"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he feels bound to make restitution. And in order to make restitution, to be kind and helpful and remedial, he must retain the management of Irish affairs in his benevolent hands. In order to expiate the crimes of the past he must repeat the basal blunder that was the cause and source of them. For this kind of sympathy we have only to say, in a somewhat vulgar phrase, that we have no use whatever. The Englishman who ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... day came differently to what we expected. Still we did our duty. Had we come to grief through any blunder or fault of mine or any of our officers there might have been cause for regret and heartburnings. Our orders were very simple—to hold the trenches at all costs until relieved. We carried out these orders and held the line. When finally ordered out we left ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... more heartless, who countenance this inhuman logic. The average mercantile sentiment of this and other great Northern cities runs thus: 'True, Slavery is unjust and barbarous—it is at once a wrong and a mistake—but it is not our blunder. Its perils are braved and its evils endured by those who cherish it, hundreds of miles away; while to us it is a positive advantage. By obstructing the mechanical and manufacturing development of the South, it dooms her products, her commerce, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the blunder which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... assure you, Monsieur Spencer, that it was with reluctance. The others of whom I have spoken—Sir George Duncombe, Monsieur Pelham, and his toy detective—forgive me that I smile—walk all the time in the palm of our hand. But they remain unharmed. If by any chance they should blunder into the knowledge of things which might cause us annoyance, why, then—there would be more invalids in Paris. Indeed, Monsieur, we do not seek to abuse our power. My errand to you to-day is ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... entitled to the preference. Lord Ellenborough is of a different opinion. He takes away the gates from a Mahometan mosque, and solemnly offers them as a gift to a Pagan temple. Morally, this is a crime. Politically, it is a blunder. Nobody who knows anything of the Mahometans of India can doubt that this affront to their faith will excite their fiercest indignation. Their susceptibility on such points is extreme. Some of the most serious disasters that have ever befallen us in India have been caused by that susceptibility. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... woman!" whispered Lady Delacour "she was to have been at the drawing-room to-day but for a blunder of mine: ready dressed she was, and I didn't call for her! Ah, Mad. de Pomenars, I am actually ashamed to see you," continued her ladyship; and she went forward to meet Clarence Hervey, who really ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... instant; then he said: "You are mistaken; it was Octavius and not Antony who was on Sextus' galley with Lepidus." And he went on his way to the courtyard, confining his blame to the historical blunder. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... piece of bell-cord, one end of which was fixed to the fellow's left foot and the other to the whistle lever, Yank set his fireman, with a white light and the robber's gun, on the rear car and flagged back to the rescue. The robbers, seeing the blunder they had made, took a few parting shots at the trainmen on the top of the train, mounted ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... Gothard was still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller fry, did not know whether to stay where he was or to depart. He stood pensively in the middle of the salon, his hand on the hilt of his sabre, his eye on the two Parisians. The Durieus, also ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... thing to have deep water between that camp and any assailants instead of behind it. Many Bears was a chief of great experience, but it had never occurred to him that it would cost him all his horses if he should be beaten in a fight with a river behind him. The blunder was remedied now with a rapidity which astonished even Murray, for he had not known how good a ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... provinces when I said you ought to be President. You said old Winkelstein had been in the position too long to be ousted. And yet I felt certain your superior English would tell in the long run in such a miserable congregation of foreigners, and when Winkelstein had made that delicious blunder about the 'university' of the Exodus instead of the 'anniversary,' and I went about laughing over it in all the best circles, the poor man's day was over. And when we came to London, and seemed to fall again to the bottom of the ladder because our greatness was swallowed ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... for I now saw too clearly that I had made a dreadful blunder, and that any attempt to carry assertion further, or even to explain away my words, might be to challenge the very discovery I would have given ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... brave for that night's work, for, when the drawbridge was drawn slowly up that evening, it was ten men, and three of them unarmed, against a regiment; and short and terrible would have been the shrift accorded to them had an inkling of suspicion arisen, or had the slightest blunder, or precipitation, exposed the ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... to clear matters up. Your aunt would insist that I took her to be forty, and the fun that my blunder made rather drew us together, and gave me a start over the other fellows at the station, half of whom fell straightway in love with her. Some months went on, and when the mutiny broke out we were engaged to be married. It is a proof of how completely the opium dreams ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... sovereignty, thou owest him the greater repayment. Render therefore to thy Benefactor the debt of thanksgiving, by the keeping of his holy commandments and by turning aside from every path whose end is destruction. For it is with kingdoms as with ships. If one of the sailors blunder it bringeth but small damage to the crew. But if the steersman err, he causeth the whole ship to perish. Even so it is with sovranty: if a subject err, he harmeth himself more than the state. But if the king err, he causeth injury to the whole realm. Therefore, as one that shall render strict ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... conversation; but Howe passed from one to another of the malcontents, and instructed them what to do in the next drill. They were to create all the confusion they could in the discharge of their duty. They were to misunderstand the orders, and to blunder in the execution of them, in such a manner as to conceal their own agency in the mischief, and divide the responsibility of it among their companions. The runaway crew of the Josephine, mortified at their failure, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... have been told by Kant's old friends, that for the space of more than thirty years, during which he had been in the habit of reading the newspaper published by Hartung, Lampe delivered it with the same identical blunder on every day of publication.—'Mr. Professor, here is Hartmann's journal.' Upon which Kant would reply—'Eh! what?—What's that you say? Hartmann's journal? I tell you, it is not Hartmann, but Hartung: now, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... former instances of a single vacancy in a cabinet, on which there was an entire concurrence. I repeated what I had said of his and their most indulgent judgment and took occasion distinctly to apologise for my blunder, and the consequent embarrassment which I caused to him in Feb. 1842, on the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... each name was called its young bearer rose and confronted her inquisitors. And the inquisitors began to blunder. Accusations of the fatal taint were met with denials and withdrawn with apologies. Sometimes it was truth, and sometimes pure arrogance and falsehood, that triumphed over these champions of instinctive racial antagonism. One dark girl ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... which she was remarkable. She ever knew full well what she desired to gain or to avoid, and once having fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an adroitness and brilliancy of resource, a control of herself and others, the which there was no circumventing. She never made a blunder because she could not control the expression of her emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas because she chose to do so, having naught to lose, and in the midst of all their riotous jesting with her the boon companions of Sir Jeoffry ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... repaid for moral injury by the pure joy he must have felt while torturing me with his banter? For all the deeper suffering, I am conscious of writhing under lacerated vanity when I think of that grotesque and humiliating blunder in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... descended upon him this afternoon that especial ecstasy that is surrendered once and again by the gods to men to lead them, maybe, into some especial blunder or to sharpen, for Olympian humour, the contrast of some swiftly ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... over him. The Duc d'Orleans asked the price of the picture. The clergy told Madame la Dauphine that the subject was suggestive of good thoughts; and there was, in truth, a most satisfying religious tone about it. Monseigneur the Dauphin admired the dust on the stone-floor,—a huge blunder, by the way, for Fougeres had painted greenish tones suggestive of mildew along the base of the walls. "Madame" finally bought the picture for a thousand francs, and the Dauphin ordered another like it. Charles X. gave the cross of the Legion of honor to this son of ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... the idea may become, it can rest on no other or sounder basis than which is presented to us in the psychology of primitive man. Each stage of theistic belief grows out of the proceeding stage, and if it can be shown that the beginning of this evolution arose in a huge blunder, I quite fail to see how any subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... EURIPIDES. The blunder is even worse than I had thought to make it out; for if he holds his office in the nether ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of the Brittische Journalistik; and so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Literature! ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Wilfred, a rare, sweet smile flitting across his lips, "dost thou blunder as Mary did? Is the Lord yet in the sepulchre? 'He is not here; He is risen.' And why then should His sepulchre be holier than other graves, when He that made the holiness is ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the least," replied the young woman, with nevertheless a sigh of relief. "It was all my own fault in so carelessly leaving the money. Some time, when less in a hurry than I am at the present moment, I will tell you how I came to make the blunder." ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... most common-place affairs! We may be thankful that the world has at last seen through these pretenders to superhuman sagacity. With but remarkably few exceptions, the great railway men of the time have committed the grossest blunders; and the stupidest blunder of all, has been the confounding of proper and improper expenditure; just as if a shopkeeper were to fall into the unhappy error of imagining that his returns were to be in the ratio, not of the business he was to do, but of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... given to be able to say it off from beginning to end, exceptions and all, without a blunder! But he could only stand and hang his head; he did not know a word of it. Then through the hot pounding in his ears he heard the master's voice; it was quite gentle; not at all the scolding voice he expected. And it said, "I'm not going to punish you, little Franz. Perhaps ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... of the identity of the story with the "Leonore" operas, of Gaveaux and Paer. Much confusion has existed in the books (and still exists, for that matter) touching the order in which the four overtures were composed. The early biographers were mistaken on that point, and the blunder was perpetuated by the numbering when the scores were published. The true "Leonore No. 1," is the overture known in the concert-room, where it is occasionally heard, as "Leonore No. 2." This was the original ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery belonging to Constance, and in which that young lady had made a great blunder, which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying. The conversation went gaily forward among the others, Fleda taking no part in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part was rather reserved and grave, according to his ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and Annie's answers were related quickly enough, and the cause of Michael's blunder was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... admitted history, that this dull but determined Missouri senator approached Judge Douglas, then chairman of the Committee on Territories, and, by some incomprehensible influence, induced that distinguished senator to commit the flagrant and terrible blunder of reporting the Kansas-Nebraska bill, with a clause repealing the Missouri Compromise, and thus throwing open Kansas to the occupation of slavery. That error was grievously atoned for in the subsequent hard ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... knew more than Mangan, most of them wouldn't have joined if they had known as much. You see they had never had any money to handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected a revolution, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that we could blunder and muddle on any longer. But nothing happened, except, of course, the usual poverty and crime and drink that we are used to. Nothing ever does happen. It's amazing how well we get ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... that all their feats of prowess have not prevented me from going my own little way. It was bound to be. Those fellows imagine that there's no one to equal them. When they meet an adversary like myself, one who is not to be bounced, it upsets them and they make blunder after blunder, while still believing that they are hoodwinking him like mad. Schoolboys, that's what they are! However, as you seem to have some illusions left about the aforesaid Lupin, as you are counting on that poor devil to crush me and to work ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... make no blunder, I resolved, before proceeding further, to learn what I could of the character and antecedents of the suspected one, and this from the only source which ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... was in progress, another event showed how imperative was his need and how precarious his situation. He had, in fact, been guilty of a serious military blunder in going with a mere flying column into Britain as he had gone into Germany. The Channel was not the Rhine, and ships were exposed to risks from which his bridge had been entirely exempt. Nothing but a crushing defeat would cut him off from retiring by that; but the Ocean ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... official register correct to the most evanescent item, Debtor and Creditor, in respect to one and all of us; silently marks down, Creditor by such and such an unseen act of veracity and heroism; Debtor to such a loud blustery blunder, twenty-seven million strong or one unit strong, and to all acts and words and thoughts executed in consequence of that—Debtor, Debtor, Debtor, day after day, rigorously as Fate (for this is Fate that is writing); ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... now and then introduces an unintentional advertisement of the linotype by presenting to its readers a line upside down. Another trick is the mixing of two paragraphs, which sometimes occurs even in books. The most famous instance of this blunder is probably that which happened in the English "Men of the Time" for 1856, and which led to a serious lawsuit against the publishers. The printer had mixed the biographies of the Bishop of Oxford and Robert ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... it with great advantage. He intends, as you will see by his speech, to move the previous question on Pitt's proposition, which he is afraid to attempt to negative. After this recantation was over, the day was closed by such a blunder of Sheridan's, as I never knew any man of the meanest talents guilty of before. During the whole time that I have sat in Parliament, in pretty warm times, I never remember such an uproar as was raised by his threatening us with the danger of provoking the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... work, ignorance on the part of parents, teachers, and other advisors; ignorance on the part of employers. As a race, we do not know human nature; we do not know how to determine, in advance of actual, painful and costly experience, the aptitudes of any individual. We blunder a good deal even in trying to learn from experience. We do not know work; we do not know its requirements, its conditions, its opportunities, its emoluments. And so, in our ignorance, we go astray; ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... In the armoury of apologetics etymology has been the most serviceable weapon. It is easy to see that by aid of etymology the most repulsive legend may be compelled to yield a pure or harmless sense, and may be explained as an innocent blunder, caused by mere verbal misunderstanding. Brahmans, Greeks, and Germans have equally found comfort in this hypothesis. In the Cratylus of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy which came to him all ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... what a misleading blunder she had committed towards Loveday in playing to the yeoman. Perhaps she had sown the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... promised that he should come to no harm—I know that," he said quickly. "At first I thought that it must have been a blunder, but on reflection I am sure that it is not. It is the Emperor. He must have given the order for the arrest himself, behind my back. That is his way. He trusts no one. He deceives those nearest to him. I made out the list of those to be arrested to-night, and your father's name was ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: 'Hullo! I have committed a blunder.' And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to Martin, as you prescribed; the blunder was my own, as well as a more considerable one, that of Lord Sandwich's death—which was occasioned by my supposing, at first, that the translation of Barba was made by the second Earl, whose death I had marked in the list, and forgot to alter, after I had ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... to him across the counter, and he took and held it tight; he had never seen her looking sweeter, nor felt that she was half so dear to him. After all, his blunder had brought them together again, and he was ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... most overpowering emotion; for, in truth, no one up to that hour had really credited that England would take the lives of those three men on a verdict already publicly admitted and proclaimed to have been a blunder. Now, however, came the news that all was over—that the deed was done—and soon there was seen such an upheaving of national emotion as had not been witnessed in Ireland for a century. The public conscience, utterly shocked, revolted against the dreadful ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... had her trials of the same character. Nothing ever annoyed her so much as a little blunder she made, the week after the opening of the session. I have not yet mentioned that there was already a universal dissatisfaction among the women, on account of their being liable to military service. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... Death and damnation! (Goes up and down with agitated steps.) Is it for this that I have sacrificed my nights—that I have mowed down mountains and filled up chasms? For this that I have turned rebel against all the instincts of humanity? To have this vagabond outcast blunder in at last, and destroy all my cunningly devised fabric. But gently! gently! What remains to be done is but child's play. Have I not already waded up to my very ears in mortal sin? Seeing how far the shore lies behind me, it would be madness to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... pilot and captain at sword and pistol, the crew playing Donnybrook freely. Their cooler heads are shrewd enough to see the folly, but it catches the Irish fancy to rush to the extreme, and we have allowed it to be supposed that it frightens us. There is the capital blunder, fons et origo. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... astonished that she still bent over the lock, motionless, saw in hand. In the instant she made a mental review of her proceedings and satisfied herself that she had been guilty of no professional blunder. The inopportune appearance of Mr. Cragg must be attributed to a blind chance—to fate. So the first wave of humiliation that swept over her receded as she gathered her wits ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... not being an experienced lover—indeed, never before having been engaged in the practice of love-making at all, except in a small schoolboy way—could not take advantage of the situation; and out came the blunder, which afterwards cost him so many bitter ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... perhaps no class of puzzle over which people so frequently blunder as that which involves what is called the theory of probabilities. I will give two simple examples of the sort of puzzle I mean. They are really quite easy, and yet many persons are tripped up by them. A friend recently produced five pennies and said to me: "In throwing these five pennies ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... town'll go to hell— Blow the bugle, draw the sword— 'Fore I see him 'live an' well— 'Im the best beside the ford. Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul river, Ford o' Kabul river in the dark! Gawd 'elp 'em if they blunder, for their boots'll pull 'em under, By the ford o' Kabul ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... night he had done something terrible, he had made a blunder. There had been a party. The guests, a lot of them, were mostly drunk, or touched with drink. And he too had too much. He remembered having thrown his arms about a tall woman, gowned in black with loose shoulder straps, dragging her through a dance. He had even sung a bit of a song, madly, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... man wisely waits until his judgment is matured, and then proceeds to choose his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... shine, Thy feet concealing, but a lamp to mine. Let me, at seasons opportune and fit, By turns adore thee and by turns commit. In thy high service let me ever be (Yet never serve thee as my critics me) Happy and fallible, content to feel I blunder chiefly when to thee I kneel. But best felicity is his thy praise Who utters unaware in works and ways— Who laborare est orare proves, And feels thy suasion wheresoe'er he moves, Serving thy purpose, not thine altar, still, And working, for he thinks it his, thy will. If such ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... politicians, my lords, have heaped one blunder upon another; they have disgusted the nation both by the means and the end; and have insulted the senate with no other view than that of plundering the people. They have ventured, without the consent of the senate, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... and so are Mephistopheles, and Prometheus, and Achilles; but they are not true to human nature; they are beings created by the poets' minds, and true to their laws of being. There is no commoner blunder in men, who are themselves mere critics, never creators, than to require consistency to the nature of us and our world in the works of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... rule it is in writing that the scholar is liable to slip; in oral speech he seldom makes a blunder. In fact, there are many people who are perfect masters of speech,—who never make a blunder in conversation, yet who are ignorant of the very principles of grammar and would not know how to write a sentence ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... not until she had exhausted the means of defence and life. At that time, few men in America but were in the habit of denouncing the French President for his indifference to the Italian cause. He was charged with having been guilty of a blunder and a crime. His consent to the expedition to Rome aggravated his offence, for it was an act of intervention on the wrong side. But the passage of ten years enables us to be more just to him than it was possible for us to be in 1849. He was not firm in his seat. He was but a temporary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... are living their lives as we are living ours, in the shimmer of a globule in space, it is not enough that we should lift our faces to the sky and blunder and guess at a God there, because there is so much room between the stars, and murmur faintly, "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." By the infinite bones of our bodies, by the seeds of the million ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... friend, no: I can't part with you tonight, no, not for an instant. I have many lessons to give you. How are we to learn our parts for to-morrow, if we don't rehearse them beforehand? Do you not know that a single blunder may turn what I hope will be a farce into a tragedy? Go home!—pooh! pooh! why, man, I have not seen my wife, nor put my house to rights, and if you do but listen to me I tell you again and again that not a hair of our ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... country, and I am tired of roturiers already.—The government has committed dangerous faults. The king is an excellent man, but his heart is where his head ought to be, and his head where his heart.—His flight was a terrible affair, but it was a blunder on both sides; he ought never to have gone, or the government ought never to have brought him back.—However, I have no cause to complain of its epitaph. The blunder dissolved that government. I have to thank it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... to me, for it was the first time in my life that I had struck society, and I would have given all of my previous summer's wages to have been away from there. I did not know how to conduct myself, and every time I made a blunder—which seemed to me every time I made a move—I would attempt to smooth it over, and always ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... to all he said. But this did not propitiate him, and I soon found him so jealous as to be a nuisance. He was Colonial-born and was always airing the fact. He rejoiced in my rawness, and when I made a blunder would crow over it for hours. 'It's no good, Mr Crawfurd; you new chums from England may think yourselves mighty clever, but we men from the Old Colony can get ahead of you every time. In fifty years you'll maybe learn ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... my calmness! If I could but think it might be a tremendous blunder out of which I would sometime wake into verity! But there has been no mistake; I have not been dreaming unless I am ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the track Of flying Fortune, emulously panting, The empires, kingdoms, dukedoms of the earth I saw, now clinging to her waving locks, Now to the end of her encircling boa. Beholding this, and o'er the ample sheets Profoundly meditating, I became Of my sad blunder, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... or possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere—she would only resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... consulted the Shakspere of Malone, and verified my recollections, when the query of "Mr. JEBB" appeared—but forbore to notice its misconceptions. Besides, one C., after an interval of two months, merely asserted that it was not a blunder of Malone; the other C. furnished, ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... said Elinor, in eager sympathy, feeling with the greatest relief that she was reinstated in Rachael's good graces after her stupid blunder. "I don't see how you stand it ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... blunder. Francis confused the old ways with the new. The German generals had been hopeless of raising the siege, the imperial armies were on the point of disbanding, but as a last resort their leaders advanced and defied the enemy to fight on equal terms. Instead ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... another thing," she continued rather proudly, "a thing men too often blunder over—with the very best intentions, bless them, only they do blunder, and that leads to ructions. Please put the question of money out of your head once and for all. I have a certain amount of my own, nothing princely ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... whom the positive currents neutralize the negative currents? Your affinity is perhaps the plainest woman in the room. But beauty is a juggling sprite, entirely uncontrolled by electricity, and you are quite likely to make a mistake. It is absurd the way we blunder on in a scientific age. We touch a button, and are married. The judge touches another button, and we are divorced. If when we touched the first button it revealed us both negatives, we should start back in horror, for it is only before ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder, and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had, cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it. And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... made a very ridiculous blunder in a French translation that morning. Such a thing was unusual for him, and was such a comical one that it set the others of the class in a roar of laughter. Drake was so extravagantly affected by Alf's blunder that Mr Clare had to stop his laughter, which ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... spark through the air breaks up some of these pairs and in the confusion of the shock the lonely atoms seize on their nearest neighbor and so may get partners of the other sort. I have seen this same thing happen in a square dance where somebody made a blunder. It is easy to understand the reaction if we represent the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen by the initials of their ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... poets without thinking of Shakspeare, who towers above them all. We have yet to discover an editor capable of doing him full justice. Some of Johnson's notes are very amusing, and those of recent editors occasionally provoke a smile. If once a blunder has been made it is persisted in. Take, for instance, a glaring one in the 2nd part of Henry IV., where, in the apostrophe to sleep, "clouds" is ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... have headed the fugitive or at the least brought its rider in rope-throw, now, outworn by the long trail it had followed, the little animal stumbled and almost fell when Perris with iron hand swung it around. That blunder lost fatal yards, but still it did its honest best. It was a veteran of many a round-up. No pony in the arduous work of cutting out was surer of eye or quicker of foot, and now this dodging back and forth brought a gleam into the bronco's eyes. There ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... of Calhoun, came presently to regard the Missouri arrangement as a capital blunder on its part, and from the standpoint of that section this conclusion seems strictly logical. For the location of a slave line upon the Louisiana territory operated in fact as a decided check to the expansion of slavery as a social rival and a political power at one and ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... themselves, and without water must surrender at the discretion of the soldiers. Gen. Howard, however, complained that his troops were worn out, that he could not come up until the following day, and ended by ordering the command under Bernard to return to his camp. This was Gen. Howard's first fatal blunder, to be followed by others equally as serious. The Indians remained in their position until the next day, when they moved out towards the head of the South Fork of the John Day River. They camped on Buck Mountain three days while Howard was resting his troops. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... of companionship which is the one sympathetic link between a drunken man and his race, he had left his place of concealment at a strangely inopportune time, entailing the most deplorable consequences upon those nearest and dearest to him—a blunder that had almost the dignity ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... fault? Tis not my arrogance, But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee. What right hadst Thou to make these people free And let all nature prompt them to advance?— Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me, Instead of Wisdom, to approve ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... James, irritably. "Mesne profits refer to profits derived from real estate. Just like a solicitor to make such a blunder." ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... ourselves and which require years to straighten out, render this life absurd, if it be final. It cannot be more than a series of tentative beginnings, and if there be no continuation, the scheme of things is a gigantic blunder. If Jesus does no more than supply us with an ideal hopelessly beyond our attainment and inspire us irresistibly to set out on its quest, He is no Saviour but ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... that I saw an instance of want of tact which struck me as most remarkable. Fighting being over, diplomacy stepped in, and a man of somewhat high rank in that service was sent to make friendly overtures to the authorities. Can it be believed (I do not say it as a sneer against diplomacy, for this blunder was really unique), this big man had scarcely finished the pipe of peace which he smoked with the authorities, when he proposed to introduce vaccination and tracts among the people? Badly as the poor fellows felt the licking they had received, and much as they feared another should ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... marriage was a good one," replied his mother, "but I could not swear all that Shanks would have had me, John—No, I could not swear that, for Dr. Paulding had nothing to do with it, and if he were to repeat it all over to me a thousand times, I am sure that I should make a blunder, even if I consented to tell such a falsehood. My father and good Mrs. Danby used always to say that the mutual consent made a marriage, and a good one too. Now your father's own letter shows that he consented to it, and God knows I did. But these lawyers will not let well alone, and by trying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:—'At three years old the cow sheds its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives.' Animated Nature, iii. 12. This statement remains in the second edition. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... within a coffin, Pray, gentlefolks, forbear your scoffin'; A Boat a judge! yes, where's the blunder A wooden Judge is no such wonder! And in his robes you must agree, No Boat was better dekt than he. 'Tis needless to describe him fuller, In short he was an ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... present net results of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible.—Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles.—Further insistence on this value a logical blunder.—The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church.—Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles.—Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to the domain of ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... Street houses, and the mist was heavy besides; otherwise he had made shift to locate Number 9 by ticking off the dwellings from the corner. If he went on, hit or miss, the odds were anything-you-please to one that he would blunder into the servant's quarters of some inhabited house, and—be promptly and righteously sat upon by the service-staff, while ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... our friends are coming here to-day! You must have been dreaming, Austin," cried Aunt Charlotte, sitting bolt upright. "How can you have made such a blunder? Of course you ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the mooring-chains The wide-eyed corpse rolled free, To blunder down by Garden Reach And rot at Kedgeree, The tale the Hughli told the shoal The ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of Birmingham keenly, the one man who could say to the executive with authority, this appointment would be a blunder. Birmingham being somewhere on the continent, out of reach of appeals for help, his place was honorably filled by the General of the Army, with an influence, however, purely sentimental. Arthur accompanied him for the last ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... soldiers will either have fretted themselves out of the army or have been driven out as political non-effectives, troublesome, innovating persons anxious to spend money upon "fads." So armed, the New Democracy will blunder into war, and the opening stage of the next great war will be the catastrophic breakdown of the formal armies, shame and disasters, and a disorder of conflict between more or less equally matched masses of stupefied, scared, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... continued the count, "ought to practise discretion, shrewdness, caution from the start; he should be incapable of such a blunder as taking a peer of France for ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... several times up and down, takes a cigar, stops near her and says, after a pause: You think the topic of my talk to-night Extremely ludicrous, I should not wonder? [Pauses for an answer. SVANHILD is silent. I'm very conscious that it was a blunder; Sister's and daughter's love alone possess you; Henceforth I'll wear kid gloves when I address you, Sure, ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... to put in an appearance at St. Wennys—and would he come down to Mallow Court? With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan's bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could not ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He had endeavored to maintain ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... Were you to draw your own conclusions from the descriptions which have been given of the sloth, you would probably suspect that no naturalist has actually gone into the wilds with the fixed determination to find him out and examine his haunts, and see whether Nature has committed any blunder in the formation of this extraordinary creature, which appears to us so forlorn and miserable, so ill put together, and so totally unfit to enjoy the blessings which have been so bountifully given to the rest ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... painted in three dresses, as a gallant, a Presbyterian minister, and a Scotch Highlander in his plaid." Langbaine and Aubrey both make the mistake of ascribing the third figure to Teague in "The Committee;" and in spite of Evelyn's clear statement, his editor in a note follows them in their blunder. Planche has reproduced the picture in his "History of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of the pension vetoes. Toward the end of the canvass Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British Minister, fell into a Republican trap and wrote to a pretended naturalized Englishman, who called himself Murchison, that a vote for Cleveland would best serve Great Britain. His tactless blunder caused his summary dismissal from Washington and aided the Republican cause much as the Burchard affair had injured it ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... written in letters of light on the tablets of our hearts. It is no slight matter for any man, whether he be President or private citizen, so to wound the sense of right of a whole race, so to shock its faith in the justice and righteousness of its rulers and government, as that cruel blunder of the President of the United States produced among the colored people of the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... fine morning, having caught Gaubertin with his hand in the bag, as the saying is, the general flew into one of those rages peculiar to the imperial conquerors of many lands. In doing so he committed a capital blunder,—one that would have ruined the whole life of a man of less wealth and less consistency than himself, and from which came the evils, both small and great, with which the present history teems. Brought up in the imperial ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... companionship apply to it. In fact, we live with it, as well as in it. And if we have a saving conscience as to the immeasurability of home by money standards we are not to be tempted by the veriest bargain of a house that does not nearly represent our ideals. To blunder here is to topple over ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... in a snow storm, and on a night so dark that it would have been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... some day, he shows that to rule well requires other things than one-sidedness in the ruling person; and is fortunate if he does not acquire that part of renown which consists in notoriety, by committing some colossal blunder, henceforth historical from ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some blunder ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... newspapers from Mexico to Cape Horn during August, 1914, to the end of that year shows plainly that for several months public opinion had not cleared up, that the conflict seemed to be a frightful blunder, a terrific misunderstanding, that might have been avoided, and for which no one nation in ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... returning with the emperor's refusal. Godfrey, the bravest and most determined of the leaders of the Crusade, was not a man to swerve from his word, and the country was given up to pillage. Alexius here committed another blunder. No sooner did he learn from dire experience that the Crusader was not an utterer of idle threats, than he consented to the release of the prisoner. As he had been unjust in the first instance, he became cowardly in the second, and taught his enemies (for so the Crusaders were forced to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "Why did I blunder in on this road?" the lover asks. He had not thought his situation so terrible as it ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... closing the door behind him. I, sitting there, and listening to his footsteps, heard him speak to somebody on the stairs, and heard two sets of footsteps blunder down the ill-lighted staircase together. I took the papers Mr. Gregory had left behind him and looked them through. They were short and simple, and I mastered them in five minutes. Then I went back ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... in his curious mistake of regarding the differences between the two as altogether to the disadvantage of the "John." Spitta, indeed, goes further than this. So bent is he on proving the superiority of the "Matthew" that what he sees as a masterstroke in that work is in the "John" a gross blunder; and, on the whole, the pages on the "John" Passion are precisely the most fatuous of the many fatuous pages he wrote when he plunged into artistic criticism, leaving his own proper element of technical or historical criticism. This is a pity, for Spitta really had a very good case to spoil. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... so good; but, in another quarter, Allcraft suddenly discovered that he had committed an egregious blunder. He had entrusted Planner with the secret of his critical position—had made him acquainted with the dishonest transactions of his father, and the consequent bankruptcy of the firm. Not that this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... a refusal would be an insult to the hundreds and thousands of loyal Dutch subjects the King has in all parts of South Africa, I say that this invidious treatment of the Orange River Colony would be the greatest blunder, a fitting pendant to all that long concatenation of fatal mistakes which has marked our policy in South Africa for so many years; and I say it would be a breach of the spirit of the terms of peace, because we could not say, "We promised ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... I regret to say, confess his blunder, but left the Reverend Mr. Withholder to remain under suspicion of having committed an unprovoked assault and battery. It was characteristic of Rocky Canyon, however, that this suspicion, far from injuring his clerical reputation, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... do it. I do say, I won't be any too surprised if he pulls it off. It's a thing that calls for invention. He'll swear he hasn't an ounce of it in him—says he just happens to blunder on things, or applies what he has picked up. All gas! He once showed me some musty old drawings that made it look like one of his grandfathers ought to be credited with the basic inventions of a dozen machines that to-day are making the owners of the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... hours I was quite perfect, and Timothy Ruddel, who was called up before me, was also able to say his lesson without a blunder very much to the disappointment of Mr O'Gallagher, who observed, "So you've slipped through my fingers, have you, this time, Master Timothy? Never mind, I'll have you yet; and, moreover, there's Master Keene to go through the fiery furnace." Just ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... stereotyping the ignorant prejudices of the people into statutes and constitutions, to educate this public sentiment, by the utterance of sound ideas, by the example of honest action. When God gives new truths to the few, it is that they may win the response of the many. There is no blunder more constantly made by politicians than the assumption that the people are never ready ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of Bishops recently held in Rome it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council; in fact, that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be repaired in 1869." I told him, of course, that no such question could be entertained in the Council; that the doctrinal decrees of the Church were irrevocable, and that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... it was to see Dick's mother and sister rise, also, and turn to Nell with dark, proud, searching eyes. Belding vaguely realized some blunder he had made. Nell's white, appealing face gave him a pang. What had he done? Surely this family of Dick's ought to know his relation to Nell. There was a silence that positively ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... enclosure. Yet one has also the feeling that such magnificence is right: to so lovely a word as Arundel, to the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, should fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasaunce. Had Arundel Park been small and empty of deer what a blunder it would be. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... palpable blunder, in materialistic science, consists in its overlooking the necessary outgrowth of theological ideas in the human mind—as conclusively a phenomenal fact of nature as the invariable uniformity of astronomical movements, the ebb and flow of the tides, or the electro-magnetic waves of the earth itself. ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... of you! I shall never forgive myself for the foolish blunder I made. See! these people look upon you as a hero, for you risked your life for a child of Malta. I am proud to be ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... then, express our disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the whole Irish line gave way. Tyrconnel looked on in helpless despair. He did not want personal courage; but his military skill was so small that he hardly ever reviewed his regiment in the Phoenix Park without committing some blunder; and to rally the ranks which were breaking all round him was no task for a general who had survived the energy of his body and of his mind, and yet had still the rudiments of his profession to learn. Several of his best officers fell while vainly endeavouring to prevail on their soldiers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... broke out: "That was my blunder, Mr. Twelvemough. Mr. Homos and I had talked it over conditionally, and I was not to speak of it till he had told you; but it slipped out in ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... least one great blunder. Though he had been three months in office, and McClellan was still inactive, there were already several successes to the credit of the Union arms. The Monitor and Virginia (Merrimac) had fought their famous duel, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... they ask for information that will help them make good use of their courtship opportunity. They rightly feel that if they blunder in this period, there is little hope of their making their goal later. They have grown suspicious of a strong feeling of attachment, because they have been forced to see in the experiences of many of their friends that this ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Hugh. "Look you, they have had wondrous ill-luck with their children; the Freiherrinn Kunigunde has had a dozen at least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr and my young Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you could see the gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a blunder when she fished her out of the fountain woman instead of man. She is Adlerstein herself by birth, married her cousin, and is prouder and more dour than our old Freiherr himself—fitter far to handle shield than swaddled babe. And now our Jungfrau ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daily more complicated. She showed a decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... morning grows drowsy with the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look as though they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the burdens the clergy lay on them—yet their blind devotion ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the better class, is scrupulously exact in spelling proper names as a rule. Perhaps Loch Fyne is not exactly "Le Lac Beau" (I have not the Gaelic). But from Pentland to Solway (literally) he makes no blunder, and he actually knows all ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... he gave the word of command—Quick, March!—while every officer felt his trigger. To the immense relief of all concerned the men stepped off, marched straight between the flags and back to quarters, tamed. The criminal War Office blunder was rectified and peace was restored in ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... of it. They know enough to have pedestals of their own; to be on their guard; to have a reputation to maintain; to conceal the "dram of folly;" to be, to that extent, artificial in their relations with men. They dare not betray the "laughable blunder," which, said Charles Lamb, is the test your neighbour giveth you "that he will ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... was perhaps not without misgivings. Six years previously, he had endeavoured to obtain two war-galleons from the Portuguese, and had he succeeded, the history of the Far East might have been radically different. Evidently, however, he committed a blunder which his countrymen in modern times have conspicuously avoided; he drew the sword without having fully ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... churches Leave behind sectarian lurches; Jump on board the Car of Freedom, Ere it be too late to need them. Sound the alarm! Pulpits thunder! Ere too late you see your blunder! ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... her, and all around, beyond the tent and in the far distance there was a provocative alluring darkness: if she only could get away, only could reach the shelter of that remote and sombre distance, she would hide, and wait, not blunder again, oh no! she would be prudent and wary, if ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Peace, And part with stronger Proofs of Love and Friendship; Meantime we hope you'll so consider Matters, As still to keep the Hatchet dull and buried, And open wide the shining Path of Peace, That you and we may walk without a Blunder. [Exeunt INDIANS. ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... this blunder of the postmaster on account of the enclosures, some of which I wished to have got to your hands without delay, that they might have undergone the consideration and acting upon which were suggested in the letter accompanying them. On another account I am not sorry for ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton says in his complaint that Giles, ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... blunder, just twenty seconds too late. Now he was sorry for the boy and angered with himself, but it was too late to draw back. To avoid a conflict he would at this moment have sacrificed half his fortune, but not ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... jumped at the correct conclusion regarding the apparent blunder. The toy-mender's two thoughtless apprentices had played a joke ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley |
