"Blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an instant memory returned to her, and with a startled cry she struggled up to a sitting posture, gazing in blank bewilderment upon the crowd that ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... the preceding pages it has been necessary to refer constantly to the Church and the clergy. Indeed, without them medival history would become almost a blank, for the Church was incomparably the most important institution of the time and its officers were the soul of nearly every great enterprise. In the earlier chapters, the rise of the Church and of its ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... blank he said he didn't." A very wonderful light came into Marilyn Loring's eyes at this instant. "Whatever else he would do, Professor Kennedy, he wouldn't lie to me; that I know. He would tell me the truth ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... recorded of some tribes of American Indians. Thus we are told that "the name of an American Indian is a sacred thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration. One may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name, and the question will be met with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he cannot understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches, the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can tell the name, receiving ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... moment they stared at each other in blank amaze. Then a smile crept over Tom's face, a smile quite as unusual with him as his sudden spirit of surrender had been; a smile of childish happiness. He almost broke out ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... vanished, and could not be sworn back into the box. Where it had gone probably no one knew; certainly no one was willing to say. The members looked at one another in blank astonishment. The lookers-on manifested as blank an ignorance, though their faces beamed with delight. It had disappeared as utterly as if it had sunk into the earth, and the oaths of Sir Edmund and his efforts to recover it ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... held what appeared to be a roll of drawings. Smith did not want to touch them; with infinite care he blew off the dust with the aid of his oxygen pipe. After a moment or two the surface was clear, but it offered no encouragement; it was the blank side of ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... kindness that could be bestowed on Lady Rosamond daily suggested itself to the mind of her thoughtful husband. He was only happy in her presence—she was the sunshine of his heart, of his life, of his soul. Without Lady Rosamond this world was a blank—a region "where light never enters, hope never comes." Nor was the fact unknown to the dutiful and amiable wife. It grieved her deeply to witness such an exhibition of true love and tenderness without ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Dalmatia. From 1697 it served as an oratory to the Count of Nona, being near his palace. Its bell (hung in the gable above the west door) served to call the people together for public meetings, &c. The eastern apse has a blank arcading on its exterior, which is square, and the same kind of ornament occurs on the drum which conceals the dome. There are three windows in the west wall, and others in the transept walls and gable. The church was restored some seven or eight years ago, as well ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the Eigeh grew angry at this, and pressed me much to fire my puas on the boisterous mob. Was he then really acquainted with their destructive power, and so indifferent about human life? Or, was he aware of the possibility of firing with blank cartridges? This ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... noo it's when I look in the book and see, maybe a year ahead, a blank week, when I've no singing the do, that ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... blank day in the rolls, I stayed at home and wrote four leaves—not very freely or happily; I was not in the vein. Plague on it! Stayed at home the whole day. There is one thing I believe peculiar to me—I work, that is, meditate for the purpose ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... reason, no. These are not the eyes of an imbecile or an idiot, but they are the eyes of a child. It is possible that when she fully recovers we may find her mind a perfect blank—a virgin page on which the story of her new life will have ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... letters, whose name will go down to posterity. Here, in short' (he lifted his hand to his forehead), 'all the inheritances and all the concerns of all Paris are weighed in the balance. Are you still of the opinion that there are no delights behind the blank mask which so often has amazed you by its impassiveness?' he asked, stretching out that livid face ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the reader of Thalaba, is the singular structure of the versification, which is a jumble of all the measures that are known in English poetry (and a few more), without rhyme, and without any sort of regularity in their arrangement. Blank odes have been known in this country about as long as English sapphics and dactylics; and both have been considered, we believe, as a species of monsters, or exotics, that were not very likely to propagate, or thrive, in so unpropitious ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... every other, but that at one part of the story I had found him entirely at fault: he could not tell what he did, where he went, or how he had felt, first after the deed was done. He confessed all after that was a blank until he found himself in bed. But when I told him something he had not seen—which his worship might remember—the testimony namely of the coast-guardsmen—about the fishing-boat with the two men in it—I had here to refresh his memory as to the whole of that circumstance—and did so by handing ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... got back to the Times, Dad and Julio had had their lunch and were going over the teleprint edition. Julio was printing corrections on blank sheets of plastic and Dad was cutting them out and cementing them over things that needed correcting on the master sheets. I gave Julio a short item to the effect that Tom Kivelson, son of Captain and Mrs. Joe Kivelson, one of the Javelin survivors who had been burned in the tallow-wax fire, ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... were playing the Columbia at Cincinnati; Mama Blank traveled with the act; Mama was about five feet long and four wide; and she was built too far front; she was at least fifteen inches ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... this strange vision, and my eyes wandering vaguely over the empty space in the silent darkness, I observed with astonishment the blank space becoming silently occupied by one of the old Protestant families of former days, calm, solemn, and dignified ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... guide yet," he muttered, his eyes dark with angry conviction, his face lowering with fury. "I'll hang him—I won't expect to prove it p'int blank. Jes' let me git a mite o' suspicion, an' I'll ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... No more trampling, grunting, and knocking of antlers. The spirits of the three sank to zero. Their breathing became thick. The blood, which a moment before had played like wildfire in their veins, now stirred sluggishly as if it was freezing. Disappointment, blank and bitter, shivered through ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... one, was most willing to oblige Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the lad they gave voice to a shout of triumph, and raising their carbines fired point-blank at the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... done. Thought about robots built to work who had no work to do, no human pleasures to cater to, nothing but blank, meaningless lives. Thought about Jerry and his disappointment when his creatures cared not a hoot about his glorious dreams of equality. All one night I had thought, knowing that as I thought, so thought ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... fancy cake, and a new kind of dainty crisp crackers; candies, nuts, raisins, and mottoes, which were the greatest fun of all. Afterward, some dancing with the Cheat quadrille, and it was so amusing to "cut out," or run away and leave your partner with his open arms, and a blank look of surprise ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... on The World Factbook Web site are large and could take several minutes to download on a dial-up connection. The screen might be blank during the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... him. Let them disperse themselves through the provinces; there they will act usefully. To resupply them with a character—if they have none—it will be necessary for his Catholic majesty to send his orders in blank, for his minister in Paris to ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... sixteen months before enjoying full life and abundant hope. The "Daily Telegraph's" proprietor cabled over to Bennett: "Will you join us in sending Stanley over to complete Livingstone's explorations?" Bennett received the telegram in New York, read it, pondered a moment, snatched a blank and wrote: "Yes. Bennett." That was my commission, and I set out to Africa intending to complete Livingstone's explorations, also to settle the Nile problem, as to where the head-waters of the Nile were, as to whether Lake Victoria consisted of one lake, one body of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... right to premonish them that we are composing an epicedium upon no less distinguished a personage than the Lottery, whose last breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself were about to be converted into a blank. There is a fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation, and, though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter predicament, we hesitate not to assert that "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit." Never have we joined in the senseless clamor which condemned the only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... act? There is the difficulty. There are true men and there are frauds. You have to work warily. So far as professional mediums go, you will not find it difficult to get recommendations. Even with the best you may draw entirely blank. The conditions are very elusive. And yet some get the result at once. We cannot lay down laws, because the law works from the other side as well as this. Nearly every woman is an undeveloped medium. ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Slave was accused by a Merchant to have robbed his house. Whereupon to clear himself, the Slave desired he might swear. So the Merchant and Slave went both to the Temple to swear. The Merchant swore positively that the Slave had robbed his house; and the Slave swore as poynt blank that he had not robbed his house: and neither of them having any witnesses, God who knew all things was desired to shew a Judgment upon him that was forsworn. They both departed to their houses, waiting to see upon whom the Judgment would fall. In the mean time the Slave privatly ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... To fill up the blank, there was conceived to exist what is called a Centrifugal Force, that is, literally, a Force acting, and ever acting from a centre, and with that Force we will ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... science has gained notably in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, to hold hands, and to ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... merry music taunt thee, How the Palace love had reared Mocks with echoes now, that haunt thee Where thou dream'dst they would have cheered? Moan the bells with thee in sorrow O'er a little mound of green, Rising up from graveyard furrow Bleakly blank upon the scene? Doth the tender language, stealing O'er the soul with soothing swell, Waken thoughts from sweet concealing: Joyous tale for chimes to tell; Reviving dainty hours of gladness, Fresh as daisies in the spring, As birds in summer, void of sadness, Songs, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... glued or something, for as I shoved my fingers inside, the whole thing opened out flat, like a lily. I looked down mechanically as I felt it go, and—by gad, the inside of it didn't look right! There was nothing on the glued-down top flap, but the inside back of the envelope wasn't blank, as it should have been. It wasn't written on in Thompson's neat copperplate or in his neat phrases, either. A pencil scrawl stared at me, upside down, as I gripped the lower flap of the envelope unconsciously, under ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... to show that curls are worn by an addition of blank spaces, this makes the difference between single lines and broad stomachs, the least thing is lightening, the least thing means a little flower and a big delay a big delay that makes more nurses than little women really ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... to fill in," said the orderly. He meant that the faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks were to be filled with portraits of important people on either the hospital staff or from the Chicago Office of ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... unusually late, which they conceived to be an unusually early, hour. The result of this conversation was, that Ormond remained with them in this beautiful retirement in Devonshire the next day, and the next, and—how many days are not precisely recorded; a blank was left for the number, which the editor of these memoirs does not dare to fill up at random, lest some Mrs. M'Crule should exclaim, "Scandalously too long to keep the young man there!"—or, "Scandalously too short a courtship, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... was blind with anger. Sharply he remembered the walks he had sometimes taken at night in the city streets and the air of disorderly ineffectiveness all about him. And here in the mining town it was the same. On every side of him appeared blank empty faces and loose badly ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... duodecimo book; its ivory-white pebbled paper cover was prettily illustrated with a water -colored design irregularly washed over the greater part of its surface: quite across the page at top, and narrowing from right to left as it descended. In the triangular space left blank the title of the periodical and the publisher's imprint were tastefully lettered so as to be partly covered by the background ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... erstwhile commander of the Algonquin. He had long since discarded his empty automatics to favor of bare fists, and now he flung himself into the midst of the battle. Others sprang forward with him, those who were still armed firing point blank into ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... secret among few men.' I cannot find that there is any record in the Paris mint of Blondeau's employment there, and the only reference to his invention in the Mint records of this country refers to the 'collars,' or perforated discs of metal surrounding the 'blank' while it was struck into a coin. There is, however, in the British Museum a MS. believed to be in Blondeau's hand, in which he claims his process, 'as a new invention, to make a handsome coyne, than can be found in all the world besides, viz., that shall not only be stamped on both flat ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... this, however, though formally separated in MSS., is looked upon as one line, one verse; hence a word can be divided, the former part pertaining to the first and the latter to the second moiety of the distich. As the Arabs ignore blank verse, when we come upon a rhymeless couplet we know that it is an extract from a longer composition in monorhyme. The Kit'ah is a fragment, either an occasional piece or more frequently a portion of a Ghazal (ode) or Kasidah (elegy), other than the Matla, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... down in the valve pits on the ladder of the casing, and to all accessible parts while in motion at its highest speed, and there was no undue vibration, only a uniform murmur of well-balanced parts, and the peculiar clash of water against the sides of the casing as its velocity was checked by the blank spaces in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... was harder for him to bear than the abuse, but he kept his countenance as blank as a sheet of white paper," Jack wrote. "There was much vehement declamation against the measure and ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in the winter of 1886-87, during my visit to America. At that time the work of opening and draining the Corso Vittorio Emanuele had just reached a place which was considered terra incognita by the topographers, and indicated by a blank spot in the archaeological maps of the city. I mean the district between the Vallicella (la Chiesa Nuova, the Palazzo Cesarini, etc.) and the banks of the Tiber near S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini. The reports spoke vaguely ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... become the Mother-Superior of her convent. I found her very cheerful and she told me that her happiness was complete. Even then she did not ask me the true story of what had happened to her during that period when her mind was a blank. She said that she knew something had happened but that as she no longer felt any curiosity about earthly things, she did not wish to know the details. Again I rejoiced, for how could I tell the true tale and expect to be believed, even by the most ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... still a moment, looking at her from top to toe in blank astonishment, her eye resting particularly on the red ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... goatee man, bloody and savage with Cameron's blow. "Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a lot of blank blank ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... time he is twenty-four he is a first mate on the coal boats. Comes another vital change! When he left the shop, he felt all that he had to do to follow his destiny was to go to sea. Now the star has led him up to a blank wall. The only promotion he can obtain on these merchantmen is to a captainship; and the captaincy on a small merchantman will mean pretty much a monotonous flying back and forward like a shuttle between the ports ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... imprecation. They were on the Ridge in a blinding snow-storm! The road had already vanished under their feet, and with it the fresh trail they had so closely followed! They stood helplessly on the shore of a trackless white sea, blank and spotless of any trace or sign of ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... up gaps by judicial conjecture, the guiding principle still is, or ought to be, the consideration of what either party has given the other reasonable cause to expect of him. The court aims not at imposing terms on the parties, but at fixing the terms left blank as the parties would or reasonably might have fixed them if all the possibilities had been clearly before their minds. For this purpose resort must be had to various tests: the court may look to the analogy of what the parties have expressly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... in Platitudes must be connected and coherent. There is no use repeating "Wollah wollah, gollah gollah, ASQUITH must go, We want eight," or things of that sort. And you must not make mere blank statements like "The number of cigars annually imported into the U.S.A. is 26,714,811," unless they can be introduced ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... "persecutions," before which a large section of the Scottish church has fallen by an act of spontaneous martyrdom, were not merely needlessly defied, but were originally self-created; they were evoked, like phantoms and shadows, by the martyrs themselves, out of blank negations. Without provocation ab extra, without warning on their own part, suddenly they place themselves in an attitude of desperate defiance to the known law of the land. The law firmly and tranquilly vindicates itself; the whole series of appeals is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... to be at no great distance from the borders of Algiers. Our knowledge of the interior of Africa, however, was very imperfect; or, I may say, we knew nothing at all about it—our only recollection of the Desert being a vast blank space, with a few spots upon it marked "oases," with Lake Tchad and Timbuctoo on its southern border, and a very indefinite line marked Algiers and Morocco. The place we were approaching was, we heard, the permanent abode ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... with plain whitewash, the dirty brick floor had never been scoured, the furniture consisted of three rickety chairs, a round table, and a sideboard stationed between the two doors of a bedroom and a sitting-room. Windows and doors alike were dingy with accumulated grime. Reams of blank paper or printed matter usually encumbered the floor, and more frequently than not the remains of Sechard's dinner, empty bottles and plates, were lying about on ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... to myself a single consolatory promise of Scripture. My mad antichristian philosophy had robbed me of all. God and His Providence, Christ and His sympathy, heaven and its blessedness, were all gone, and nothing was left but the hard blank horrors of inexorable fate. My soul was shut up as in a dungeon, unable to help itself. It was stretched on a rack, and tortured with excruciating pain. Those four long dreary days and nights were the darkest and most miserable I ever passed. But God was merciful. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... She sank back once more in her cushioned corner, looking at him with a blank dismay that could not escape even his dull observation. How impossible it was to tell Peter, after all! How ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... time to time of Maria Consuelo. He intended to go and see her in the afternoon, and he, like Contini, planned what he should do and say. But his plans were all unsatisfactory, and once he found himself staring at the blank wall opposite his table in a state of idle abstraction ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... wants; he began to think he should be very fortunate if all his science would procure for him the commonest "board and lodging!" When a man has ceased to cultivate his relationship with society, and wishes, after a time, to return to them, he will find that a blank wall has been built up between him and the world. There is not even a door to knock at, let alone the chance of its opening when he knocks. Our mathematician knew not where to look for a pupil, nor for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... at Jerusalem, rather unwelcome new development and expansion, when some unofficial believers, without any authority from headquarters, took upon themselves to stride clean across the wall of separation, and to speak of Jesus Christ to blank heathens, and found, to the not altogether gratified surprise of the Christians at Jerusalem, 'that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost,' it was Barnabas who was sent down to look into this surprising ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the first to introduce the sonnet, which Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth employed with such power in after times. Blank verse was first used in England by the Earl of Surrey, who translated a portion of Vergil's AEneid into that measure. When Shakespeare took up his pen, he found that vehicle of poetic expression ready for ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in far-away days when Venice was an early rapture, this strange and mystifying painter was almost the supreme revelation. The plastic arts may have less to say to us than in the hungry years of youth, and the celebrated picture in general be more of a blank; but more than the others any fine Tintoret still carries us back, calling up not only the rich particular vision but the freshness of the old wonder. Many things come and go, but this great artist remains for us in Venice a part of the company of the mind. The others are there ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Alcibiades, to the young Caesar. To many he seemed Nietzsche's Overman revealed. He was big and blond and virile, and splendidly non-moral. The first great feat that startled Europe, and almost brought about a new Trojan war, was his abduction of the Princess Helena of Norway and his blank refusal to marry her. Then followed his marriage with Gretchen Krass, a Swiss girl of peerless beauty. Then came the gallant rescue, which almost cost him his life, of three drowning sailors whose boat had upset in the sea near Heligoland. For that and his victory ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... themselves to brandy-and-water. As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and not keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old soldier refused point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy. "Faith, the Major's big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael said; "he'll ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matter off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, and had written ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Peterkins' house formed a blank wall. The owner had originally planned a little block of semi-detached houses. He had completed only one, very semi ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... just been broken by it, and who were now taking to the trees in all directions. I ought to remark, lest the gallant riflemen should be under the imputation of want of valour in this proceeding, that they were only allowed to fire blank cartridge. The elephant next to me stood the brunt of the charge, which was pretty severe, while mine created a diversion by butting him violently in the side, and, being armed with a formidable pair of tusks, made a considerable impression; ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... in the late afternoon of the day when she wrote to Craven. Just before his arrival she was feeling peculiarly blank and almost confusedly dull. She had gone through so much recently, had lived at such high tension, had suffered such intense nervous excitement, in the restaurant of the Bella Napoli and afterwards, that both body and mind refused to function quite normally. Long ago she had stayed ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... for leaf, the wise man read it through: every man may read in this book, but only by fragments. To many an eye the characters seem to tremble, so that the words cannot be put together; on certain pages the writing often seems so pale, so blurred, that only a blank leaf appears. The wiser a man becomes, the more he will read; and the wisest read most. He knew how to unite the sunlight and the moonlight with the light of reason and of hidden powers; and through this stronger light many things came clearly before him from the page. But in the division of ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... personal cares to harass them, and no political questions to agitate them—having no extended speculations to push, and no public enterprises to prosecute, (save occasionally when a wreck on the southern point throws them into a ferment,) the lives of the higher classes seem a perfect blank, as it regards every thing manly. Their thoughts are chiefly occupied with sensual pleasure, anticipated or enjoyed. The centre of existence to them is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Robert was allowed to be judge of the proprieties, and as the kindness on his part was great, it was accepted; and Caroline was carried off for three weeks to keep her residence, and make the house feel what a blank her little figure ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beheaded for it ten times.—Ah, thou say, thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord! now art thou within point- blank of our jurisdiction regal. What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence, even the presence of Lord Mortimer, that I am ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... not the only literary man on board the Neversink. There were three or four persons who kept journals of the cruise. One of these journalists embellished his work—which was written in a large blank account-book—with various coloured illustrations of the harbours and bays at which the frigate had touched; and also, with small crayon sketches of comical incidents on board the frigate itself. He would frequently ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... him in blank amazement Then very slowly a look of intelligence came over his face. He ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Shorne Mills. Something had seemed to have gone out of her life. The sun was shining as brightly, there was the same light on the sea, the same incoming and outgoing tide; every one was as kind to her as they had been before he left, and yet all life seemed a blank. When she was not waiting upon mamma she wandered about Shorne Mills, sailed in the Annie Laurie, and sometimes rode across the moor. But there was something wanting, and the lack of it made happiness impossible. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... tantalizing. He longed to hear of the experience, and yet he hesitated to ask point-blank. His interest was so keen, however, that he could not restrain himself entirely, and he ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... Lavalliere announced his departure for the wars. Maille was much grieved at this resolution, and wished to accompany his brother; that Lavalliere refused him point blank. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... not to Middlesex, but to Warwickshire. Alas! for the credit sake of 'Robert Burbadge, of Northend, Fulham,' in the place in the poor-rate assessment of 1625, where the sum should have been inserted, there is a blank; although twenty-two of his neighbours at North End are contributors of sums varying from 6s. 8d. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Then he offers to buy. As his wealth is unlimited, and sooner or later all the nobility and gentry of England, France, Italy and Russia will be in Queer Street, his collection cannot but grow and become more and more amazing. He even had the cheek to send the Trustees of the National Gallery a blank cheque asking them to fill it up as they wished whenever they were ready to part with TITIAN'S "Bacchus and Ariadne." Though he calls himself a patriot, directly the War is done he will make overtures to Germany. There is a Vermeer in Berlin on which he has set ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... the topmost branch—hurrah! out of sight! Margaret adds her voice to the acclamations. Beat that if you can, Mary! That doubtful wind keeps yours suspended in a graceful minuet; its pace is accelerated—but earthwards! it has committed self-destruction by running foul of a rose-bush. A general blank! ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Anxiously, therefore, all eyes were looking out for a sail. Each time that the brig rose to the top of a sea, they all looked out on every side, in the hope of catching a glimpse of some approaching vessel; and blank was the feeling when she again sunk down into the deep trough and they knew that no help ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... met, they both fired at each other, point blank. The lieutenant dodged, but the robber was hit in the face, and the blood was soon dripping from his beard, the ends of which were, as usual, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the Baron, "let me recommend you to ask at CHAPMAN AND HALL's for Hilda's 'Where Is It' of Recipes, a work got up as simply and substantially as a good dinner should be, with 'pages in waiting,' quite blank, all ready for your notes,—the book, like a dining-table, being appropriately interleaved; and there is, happy thought, a pencil in the cover-side most handy for the intending Lucullus." The season of Lent is an excellent ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... now the familiar tale of every day; and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of destruction. What next? We may strain our eyes into the future which lies beyond this waning century; but never was conjecture more at fault. It is blank darkness, which even ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... this season, they have over-grown graft unions, and the tops are oversize for stocks. Circumference four inches below union is now 7 inches, and at same distance above is 9 inches. Both these types have thick shelled roundish nuts which are hard to get out of the husks, and so far have many blank nuts. India tree hazels also contain many blanks and are very difficult to separate from the husks. Trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... quite right," said I, "for you would be confronted by blank impossibility. But if you take to reading Hobbes you are in danger of becoming ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... called the Accused—the Assured, I mean—has paid blank pounds, shillings and pence Premium or Consideration ... to insure him/her from loss or damage by Lightning, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... whistle and looked at Bert to see what he thought about it; but the blank expression on the latter's face showed that he was ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... patient thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense family feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity which distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a solemn pause in all the sights and sounds of earth. And he whose moral nature was not yet enough developed to fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely instructed by his weariness into the secret ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... death, I looked at his missal. The blank pages at the beginning and the end were filled up with pious reflections, besides some few words, which spoke volumes as to one period of his existence. The first words inscribed were: "Julia, obiit A.D. 1799. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... was a native of Adair, county Limerick, Ireland. General Wemyss, who rode exactly in the line between her majesty and the criminal, thought that the pistol was fired at him, and was of opinion that, had it been loaded with ball, he must have been struck; he also considered the report to be from a blank cartridge. This opinion proved to be correct, he had no intention of hurting any person, and seemed either to have been actuated by a desire for display, or to place himself in the hands of the authorities as a criminal, for sake of maintenance, as he was in great destitution. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... landlord, but the latter curtly declined, having horses enough to "eat their heads off" during the winter, as he expressed it. His Jeremy Collier aversion to players was probably at the bottom of this point-blank rebuff, however. He was a stubborn man, czar in his own domains, a small principality bounded by four inhospitable walls. His guests—having no other place to go—were his subjects, or prisoners, and distress ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... her according to the ancient formula, and proceeded to question her upon her symptoms. He soon discovered their gravity, and I could see by his manner that he was anxious to an extreme. The Muse had grown so weak as to be unable to dictate even a little blank verse, and the indisposition had so far affected her mind that she had no memory of Parnassus, but deliriously maintained that she had been born in the home counties—nay, in the neighbourhood of Uxbridge. Her every phrase was a deplorable commonplace, and, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... studying did not satisfy. He was not trained enough to analyze his own thoughts to any purpose; he was not experienced enough to understand where his thoughts were leading him. He only knew that he felt no call to pray and fast that the Torah did not inspire him, and his days were blank. The life he was expected to lead grew distasteful to him, and yet he knew no other way to live. He became lax in his attendance at the synagogue, incurring the reproach of the family. It began to be rumored among the studious that the son-in-law of Raphael the Russian was not devoting himself ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a detour in the glimmer and shadow of the streets, came into the back stable lane, and watched for a long while the light burn steady in the judge's room. The longer he gazed upon that illuminated window-blind, the more blank became the picture of the man who sat behind it, endlessly turning over sheets of process, pausing to sip a glass of port, or rising and passing heavily about his book-lined walls to verify some reference. He could not combine the brutal judge and the industrious, dispassionate student; the connecting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less, on that day of arrival she had been painfully surprised by the bitterness of this Brittany, seen in full winter. And her heart sickened at the thought of having to travel another five or six hours in a jolting car—to penetrate still farther into the blank, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... the first place, it is impossible to take Vicksburg in front without too great a loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank range of their guns, not only from their water batteries, which line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills, while the enemy would be protected by the elevation from the range of our fire. By examining ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... the Etruscan, when we study the design. The modern demand for them has produced innumerable impositions in the shape of copies,—poor Scarabaei retouched to fine ones, still bearing the marks of antiquity, and others whose under surface, being originally left blank, is engraved by the hired workmen of the modern Roman antiquaries, by whom they are sold as guaranteed antiques. This is the most common and dangerous cheat, and one which the easy conscience of the Italian merchant regards as perfectly justifiable; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... I worked happily, content to the point of being absolutely oblivious of everything except ourselves and the picture. Our tea together afterwards, when we discussed the progress made and the colour effects, was a delight. But the moment the door was closed after her, when she had left me, a blank seemed to spread round me. The picture itself could not console me. I gazed and gazed at it, but the gaze did not satisfy me nor soothe the feverish unrest. I longed for her presence ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... out of it with the blank mind of a newborn babe; and here he was, keen to resume his adventures. Luck. They had not stopped to see if he was actually dead. Some passer-by in the hall had probably alarmed them. That handkerchief had carried him round the brink. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... and ridicule which your letter would meet with at the hands of some of our best anti-slavery men. I am thinking of it, just now, as in the hands of Rev. Mr. Blank. The other day I saw a cambric muslin handkerchief, richly embroidered, blow past me out of a child's carriage. As I turned to get it, a dog seized it, shook it, put both his paws on it, rent it, made rags of it, threw it down, snatched it up, and seemed vexed that there was no more ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... sculptor,—he may share that title with Greenough, since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael, —had found a ready market for all his blank slabs of marble, and full occupation in lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and singleness, both ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... She looked blank. "I don't think so, although there are dwarf chaks in the Polar Cities. But I'm sure I've never ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... one have a ruled blank book of good size to write down the botanical and common name of every flower. How many flowers do you think you can find in April? and who will ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looking before him, with his legs stretched out and his hand beating a little tattoo upon the table. "Well: well? well!" That was about what he said to himself, but it meant a great deal: it meant a vague but great disappointment, a sort of blank and vacuum expressed by the first of these words—and then it meant a question of great importance and many divisions. How could it ever have come to anything? Am I a man to marry? What could I have ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... In private houses only fumigation may be performed under the supervision of the attending physician; provided he follow accurately the directions given in the following rules and regulations. Upon request a blank will be provided upon which he must state the manner and extent of the work performed under his orders and supervision. If satisfactory to the Department, this will be accepted in place of fumigation by the Department. It is essential, however, that he should ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... of blank dejection. Kirk's first disappointment, when the girl had failed to keep her tryst, was as nothing compared to this, for now he felt that she was unattainable. He did not quite give up hope; so many strange ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... is his knowledge of English— extending to the most subtle idiom, or the most recondite cant phrase—more extensive than that of many of us who have English for our mother-tongue, but his delivery of Shakespeare's blank verse is remarkably facile, musical, and intelligent. To be in a sort of pain for him, as one sometimes is for a foreigner speaking English, or to be in any doubt of his having twenty synonymes at his tongue's end if he should ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... have lots of flags about the place this Christmas," said Monty, "to make it a sort of victory celebration as well. I'll put two or three over the organ, and stick some round the monuments. What I'd like would be to see our huge Union Jack hanging down over that blank wall there." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Western State—of all things! Senator North is the reverse of transparent, but sometimes he goes to the point in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. He is not on the Committee of Foreign Relations, so I asked him point blank the other day if he thought the treaty would go through and if he did not mean to vote for it. He is usually as polite as all men who are successful in politics and like women, but he gave a short and brutal laugh. 'Lady Mary,' he said, 'when some of my colleagues were cultivating ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... stem of my useless pipe and racking my bran, but the "few brief words" obstinately refused to come. Nine o'clock chimed mournfully from the Norman tower of the church hard by, yet still my pen was idle and the paper before me blank; also I became conscious of a tapping somewhere close at hand, now stopping, now beginning again, whose wearisome iteration so irritated my fractious nerves that I flung down my pen ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... divided into four panes of 60, each pane consisting of ten horizontal rows of six stamps. The Crown and C.C. watermarks are arranged in the same manner upon the sheet of paper; each pane is enclosed in a single-lined frame. Down the centre of the sheet is a blank space of about half an inch wide; across the centre is a wider space, watermarked with the words CROWN COLONIES, which are also repeated twice along each ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville
... But when we combine and arrange their various statements, so as to form the whole into one regular and comprehensive testimony, we discover that there are not a few periods of His life still left utterly blank in point of incidents; and that there is no reference whatever to topics which we might have expected to find particularly noticed in the biography of so eminent a personage. After His appearance as a public teacher, He seems, not only to have made sudden transitions from place to place, but ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Holy Willie's Prayer had on the kirk-session, he says that they actually held three meetings to see if their holy artillery could be pointed against profane rhymers. 'Unluckily for me,' he adds, 'my idle wanderings led me on another side, point-blank within reach of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poem The Lament. 'Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot yet bear to recollect, and it had very nearly given me one or two ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... set and blank; his eyes looking vacant. 'Miss Limmer is very kind to us. She loves us and we love her dearly. Ask Batsy,' he said in a monotonous voice, as if he were repeating a lesson. 'Batsy, come here,' he said in the same voice. 'Is Miss Limmer ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... note of admiration; thaumaturgy &c.(sorcery) 992[obs3]. V. wonder, marvel, admire; be surprised &c. adj.; start; stare; open one's eyes, rub one's eyes, turn up one's eyes; gloar|; gape, open one's mouth, hold one's breath; look aghast, stand aghast, stand agog; look blank &c. (disappointment) 509; tombe des nues[Fr]; not believe one's eyes, not believe one's ears, not believe one's senses. not be able to account for &c. (unintelligible) 519; not know whether one stands on one's head or one's heels. surprise, astonish, amaze, astound; dumfound, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sitting on the piazza one morning with a number of un-appropriated blank hours before me, a little embarrassed whether to tease the big bear in the yard or lean over and give up to it, with the old dog who was snapping at flies on the floor, when it struck me as something very fresh, that as the wind was still ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... bit for Uncle Sam's fighting men. We ask your subscription to a fund which we are raising to send cigarettes to young students of the university who are now serving with the colours and who are so nobly maintaining the traditions of our Alma Mater. Please fill out the enclosed blank, stating your profession and present ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... twenty-six votes out of a possible 39, five blank papers were sent in, and eight votes were recorded ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin |
