"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to his feet. His eyes were shining. He clasped Raynor's hand and wrung it pump-handle fashion. Raynor looked at the usually quiet, rather self-contained lad, in blank astonishment. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... world, where her society might involve him in disagreeable consequences. The persevering Fylgia, however; in the shape of a fair maiden, walked on the waves of the sea after her viking's ship. She came thus in sight of all the crew; and Halfred, recognising his Fylgia, told her point blank that their connection was at an end for ever. The forsaken Fylgia had a high spirit of her own, and she then asked Thorold "if he would take her." Thorold ungallantly refused; but Halfred the younger said, "Maiden, I ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Bridgeboro station was a congestion of trunks and other luggage bespeaking the end of the merry play season. And saddest of all, the windows of the stationery stores were filled with pencil-boxes and blank books and other horrible reminders of ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... who was our guide, entered the Shereef's grounds to prepare for our introduction; and now the ladies, who had insisted on coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they would not salute the Shereefa as "Your Highness." They were impatient to see her, but they declined to give countenance to a Christian who had demeaned herself by wedding ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... were silent and constrained. She tried not to see Prissie shaking and jerking and spilling soup down the front of her gown. Robin's face was smooth and blank; he pretended to be absorbed in his food, so as not to look at Prissie. It was as if Prissie's old restlessness had grown into that ceaseless jerking and twitching. And her eyes fastened on Robin; they clung to him and wouldn't let him go. She kept on asking him ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... lay, stunned, stupefied, Nor asked for comfort more; My heart to hopeless, blank despair ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... one single victim, among their men at the barracks of St. Martin, Louvain, where it was claimed that the first shot had been fired from a house situated in front of the Caserne. This would appear to be impossible had the civilians fired upon them point blank from across the street. It was said that when certain houses near the barracks were burning, numerous explosions occurred, revealing the presence of cartridges; but these houses were drinking houses much frequented by German soldiers. It ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the city in a hostile manner. "Mr Fage told me," says Pepys, "what Monck had done in the city, how he had pulled down the most parts of the gates and chains that he could break down, and that he was now gone back to Whitehall. The city look mighty blank, and cannot tell what in the world to do." The next day he turned from the Parliament, and took ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... present in Valladolid when Magellan came thither to present his plan to the King. "Magellan," he writes, "had a well painted globe in which the whole world was depicted, and on it he indicated the route he proposed to take, saving that the strait was left purposely blank so that no one should anticipate him. And on that day and at that hour I was in the office of the High Chancellor when the Bishop [of Burgos, Fonseca] brought it [i.e. the globe] and showed the High Chancellor the voyage which was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... The horses attached to my vehicle became frightened, and ran away. They were wholly beyond control, plunging down the road at a fearful speed, when, by a slight turn to one side, the wheel struck a large log. There was a concussion, and then a blank. The next thing I knew I was floating in the air above the road. I saw every thing as plainly as I see your face at this moment. There lay my body in the road, there lay the log, and there were the trees, the fence, the fields, and every thing, perfectly natural. My motion, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... private affairs of Mr. Winterfield, in which he is deeply interested, and they ought to have been long since placed in his possession. I need hardly say that I consider myself bound to preserve the strictest silence as to what I have read. An envelope, containing some blank sheets of paper, was put back in the boy's waistcoat, so that he might feel it in its place under the lining, when he woke. The original envelope and inclosures (with a statement of circumstances signed by my assistant ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... in a fury of joy, all the bells clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... but several manifestations of its genius, generally passed over in silence, will have to be studied. The ages during which the national thought expressed itself in languages which were not the national one, will not be allowed to remain blank, as if, for complete periods, the inhabitants of the island had ceased to think at all. The growing into shape of the people's genius will have to be studied with particular attention. The Chapter House of Westminster will be entered, and there will be seen how the nation, such as it ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the wounded man opened his eyes. After a blank space he again could see and hear and feel and think. Turning his eyes about, he found himself lying on a wooden bench. A tall man with a perplexed countenance, wearing a big badge with "City Marshal" ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... shelter without seeming to see them, and then cast himself down again upon the stones in a paroxysm of melancholy. He seemed to have no desire to escape, no energy, except to suffer. There was no hope about it all, no suggestion of prayer, nothing but blank and unadulterated suffering. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mr. Romanes speaks point-blank of the new-born child as "EMBODYING the results of a great mass of HEREDITARY EXPERIENCE" (p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by those who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own knowledge matter whose relevancy does not appear ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of suffering through which I have literally stumbled my way—over the long series of embarrassments and mortifications which lie behind me—I wonder, with a mild and patient wonder, why the Old Nick I did not commit suicide ages ago, and thus end the eventful history with a blank page in the middle of the book. I dare say the very bashfulness which has been my bane has prevented me; the idea of being cut down from a rafter, with a black-and-blue face, and drawn out of the water with a swollen one, has put me so out of countenance that ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... Again blank water spread before us; and after many days, there came a gentle breeze, fraught with all spicy breathings; cinnamon aromas; and in the rose-flushed evening air, like glow worms, glowed the islets, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... told you,' I replied,—for I had been quite frank with her,—'how I left America,—what a blank life was to me then; and did I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... blank as any perceptive when it comes to reading minds. I was hoping to collect him whole enough to ask questions, but he forced my hand." I looked to where some of the clean-up squad were tucking the corpse into a ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... through the world. It is necessary to show the police that we are at least honest men. Happily, I believe I have the means to do so at hand. Open our ominous bag, friend Balby, I think you will discover my portfolio, and in it a few blank passes, and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... I cried that night. It was my true night of mourning. When you have just lost a beloved there is a wretched moment, after the brutal shock, when you begin to understand that all is over, and blank despair surrounds you and looms like a giant. That night was a moment of such despair when I was under the sway of my crime and the disenchantment of my poems, greater than the crime, greater ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... city, and a boding. Twice hath Nehemoth gone to worship Annolith, and all the people have prostrated themselves before Voth. Thrice the horologers have looked into the great crystal globe wherein are foretold all happenings to be, and thrice the globe was blank. Yea, though they went a fourth time yet was no vision revealed; and the people's voice ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to you gravely of that excellent poem, The Fleece.' Having talked of Grainger's Sugar-Cane, I mentioned to him Mr. Langton's having told me, that this poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet began a new ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... those I saw inside my head, and if you'll believe me, I used to be moody and out of sorts half the time, just like Christopher. Times have changed now, you'll say, and it's true. Why, I've got nothing to do these days but to take a look at things, and I tell you I see a lot now where all was a blank before. You just glance over that old field and tell me what you find," Cynthia followed the sweep of his left arm. "There's first the road, and then a piece of fallow land that ought to be ploughed," she said. "Bless my soul, is that all you see? ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along. He came and slept at night in the tutor's room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart protector who put hope and cheer into him, and filled the blank in his heart with sturdier views of life than the boy had ever ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lord of Mortimer's face was dark and gloomy. He had reckoned somewhat confidently on finding the fugitive in one of these known hiding places. He had hoped Sir Oliver would profess an ignorance of at least one of the two. His face was fierce and vindictive as the second was "drawn blank." ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... turning inward and upward, result in a veritable crown of glory on the top of the head, the place, after all, where the hair ought to grow. Their teeth, as with most gramnivora, are sound, regular, brilliantly white and exceptionally large, the average size being that of the double-blank domino. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the smith, and employ myself in the meanwhile in tasting your ale, and consuming whatever you may happen to have in the house fit to eat." I observed that the landlord and his wife, as I presumed 188her to be, exchanged very blank looks when Oaklands announced this determination. When he ceased speaking she whispered a few words into the ear of the man, who gave a kind of surly grunt in reply, and then, turning to Harry, said, "Mayhap I'll shoe your horse for you myself if ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... childhood, while its majesty was like the sheen of white marble in the sunlight. It was a very high, serious, noble work; yet,—although, to his immeasurable credit, the actor never tried to apply a "natural" treatment to artificial conditions or to speak blank verse in a colloquial manner,—it was made sweetly human by a delicate play of humour in the earlier scenes, and by a deep glow of paternal tenderness that suffused every part of it and created an almost painful sense of sincerity. Common life was not made commonplace life ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... memoranda of repairs, alterations, etc., for rendering it habitable. My last visit was to be to the garret, where many of my books yet remained. As I passed once more through the parlor, on my way thither, a ray of light from my raised lamp fell upon the wall that I had thought blank, and a majestic face started suddenly from the darkness. So sudden was the apparition, that for the moment I was startled, till I remembered that there had formerly been a picture in that place, and I stopped to examine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Paris,—"Why is not our good old king well and here to see this sight?" This question displays the general feeling of the nation for the "good old king." Although the latter part of his life had been a blank, his people had never lost sight of him: their interest had not been wearied by his long seclusion, nor had their love expired in the flood of victories that distinguished the regency. The least information concerning him was read ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... softly, "if you were only with me now that father has left me. How shall I get along in life without him? The future looks blank and dark to me, the present sad, and only the past is worth having lived for! What a present the proud name is that was laid in my cradle. Others see bright light where the shadow threatens to suffocate me, and my heart trembles when I think that I am ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... pulses, that beat so fast, all still and silent—senseless, motionless, like the birds he had killed? And that was not all: that other world! To enter on what would last for ever and ever and ever, on a state which he had never dwelt on or realised to himself, filled him with a blank, shuddering awe; and next came a worse, a sickening thought: if his feeling for the bliss of heaven was almost distaste, could he be fit for it? could he dare to hope for it? It was his Judge Whom he was about to meet, and he had been impatient and weary of Bible and Catechism, ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... room, wherein never a single muscle twitched. And then there were no words and only three sharp pistol shots. Broderick had seen what lay in the Kid's eye, a look to be read by any man; he had snatched his gun up from the floor beside him and had fired, point blank. There is no name for the brief fragment of time between his shot and the Kid's. But Ben Broderick had shot true to the mark, and the Kid was sinking; Bedloe's bullet had gone wide.... And then the third shot, Thornton's ... and as the two men fell, Kid Bedloe and Ben Broderick, ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... honorable contrast with those whom he thus severely condemns: "The writer of these pages," says he, "is fully persuaded that Arminian principles, when traced out to their natural and unavoidable consequences, lead to an invasion of the essential attributes of God, and, of course, to blank and cheerless atheism. Yet, in making a statement of the Arminian system, as actually held by its advocates, he should consider himself inexcusable if he departed a hair's-breadth from the delineation made by its ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... not speak of it as a retort upon Nevil, though he reiterated the word Apology amusingly. He put it as due to the lady governing his household; and his ultimatum was, that the Apology should be delivered in terms to satisfy him within three months of the date of the demand for it: otherwise blank; but the shadowy index pointed to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The feeling he expressed was shared by all. Never before could I realize the full value of liberty, and the horror of confinement. Even in the prisons where we had hitherto been, the novelty of our situation, the frequency of our removals, and the bustle and excitement of the trial, prevented the blank monotony of imprisonment from settling down on us as it did here, when the first few weeks had rolled by, and no intimations of our fate reached us. It was like the stillness and the death that brood ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... girl kept constantly coming in and out, and looking point-blank at them, especially at Denys; and at last in leaning over him to remove a dish, dropped a word in his ear; and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that are substantiated only by biology," Martin insisted, and was rewarded by a blank stare. "Your conclusions are in line with the books which ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... court, flanked on one hand by the side of the apartment building, on the other by the blank wall of an adjoining house. The latter was some ten feet from where she stood, and there were no windows in it! She turned to the window at the other ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... meting out punishment and providing adequate remedies—are perpetrated, include many variations of procedure by which false certificates of citizenship are forged in their entirety; or genuine certificates fraudulently or collusively obtained in blank are filled in by the criminal conspirators; or certificates are obtained on fraudulent statements as to the time of arrival and residence in this country; or imposition and substitution of another party for the real petitioner occur in court; or certificates are made the subject of barter ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... marched down upon the beach of the Atlantic, and, attired as a true son of Adam, with two goodly arms intact, became a commodity. Passing out of first hands in barter for a looking-glass, he was shipped in good order and condition on board the good schooner Egalite, whereof Blank was master, to be delivered without delay at the port of Nouvelle Orleans (the dangers of fire and navigation excepted), unto Blank Blank. In witness whereof, He that made men's skins of different colors, but all blood of one, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... loses under a false idea of its being a luxury to sleep in the morning! Reclining under Farmer Puddingstone's elm, and looking upon the glassy pond, in which the glowing sky mirrored itself, my soul was fired with poetic inspiration. On the blank page of ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... the chart, hope came suddenly to his face, and his heart beat high under his sapphire blue tunic. There was an asteroid left for sale there—one blank space among the myriad, pink-lettered Sold symbols. Could it be that here was the chance he ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... to talk of an ancestral home, but when it consists of a tall, slim house, with blank walls and pepper-box turrets, set down on a bleak hill side, and every one gone that made it once a happy place, it is not attractive. Moreover, my only use there would be to be kept as a tame heir, the person whose ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stubbornly believe that somebody must recognize the fact of sickness or else we cannot begin to set in action the machinery for curing it, even if that machinery be Christian Science itself, and we do not change this rather stubborn fact by covering sickness with the blank designation Error. Even the error is real ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... the course of which we discoursed profoundly on the secrets of Nature in fire, though I noticed that my companion was very chary in imparting information about the Grand Arcanum.... At last I asked him point blank to show me the transmutation of metals. I besought him to come and dine with me, and to spend the night at my house; I entreated; I expostulated; but in vain. He remained firm. I reminded him of his promise. He retorted that his promise had been ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... point-blank question which I hardly expected," said Yanski, gazing at her in astonishment. "Don't you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not think of the blank and dreary future, but lived from hour to hour, watching for the mails. When the postman stopped on his daily round at the foot of Storm Hill, she was always waiting for him. Sometimes she met him down the road, in her eagerness. But there was never a letter for her, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of verbs Are far too tricky; once involved in these, For instance, "lovedst" and "spreadst" and "stillst" and "gapest," And thousands more—once, as I say, involved In these too clinging tendrils one is done; And so I find I cannot write an ode, Not even a ten-syllabic blank-verse ode, In second persons singular of verbs, In "snifflest" and in "wheezest" and the rest, For I am sure to trip and spoil the thing, And bring grammatic censure on my head. Be, therefore, plural—"you" instead of "thou"— Which makes things simpler. Now we can get on. O fain-avoided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... Chiltern has taken up hunting as his duty in life, and he does it with his might and main. Not to have a good day is a misery to him;—not for himself but because he feels that he is responsible. We had one blank day last year, and I thought that he never would recover it. It was that unfortunate ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in any case you must have had him. That threat of Granger's was only blank cartridge. He could not deprive you of the custody ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... was anything but what France had expected. On April 8 a French minister, Genet, landed in Charleston, armed with a quantity of blank commissions for privateers. He was a man twenty-eight years old, whose diplomatic experience had culminated in the disruption of one of the weaker neighbors of France. He had no doubt that the sympathy of the American ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... a blank stare that he did not begin to grasp the meaning of this statement. He shook his head. "He was always a wild lad. Now as to the Signorina Ginini, who is to be his beautiful Contessa, she loves Sicily. She has spent most of her life ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... inside ther co'te house an' made a pint-blank fort outen hit, an' ther Rowletts tuck up thar stand in ther stores an' streets. They frayed on, thet fashion, twell ther Doanes wearied of hit an' sot ther co'te house afire. Some score of fellers war shot, countin' men an' boys, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... time everybody had come to look to me for anything and everything in the way of comfort, Colonel Joe McKibben brought an order from the General for me to get fresh beef for the headquarters mess. I was not caterer for this mess, nor did I belong to it even, so I refused point-blank. McKibben, disliking to report my disobedience, undertook persuasion, and brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted if only for a brief hour to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experience. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God, whom to know is life eternal. The roue you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... "Madame le Blank! ye know! Got cut about the head down at the fete at South Park! Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on some champagne bottles. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... exhausted every device of delay and evasion. Andrew Ellicott was appointed by Washington Surveyor-General to run the boundary; but when, early in 1797, he reached Natchez, the Spanish representative refused point blank to run the boundary or evacuate the territory. Meanwhile the Spanish Minister at Philadelphia, Yrujo, in his correspondence with the Secretary of State, was pursuing precisely the same course of subterfuge and delay. But these tactics could only avail for a time. Neither the Government ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in his study when Alexey Yegorytch had announced the unexpected visitor. Hearing the name, he had positively leapt up, unwilling to believe it. But soon a smile gleamed on his lips—a smile of haughty triumph and at the same time of a blank, incredulous wonder. The visitor, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, seemed struck by the expression of that smile as he came in; anyway, he stood still in the middle of the room as though uncertain whether to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I form'd my plan; and, asking leave to bring in a bill for incorporating the contributors according to the prayer of their petition, and granting them a blank sum of money, which leave was obtained chiefly on the consideration that the House could throw the bill out if they did not like it, I drew it so as to make the important clause a conditional one, viz., ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... vacant face set toward the hills. The pitiful story of her weak lungs was started, the journey to the far away sanatorium, which really ended in the cabin of a one-time slave of the family twenty miles away! The hideous secret; the journeys by night and that last terrible scene when the blank mind refused to interpret the agony of the riven body and the wild screams and moans rang through the cabin chamber. Alone, the old black woman and Ann Walden had witnessed the struggle of life and death, which ended in the birth of Cynthia and the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... private sitting-rooms of the Institute sat poor young Mrs Martin, the very embodiment of blank despair. The terrible truth that her husband had died, and been buried at sea, had been gently and tenderly broken to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... an organic whole, in which every process conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations to that which is infinitely real,—the object, the real thing before us,—which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind, this is equally blank as regards ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... illness of Ernest, to procure from him the appointment of the elector of Cologne as temporary successor to the government, but Count Fuentes was on the spot and was a man of action. He produced a power in the French language from Philip, with a blank for the name. This had been intended for the case of Peter Ernest Mansfeld's possible death during his provisional administration, and Fuentes now claimed the right of inserting ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I was at home, and that on taking up my Greek Testament one morning to read (as is my wont) a chapter, I found, to my surprise, that what seemed to be the old, familiar book was a total blank; not a character was inscribed in it or upon it. I supposed that some book like it had, by some accident, got into its place; and, without stopping to hunt for it, took down a large quarto volume which contained both the Old and New Testaments. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... substitute anything? If so why? If so what? Or is it enough to let the matter rest on the pleasure mainly physical, of the tones, their color, succession, and relations, formal or informal? Can an inspiration come from a blank mind? Well—he tries to explain and says that he was conscious of some emotional excitement and of a sense of something beautiful, he doesn't know exactly what—a vague feeling of exaltation or perhaps of ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... begun to talk in high-flown, blank verse sort of a way. "Ere long!" that wus somethin' new for ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... were in Craven's name, but they were transferred in blank and in Mr. Warren's safe. Together with his own hundred, they gave him control and a voting majority. That much we know by ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... their sad wailings till the boat reached the schooner. The women were assisted to the deck, where they stood staring with blank amazement at the vessel and her crew. The skipper was bewildered by the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... tantalizing. It is like being congratulated on the high prize when one has drawn a blank; for I have just as great a desire as any one of the public to penetrate the mystery of that very singular personage, whose voice fills every corner of the world, without any one being able to tell from whence it comes. He who keeps up such a wonderful and whimsical incognito: whom nobody knows, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... that attitude of mind which is not directed to any specific external object—that, for himself, he is, and always must be the centre of all this galaxy of Life, and thus he contemplates himself as seated at the centre of infinitude, not an infinitude of blank space, but pulsating with living being, in all of which he knows that the true essence is nothing but good. This is the very opposite to a selfish self-centredness; it, is the centre where we find that we both receive ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... to fill the cry! 200 And let me still the sentiment disdain Of him who never speaks but to arraign, The sneering son of Calumny and Scorn, Whom neither arts, nor sense, nor soul adorn; Or his, who, to maintain a critic's rank, Though conscious of his own internal blank, His want of taste unwilling to betray, 'Twixt sense and nonsense hesitates all day, With brow contracted hears each passage read, And often hums, and shakes his empty head, 210 Until some oracle adored pronounce The passive bard a poet or a dunce; Then in loud clamour echoes ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... seconds the Count gazed at the blank space before him with an expression of stony unbelief; then springing suddenly to his feet, he spurned his chair from him and rushed from the room. So quick was the movement, that he had reached the door and passed out before Lewis ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... trial Phillips produced a writing, which purported to be signed by two men, and witnessed by two others; and Phillips swore he saw all of them sign it. Whereupon not only the men themselves, but the two witnesses to the paper, came up and swore, point-blank, that their alleged signatures were forgeries. There were four oaths against one. Phillips lost his case. But this was not the worst of it. The next day he was indicted for forgery and perjury; and, despite his wealth and the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... nineteen, I would not marry him. I would refuse point-blank. But I am two-and-twenty, and though 'tis true some people say I am handsome, 'tis not all who think so. I believe the truth is, I am like to be large and heavy and go off soon. 'Tis dangerous to refuse so good a match. Therefore tell ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... fundamentally, and all enactments, alike of the legislature, the consistory, and the saloon—all regulations, formal or virtual, have a common character: they are all limitations of men's freedom. "Do this—Refrain from that," are the blank formulas into which they may all be written: and in each case the understanding is that obedience will bring approbation here and paradise hereafter; while disobedience will entail imprisonment, or sending to Coventry, or eternal torments, as the case may be. And if restraints, however named, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... artful design Mrs. Morley put that question point-blank, fixing keen eyes on Isaura while she put it. She saw the heightened colour, the quivering lip of the girl thus abruptly appealed to, and she said inly: "I was ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remnants of "B." company on the crest, than he himself fell dead just as dawn appeared. Only about 100 officers and men were now scattered over the hill, many of them wounded, but opposing as hot a fire as they could deliver to the invisible enemy who was firing point blank into them. The pouches of the dead were rifled for cartridges with which to continue the struggle; but no hope remained; even the shrapnel of Eustace's artillery, which now opened from Kloof camp, became an added danger: while the Boers, aided by the increasing ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... imperial worth, The mighty mistress of the earth; Rome, that gave law to all the world, Is now to blank Destruction hurl'd!— Is now a sepulchre, a tomb, To tell the ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank. ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... looked around again, she was surprised to see that it was morning. She tried to think, but her mind was almost a blank. Outside of the broken window a wild bird was singing gayly. She looked around. The old woman ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures. Each part assumes its proper dimensions; continents are not looked at in the light of islands, or islands considered as mere specks, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the late lamented Middler class. How appropriate! The white represents the conditions of the examination sheets they habitually handed in—not a line, not a letter. Blank, quite blank. It is the opinion of the faculty that this also represented the condition of their brains. I do not fully agree with this. I believe that at rare intervals, and when under the influence of proper environment, for example, the presence of some Senior, the minds of ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... course was easy. Let him wait at Bellaggio for more money, and when he returned home, let him buy Mrs. Greene more jewels. A poor man always presumes that a rich man is indifferent about his money. But in truth a rich man never is indifferent about his money, and poor Greene looked very blank at my proposition. ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... as a parting benediction, and relinquished his grasp. No sooner did I fairly find myself on the right side of the barricade, than, all my terrors overcome by pain, I seized an inkstand and discharged it point blank at the fleecy curls of the ferulafer with an unlucky fatality of aim! Mr Root's armorial bearings were now, at least, on his crest, blanche ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... me. I knew the children marvellously quick in getting out of the way—the giants had taught them that; but when I raised myself, and looking about in the open shrubless forest, could descry neither hand nor heel, I stared in "blank astonishment." ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... of lore she follow, 'Twill be with tired and goaded will; She'll only toil, the aching hollow, The joyless blank ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... a special favor by aiding in the preparation of this list by filling in the blank form below, and sending in any replies as promptly as possible. Should you be unable to furnish any data, will you kindly ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... powers. There are some loose leaves and fragments of small poems, mostly on the usual subjects of love and scenery, and in the form of odes, sonnets, elegies, &c.; all serious, none personal or satirical. And besides these slight things, there is a completed poem on Dreaming, in blank verse, about 1800 lines long. The first page is dated Edinburgh, May 4, 1791, the last Edinburgh, 25th June 1791; from which I presume that we are to hold it to have been all written in these fifty-three ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... and was succeeded by Astyages, B.C. 593, whose history is a total blank, till near the close of his long reign of thirty-five years, when the Persians under Cyrus arose to power. He seems to have resigned himself to the ordinary condition of Oriental kings—to effeminacy and luxury—brought about by the prosperity ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the first time we stand by one who has fainted, and witness the fresh birth of consciousness spreading itself over the blank features, like the rising sunlight on the alpine summits that lay ghastly and dead under the leaden twilight. A slight shudder, and the frost-bound eyes recover their liquid light; for an instant they show the inward semi-consciousness ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... dramatic poetry, as it was understood under Elizabeth. Blank verse had expired or swooned away, never again to be wholly reanimated. Fantastic tragedies in rhyme, after the French pattern, became the vogue; and absolute translations from the French and Spanish for the first time occupied the English ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... before service commenced, he conducted me to a seat near the pulpit. Rev. Thorold, the officiating clergyman, is a very able speaker, and made the first attempt at argument in his discourse that I had yet listened to in England. Preaching, in England, like the reciting of prayers, is all so much blank assertion—no more, and no less. I had never before so felt the force of unquestioned authority as I learned to feel and appreciate it in the services of the Episcopal Church of England. The very fact of arguing a question is in itself a compromise of its one-sidedness and of the infallibility ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... A blank silence seemed to fall upon the group, the Hakim thrusting away his knife, Frank, who half knelt behind him, as a slave should, waiting for such morsels as the Hakim might condescend to pass, darted a fierce look at the speaker, and the Sheikh, who shared their ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... rosy red and voilet green, is it surprising that so rich a thing shows a certain little thing, shows that every bit of blue is precious and this is shown by finding, by finding and obtaining, by not silencing disentangling, by never refusing resigning. All the blank burden and surely there is none in a particular discreet turning, surely there is no unit in smelling and no market in market gardening. This is not true. It is not ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... pop-gun what calls hisself anything you care to mention, and turns out to be a blessed mounseer at the end of it! 'Ere 'ave I been drivin' of him up and down all day, a-carrying off of gals, a-shootin' of pistyils, and a-drinkin' of sherry and hale; and wot does he up and give me but a blank, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his voice was evidently enough. Lady Anstruthers turned with an unmistakable start. The rose lining of her parasol ceased to warm her colour. In fact, the parasol itself stepped aside, and she stood with a blank, stiff, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lost its expression as I was speaking, until it became as blank of vivid significance as the countenance of a gingerbread rabbit with two currants in the place of eyes. He had not taken ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... to me, Mr. Colia, that you were very foolish to bring your young friend down—if he is the same consumptive boy who wept so profusely, and invited us all to his own funeral," remarked Evgenie Pavlovitch. "He talked so eloquently about the blank wall outside his bedroom window, that I'm sure he will never support life ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
