"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-being of the community, the nation, the society, and to the life and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or emperor, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted, or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or poor, trained to find the centre ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... yawned. "It depends on your funny bone. Mine's got blunted. I'm the lady that the Irish comedy guy slaps in the face with a bunch of lettuce. Say, there's something about you that makes a person get gabby and tell things. You'd make a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... the most unfortunate that could have happened; the gentleness of Delvile was alone sufficient to melt her, since her pride had no subsistence when not fed by his own; and while his mildness had blunted her displeasure, his anguish had penetrated her heart. Lost in thought and in sadness, she continued fixed to her seat; and looking at the door through which he had passed, as if, with himself, he had shut out all for ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... heart of the matter before him brought him a certain relief. Perhaps, in spite of his cold realizations and the death of all illusion as to Karen's love for him, they could really, now, come to an understanding, an accepted compromise. His heart ached and would go on aching until time had blunted its hurts, and a compromise was all he had to hope for. He had nothing to expect from Karen but acceptance of fact and faithful domesticity. But, after all the uncertainties and turmoils, this bitter peace had its balms. He took ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... at large. If, for instance, a corrupt state of politics have lowered the standard of public virtue, and have widely introduced into society the unblushing avowal of self-seeking motives, which in better times would be everywhere reprobated, the edge of principle is likely to become somewhat blunted even where it might be least expected. In the last century unworthy acts were sometimes done by men who were universally held in high honour and esteem, which would most certainly not have been thought of by those ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... marriage, from constant association with good, little Connie who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... 'never did the full realization of what I am, come so plainly before me, as when this villian so cooly told me of his plans. I drove him from my presence as I would a dog.' This shows that Molly's race pride is not entirely blunted by dissipation and unholy living. I counsel you all ere you depart, to remember that we are at the mercy of the whites, and each one of us should do all in our power to show our men the wisdom of coolness. By this, with God's help, we may be able to avert the evil threatened. I declare the Union ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... continued its relentless fury. The survivors say it was the coldest night they ever experienced. There is a limit to human endurance. The man was getting stone-blind. Had he attempted to speak, his tongue would have cloven to the roof of his mouth. His senses were chilled, blunted, dead. Sleep had stilled the plaintive cries of those about him. All was silent save the storm. Without knowing it, this heroic man was yielding to a sleep more powerful than that which had overcome his companions. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... was the first real pleasure I enjoyed in my life. Had it not been for M. Baffo, this circumstance might have been enough to degrade my understanding; the weakness of credulity would have become part of my mind. The ignorance of the two others would certainly have blunted in me the edge of a faculty which, perhaps, has not carried me very far in my after life, but to which alone I feel that I am indebted for every particle of happiness I enjoy when I look ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... proceeds from the Lord as a sun. Since, then, the will's love, without the light of the understanding, sees nothing and is blind, it follows that without the light of the understanding even the bodily senses would be blind and blunted, not only sight and hearing, but the other senses also, - the other senses, because all perception of truth is a property of love in the understanding (as was shown above), and all the bodily senses derive their perception from their mind's ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... usually recognized by observation and by the individual himself. It is very difficult and takes a long time to deceive ourselves with regard to the upward or downward trend of our own life, till we have blunted by misuse and degraded all the finer faculties, capacities, and powers of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... all on fire; and some, with studious care, Their restiff steeds in sandy plains prepare; Some their soft limbs in painful marches try, And war is all their wish, and arms the gen'ral cry. Part scour the rusty shields with seam; and part New grind the blunted ax, and point the dart: With joy they view the waving ensigns fly, And hear the trumpet's clangor pierce the sky. Five cities forge their arms: th' Atinian pow'rs, Antemnae, Tibur with her lofty tow'rs, Ardea ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... over Walter Hine. She had knowledge of the under side of life—yes, but her father had a greater knowledge still. He had used his greater knowledge. Craftily and with a most ingenious subtlety he had destroyed her power, he had blunted her weapons. Hine was attracted by Sylvia, fascinated by her charm, her looks, and the gentle simplicity of her manner. Very well. On the other side Garratt Skinner had held out a lure of greater attractions, greater fascination; and Sylvia ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Throat, which has three long and straight feathers proceeding from each side of the head. These birds are considered the best, but they are all arrayed in brilliant colors, and all superbly magnificent. They are caught chiefly in the Aroo Isles, either by means of bird-lime, or shot with blunted arrows. After being dried with smoke and sulphur, they are sold for nuts or pieces of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... was no easy matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen, Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in, produced an irresoluteness ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Rodolphe, "and truce to your railleries. They will be blunted against the buckler of invulnerable resolution in which I am from this ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... of the camp, and the recent events, as well as the absence of his daughters. The latter gave him no concern, for he relied greatly on the sagacity of the elder, and the known impunity with which the younger passed among the savages. Long familiarity with danger, too, had blunted his sensibilities. Nor did he seem much to regret the captivity of Deerslayer, for, while he knew how material his aid might be in a defence, the difference in their views on the morality of the woods, had not left much sympathy between them. He would have rejoiced to know the position of the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... wasting famine had made lean and spare, Devours and rends, and swallows, and lays dead The feeble flock, which at his mercy are; So, in their sleep, the cruel paynim bled Our host, and made wide slaughter everywhere: Nor blunted was the young Medoro's sword, But he disdained to smite ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... above all, to the amazing goodness of our Heavenly Father. Looking my long pastorate squarely in the face, I think I can honestly say that I have been no man's man; I have never courted the rich, nor wilfully neglected the poor; I have never blunted the sword of the Spirit lest it should cut your consciences, or concealed a truth that might save a soul. In no large church is there a perfect unanimity of tastes as to preaching. I do not doubt that there are some of you that are quite ready for the experiment of a new ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... was aware that he did not like himself. He was self-repelled, as though he had undergone some degradation or was intrinsically foul. All that was god-like in him was blotted out. The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality with which to feel the prod of it. He was dead. His soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. He saw no beauty in the sunshine sifting down through the green leaves, nor did the azure vault of the sky whisper as of old and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... as an especial people—how He loved and favoured them: as long as they were faithful and obedient He never deserted them. They conquered hosts ten times their numbers—they were victorious against armed warriors, and mighty giants. The Lord blinded their enemies so that they saw not; He blunted their weapons; He paralyzed their courage; chariots and horses did not avail them; nor strong walls, nor mighty men of battle. The Lord loved the Israelites, and as long as they were faithful and obedient, they prevailed ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... with the same mental clearness, that he had ceased to love her. But at the instant with this vision before her, she told herself that the discovery made no difference—that it no longer mattered whether he loved or hated her. Afterward, when he had gone, her perceptions would be blunted again and she would suffer, she knew; but now, while she stood there face to face with him, she could not feel that he bore any ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... blunted her chisel in polishing this statue, which, by its majesty, its haughty disdain, its look of hopeless anguish, shadowed by the frowning of the pure brows and by the long loose locks shivering with electric life, reminds ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the name of "Con" Parker, the Con standing for concrete. He had been in the cement business before taking to the turf, and there were those who hinted that he still carried a massive sample of the old line above his shoulders. When cross-examined about the grey horse, he blunted every sharp inquiry with polite evasions, but he looked wiser than any human could possibly be, and the impression prevailed that he knew more than he would tell. Perhaps this ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... they had gone to seek. The contrast between the plain dealing of the North and the refined Machiavellism of the South, between Protestant earnestness in religion and Popish scepticism, between the homely virtues of England and the courtly libertinism of Venice or Florence, blunted the moral sense, while it stimulated the intellectual activity of the English travellers, and too often communicated a fatal shock to their principles. Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato passed into a proverb: we find it on the lips of Parker, of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... abominable, discussed with shouts of laughter. Those matters which until now he had regarded with an almost sacred veneration were subjects for immense jokes. A few years ago he would have been horrified at it all, but the fine quality of this first sensitiveness had been blunted since his experience at college. He tolerated these things in his ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... sins, and then calmly resigned myself to death, which I now believed to be inevitable. For a time, which I afterwards found to be only five minutes, but which then seemed to me like hours, I hung motionless. The pain had ceased, for the intense cold blunted my sense of feeling. A numbness, stole over me, and I seemed to be falling into a trance, from which I was roused by a sound of bells borne to me as if from a great distance. Hope again awoke, and I ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... corrupt operators to retain possession of the road for an indefinite period in defiance of the stockholders. It is probable that the real character and fatal tendency of his associates had not been revealed to him. Nevertheless, ambition seems to have blunted a strong, alert mind. The appointment of Ingraham, Cardozo, and Barnard to the General Term of the Supreme Court within the city of New York, if further evidence were needed, revealed the Governor's subserviency. To avoid the Tweed judges as well as interruption to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... constitution exists, it is to be cured by the usual medicinal means which are employed to restore weakened organs. But the great difficulty in these attempts to cure inebriety is in satisfying the mind, and in whetting the blunted resolutions of the patient; and this is, doubtless, more easily accomplished by a gradual abstraction of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... of 'blasphemer' and 'hater of the Lord.' Of course, in these days these weapons though often effective in disturbing the ease of good men and though often powerful in scaring women, are somewhat blunted. Indeed, they do not infrequently injure assailants more than assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo. These weapons were then in all their sharpness and venom. The first champion who appears against him is Bellarmine, one of the greatest of theologians and one of the poorest ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... most frightful curses, and then, in the same breath shrieked for forgiveness and mercy. It was perfectly appalling; even his comrades—those who had shared with him in the dreadful deeds about which he raved—found the scene too trying for their hardened and blunted feelings; and such of them as had their hammocks slung in the same dormitory abandoned them and slept in the open air rather than remain to have their souls harrowed by his ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... age For baseness of the spirit scorns, Saint Priest, who every album's page With blunted pencil-point adorns. Another tribune of the ball Hung like a print against the wall, Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84) Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim. The traveller, bird of passage he, Stiff, overstarched and insolent, Awakens secret merriment By his embarrassed dignity— ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... slaves as were trained to these pursuits—men who would not have been so trained had they not possessed higher artistic perception and greater deftness in execution than their fellows—were wholly freed from the military burden which absorbed much of the leisure, and blunted much of the skill, possessed by their free-born rivals. The competition of slaves must have been still more cruel in the country districts and near the smaller country towns than in the capital itself. At Rome the limitations of space must have hindered the development ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... title, found for it by some inspired journalist, of the Smart Set. There, where life forever bubbles a cheap and exceedingly dry champagne of a very doubtful exhilaration, he did now and again find a poor respite from regret till time blunted the edge of his sorrows. And when his sorrow was no longer acute, he had formed a reckless and extravagant habit of life from which, even when the reason for it had passed, he never sought to free himself: indeed, it never occurred to him ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Prophet, his tiger Cain, his lion Judas, and his black panther Death, had sometimes attempted, in a moment of rebellion, to try their fangs and claws on his person; but, thanks to the armor concealed beneath his pelisse, they blunted their claws upon a skin of steel, and notched their fangs upon arms or legs of iron, whilst a slight touch of their master's metallic wand left a deep furrow ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... injured those high principles which all the Esmonds are known to be born with; that Mr. Will's words were not altogether to be trusted; that a loose life and pecuniary difficulties had made him mercenary, blunted his honour, perhaps even impaired the high chivalrous courage "which we Esmonds, cousin," the little lady said, tossing her head, "which we Esmonds must always possess—leastways, you and me, and my ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Good Hope to Dr. Andrew Smith, he told me that he recollected finding on the south-eastern coast of Africa, about one hundred miles to the eastward of St. John's river, some quartz crystals with their edges blunted from attrition, and mixed with gravel on the sea-beach. Each crystal was about five lines in diameter, and from an inch to an inch and a half in length. Many of them had a small canal extending from one extremity to the other, perfectly cylindrical, and of a size that readily admitted ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely a word was spoken—heads down, hands and ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... champagne, thinking this would forward his purpose. The wine made her rosy and pretty, and it also made her forget her poses and affectations. She was more charming to him than ever before, partly because of the change in her, and partly because his own critical faculties were blunted by alcohol. He was almost in love with her and he felt sure that he was about to win her. But presently she began wheedling him in the old vein. She wanted him to take her to the ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable Loving only the persons who flattered him Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism Made peace—and had been at war ever since Magnificent hopefulness Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom Man had no rights at all He ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cause. When a person of some mental capacity is confined for a long time to an unvarying round of employment which affords neither scope nor stimulus for one half of the faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources; the mental powers, for want of exercise, become blunted, and the perceptions slow and dull." "The intellect and feelings, not being provided with interests external to themselves, must either become inactive and weak, or work upon themselves and ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a few reluctant plough-boys, and the vile little school children row upon row. "Ugh! what a hole," thought Mrs. Failing, whose Christianity was the type best described as "cathedral." "What a hole for a cultured woman! I don't think it has blunted my sensations, though; I still see its squalor as clearly as ever. And my nephew pretends he is worshipping. Pah! the hypocrite." Above her the vicar spoke of the danger of hurrying from one dissipation ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... knight the buckles rich among, Wherewith his precious girdle fastened was, It bruised them and pierced his hauberk strong, Some little blood down trickled on the grass; Light was the wound; the angel by unseen, The sharp head blunted ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... avert a crisis which could only be postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of sheep two or more years old is known as wether. The ends of the fiber from such sheep are thick and blunted, on account of having been previously cut. It is necessary to be able to tell at once a hog fleece from a wether, and this can be done in two ways: by examining the ends of the fiber to see if they are pointed; or ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany—much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of Berkeley, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... earnestly for a day or two, and making extracts for his book, he would ask himself, "Why take all this trouble? Who is going to be made wiser or happier by this rigmarole?" and his pleasure in the work was gone again for days. The consciousness of exile, instead of being blunted by time, weighed ever more heavily upon him. He never realized till now what an absolute necessity it was to his nature to lean upon a kindred spirit, for he had never before been without one. Since the death of his father he had first ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... hardships he learned to write. The boy's wits, sharpened instead of blunted by repression, saw opportunities where more favored children could see none. He gave himself his first writing lesson in his master's shipyard, by copying from the various pieces of timber the letters with which they had been marked by the carpenters, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Lyonesse had been less talked about than his brothers, it was only because his long residence abroad had blunted the edge of calumny. For in his case the women were French or Austrians, and it seemed quite natural that ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... intenseness of his industry and the extent of his capacity. He was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction. He continued to the end of his life a teacher of a congregation, and no reader of his works can doubt his ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would—Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cast an oblique glance which resembled denunciation, at his companion. To his blunted faculties, and superstitious mind, there was profanity in thus invoking the tempest, at a moment when the winds seemed already to be pouring out their ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... and politics; he became a practised writer and made a good figure at debating clubs; he became so intent on the solution of complex social problems as to acquire a distaste for general society; his mental concentration blunted his sensibility to the physical passions that so ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Mr. Griffin's proposal that I should edit such a Cyclopaedia, I had it in my mind that I might make the scissors eminently effective. Alas! on narrowly examining our best Cyclopaedias, I found that the scissors had become blunted through too frequent and vigorous use. One great exception exists: viz., the Penny Cyclopaedia of Charles Knight.[470] The cheapest and the least pretending, it is really the most philosophical of our ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... line above; head as wide as the thorax, with a blunted projection in front between the antennae, which are very long and situated in a groove in front of the eyes, and have their basal joint very large. No ocelli visible. Thorax wider than long, somewhat narrower in front than behind. Hemelytra very transparent, longer than the abdomen, lying flat upon ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Donovan a midshipman of the Sirius, who ventured off to the ship in one of the island boats through a very dangerous surf, and brought on shore the end of the hawser, to which was slung the grating that saved the lives of the officers and people. They likewise somewhat blunted the edge of this calamity, by assurances that it was highly probable, from the favourable appearance of the weather when the Supply left Norfolk Island, that all or at least the greatest part of the provisions would ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... in towns has probably a greater effect than we are apt to realize in deadening the imagination, and it certainly seems to produce a certain insensibility to beauty of line and composition, since the perception must necessarily be blunted by being inured to the commonplace and sordid. The instinct for harmony of line and form becomes weakened, and can only be slowly revived by long and careful study in art, instead of finding its constant and most vital stimulus ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... Allied armies gained a brilliant victory that marks the turning point of the war. You did more than to give the Allies the support to which, as a nation, our faith was pledged. You proved that our altruism, our pacific spirit, and our sense of justice have not blunted ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... while the poignancy of his emotions became blunted by familiarity, and mere weariness forced him to accept himself on a reduced level. A sort of new equilibrium was established within him, but it was primarily based on indifference. Nothing really mattered. Effort was useless. Things merely happened. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... a certain boredom in these monotonously voluptuous days. His senses were becoming blunted with so many indulgences mechanically repeated. Besides, a monstrous debilitation was making him think in self-defense of the tranquil life of the hearth. He timidly began calculating the time of his seclusion. How long had he been living ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... spear from his hand; but almost before it could drop, he had recovered it. And in that flashing instant Denny had darted in at the side of the thing and half disembowelled it with a thrust of the acid-blunted point of his three-foot bar, and a lightninglike wrench up ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... is an oblong box, with a lid, about twelve feet in length. The lid, when thrown back, forms a chopping-table; and it is covered with bits of whale's tail from end to end, which, being elastic, though hard, prevents the knives being blunted. In the middle of the trough is a square hole, which is placed over the hatchway; and to the hole is attached a hose or pipe of canvas, leading into the hold, and movable, so as to be placed over the bungs of each cask. A pair of nippers embrace it, so ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Pliny—the list of dangers apprehended from menstruation is longer than any furnished by mere barbarians. According to Pliny, the touch of a menstruous woman turned wine to vinegar, blighted crops, killed seedlings, blasted gardens, brought down the fruit from trees, dimmed mirrors, blunted razors, rusted iron and brass (especially at the waning of the moon), killed bees, or at least drove them from their hives, caused mares to miscarry, and so forth.[244] Similarly, in various parts of Europe, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... highest price was allowed that could be ascribed to the domestic animal at any moment of the year preceding his death; a similar latitude of thirty days was granted on the destruction of any other valuable effects. A personal injury is blunted or sharpened by the manners of the times and the sensibility of the individual: the pain or the disgrace of a word or blow cannot easily be appreciated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... into the range of the Maccabee's vision. The next instant he had thrown away his sword and had caught her in a crushing embrace to him. His voice, blunted and repressed as if something had him by the throat, was stunning ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... they realized their position. The last stages of starvation had blunted their sensibilities, thrown a veil over ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... exhausted debauchee. He cannot afford to confess himself beaten with the idealist who has discovered that Rome was not built in a day, nor revolutions made with rose-water. He has to work as long as he has strength; to work in spite of, even by strength of, sorrow, disappointment, wounded vanity, and blunted sensibilities; and therefore he must search for some profounder solution for the dark ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... their first fruits, and lay the offering of their childhood unsullied by unholy communion with the world at the Master's feet. Let them come with their cherry lips, and sparkling eyes, and loving hearts. Let them come before age has curdled their blood, and the pleasures of life have blunted the keenness of their susceptibilities. Let them come, let them come. The Saviour welcomes their approach. The fragrance of the sacrifice they bring is precious in his sight, and while he folds the little ones in his arms, he lifts his eyes to heaven, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, in her ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... along Piccadilly is a most exhilarating and delightful treat. I don't enjoy it above once in ten days, but therefore with double zest." What told on him most was the physical depression induced by the very look of these vast, monotonous masses of sheer poverty. "My wits are getting blunted," he says, "by the monotony and ugliness of this place. I can almost imagine, difficult as it is, the awful effect upon a human mind of never seeing anything but the meanest and vilest of men and men's works, and of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... up the ground in search of marmots, burrowing squirrels, and various esculent roots; and this habit accounts for the blunted condition of his claws. They are sharp enough, notwithstanding, to peel the hide from a horse or buffalo, or to drag the scalp from a hunter—a feat which has been performed by grizzly bears on ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... outside Independence had evidently blunted his perceptions. The small waist, a round, bare throat rising from a narrow band of lace, and a flat, yellow straw hat were the young woman's only points of resemblance to the beauty-book heroines. She was not in the least beautiful, only ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... thousand come by sea. . . . The crop is more abundant than the harvest; the tree puts forth more branches than the axe can lop off. It is true that great numbers have already perished, insomuch that the edge of our swords is blunted; but our comrades are beginning to grow weary of so long a war. Haste we, therefore, to implore the help of the Lord." Nor needed he the excuse of passion in order to be cruel and sanguinary when he considered it would ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of slander were blunted by the fact that about May 1900 the Transvaal Government, wishing to allay the fears of the women in the farms, published an announcement in the 'Volksstem' advising every burgher to leave his family upon the ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent. On our walking into the midst of one of these dreary perspectives ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... their governments, are asked to assist poor nations by making an apportionment of goods and credit which the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. The edge of this issue should not be blunted. If the people and government of America were only concerned to let their individual citizens extort the highest prices they could get for their surplus in the best markets, they would let Central and Eastern Europe starve. ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... fraud played a large part in the restoration of white control, but it could not have been effective without some connivance from the North. Before 1872 the keenness of Northern radicalism was blunted. Thoughtful Republicans began to examine their work and criticize it. "We can never reconstruct the South," wrote Lowell, "except through its own leading men, nor ever hope to have them on our side till ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... joyful faces; but the appearance of a stranger blunted many a gibe which had been prepared on Hobbie's lack of success in the deer-stalking. There was a little bustle among three handsome young women, each endeavouring to devolve upon another the task of ushering the stranger into the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... a feeling should have budded and blossomed in Mlle. Cesarine's soul, withered as it was by vanity, and blunted by pleasure was almost a miracle. It was, at any rate, an astonishing proof of love which she gave; and Marius de Tregars would not have been a man, if he had not been deeply ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... games—like their own pampered children, to be sheltered in the nurseries of wealth their whole lives through. And not at all in bitterness, but wholly in sadness, a sense of the injustice, the unfairness of it all—a sense that had been strong in me in my youth but blunted during the years of my busy prosperity—returned for a moment. For a moment only; my mind was soon back to realities—to her and me—to "us." How soon it ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... frown sublime, Mocking the blunted scythe of Time, Whence I would watch its lustre pale 100 Steal from the moon o'er yonder vale Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast, Bared to the stream's unceasing flow, Ever its giant shade doth cast On the tumultuous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... him when he came in. He heard her say timidly in her foreign voice: "Thank you, sir!" the policeman's retreating steps, the outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he could not see her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak the truth! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had blunted his razor"; "He had his servant shaved"; "He killed his companion with an axe"; "Let us send ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... about to round off his ultimatum with a spurt of tobacco-juice aimed at a passing cat, when he checked himself hastily at sight of a woman. What became of the tobacco-juice was a mystery or a conjuring trick, but the cat's somewhat blunted sensibilities, and the ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and I asked him. He answered me clearly that Monseigneur was no more. Thus answered, I tried not to be glad. I know not if I succeeded well, but at least it is certain, that neither joy nor sorrow blunted my curiosity, and that while taking due care to preserve all decorum, I did not consider myself in any way forced to play the doleful. I no longer feared any fresh attack from the citadel of Meudon, nor any cruel charges from its implacable garrison. I felt, therefore, under no constraint, and followed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... be inferred from this that our hero's character had grown so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher had no great sum been required, or had he not been called ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "I mustn't speak about it," he said. "Silence helps me to bear my misfortune as becomes a man. I have had some hard blows in my time: they don't seem to have blunted my sense of feeling as I thought they had. Thank God, she doesn't know how she has made me suffer! I want to ask her pardon for having forgotten myself yesterday. I spoke roughly to her, at one time. No: I won't intrude on her; ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... Easter Eve we sallied up-stream again, snow falling and driving heavily, and the wind still strong but with yesterday's keen edge blunted. By the time we had beaten around the long bend up which we had fought our way the day before, the snow had ceased, and by noon the wind had dropped and the sun was shining, and in a few moments of his unobscured strength all the loose snow on the sled was melted—a warning of the rapidity with ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... whole tank of it stands on a table covered with a cloth; and lemons like blunted fishes blob in the yellow water. It looks solid, like a jelly, in the thick glasses. Why can't they drink it without spilling it? Everybody spills it, and before the glass is handed back the last drops are thrown in ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... hasty words of the Superintendent, reflecting on the remissness of the soldiers on duty, had been the proximate cause of the slaughter, I do believe that the death-warrant was unwittingly spoken. The man's bearing and demeanor are rough, even to coarseness, and his sensibilities probably blunted from having perpetually to listen to complaints and tales of wrong-doing, which he must perforce ignore; but I do not think his nature is harsh or cruel; the bark of Cerberus is much worse than the bite; ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... bat swoops past so quickly that the eyes refuse to see any single effort—but the grasshopper has vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I tried the experiment of a bit of blunted bent wire on a long piece of thread, and at the very first cast I entangled a flutter-mouse and pulled him in. I was aghast when I saw what I had captured. A body hardly as large as that of a mouse was topped ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... roads, the guests were numerous and their entertainment costly. We are reminded, however, by the Observances of Barnwell Priory that "by showing hospitality to guests the reputation of the monastery is increased, friendships are multiplied, animosities are blunted, God is honoured, charity is increased, and a plenteous reward in heaven is promised." It was enjoined that the hosteller, or brother in charge of the hospitium, should have "facility of expression, elegant manners, and a respectable bringing up; and if he have no substance to bestow he may ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... were the epistles she received from time to time, and though frequency blunted something of their sting, and their injustice gave her a support against their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a spirit of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none of these letters to her father. He, indeed, only asked if Dick were well, or if he were soon going up for that ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... It had blunted the force of the impact but little, however, and chaos reigned upon the shattered deck. Mike found that both Nicko and Doree were unconscious but that the H'Lorkan tribesman was shaking his ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... asleep, she deliberately pounded in her skull and breast-bone, and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It did produce a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant was issued for her arrest, but, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served. Thus did Mrs. Hicks not only escape condign ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Givens seldom had sight of her, and set it down to pride and contempt of her husband's origin. (He had been a weaver's son from Falkirk, who either had won his way to the Marischal College of Aberdeen by strength of will and in defiance of natural dullness, or else had started with wits but blunted them in carving his way thither.) She rarely set foot beyond the manse garden, the most of her time being spent in a roomy garret under the slates, where she spun a fine yarn and worked it into thread of the kind ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... word or so, but there was amongst them an obvious haste to get away, of which Persimmon Sneed was cognizant, albeit his head was swimming, his breath short, his eyes dazzled by the fire which he feared. His understanding, however, was blunted in some sort, it seemed to him, for he could make no sense of Nick Peters's observation as he took him by the arm, although afterward it became ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... bed; then he buried his face in the coverlet—and he actually groaned. In bitterness of spirit the woman turned away and wept. Her feelings had been blunted by misfortune and the collisions of a selfish world; but enough of former self remained to make this the hardest of all the blows she had ever received. Her husband, dying as he was, as he must and did know himself to be, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... career to the ordinary customs of his easy-going age, he would have presented no problem to the scientific mind. After consuming the fuel of the passions, he might have subsided into common calm, or have blunted the edge of inspiration, or have finished in some phase of madness or ascetical repentance. Such are the common categories of extinct volcanic temperaments. But the essential point about Michelangelo is that he never burned out, and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... pages. That officer took him down to the courtyard, where four young knights were engaged in superintending the military exercises of the pages. The scene was exactly the same as that to which Gervaise had been accustomed at the House in London. Some of the lads were fighting with blunted swords, others were swinging heavy bars of iron, climbing ropes, or vaulting on to the back of a wooden horse. All paused as the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... have heard the coming avowal in his tones, might have discovered it in his eyes. As it was, her delicate insight was dulled, her fine perception was blunted. She held out her hand to him, feeling a vague conviction that he was kinder to her than ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... syllables to him and that he recorded them. But the traditions of the Jews are not, in other matters, highly regarded by Christians. Our Lord himself speaks more than once in stern censure of these traditions by which, as he charges, their moral sense was blunted and the law of God was made of none effect. Many of these old tales of theirs were extremely childish. One tradition ascribes, as we have seen, to Moses the authorship of the whole Pentateuch; another declares that when, during an invasion of the Chaldeans, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Miss Goldthwaite termed it. Keziah had been dismissed also, and Lucy's burden was sometimes more than she could bear. Miss Hepsy refused to see what others saw—that the girl was overwrought; and her feelings had been blunted so long, that only a very sharp shock would bring them into use again. And the time had not come yet. For more highly favoured young folks than Tom and Lucy Hurst, these frosty days brought innumerable enjoyments in their train—skating and sleighing by daylight and moonlight, evening parties, and ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... loved, went like one in a dream. He hired a horse and a guide at the little hostelry, and rode swiftly towards the German frontier. But all was mechanical; his senses felt blunted; trees and houses and men moved by him like objects seen through a veil. His companions spoke to him twice, but he did not answer. Only once he cried out savagely, "Shall we never be out of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... camp, I was astonished at the order and regularity which prevailed among these barbarians. Some were exercising their horses in the mimic representation of a battle; part fled with incredible speed, while the rest pursued, and darted blunted javelins at their antagonists. Yet even those who fled would frequently turn upon their pursuers and make them repent their rashness. Some, while their horses were running in full speed, would vault from off their backs to others that accompanied them; some would gallop by a mark erected ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... captains have departed. The weary clerk has put up the last shutter; empty stools and blunted quills abandoned. Only the ledgers remain, free of blot and blemish to attest the skill and ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... no question! The old woman herself shared in the wild merriment of the little ones! I have always wondered 15 at the ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness. Accustomed to live in the present, they use every pleasure as soon as it offers itself. But the rich, blunted by luxury, gain happiness less easily. They must have all things in harmony before they ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such as these:—"This voice of duty—whence comes it? and what would it have? May not conscience be a prejudice, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Revolution. Their beneficial effects were more visible now—sustained and bound together as the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness of its daily developing strength—than at a later day when prosperity and luxury had blunted the fine ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... intelligence was hailed with a delight of which natures coarse or blunted never know. The Wise Men of old worshipped the Babe in the manger, and sadly defective or perverted in their organizations are those who do not see something divine in ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... his hands. If he had hoped to restore his self-respect by the simple expedient of assailing Flamel's, the result had not justified his expectation. The blow he had struck had blunted the edge of his anger, and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted did not alter the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. He saw now that his rage against Flamel was only the last projection of a passionate self-disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike of ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the neck of the arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and flanked by towers; but Sidney Smith, having command of the sea, could ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... unable to see what will take place, and regard themselves as safe, whatever happens." The Irish Quakers have issued a manifesto which should weigh with their English brethren and with the country at large. The Quakers know their way about. Their piety has not blunted their perceptive faculties, has not taken the edge off their keenness. Their reputation for shrewdness is equal to their reputation for integrity, which is saying a good deal. With them the innocence of the dove is happily combined with considerable wisdom of the serpent. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... they occupied a little mound in a sea of enemies, and there each man fought till he died, stabbing with his dagger when his sword was broken, and biting, and striking with the fist, when the dagger-point was blunted. Among them all, none made a better end than Eurytus. He was suffering from a disease of the eyes, but he bade them arm him, and lead him into the thick of the battle. Of another, Dieneces, it is told that hearing the arrows of the Persians would darken the sun, he answered, 'Good news! ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... unsuspecting goblin finds his progress retarded by his scythe coming into contact with these obstacles, which he takes to be some very hard—very hard—species of dock. "Mortal hard docks, these," said he; "Nation hard docks!" His blunted scythe soon brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... his children ragged, and squalid, and ignorant. He is the tenant of some little cabin that poverty has erected to house him from the storm and the tempest. He is useless, and worse than useless: he is a pest to all around him. All the feelings of his nature are blunted; he has lost all shame; he procures his accustomed supply of the poison that consumes him; he staggers through mud and through filth to his hut; he meets a weeping wife and starving children; he abuses them, he tumbles into his straw, and he ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Bible was by my side, and even the prison was mingling with other memories as I drifted from earth and all its thorns and tears. All was blunted but the Christian's faith and trust in ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... though sorrow lengthen out her night Of widowhood, yet with a cry of joy She hails the morning light that brings her mate Back to her side. The agony of parting Would wound us like a sword, but that its edge Is blunted by the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... fugitives, finding so few of their enemies close at their heels, stopped, and stood at bay. They had cause to repent their temerity. Three were brought to the ground by the edge of Ronald's cutlass, somewhat blunted as it was, while others, with severe wounds, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... made Eudena bring him the lion's teeth and claws—so much of them as she could find—and hack him a club of alder. And he put the teeth and claws very cunningly into the wood so that the points were outward. Very long it took him, and he blunted two of the teeth hammering them in, and was very angry and threw the thing away; but afterwards he dragged himself to where he had thrown it and finished it—a club of a new sort set with teeth. That day there was more meat for them both, an offering to the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... now answer your sarcasm. There is some excuse for ignorant seamen before the mast, who enter on board of privateers: they are indifferent to blood and carnage, and their feelings are blunted—there is some excuse even for decayed gentlemen like me, Mr. Trevannion (for I am a gentleman born), who, to obtain a maintenance without labour, risk their lives and shed their blood; but there is no excuse for those who, having already as much wealth and more than ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... mercy. His feelings were blunted by what he had already gone through, so the worst that might happen now did not worry him; for, when hope of relief entirely goes, what one has to face loses most ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... in confidence. Nothing is a surer mark of good breeding and careful "upbringing" (as the Scotch call it) than delicacy on those little points which are trusted to one's honour. But refinement in such matters is easily blunted if one lives much with people who think any little meanness fair that is not found out. I really saw no harm in trying to overhear all that I could of the conversation between my father and Mr. Andrewes, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at least to her mother's mind, when young Mrs. Harcourt returned, and without a word took up the reins again. No one disputed her claims. Now and then there would be a lazy protest from Audrey—a concealed sarcasm that fell blunted beneath the calm amiability of the elder sister. Geraldine was always perfectly good-tempered; the sense of propriety that guided all her actions never permitted her to grow hot in argument; and when a ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... first, with races on foot, on horseback, and in chariots; then followed a grand hunting of beasts turned loose in the arena; and next a sword dance. But after the sword dance came the arraying of swordsmen, with no blunted weapons, but with sharp spears and swords—a gladiator combat in full earnest. The people, enchanted, applauded with shouts of ecstasy this gratification of their savage tastes. Suddenly, however, there was an interruption. A rude, roughly robed man, bareheaded and barefooted, had sprung ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not in madness, but to escape humiliation. Suicide was one of the worst features of Pagan antiquity. It was a base and cowardly reluctance to meet the evils of life, as much as indifference to the future and a blunted moral sense. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... a right, have, even within my memory, blunted this open-heartedness, but none the less today, if you belong to the Inner Circle and are neither a Bear nor a Black Sheep, all houses are open to you, and our small world is very, very ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... The wits of our people have been blunted, their habits bestialized, their very climate and landscape ruined. The alert genius of the Greeks is clogged by a barbaric, leaden-hued religion—the fertile plains of Asia Minor and Spain converted into deserts! We begin, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... oak that soars on high, And scorns the whirlwind's breath Behold thy Poet's youth defy The blunted dart of Death! His gaze as ardent as the light That shoots athwart the heaven, His soul yet fiercer than the light In the eternal heaven, Of Him, in whom as in an ocean-surge Creation ebbs and flows—and worlds arise and merge! Through Nature steers ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... February, and it is to be presumed that, like other dogs, he is a jealous lover. A crow had alighted and examined the blood-stains, and now, if he will look a little farther along, upon a flat rock he will find the flesh he was looking for. Our hound's nose was so blunted now, speaking without metaphor, that he would not look at another trail, but hurried home to rest upon ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... do anything for you?" said the innocent lamb, offering his throat to the butcher. But some unwonted feeling numbed the butcher's fingers, and blunted his knife. He sat still for half a minute after the question, and then jumping from his seat, declined the offer. "No, no; nothing, thank you. Only write to Mark, and say that I shall be there to-morrow," ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... not mean that my larger sympathies are blunted. By going to certain places, looking upon certain scenes, I could most effectually destroy all the calm that life has brought me. If I hold apart and purposely refuse to look that way, it is because I believe that the world is better, not worse, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... was not an amiable man, his training as buccaneer and slaver having possibly blunted his finer feelings, and his consciousness of present treachery probably increasing the irritability often ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... home from the young men's association which he attended so often, his head fuller of champagne and brandy than it was of sense, and every good feeling blunted with dissipation. But the Nettie whose pale face had been to him so constant a reproach was gone forever, and only the lifeless form was left of what he once called his wife. She was buried in Mount Auburn, and they made her a grander funeral than they had given to her first-born, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... infinite stores of time and torture to draw upon, failed to wean men from sins which gave them a passing gratification, even when faith was incomparably stronger than it is now, or is likely to be again. One reason, doubtless, is that the conscience is as much blunted by the doctrines of repentance and absolution as it is stimulated by the threats of hell-fire. But is it not contrary to all common-sense to expect that the motive will retain any vital strength when the very people who rely upon it admit that it rests on the most shadowy of grounds? The other ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Sunnyside oppressed with a homesick longing for Patrick. The two years which had elapsed since his death had blunted the edge of her sorrow—as time inevitably must—but she still missed the shrewd, kindly, worldly-wise old man unspeakably, and just now, thrown back upon herself in some indefinable way by Miles's attitude, her whole heart cried out for that ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... inquiries which might end in his being deprived of the pleasure. Lady Oxford, therefore, was not troubled that evening,—nor the next, nor indeed for a goodly number to follow. But within a week of his visit to the White Bear, when the sharp edge of his grandmother's words had been a little blunted by time, and the cares of other things had entered in, Aubrey again made his way to the lodgings occupied by Winter at the sign of the Duck, in the Strand, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to herself, "some day I shall laugh over this!" For the present, however, her sense of humour was strangely blunted, and the handkerchiefs were needed for a ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were passed in one perpetual, unceasing current of dissatisfaction and ill-temper with all around, that formed a heavy counterpoise to the fascinations of the young ladies. The repeated jiltings to which they had been subject had blunted any delicacy upon the score of their marriage; and if the newly-introduced cornet or ensign was not coming forward, as became him, at the end of the requisite number of days, he was sure of receiving a very palpable admonition from Mrs. Dalrymple. Hints, at first ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... The steel-blue of the sky bleached from the furnace-circle of the horizon;—the lukewarm river ran yellow and noiseless as a torrent of fluid wax. Even sounds seemed blunted by the heaviness of the air;—the rumbling of wheels, the reverberation of footsteps, fell half-toned upon the ear, like sounds ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... of danger, Ned was resting again in his own berth, and Jack was dining with the rest in the cabin as if nothing whatever had occurred; the yacht many miles now from the island, which stood in the evening light like a blunted cone of perfect regularity resting upon ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... order that they may be worn down by war and not have leisure to plot against thee. For now thou mightest display some great deed, while thou art still young; seeing that as the body grows the spirit grows old also with it, and is blunted for every kind of action." Thus she spoke according to instructions received, and he answered thus: "Woman, thou hast said all the things which I myself have in mind to do; for I have made the plan to yoke together a bridge ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... of these nodules there is a nucleus of whiter iron-earth surrounded by many concentric strata of darker and lighter iron-earth alternately. In one, which now lies before me, the nucleus is a prism of a triangular form with blunted angles, and about half an inch high, and an inch and half broad; on every side of this are concentric strata of similar iron-earth alternately browner and less brown; each stratum is about a tenth of an inch in thickness and there are ten of them in number. To what known cause ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... our moral insight is intensified or blunted by our habitual wishes or, indirectly, by our physical condition, the same may be said of our perception of the true relations of physical facts one to another. An eager wish for marriage has led many a man to exaggerate the powers of a limited income, and a fit of dyspepsia ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Basque chattered as he stood at the bows and poled me with a blunted oar across the river shallows. He told me proudly that he had the three languages, that he was all at home with French and Spanish and Basque. He was intelligent within due limits; he at anyrate knew how to extract francs from an Englishman. That generosity which consists in ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... of the divine passion in strong and tender natures. The calculating sensualist can never comprehend this swiftly exalted emotion, this immediate radiation of light through all life, which is like the sun breaking through clouds on a dark day. The sensualist has by self- indulgence, blunted the edge of feeling, and it is impossible for him to experience this delicate sensation of exquisite delight,— this marvellous assurance that here and now, face to face, stands the One for whom all time shall be merged into a Song of Love, and upon whom all ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... benevolence henceforth charge is continued as in the present conditions. Kogiku is still more reprehensible. The attempt to cheat her master being so brazenly confessed is hard to overlook. Owing to her previous life perhaps the feelings have become blunted. The same benevolence and punishment is awarded to her—with hope of future amendment." The master of the Uedaya, crouching close to his head clerk made a wry face. The two men exchanged glances, and the clerk opened a very big round eye for his master to observe. The latter sighed. Continued ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... herbivorous, some carnivorous; some bipedal, others quadrupedal; many of them protected by various kinds of bony armor-plates, or provided with horns or spines; some with sharp claws, others with blunted claws ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather, carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them! ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... now-a-days discourage the romantic turn a little too much. Our boys are prudent too soon. Mistake me not, I do not mean to blame them for want of levity or dissipation; but their pleasures are those of hackneyed vice, blunted to every finer emotion by the repetition of debauch; and their desire of pleasure is warped to the desire of wealth, as the means of procuring it. The immense riches acquired by individuals have erected a standard of ambition, destructive of private morals, and of public ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie |
