"Blow out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... :blow out: /vi./ [prob. from mining and tunneling jargon] Of software, to fail spectacularly; almost as serious as {crash and burn}. See {blow past}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... done, and I'll try to do it," he told Mayo, in a voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then he called to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps, "Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dance bad, and we don't want to run the chance ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... off in the starlight, and followed him to the bunkhouse. The other men were already in their beds, fast asleep and half of them snoring. Gowan silently lit a lantern and showed the tenderfoot to an unoccupied bunk in the far corner of the rough but clean building. After a curt request for Ashton to blow out the lantern when through with the light, he withdrew, to tumble into ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... got to Paris, and was the only one of the seven who did not come by a violent death. Guadet and Salles were captured at St. Emilion, and were executed, as a matter of course. Barbaroux was also taken, after making an unsuccessful attempt to blow out his brains, and he, too, was guillotined at Bordeaux. Buzot and Petion stabbed themselves in a field between St. Emilion and Castillon, where their bodies were found half eaten by wolves. The seventh, Valady, was brought to the scaffold at Perigueux. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... in its defence. These eight were hurriedly decapitated by order of Li Hung-chang, and Gordon immediately resigned, after having searched that same night, so the story goes, revolver in hand, for Li Hung-chang, whose brains he had determined to blow out on the spot. The Emperor sent him a medal and a present of about L3,000, both of which he declined; and Imperial affairs would again have been in a bad way, but that Gordon, yielding to a sense of duty, agreed to resume command. Foreign interests had begun to suffer badly; trade was ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier. Go, go, go like a soldier, Go, go, go like a soldier, Go, go, go like a soldier, ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... The cool familiarity of her lips was blurred in the remembered clinging intensity of Savina's mouth. "Lee, dear, blow out the candles; the servants forget, and those blue handmade ones cost twenty-five cents apiece." They left the dining-room with her arm about him and his hand laid on her shoulder. Lee's feeling was curious—he ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that for acting without orders, and lying to disguise it.' Callum received the blow without appearing to flinch from it, and fell without sign of life. 'Stand still, upon your lives!' said Fergus to the rest of the clan; 'I blow out the brains of the first man who interferes between Mr. Waverley and me.' They stood motionless; Evan Dhu alone showed symptoms of vexation and anxiety. Callum lay on the ground bleeding copiously, but no one ventured to give him any assistance. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... mildly that 'she hoped it would blow over;' but Mr. Bull exclaimed indignantly that 'he didn't want it to blow over—he wanted it to blow out and done with it, if it was goin' to, and not keep a threatenin' all to no purpose. It was high time that things was settled, and people knew what was what. If we was goin' to hev a rumpus, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... presently, "if we are to be killed, at least let us die fighting to the last, and blow out our own brains with the last shots we have left. I don't think I'm afraid of being killed, but to be tortured like ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... doesn't know, sur," answered Squill, "and it wasn't me as found it, but Jim Heron there. I only helped to sling it on the pole, and shoulder an end. It's aither pork or gunpowther, so if it ain't good for a blow out it'll be good for a ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... inside, do not get frightened, but take it off instantly, and blow out the fire, or smother it with the cover or a board if you ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... nostrils, especially when in these public places, because the nostrils are so constructed that they act as a sieve or strainer, they clean the air we breathe, and when we blow the nose after being in one of these places we blow out thousands of germs and other impurities which would have gone straight into the lungs if we had breathed through the mouth. She can teach them the value of deep breathing when in the open air, and of standing and walking erect so as to get all the lung ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... once more to rights, it will do me pleasure to quaff a flagon in thy honest company, for such is a man who knoweth Sir Thomas Winter, and," he continued, drawing closer to the other, "is no prating Protestant in these times when he who would seek a favor or gain a title must blow out the candles on his altar, and break its images. Start not at my words, for by thy very speech thou art no heretic, and I do love thee the better for it. But see," he continued as he opened the door, "the night ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Sallycomeup, Kissmequick, and Curate on Toast, whilst in the collateral line he can claim kinship with Artaxerxes and Devil's Dustpan. In the Margate Open Sweepstakes, he ran second to Daddy, when the sea was as smooth as an old halfcrown. If there had been wind enough to blow out a wooden match, he must have won ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... able to stand much more of this," says Mr. Potts, presently, coming behind the lounge on which sit Lady Stafford and Molly. "I shall infallibly blow out at that obnoxious old person, or ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... could see newspaper men and politicians feasting and drinking in company with gay women. Not a meeting was held but some menacing allusion was made to that cafe, and one night a dynamite cartridge was exploded in it by an unknown hand. A worker who was occasionally there, a socialist, jumped to blow out the lighted fuse of the cartridge, and was killed, while a few of the feasting politicians were slightly wounded. Next day a dynamite cartridge was exploded at the doors of a recruiting bureau, and it was said that the anarchists intended ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... life, but they add to it a measure of Aristophanesque satire—they engage themselves to marry. Now marriage is man's approval and confirmation of his belief in human existence—they engage themselves to marry, but instead of putting their threat into execution, they enter a railway carriage and blow out their brains, proving thereby that they had brains to ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... is behind us, see now we are one. Blow, you winds, blow out your stormy heart; we know the secret of your strength, you rush to your desire. Fall, deep waters of the sea, fall in thunder at the feet of earth; we hear ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... a little talk with old Cunningham afterwards as to the motive of the crime. He was tractable enough, though his son was a perfect demon, ready to blow out his own or anybody else's brains if he could have got to his revolver. When Cunningham saw that the case against him was so strong he lost all heart and made a clean breast of everything. It seems that William had secretly followed his two masters on the night ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... barricade Javert had been captured as a spy, and Jean Valjean, who was known to the revolutionaries, found his old, implacable enemy tied to a post, waiting to be shot. Jean Valjean requested to be allowed to blow out Javert's brains himself, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to heaven, captain,' he said, 'you had got a pistol and your hand free, and would blow out my brains for me. It is all my fault, and hanging at the yard-arm is what I deserve. I never thought there was the slightest risk—not a shadow of it—and feeling a bit dozy, sat down for five minutes' caulk. Seeing that, no doubt the men thought they might do the same; ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... than I can do. While I'm with you I can be philosophical about it and smile, but at home I lose heart completely; I am so utterly miserable, that if I were told, for instance, that I should have to live another month with her, I should blow out my brains. At the same time, parting with her is out of the question. She has no friends or relations; she cannot work, and neither she nor I have any money. . . . What could become of her? To whom could she go? There is nothing one can think of. . . . Come, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated lights together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing Authority as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... lasted only for two or three minutes, or our mast could never have resisted the tremendous strain upon it; as it was, stout though the spar—absurdly disproportionate to the size of the craft, I then considered it—it swayed and bent like a fishing-rod, causing the lee-rigging to blow out quite in bights, while that to windward was strained as taut as harp-strings, the resemblance to which was increased by the weird sound of the wind as ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... value. These ships, like those used in the first attempt, were loaded with stones and scrap iron consolidated into a mass by pouring liquid cement over it, thus converting it into a sort of reinforced concrete, underneath which was buried the explosion charges destined to blow out the bottoms of the ships and sink them upon their arrival ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... was not felt or noticed. But he suffered. He was like a hyena caged, though he showed it only by involuntary movements and furtive glances. Finally, he could bear it no longer, and entreated me piteously, abjectly, to give him his freedom or blow out his brains. I told him he couldn't have his freedom just yet; but he knew how to get his brains blown out, if he desired it. Then followed more execration, ending in renewed protestations of regard for me. I reminded ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Mr Desmond proposed trying the old dodge, and getting in at the window. We went round the house, and knocked at all the windows we could reach. At last an old gentleman poked out his head from an upper window, and threatened in Spanish to blow out our brains with a blunderbuss, if we didn't take ourselves off. Mr Desmond understood what he said, and that he meant it was clear, for I caught sight of the muzzle of his piece resting on ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... and everyone will be there, I have Bonnat, Guillemet, Gervex, Beraud, Hebert, Duez, Clairin, and Jean-Paul Laurens. It will be a glorious blow out! And women too! Wait till you see! Every actress without exception—of course I mean, you know, all those who have nothing to do ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... some days in search of them, Ennells called upon Isaac T. Hopper and Thomas Harrison, and offered to sell them very cheap if they would hunt them up. Friend Hopper immediately recognized him as the man who had threatened to blow out his brains, when he went to the rescue of old William Bachelor; and he thus addressed him: "I would advise thee to go home and obtain thy living in some more honorable way; for the trade in which thou ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... going forward I had a painful duty to perform, viz. to load one barrel, and blow out Rascality's brains, whom the lion had utterly disabled in his after-quarters. Thus ended this protracted and all but unsuccessful hunt; for when I at length managed to shoot him, the dogs were quite tired of it, and, the reeds being green, I ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... shall see better,' came his voice, sudden and mechanical and belonging to the world of man. She could scarcely believe there was a world of man. She leaned round and blew out her lanterns. They were difficult to blow out. Everywhere the lights were gone save the coloured points on the sides of the launch. The blueygrey, early night spread level around, the moon was overhead, there were shadows ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... dishonest toward their life partners afterward. And then, perhaps, many a young bachelor, who, betrothed to some good woman, is learning his first lessons in greed and deceit. And some young girls, too, who are perhaps learning the wrong lessons in life. I know of one very young man here who tried to blow out his brains to-night. For the sake of a few hours, or perhaps a few weeks, over the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, he had thrown away everything that made life worth living. Any man who gambles bids good-by to ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... any doubt that Providence had foreordained me to do this work, and given me extraordinary faculties, and extraordinary knowledge, to enable me to perform it, I would, this instant, blow out my brains." ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... cause demands of you; I do know what it seems to demand of me. Hear me, then! I will do my best to protect you, and get you safely away from here; but, failing that, I tell you plainly that I shall blow out your ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... banker's books that he was rich. But I do not see, I confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or why fame, besides playing that delightful REVEIL for which she is so justly celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few notes of a different kind from those with which she has hitherto ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... child who rubbed the ring on his small breeches and played with it, looking up now and then with a frightened start. The woman's heart ached for him, for she knew her own life-long malady. He was hungry for something which he had small hope of finding.... And then a wind seemed to blow out-of-doors and the world darkened down to evening. But her eyes pierced the gloaming easily, and she saw very plain the figure of ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... of fools here, but none that wild that I ever heard of," the bone man said. "You're a hundred miles and more past the deadline for wheat—you'd just as well try to raise bananers here. Wheat! it'd freeze out in the winter and blow out by the roots in the spring if any ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for 'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,—unless a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got a fine lot of flour, but am as tired as a dog, and as hungry as a hunter." "Well done, Burke," said I, for that was his name, "we will soon have a blow out of dough-boys ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... his porcelain pipe and filled it from the blue packet of caporal that lay on the table with the oilskin cover. He struck a match and was about to apply it to the bowl, when one of his sudden ideas caused him to blow out the match and lay down the pipe. Then with his old lightning swiftness he strode to the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... argument at all, for it does not give him a bit the more right to my property; and a man's running in debt, and spending other people's substances, for no reason in the world but just because he can blow out his own brains when he's done,—though it's a thing neither lawful nor religious to do,—why it's acting quite out of character, and a great hardship to trade into ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... below ceased, and we heard steps on the staircase. That was the seal cutter. He stopped outside the door as the terrier barked and Azizun fumbled at the chain, and he told Suddhoo to blow out the lamp. This left the place in jet darkness, except for the red glow from the two huqas that belonged to Janoo and Azizun. The seal cutter came in, and I heard Suddhoo throw himself down on the floor and groan. Azizun caught her breath, and Janoo backed on to one of the beds with ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... plan of getting the fore-topmast staysail loose, notwithstanding the mast was gone, in the hope it might blow open, and help the brig's bows round. Jack was a fellow to act, and he succeeded in loosening the sail, which did blow out in a way greatly to help us, as I think. I then proposed we should clamber aft, and try to get the helm up. This we did, also; though I question if the rudder could have had much power, in the position in which the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "the politicians are afraid to tax the people for the support" of so humane and necessary a thing as a hospital. And do your "people" propose to stand that?—at the hands of vermin officials whom the breath of their votes could blow out of official existence in a moment if they had the pluck to band themselves together and blow. Oh, come, these are not "people"—they are cowed school-boys with backbones made of boiled macaroni. If you are not misreporting those "people" you are just in the right business passing the mendicant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... just compelled me to pay about L1,000 as war tax, in order to help some "brave little Serbian" or other to cut your throat, or some Russian mujik to blow out your brains, although I would rather pay twice as much to save your life or to buy in Vienna some good picture for our National Gallery, and although I should mourn far less about the death of a hundred Serbs or mujiks than ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wind might not blow out his light, he rode the whole distance back to Florence with ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... comes!" cried Mrs Mellis; and her husband and Miss Horn made such haste to blow out the candle, that they knocked their heads together, blew in each other's face, and the first time missed it. Jean approached the window with hers in her hand, and pulled down the blind. But, alas, beyond the form of a close bent elbow moving now and then across a corner of the white ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... We can't blow out a reality, just because it happens to make us miserable. We must face it. It is a part of the discipline of life. But a book or a play has no such right to domineer over us. Our own imagination has the first rights in its own ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... possible to insult you?" said Athos. He drew out a pistol and cocked it. "Madame, you will instantly deliver to me the paper you have received from the cardinal; or, upon my soul, I will blow out your brains." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... adventuring further and further into a cave the delight of awesome supposition—for what may not the next turn reveal?—and is pleased to feel all his young machinery ready instantly to enact a panic if his torch should blow out, and laughs at each furtive rehearsal of his own terror in which he indulges;—so the Humanists turned from astronomy to astrology, and used their skill in mathematics to play with horoscopes which they more than half believed might bite. There was just enough ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... to another of his gang, who instantly received his orders, and, instead of hesitating at a single murder, asked if he should blow out the brains of all the passengers, coachman and all. But Wild, whose moderation we have before noted, would not permit him; and therefore, having given him an exact description of the devoted person, with his other necessary instructions, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... we in whose presence she would choose to die—if she did so choose. Also who would be likely to tie the pistol to her wrist and blow out the candle when ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... spring at some particular light, and dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light their extinguished tapers; others, with their hats off, at a carriage-door, humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... not have that room, and wanted to turn them out of it forcibly; but my friend Major G—— took up one of his pistols, which were lying on the table, and told the innkeeper that if he did not cease to molest them and instantly quit the room, he would blow out his brains. This threat had the desired effect, and he withdrew. It appears that this fellow has in the end outwitted himself, for most people now, who travel on this road in their own carriage, chuse to travel with a vetturino and his horses and are spesati, solely in order ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... accepted, and, having the choice in weapons, chose an examination in mathematics, the one first failing in a demonstration to blow his brains out. "That is the safer for you," he said to his adversary. "You are sure to lose; but the after-effects will not be fatal, because you have no brains to blow out, so you can blow out ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... tennis ball. "Come on, you funking brutes! I'll teach you how to play cuckoo. Every man takes three tennis balls and stands in a corner of the room. I stand in the middle. Then you blow out the candle. Then I call 'cuckoo!' in the dark and you try to hit me, aiming by the sound of my voice. Every time I'm hit I pay ten shillings to the pool, take my place in a corner, and have a shot at the next man, chosen by lot. And if you throw three balls apiece ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... their carriage that evening, the boy on the box making great efforts to blow out ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is placed upon a table. The players are blindfolded in turn, spun around, and instructed to blow out the candle. The time of each player is recorded and the one succeeding in blowing out the candle in the ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... nervous that it took three puffs to blow out the slush-lamp, and he crawled into his blankets without even removing his moccasins. The sailor was soon snoring lustily from his hard bed on the floor, but Kent lay staring up into the blackness, one hand on the shotgun, resolved not to close ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... we may say this also of the catastrophe, which we found questionable from the strictly dramatic point of view. Its purpose is not merely dramatic. This sudden blow out of the darkness, which seems so far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes for the victims of so much cruelty, seems now only what we might have expected in a world so wild and monstrous. It is as if Shakespeare said to us: 'Did ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... far down, and I'm struggling for breath, and there seems to be no land in sight, nothing to hold to except you. I'm sorry if you dislike to have it so, but it is so; your letters mean anchorage. I'd blow out to sea if I didn't have them to hope for. You ought to be glad of that; you're doing good, even if it is only to a flippant, shallow, undeveloped doll. I can ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... yourself, madam. Nay, nay, Luke, hands off. See, Lady Rookwood, how you would treat a friend. This strange fellow would blow out my brains for laying a finger ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Blow out that match!" he cried. "You'll set your dress on fire!" He caught her hand, which she was holding with the lighted match in it at her side, after the manner of women with lighted matches, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... reward, and I for one believed him. If it had been in mediaeval times you would have had a legend or a ballad. Bret Harte would have given you a tale. You see in me a mere recorder, for I know what is best for you; you shall blow out this bubble ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... the third and highest floor of the mill. He did not remain long, however, but came down, still talking to himself. And when he kept on and descended to the main floor, he was repeating that it was "all right," and "all safe;" and so, finally, they heard him blow out the light, hang the lantern on a hook and pass out through the door. The sound of the wagon wheels told them ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... her hand and kissed it. "Blow out my own brains, more like," he said, laughing. Then he turned away. "What on earth have we got into this beastly conversation for? Let's get out of it. The Parhams are there—male and female—aren't they?—and we've got to put up with them. Well, I'm going to the Piazza. Any commissions? Oh, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he gives them a half holiday or a blow out. Mr. Squeers (vide Nicholas Nick: illustriss. Boz.) was in the habit of making much of the young gentlemen ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... the door—we'll heave the other slap into his face—there he lies, full on the broad of his fat back, with his mouth wide open—and when he jumps up full of fight, which he is sure to do, run you with the candle, which blow out the moment he appears, straight down the passage. I'll stand back here, and as he trips over that broomstick, which he is certain to do, I'll pitch the other bucket on his back—and if he does not think he's bewitched, I'll promise not to laugh. I owe him two or three practical ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... my boy!" exclaimed Merrywell, "bring your bellows{2} in good order, and don't be afraid of your bread basket.{3} The dibs are in tune.{4} A ball of fire,{s} a dose of daffy, or a blow out of black strap, will set the blue devils at defiance, give a spur to harmony, and set the spirits ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... my diary to explain who I am and to help identify myself in case I should come home to my room intoxicated some night and blow out the gas. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... a'ready, and I believe it. It's about time, you know. She's let her temper and restless disposition wear her out. Pretty soon she'll blow out, like a candle. All that worries her is to keep alive until she can decide who to leave her money to. That's why you're here, I s'pose, my dears. How do you like being on exhibition, an' goin' through your paces, like a bunch o' trotting ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... such a case the number of the fundamental discharges between the knobs may be so small as to render the currents produced in the secondary unsuitable for many experiments. The intense magnetic field then serves to blow out the arc between the knobs as soon as it is formed, and the fundamental ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... end, were glad enough to take chance shelter behind Saul's Island, which lies close to the mainland near the Harbourless Shore. There we lay three days, with all anchors over the side, waiting in comfortable security for the gale to blow out; and 'twas at dusk of the third day that we were hailed from the coast rocks by that ill-starred young castaway of the name of Docks whose tale precipitated the final catastrophe in the life of Jagger ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... Cornelia, I see myself stretched out on my cot, watching the ladder being pulled up by the executioner, watching the workmen fitting in the last stone of the vault. I imagine myself staring at the wick of the lamp and wondering how long the oil will last and debating whether it would be better to blow out the light and save the oil to drink and so live longer in the dark, or to let the lamp burn out and have the discomfort of the light a little longer. I fancy myself conning over the trifle of bread, milk, fruit and wine left ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... to some secluded hamlet, inquire as to the probable date of the next birth in the neighborhood, and, when things are in shape, he can blow out the gas some night and wake up the next morning as a new-born babe, with all the elements of greatness ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... the Mediterranean. Charles had been victorious so long as he fought kings with words of steel. But the monk Martin Luther drew the sword of the spirit, and the conqueror quailed. Luther challenged the Church of Rome at its own door. The Vatican rained anathemas. It might as well have tried to blow out the stars; and all the fires of the furious popes who followed Leo were not sharp enough to consume the colossal heresy of free thought. But king and emperor and pope fed the fire. The reign of terror blasted ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... person, and once remarked frankly that he had no passion for clean linen; that he ate voraciously, with a half-animal eagerness; that in the intervals of talking he 'would make odd sounds, a half whistle, or a clucking like a hen's, and when he ended an argument would blow out his breath like a whale.' More important were his dogmatism of opinion, his intense prejudices, and the often seemingly brutal dictatorial violence with which he enforced them. Yet these things too were really on the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of introductions on visiting cards, and Paul went away satisfied. He called on the two actors. The first, in atrabiliar mood, advised him to sweep crossings, black shoes, break stones by the roadside, cart manure, sell tripe or stocks and shares, blow out his brains rather than enter a profession over whose portals was inscribed the legend, Lasciate ogni speranza—he snapped his finger and thumb to summon memory as if it ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in your joys. Work—yes, I can work, but why should I strive and toil? For myself? Bah—I'm sick of it all. To live alone, as I do, is not worth the effort it costs. Sometimes I think I'd just as soon blow out my brains as not. What's the use of straining every nerve and sweating blood to make a success in life if there's no one to share success with ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... thoroughly aroused, gave out a querulous note, thin and sustained. Jonah stooped to blow out the candle, and then, with a sudden curiosity, walked over ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... "how is it possible that you can act so strangely? Is the daylight not good enough that you must shut yourself up here? Take your books and go downstairs immediately, and blow out the lamp and tell Sarah Emily to clean it again. Really, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the performers produced two swords twenty-six inches long, and pushed them down their throats to the hilt, and then asked Dr. Hawkes to feel the point in their stomachs. Another put a stone in his mouth, and then began to blow out smoke and a cloud of sparks from his nose as well as his mouth. Turning a somerset, he cast the stone on the floor. One took an iron hoop from a pile of them, and set it to spinning on a pole in the air. He continued to add ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... nothing. Walked on still a little while; then ordered, 'Blow out the lanterns; to horseback now!' and mounted, as we all did. Me he bade keep five steps ahead, five and not more, that he might see me; for it was very dark. Not far from the Lordship Casserey, where there is a Water-mill, the King asked ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... grease in the South, and the difficulty of supplying the railroads with lubricants. Apparently there had been no oil on the Atlantic & Gulf since the beginning of the war, and the screeches of the dry axles revolving in the worn-out boxes were agonizing. Some thing would break on the cars or blow out on the engine every few miles, necessitating a long stop for repairs. Then there was no supply of fuel along the line. When the engine ran out of wood it would halt, and a couple of negros riding on the tender would assail a panel of fence or a fallen tree with their axes, and after ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between Francois I and Charles V. This ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... jammed when only half down. It transpired afterwards that a gasket which had been blown over the yard had fouled the block of the sheet of the main upper topsail. The topgallant yard was all tilted to starboard and swaying from side to side, the sail seemed as though it might blow out at any moment, and was making a noise like big guns, and the mast was ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... While engaged in the Hotel de Ville in signing death-sentences which were to furnish fresh victims to the guillotine, he was arrested by the Jacobins and National Guards, who had stormed the gates and penetrated into the building, and the attempt to blow out his brains with his pistol miscarried. Bleeding, his jaw shattered by the bullet, he was dragged before Fouquier-Tainville to receive his sentence, and to be conducted thence to the scaffold. In order that the ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... then I blow out your brains, pull out the plug in this boat, and we'll all go to hell together," said Morgan ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... fellow! The game's up! You precious blackguard! M. Morisseau, will you give orders to the sergeant not to let him out of his sight and to blow out his brains if he tries to get away? Sergeant, we rely on you! Put a ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... you are wrong, Jenny, and he is right—there were two; and, what is more, Tom Yates had got the other, threatening to blow out his brains if he moved, so down he sat on the dresser and took it quite easy and whistled a tune while we trussed the other beggar with his own bludgeon and our chokers. Tom Yates says the cool one tumbled down from upstairs just as we drove our one ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh precipitated through "a shivered Universe" in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... cheeks or singing 'La Bella Frances-china,' [2] he could bring the Duke to make that purchase, then he gained the good grace of the Duchess, and to boot his own commission, which rose to some hundreds of crowns. Consequently he did blow out his chaps. The Duke smacked them with several hearty boxes, and, in order to get rid of him, struck rather harder than his wont was. The sound blows upon his cheeks not only reddened them above their natural purple, but also brought tears into his eyes. All the same, while smarting, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Timmy draw a deep breath and—without puffing out his cheeks as a child would do—neatly blow out the eleven candles on his cake. It was an efficient, sprayless, perfectly-controlled operation, an operation carried out happily and in high spirits, and it depressed Phil. The "party" itself depressed him—a child's birthday party with no children present, unless you counted Timmy! Phil and ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... the drill is worked—yes, Miss," the brakeman said. "They bore down through the sand and rock until they think they're close to the oil. Then they blow out what rock and earth remains, with nitro-glycerine. The well may be a 'spouter,' or they may have to pump. Can't tell until after they fire the shot. I guess she's going off!" he added quickly. "Look at ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... like smoke in the buffeting wind. His fingers blow out like smoke, his head ripples in the gale. Under the sign-post, in the pouring rain, he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. It flickers among the trees. He licks out and winds about them. Over, under, blown, contorted. ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... the tank is too cold to flow into the burner readily, it must be heated. Open the front damper and put on the blower strong enough to create the necessary draft, open the atomizer valve long enough to blow out any water that might be in the steam pipe to the burner, then close the valve and throw a piece of burning waste in front of the burner and open the atomizer valve enough to carry oil to the burning waste and open the regulating valve ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... the room Wonder was sleeping peacefully again, but at the chill hour when watchers blow out the night-lights, and a dreary greyness comes like a fog through the curtains, Antony and Beatrice fell into each other's arms in anguish, for Wonder ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... concealed his feelings, was exceedingly annoyed, had to blow out a way with powder in order to enter Leopold Harbor; he reached it at midday, on Sunday, May 27th; the brig was securely anchored to the large icebergs, which were as firm, solid, ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... "I'll allow five minutes," said he, "for decision. If at the end of that time you refuse, I will blow out your brains with my ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... neither to-day, unless she find more wind. I do not understand why the man has sailed with no more air than will serve to blow out a pocket-handkerchief." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... vol. ii., o. 23.] I am sad, sad in my inmost soul, and it seems to me as if this instant were to overshadow my whole life; as if the shades of night had fallen upon me, and—what is that? Did you blow out the light, Campan?" ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach |
