"Bungling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... food? His grace in both is equal in extent, The first affords us life, the second nourishment. And if he can, why all this frantic pain To construe what his clearest words contain, And make a riddle what he made so plain? 140 To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry. Both knave and fool the merchant we may call, To pay great sums, and to compound the small: For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all? Rest, then, my soul, from endless anguish freed: Nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed. Faith is the best insurer ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that he was bungling horribly, but he knew no other way of getting on in his attempt. He was terrified by the openness of his tactics. It seemed to him that any man must be able to perceive what he was driving at, but he desperately assured himself that after all Hubbard could ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the harshness of their creed felt all over the country. Never was nation in a more tractable humour; La France, like a tired woman, was ready to agree to anything; never was mismanagement so clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven wrongs more easily than bungling. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... charge a rather large insect. The awkward fledgeling let it fall three times; and still the parent picked it up again, only chirping mildly, as if to say, "Come, come, my beauty, don't be quite so bungling." But even in the midst of their family cares, they still found leisure for music; and as they and the black-throated greens were often singing together, I had excellent opportunities to compare the songs of the two species. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... community; and we have at last reached a point where to stand still is as ruinous as to go on—as we are going—to certain destruction and annihilation. Look at the finances, entirely destroyed by the bungling and injudicious course of the honorable Mr. Memminger, who has proceeded upon fallacies which the youngest tyro would disdain to refute. Look at the quartermaster's department,—the commissary department,—the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Cameron and swiftly threw a line over his shoulders and, drawing it tight, bound his arms to his side. Again and again he repeated this operation till Cameron stood swathed in the coils of the rope like a mummy, inwardly raging, not so much at his captor, but at himself and his stupid bungling of his break for liberty. His helpless and absurd appearance seemed to restore ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... quarrels with Ned, and humiliating scenes with the landlady. The visits to the play ceased, the maid was discharged, the hairdresser was no more brought into requisition. Their fall to destitution was worthy of the harebrained design, the bungling conduct, of Ned; the childish inexperience, the blind confidence, of Madge. 'Twas a fall as progressive as a series of prints by Hogarth. The brother was perpetually in liquor; he no longer took Madge out with him. Often he stayed away nights ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... her little best according to orders, for she dared not offend Dick's father. None of the Challoners were accomplished girls. Dulce sang a little, and so did Nan, but Phillis could not play the simplest piece without bungling and her uncertain little warblings, which were sweet but hardly true, were ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and bungling practice, which obtains in our political life, the Administration elected in November does not take office until the following March, an interval which permits the old Administration, often beaten and discredited, to continue in office for four months after the people ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... government, the people of Holland cannot easily overcome a feeling of vague distrust that the nation which in the past has so often abused them cannot entirely be counted upon to treat them justly this time. Incidentally, I may say that the bungling of Mr. Churchill in Antwerp, which we know much better than do the people of England, is another reason why we are a bit afraid of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... embarrassed phantoms was established in office to enable the king to evade the demands of the Allies. They increased in severity from the surrender of the fleet to that of the army's batteries and then to its disbandment; but they were backed by inadequate force and bungling diplomacy. On 1 December detachments of Allied troops, landed at the Piraeus, were driven back with bloodshed, and well into the new year the King continued to defy the Entente and push Greece deeper into anarchy. On its side the Entente wished to avoid a civil ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... put up the wire itself, and this was done in rather a bungling manner, if this wire were compared with ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But at last he found the ornate pair of pillars spanned by the painted legend, "Primrose Meadows," and drove through them into what soon became a rutted lane. Almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance he found the isolated house, unmistakable because ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the labours of Parliament was a tissue of legislative bungling, involving enormous loss to the public. Railway Bills were granted in heaps. Two hundred and seventy-two additional Acts were passed in 1846. Some authorised the construction of lines running almost parallel to existing railways, in order to afford the public "the benefits of unrestricted ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... color are not unlike what words and sentences and what we call style are in literature. Even if a writer has good and beautiful ideas, much of the pleasure we might derive is lost when the words are ill chosen, the sentences are bungling, perhaps even ungrammatical, and the whole expression ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... sleep when the wind howls; it gets into my imagination. I'd rather talk. The thing I have to tell you—is what I shall tell Farwell if I ever see him again. It's rather a bungling thing I've done. I'll receive my reward, doubtlessly, but I would do the same, were I placed in the same position, over and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... and the doctors have been making; and while the gentlemen in black silk stockings, with gold-headed canes, have been fobbing fees for three weeks, perhaps, they call in poor Jack Growling, who scorns Jack-a-dandyism, and he gets a solitary guinea for mending the bungling that cost something to the tune of twenty or thirty perhaps. And when I have plucked them from the jaws of death—regularly cheated the sexton out of them—the best word they have for me is to call me a pig, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... searching than those of the philosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curious problem to those you have stated. I am wondering what the result will be when two 'lucks'—in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of which one is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling—meet and in some measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking? Which will triumph over the other? I soon shall know. This afternoon I propose to take a step that will be of supreme importance to the person I value above all others in this world. Her entire ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... a woman cast a stone down from the wall and "all to break his skull." That is confessedly rather obscure. Our ordinary understanding of it would be that she did that for no other purpose than just to break the skull of Abimelech. As a matter of fact, that expression is a printer's bungling way of giving a word which has become obsolete in the original form. When the King James translators wrote that, they used the word "alto," which is evidently the beginning of "altogether," or wholly or utterly, and what they meant was that she threw the stone and utterly broke ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... social scale; in short, she believed that instead of people going down to them in a condescending spirit, they could be drawn up to the level of others, so that they would realize their manhood, and be led to make earnest efforts to take their rightful places in the world. I know I am bungling dreadfully; I don't know how to tell you her plans, only that they were splendid. But I am afraid the world will have to be made over, before they can be ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than the creations of the sixth century. The literati and the friends of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves that the season of the nation's youth was past, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... eye on your watch, Tom," said Jack. "We don't want to make any mistake and cross the line too soon—but we don't want to be late, either. This job is too important to run any risks of bungling it. I'd hate to think that I'd been trusted with something really big for the first time and then fallen ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... wouldn't be either. You must excuse me, Miss Knowles. There was something about your voice and face—rather threw me off my balance. If you'll kindly overlook the bungling start-off! I'm greatly pleased to meet you. My wife will be, too. May I ask you to step aboard the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... my simple language, and in a bungling manner, I have told the story of my life. I am no author, but claim a title which I consider nobler, that of a "Mechanic." Being possessed of a remarkable memory, I am able to give a minute account and even ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... he pulled up his rod, but there was never a fish at the end of it, only the hook and the bait. If he had known how to fish properly, he would have been able to catch plenty of fish, but although he was the greatest hunter in the land he could not help being the most bungling fisher. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... touch their trouble when the minister came in as if it were their disgrace; but Lapham did so at last, and, with a simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's compassionate and reverent eye. He spared Corey's name, but he did not pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... glad to understand how it is that your daughters are able to play the numerous pieces which I have heard from them so correctly and intelligently, without bungling or hesitation, and with so much expression, and the most delicate shading; in fact, in such a masterly manner. From my youth upwards, I have had tolerable instruction. I have played scales and etudes for a long time; and have taken great pleasure in studying and industriously practising ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... cutting of them down becomes a delicate surgical operation, which must be performed with as tender a regard as possible for the feelings of the sufferers, who otherwise may turn and rend the careless or bungling operator. When an oak is being felled "it gives a kind of shriekes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq., hath heard it severall times." The Ojebways "very seldom cut down green or living ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had learned his lesson sufficiently well so that the motor was started without bungling and the machine was soon under way across the meadowland. A groan escaped the lips of the distracted Englishman as he watched the woman he loved being carried to almost certain death. He saw the plane tilt and the machine rise from the ground. It was a good take-off—as ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and dog,—such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,—but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... clumsy, foolish, ignorant, slow, thick-headed, bungling, dull, idiotic, senseless, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... he came alive, and they had to hang him over; and father got all worked up about it. He said the man had suffered death the first time to "all intents and purposes," so that fulfilled the requirements of the law, and they were wrong when they hanged him again. Laddie said it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to hang him again. Father said that law was ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... This bungling, barefaced attempt to destroy the steamer touched Mayo's pride as deeply as it stirred his wrath. Fogg evidently viewed the pretensions of the new ownership with contempt. He must have belief in his own ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... snapped under Kerry's foot with the report of a toy pistol. He swore perfunctorily, and gazed greedily at the cave-opening just ahead. He was a bungling woodsman at best; and now, stalking that greatest of all big game, man, the blood drummed in his ears and his heart seemed to slip a cog or two with every beat. He stood tense, yet trembling, for the space in which a man might count ten; surely if there were any one inside the cave—if ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... execution were written not printed, and, excepting the bungling mechanism of the scaffold, the sorrowful event went off with more than usual good order. Every body feels relieved to night, because half of the ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... manner of his predecessors, despairing of being able to accomplish any improvement in the Roman theatre, but that one day being surrounded by the multitude and excessively fatigued, he called a slave to relieve him while he recovered his breath. Displeased with the bungling manner in which the slave performed this new task, Livius rebuked him very severely, the slave justified, the master replied, and a dialogue ensued which the spectators imagining to be a part of the plan of the piece, greatly applauded. The drama at once broke upon their ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... fitting my masts and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a small stay, and a sail, or foresail, to it, to assist if we should turn to windward; and, what was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the stern of her to steer with. I was but a bungling shipwright, yet as I knew the usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself with so much pains to do it, that at last I brought it to pass; though, considering the many dull contrivances I had for it that failed, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... is false, my Manilius; it is not merely a fiction, but a ridiculous and bungling one too; and we should not tolerate those statements, even in fiction, relating to facts which not only did not happen, but which never could have happened. For it was not till the fourth year of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus that Pythagoras is ascertained to have come to Sybaris, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... tampered with," he said quietly, and he handed it to the prosecuting attorney. The fact was plain; it was a bungling job and better proved the Red Fox's guilt. Moreover, there were only two such big rifles in all the hills, and it was proven that the man who owned the other was at the time of the murder far away. The days of brain-storms had not come then. There ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him—to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Below he saw the Croyden hills. He jerked upward and once more he gained on ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... grunted in dissatisfaction. I knew how disgusted he had been at the bungling and utter failure of the police inquiries, for he was always declaring Scotland Yard seemed to be useless, save for the recovery of articles left ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... strolling about the hedges, studying jests with a most tragical countenance. The Natural History is about half finished, and I will shortly finish the rest. God knows I am tired of this kind of finishing, which is but bungling work; and that not so much my fault as the fault of my scurvy circumstances. They begin to talk in town of the Opposition's gaining ground; the cry of liberty is still as loud as ever. I have published, or Davies has published for me, an 'Abridgment ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... back at the wondering little white-clad figure, watching him out of sight around the bend, "when he gets to talking with a woman—a woman with—with eyes like hers! They—why, they make me feel as if I was in church! What sort of bungling novice am I, anyhow, for work ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... a hundred; nay, Clap on a thousand; still he'll slip away, This Protean scoundrel: drag him into court, You'll only find yourself the more his sport: He'll laugh till scarce you'd think his jaws his own, And turn to boar or bird, to tree or stone. If prudence in affairs denotes men sane And bungling argues a disordered brain, The man who lends the cash is far more fond Than you, who at his bidding sign ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... scout. Laugh at him and make fun of him as you will, he was a scout. He was at once the littlest scout and the biggest scout that ever scouting had known. He boasted and bungled, but out of his bungling came triumph. He fell, oh such falls as he fell! But he always landed right side up. He could save the world with a blunder. And then boast of ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... till he came to the top of a hill, when in the valley below suddenly appeared the turrets of a castle, surpassing all he had conceived of light and magnificent in architecture: a real castle! not a modern, bungling imitation. The inside was suitable in grandeur to the outside; hall, staircase, antechambers; the library fitted up entirely with books in plain handsome mahogany bookcases, not a frippery ornament, everything grand, but not gaudy; ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... all admitted his patience, whether it was in bungling, in harvesting his graft, or whether it was a form of slackness. Nor could they help doing so, for patience, a wonderful purposeful patience, was his greatest characteristic. Every other feature of his personality was subservient to it, and so it was ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... wrestle once more with the tie. He must be ready to receive Miss O'Reilly at the door, and his waistcoat and coat were yet to put on. But it could be managed. The suite was on the fifteenth floor, and a full minute's walk from the lift for an old person like Miss O'Reilly. Bungling everything in his haste, he tried to think what it might mean. It looked as if she must have changed her mind, and be ready to sell him her house, the dear old house on which he had set his heart. Perhaps she would demand a higher price ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of your aerial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness—the deep, deep pain—of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, Gilles de Raiz: and the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... particularly Stanton, who, though tied to his desk as Secretary of War, was busy wire-pulling Banks's men about the Valley. Stanton ordered Banks to take post at Strasburg and to hold the bridges at Front Royal with two detached battalions. This masterpiece of bungling put the Federals at Front Royal in the air, endangered their communications north to Winchester, and therefore menaced the Valley line toward Washington. But Banks said nothing; and Stanton would have snubbed him ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... long trousers had had something to do with his dissatisfaction; in any event, they made his bungling seem the more ridiculous. His fellow scouts had called him "bull head" and "butter fingers," but only in good humor and because they loved to jolly him; for in plain fact they all knew and admitted that Tom Slade, former hoodlum, was the best all-round scout that ever raised ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... peaceful. The glass hung in fragments about the leaden sashes; the chair and priere-dieu of the lady abbess had altogether an innocent and comfortable air, and the images, of which there were several, as horrible as a bungling workman and a bloody imagination could produce, though of a suffering appearance, were really insensible to pain. While we were making this reconnoissance a bugle sounded on the main, and looking out, we saw the Oberwinter postilion coming round the nearest bend in ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not but regard with a jealous and distrustful eye. From time to time, by way of giving him a piece of his mind, he would cast side-long at his master a look of severe reproach, unqualified disapprobation. Plain was it that to his dogship's way of thinking it was a very bungling fashion of doing business, thus to suffer this red barbarian to pass from under their hands, untouched by tomahawk or tooth—betraying, as it did, a weakness of feeling altogether unbeseeming warriors of the first ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... thought of fear crossed her mind, save the fear of bungling in her diplomacy, and so losing the flag. She knew Mr. Simpson well, and a pleasanter man was seldom to be met. She recalled an afternoon when he came home and surprised the whole school playing the Revolutionary War in his helter-skelter dooryard, and the way in which he had joined ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... put to the severest tests, and by which their reputations were established. The result is a rifle, compared with which, as manufactured by a dozen rifle-makers in the United States, the Minie, the Enfield, the Lancaster, or even the Sharpe's, and more recent breech-loaders, are bungling muskets. The last adopted form of missile, the sugar-loaf-shaped, of which the Minie, Enfieid, Colonel Jacob's, and all the conical forms are partial adaptations, has been, to our personal knowledge, in use among our riflemen more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... but in that instant I caught up a heavy stone that chanced handy and hurled it; the poor beast bleated once, and rolling down the rock thudded at my feet, where I despatched it with my knife. My next care was to skin it, which unlovely task I made worse by my bungling, howbeit it was done at last and I reeking of blood and sweat. None the less I persevered and, having cleaned the carcass I cut therefrom such joints as might satisfy our immediate needs, and setting them in my turtle-shell with my irons, hung up the carcass within the coolest part ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... liquor in a bungling masculine fashion between her lips as she leaned back, with closed eyes. She ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and bewildered, "feeling," says Clarendon, "the trouble and agony which usually attend generous minds upon their having committed errors;" or, as Macaulay says, "the despicable repentance which attends the bungling villain, who, having attempted to commit a crime, finds that he has only ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... young person; she was not given to introspection. She never took herself to pieces, in a morbid way, to examine the inner workings of her own mind, after the manner of some folk, who regulate themselves in a bungling fashion, and wind themselves up afresh daily; and who would even time their own heart-beats ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... back and tail at every light bound of the athletic little creature. He never moves abruptly or jerks himself impatiently, as the red squirrel is continually doing. On the contrary, all his movements are measured and deliberate, but swift and sure. He never makes a bungling leap, and his course is marked by a number of sinuous curves almost equal to those of a snake. He is here one minute, and the next he has slipped away almost beyond the ability ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... hand. Item, these tales have been a trifle pulled about, most notably in "The Story of the Satraps," where it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to put into Gloucester's mouth a history which in the original version was related ab ovo, and as a sort of bungling prologue to the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... they occur, and it is only by reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their importance. But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bungling. The lively sequence of these complaints implies that they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment without some study and some ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... at the end of about eight lines. "After such a complete exhibition of incompetence we won't inflict any more of your bungling upon the form. We must see if we can find a way of sharpening your wits. Your brain seems to have been lying fallow since you came to school! You will report yourself to Miss Bishop ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... mighty hard," retorted the man grimly. "But we've got to go easy, Sarah Ellen,—no bungling. We've got to spin some sort of a yarn that won't break, nor have any weak places; and of course, as far as the real work of the farm is concerned, we'll still do the most of it. But the place'll be theirs. See?—theirs! ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... legislation kept bungling on, irresponsive to the principal needs and interests of the times. An ineffectual start was made on two subjects presenting simple issues on which there was an energetic pressure of popular sentiment—Chinese immigration and polygamy among the Mormons. Anti-Chinese ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her understand that it was worthless—but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her so—but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my infernal bungling—you mustn't buy the picture!" ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... his head was always in the clouds. He has not seen much society save that of his mother and an old-maid sister. Moreover, he is so dreadfully pious, and life with him such a solemn thing, that unless we are very bungling he will not even imagine such frivolity, as he would call it, until the truth is forced upon him. Then there will be a scene. You will shock him then, Lottie, to your heart's content. He will probably tell you that he is dumbfounded, and that he would not believe ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... you that we can rob the seth of his treasure without an outcry—and if there is an outcry, that he will not go back to those of his caste in Poona, and when trouble is made, think you that the Dewan will thank us for the bungling of this? And as to the matter of a thug or a decoit, half our men have been taught the art of the strangler. With these,"—and extending his massive arms he closed his coarse hands in a gnarled grip,—"with ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... contemporaries in western Europe, Peter gave considerable attention to the economic condition of the monarchy. He strove, though often in a bungling manner, to promote agriculture and to improve the lot of the peasantry, who still constituted the overwhelming bulk of forms of the population. He certainly deprived the nobles of many of their former privileges and sought to rest political power and social position ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... that the enemies of the cardinal said that it was he himself who set these bungling assassins to work, in order to have, if wanted, the right of using reprisals; but we must not believe everything ministers say, nor ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scrambled into the priest's robe which the discomfited Higgins resigned to him. Evidently the bungling actor was in disgrace, for he was told to go to the office and get his pay and then ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... a trembling little smile, and said she saw, and would do her best; but her heart sank at the prospect. What a responsibility to be put upon her ignorant shoulders. The Lord's Sabbath in her bungling hands to make or to mar for these two young souls! She must pray. Oh, she must pray continually that ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... shadows, my dear Alixe, has been one of my delights, for I can project my futile desires into another's soul. I am denied the gift of music-making, so this is my revenge on nature for bungling its job. If Richard had genius, my intervention would be superfluous. He has none. He is dull. You must realize it. But since he has known me, has felt my influence, has been subject to my volition, my sorcery, you may call it,—" his laugh was disagreeably conscious,—"he has developed ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... treaty. Alarmed by this, the Spartans immediately concluded a second treaty with Athens, binding both sides to mutual aid and defence, in case their territories were attacked. The prisoners taken at Sphacteria were now restored, but owing to the bungling of Nicias, the Athenians failed ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... lighting the stove, he began bewailing his fate in an angry voice. What a dog's life a sculptor's was! The most bungling stonemason was better off. A figure which the Government bought for three thousand francs cost well nigh two thousand, what with its model, clay, marble or bronze, all sorts of expenses, indeed, and for all that it remained buried in some ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... take any characteristic series of pictures or incidents from Madame Bovary: take Bovary's bungling and gruesome operations on the club-footed ostler's leg, with the entire village clustering agape; take the picture of the eyeless, idiotic beggar on the road to Rouen; or the scene in which Emma offers herself for three ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... smart, ain't you? You can sit back here and sneer at me, can't you? And feel so big and smart and triumphant! What've you done but catch a girl at her first bungling job! It makes you feel awfully cocky, don't it? 'What a big man am I!' Bah!" I blew the smoke up toward the ceiling from my mouth, with just that satisfied gall that he had had; or rather, I pretended to. He let down the front legs of his chair and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... JOSEPH, the more urbane he becomes, and the more dangerous. Mr. G., standing on the commanding eminence he has built for himself in the House of Commons, is the sport of most inconsiderable Member. Anyone, with whatever bungling hand, can "draw" him. To-night, whilst JOSEPH smiled his way through all the spiteful things he had stored up for gratification of old friends, Mr. G. sat restless, with clouded brow, face pale with anger, every now and then springing up with hot correction. Which was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... public burdens; the wasteful and irritating methods of collecting the taxes; the interior customs lines, preventing the easy passage of goods from one part of France to another; the extravagance of the king's household; the pensions granted to undeserving persons; every evil of the bungling, iniquitous old rgime was brought under the scrutiny of the new thinkers, who tested the existing system by the light of reason and the welfare of the great mass of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... were judged as works of art, not as lame though interesting revelations of Phidias's soul. And be sure no faintest sin of the chisel was excused on the plea that Phidias meant more than he could express, and so bungled in the expression. Nor was the plea advanced that such bungling after the infinite was better than simple perfection in the attainable. An artist was called upon to be an artist, not a poet nor a philosopher nor a moralist. When Plato confounded them all in a splendid confusion of criticism the fruit-time had gone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Sir John Willoughby does not attribute his failure to the bungling of his employes that is said to have taken place. The man that was despatched to cut the telegraph wires failed to do so, with the result that the Boers were provided with the news of the invasion eight hours before the Reform leaders were aware of it; while another ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... inject her own. How mad that sounds! I know it, but it's true. It's the only way I can express it. Moreover, while the operation terrified me, the skill with which it was accomplished filled me afresh with laughter at the clumsiness of men by comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close upon the heels of the comic. Oh, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... is lucky. I'm glad I came upon you at such a time. You won't have to trust to a bungling Spaniard to ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... so leaky that she had a foot or two of water in her, which he sought to excuse, but every word he said on the subject was untrue. The pump was stopped up, and we had to help him clear it out, which was accomplished after much trouble and bungling. We cleared it out, but we had that to do three times, because in repairing the boat they had left all the chips and pieces of wood lying in the hold between the planks, and when we pumped, this stuff would continually obstruct the pump, though ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... the management of parties, be they in-door or out-door, morning or evening, city or country, is to endeavor to find out the wishes of the majority of the guests and act upon that knowledge. To force a large party of people to listen to awkward, bungling charades, because two or three amateur actors desire to "show off," proves a want of tact in the hostess; to allow a few young people to guide the entertainments in a large assembly of older and graver ones, is in equally bad taste; it is, of course, better to assemble together ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... night had taught her a new humility. She came to Jacqueline as a suppliant, begging to be forgiven not only for her moment of cruel anger but for her stupid and bungling interference in her child's life. Nothing was very clear in her mind except that Philip must be told the truth, and that, whatever happened, she and her child ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... there was no hope for him; the proofs of his guilt were manifest and incontrovertible. The forged note, which his wife had taken from his desk and given to the milliner, was one which had not gone through certain mysterious preparations. It was a bungling forgery. The plate would doubtless have been retouched, had not this bill been prematurely circulated by Mrs. Ludgate: thus her vanity led to a discovery of her husband's guilt. All the associates in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... and muffle the damsel so securely, that, with the keys in our possession, we might open the gates, and pass without question the only sentinels who guarded the exterior corridor. Germaine was eloquent upon the merit of his scheme, while, to my mind, it indicated the bungling project of a beginner, and was promptly rejected, because I would not injure with violence the innocent girl I had trifled with, and because I would not dishonor the kindness of Sorret and his wife, by compromising their ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... arrange a mock marriage for her with a local confederate and then positively bring her to Rome with you was infinitely worse. I am insulted, of course. But, above and beyond your treachery to me, I am insulted at your bungling your clumsy intrigues and flaunting the minx in the face of all the world and setting all fashionable Rome to gossiping about you and your hussy and to wondering how I am going to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... teeth with suppressed rage. It was only a chance that it hadn't happened when he himself was behind, but he couldn't see that. No; it was the Colonel's bungling—tryin' to spare himself; leanin' on the bar instead o' liftin' the sled, as he, the Boy, would ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Langman, who was present, saw the Boers, in some instances, filling their bandoliers from these cases on the plausible excuse that they were only using our own ammunition. Such cartridges should never have been permitted to go up. But in spite of instances of bungling, the evidence shows that every effort has been made to keep the war as humane as possible. I am inclined to hope that a fuller knowledge will show that the same holds good for our enemies, and that in spite of individual exceptions, they ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scratching his head with an air of some vexation; 'three is not enough, and it's very bungling and irregular not to have more, but if we can't help it we can't, so there's no use in talking. A novelty would be very desirable. You couldn't sing a comic song on the pony's back, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... acknowledge my negligence. I should have done better, the chances are, had I thought it would have been of interest to you—pardon me. Just my bungling wit. The truth is, I was too much of a greenhorn to hold my own and spare glances ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... you think I'm a bungling theorist like yourself? Who do you think is operating that short-wave station? I am. Who do you think put the world to sleep? I did. Who do you think will wake ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... never sure of his aim till he is quite close to his object. I have mentioned this fact to several Europeans who had accompanied various tribes to battle, and they all informed me they made a sad bungling use of the musket; their aim would be surer if they had large and ferocious animals to hunt or contend with. There is another circumstance that operates against their acquiring skill in the use of ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... to all who are capable of serving under him (for all are ready to take him as chief), he might secure to himself a long and honourable possession of power. Then it is said he can't whistle off these men merely because it is convenient, but he had better do that than keep them on bungling through all the business of the country. Besides, I have some doubts of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... thought that the principal piece of bungling in this affair was Hunter's failure to secure possession of the Coroner's certificate after the inquest, but he was afraid ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... loom, and brings out her spinning wheel to instruct us in that housewifely accomplishment. How easy it looks, as the fleecy web moves through her fingers, and winds in smooth, even yarn on the swiftly turning reel; and, oh, what bungling and botching when we essay that same! The two pretty, modest, and diffident daughters are quite overcome at last, and join in our ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... and fretted and jerked his watch back and forth from his pocket, while Westlake wasted fifteen precious minutes in waddling up to the house and hunting for his hat and returning with it, and two minutes more in bungling his awkward way into the buggy; then Sam started the grays at such a terrific pace that, until they came to the steep hill midway of the course, there was no chance for conversation. While the horses pulled up this steep hill, however, Westlake had ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... Besides," said she, with sudden boldness, "I do think I've a talent for fiction, it is so pleasant to invent, and make the incidents dovetail together; and after all, if we are to tell a lie, we may as well do it thoroughly, or else it's of no use. A bungling lie would be worse than useless. And, Thurstan—it may be very wrong—but I believe—I am afraid I enjoy not being fettered by truth. Don't look so grave. You know it is necessary, if ever it was, to tell falsehoods now; ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not half like this boat-service in open daylight, Winchester," observed the senior, beckoning to the other to take a chair. "The least bungling may spoil it all; and then it's ten to one but your ship goes half-manned for a twelvemonth, until you are driven to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and practising for his degree; hence he became acquainted with many useful facts and modes of action connected with the healing art, of which the world at large is ignorant. Perceiving that one of the pirates was bungling a very simple operation, he stepped forward, and, with that assurance which results naturally from the combination of conscious power and "cheek," took up the dressing of ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... to see how perfectly insane your scheme was," she said. "You have to support your act with a whole series of bungling lies. Possibly Marcus, like a fool, has mentioned it in Monte Carlo, and we shall have the detectives out here asking why you have not ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... of being a cripple is not reason enough for being a school teacher; but I can't help this either, because it is true, and we all know it is. We lift up our eyes and behold the educational field all white for the harvest and even among the few laborers that are working, we see a large per cent of bungling reapers who trample under foot more grain than they gather, and whose pockets are full of the seeds of tares, which they are sowing gratis for next year's crop, as they stumble about. I am sure I pity a cripple as much as any one can, but children have rights that even cripples should ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... Romans are! They have no real taste for art, for beauty. They cannot even conduct a murder, save in a bungling way. They have to call in us Hellenes to help them. Ha! ha! this is the vengeance for Hellas, for the sack and razing of Corinth and all the other atrocities! Rome can conquer with the sword; but we Greeks, though conquered, can, unarmed, conquer Rome. How these ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... is why I prefer not to be quoted against him," said Davies, quietly. And mentally kicking himself, as he expressed it, for making such a "break" as in his bungling half allusion to the exception, Gray hastened away to tell of it. His story came ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... completely stuck; No chance to catch my train, worse luck! I sit and wonder: Why should the roads be up in May? Who muddles matters in this way, With bungling blunder? ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... him now. His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth. He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... when he had been gone a week, Mrs. Grant was milking the cows, of which they kept twenty. Ethan was helping her, and Fanny, not yet a proficient in the art, was doing what she could to assist. Doubtless she was rather bungling in the operation, for the cow was not as patient ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... handling—a case for the subtlest diplomacy. If I am going to risk my reputation for veracity—and jeopardize my hopes of Heaven by the fibs that I must tell in your behalf, I don't propose to have my efforts spoiled by senseless bungling. Will you give me ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... countries. Literary newspapers, too, are a singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead of being occupied by the daily bungling commonplace persons. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... costume was all right. Why, it was a rig I'd be glad to see Winnie in, when she gets older, and if I've made it sound rather—er—gay and festive, it's my bungling way of describing it, and also, because Vicky's personality would add gayety and festivity ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... that occurred at the trial and his knowledge of Maslova, Nekhludoff was convinced that she was innocent, and at first was confident that the other jurors would so find her, but when he saw that because of the merchant's bungling defense of Maslova, evidently prompted by his undisguised liking for her, and the foreman's resistance which it caused, but chiefly because of the weariness of the jury, there was likely to be a verdict of guilty, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and she decided not to accompany her husband to the Review at all. Her husband, the Distinguished Visitor, did desire to see the cavalry go past at the gallop, and so the Chief Commissioner's Distinguished Visitor's wife's maid's bungling had a tremendous influence upon the fate of Damocles de ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... bottom of it," said Craven. "That's no news to us. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have this trouble now, despite your bungling. But that doesn't help us any. With this new discovery of mine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can't spy on us any more. But that's as far as ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... This bungling had lost the battle, but the fact that on the morrow, six divisions of the army of the Mincio were practically fresh, might have suggested to a general of enterprise to try again, since it was known that the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... peribolus or inclosure bear the traces of some bungling repairs made between the earthquake of 63 and the eruption of 79. They were Doric, but the attempt was to render them Corinthian, and, to this end, they were covered with stucco and topped with capitals that are not becoming to them. Against one of these ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... frame of mind when the captain proposed that we should land upon the island. I saw he had something to say, and only feared it might be consolation; for I could just bear my grief, not bungling sympathy; and yet I had no choice but ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Mortlake. "It's all the fault of the men who made the carburetor. They did a bungling bit of work, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... and say that she commanded acceptance. He went. A scurf of books and china ornaments awaited them. The Basts had just been evicted for not paying their rent, and had wandered no one knew whither. Helen had begun bungling with her money by this time, and had even sold out her shares in the Nottingham and Derby Railway. For some weeks she did nothing. Then she reinvested, and, owing to the good advice of her stockbrokers, became rather richer than she had ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... a bungling attempt to carry out the policies of Lincoln and had gone down in the strife. The Democratic Party had reached the ebb tide of its ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... moment had been given her. She was letting it slip away. She had her reward in her hand for the mere pulling of a trigger and no incrimination for the result. For a bit of human sentiment she was bungling the situation unpardonably, fatally. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... The first two would be for Clough and for her Master; but the third—'the biggest widow's cap of all'—would be for Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in her hour of need; and after all, could she be sure that even the male sex was so impeccable? There was Dr. Sutherland, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he intended to go off one of these days, too? She gave him a look, and he shivered in his shoes. No!—she grinned sardonically; she would always have Dr. Sutherland. And then she reflected that there ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey |
