated. We have moved five-and-twenty miles across country—in fifty-seven hours. And without food for about eighteen hours. I have been with my Captain, who has been billeting us here in Cheasingholt. Oh, he is a ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... thousand in your head. And if you haven't done one on paper so much the better. You'll jam them back, and stifle them, and screw the cover down tight on every natural impulse, and then, some day, the cover will blow off with a loud report. You can't kill that kind of thing, Fanny. It would have to be a wholesale massacre of all the centuries behind you. I don't so much mind your being disloyal to your tribe, or race, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Hugge their diseas'd Perfumes, and haue forgot That euer Timon was. Shame not these Woods, By putting on the cunning of a Carper. Be thou a Flatterer now, and seeke to thriue By that which ha's vndone thee; hindge thy knee, And let his very breath whom thou'lt obserue Blow off thy Cap: praise his most vicious straine, And call it excellent: thou wast told thus: Thou gau'st thine eares (like Tapsters, that bad welcom) To Knaues, and all approachers: 'Tis most iust That thou turne Rascall, had'st thou wealth againe, Rascals ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... time to blow off the top of my cocoanut," the nester suggested more than once to the infuriated cave man. "I'm allowing, you know, to send you to Yuma as soon as I get out of this. Nothing like grabbing your opportunity ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... studying freedom and practising servitude." Little went well with him in his student course. He had a menial position, a savage brute for a tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. But he was not without his consolations; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult, could blow off excitement through his flute. The popular picture of him in these days is of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the wait ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton |
