"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER pointed out that the Labour Party had opposed indirect taxation and now they were opposing direct taxation. In what form did they consider that working-men should contribute to the expenses of their country? No answer to this blunt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... corps in his Majesty's opinion. This surgeon, M. M——, lodged with General Dorsenne and some superior officers in a pretty country seat, belonging to the Princess of Lichtenstein, the concierge of the house being an old German who was blunt and peculiar, and served them with the greatest repugnance, making them as uncomfortable as possible. In vain, for instance, they requested of him linen for the beds and table; he always pretended ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the business of his office with faithfulness; a courageous sense of justice which impelled him to fight valiantly for a cause that he deemed right, however unimportant or hopeless the cause might be; a reformer's contempt for hypocrisy and shams, and a blunt directness in freeing his mind about wrong of every kind. He had the faults of his virtues, likewise. Sure of himself and of the right of his position, he had the impatience of an unimaginative man with any ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... roller is a solid or hollow cylinder of wood fastened into a frame by which it is drawn. Some rollers have spikes or blunt attachments fastened to their surfaces for breaking clods. A roller that is quite popular consists of ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... are old friends," replied Deacon Davis, as he took an apple from a barrel and handed it to Marshall's father as a peace offering; "we are old friends, and I don't want to hurt your feelin's; but I'm a blunt man, and air goin' to tell you the truth. Marshall is a good, steady boy, all right, but he wouldn't make a merchant if he stayed in my store a thousand years. He weren't cut out for a merchant. Take him back to the farm, John, and teach him how to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... forward, And Gertrude is too gruff, Yet, coupled with a pretty face, Is pretty name enough' And Adelaide is fanciful, And Laura is too fine, But Emily is beautiful, And Mary is divine Maud only suits a high-born dame, And Fanny is a baby name Eliza is not very choice, Jane is too blunt and Bold, And Martha somewhat sorrowful, And Lucy proud and cold; Amelia is too light and gay, Fit for only a flirt; And Caroline is vain and shy, And Flora smart and pert; Louisa is too soft and sleek But Alice—gentle, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... torture! vainly I essay To turn me from that piteous look away. How strangely doth a single crimson line Around that lovely neck its coil entwine, It shows no broader than a knife's blunt edge! ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... forward with benevolent fervour to greet these amiable and respectable groups, in spite of the sneering of cold hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with frigid self-importance, the damning epithet— romantic; the force of which I shall endeavour to blunt by repeating the words of an eloquent moralist. "I know not whether the allusions of a truly humane heart, whose zeal renders every thing easy, is not preferable to that rough and repulsing reason, which always finds in indifference for the public good, the first obstacle to whatever ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the figure, but the fact which it imperfectly illustrates is beyond gainsaying. The right relation to God, which Jesus always makes fundamental, cannot be maintained except as it issues in right relations with men. Here is the apostle John's blunt way of putting it: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... appear in my own eyes. A strong, healthy man with an active disposition, and capable of, and a lover of hard work. A blunt manner, and with an entire absence of tact in anything in which strict business is not concerned. I know that I am truthful, for, in addition to a natural hatred of lying which I must have inherited from my dear parents, I have always recognised the fact that in business and in everything ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... and interrupted; and, in order to fill up the vacant time, she bestowed a part of it upon the music and poetical traditions of the Highlanders, and began really to feel the pleasure in the pursuit which her brother, whose perceptions of literary merit were more blunt, rather affected for the sake of popularity than actually experienced. Her resolution was strengthened in these researches by the extreme delight which her inquiries seemed to afford those to whom she resorted ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dress captivated her imagination, his perfect and unfailing sympathy and constant kindness completely won her heart. There was, too, now and then, a peculiar tone in his voice which would bring the tears to her eyes without her knowing why, until her mind would recall some blunt, outspoken speech of her dead father's in answer to the very sentiments she was then expressing to Richard, who received them as a matter of course—a remembrance which always caused a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... away, it began to tremble. The children stood breathless and almost pitying as they saw the shiver, apparently conscious, which followed each blow. Something of the same callousness of custom with which the fall of a man is witnessed must blunt one's nature before he can look unmoved upon the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... thoughts of accomplishment, I returned to my task, but I cannot say it went easily. I remembered many great writers indulged in stimulants in the throes of composition, but I decided such a course might blunt the keen edge of my mind and afterall there was no better stimulant than plain oldfashioned perseverance. I picked up the pencil again and doggedly went on to the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... different motive, is uncertain. There was formerly a story in circulation that he was defeated as a candidate for some political office and retired in disgust from the haunts and ways of men. This however is not likely. Thomas Laighton was a man of a blunt and rugged sincerity, tenacious and determined; such as would not be likely to lose his mental balance at the first unfavorable ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Premier to peasant, was laughing in his sleeve at the helplessness of the Supreme Council. But they laughed too soon. For the Supreme Council wired to the Food Administrator, Herbert Hoover, who was in Vienna, informing him of the facts of the situation, whereupon Mr. Hoover, who has a blunt and uncomfortably direct way of achieving his ends, sent a curt message to the Rumanian government informing it that, if the orders of the Supreme Council were not immediately obeyed, he would shut off its supplies of food. That message produced action. The troops were ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... before leaving. There is clear evidence that the first post established by the Colonists for trade with the Indians was here where Indians and whites lived together in some number. When, however, Humphry Blunt out of Fort Algernourne, that is Old Point Comfort, was killed by Indians at Nansemond, Sir Thomas Gates used the opportunity to punish the Indians by driving the Kecoughtans away from their cornfields ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... we found on him, miss," said he, "that an' a couple o' cigars. He hadn't no watch, no blunt, no latch-key, no nothink. I kep' this here careful to bring it you. Bless ye, I can read, I can, well, but I've not read that there. I couldn't even smoke of his cigars. No, I guv 'em to a pal. This here job warn't done for money, miss! ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... not perturbed by something that fell under my eye soon afterwards. At a shop door hung certain printed cards, bearing a notice that "wood hay-makers," "wood binders," and "wood mowers" were "sold here." Not in Italian this, but in plain, blunt English; and to each announcement was added the name of an English manufacturing firm, with an agency at Naples. I have often heard the remark that Englishmen of business are at a disadvantage in their export trade because they pay no heed to the special requirements ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... veracity, down to the bottom of the soul, more necessary in the clerical than in any other calling. "A prime virtue in the pulpit is mental integrity. The absence of it is a subtle source of moral impotence. It concerns other things than the blunt antipodes represented by a truth and a lie. Argument which does not satisfy a preacher's logical instinct; illustration which does not commend itself to his aesthetic taste; a perspective of doctrine ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... sources of strength. It made it possible for him to keep the regard of every one of them. Before he had been in office a month it had transformed Secretary Seward from his rival into his lasting friend. It made a warm friend out of the blunt, positive, hot-tempered Edwin M. Stanton, who became Secretary of War in place of Mr. Cameron. He was a man of strong will and great endurance, and gave his Department a record for hard and effective work that it would be difficult to equal. Many stories are ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... Then, as Danny approached his ninth birthday, the old man had said, "They're teaching you too much at school, son. Too many wrong things, too many highfalutin' notions, too much just plain old hogwash. Why don't you kind of make yourself scarce for a few years?" It had been blunt and to the point. It had made Danny cry. He hadn't thought of what had happened that last day he'd seen his grand-uncle for years, but he ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... means to good. There is no virtue in one who is restrained from evil by fear. He went further: he regarded external restraints as means to bad, since they come between a man and his conscience and blunt the moral sense. "So long as I keep to the rules," says the smug citizen, "I am of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State, with its negative virtues, its mean standards, its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He was a ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... both were silent, and when that was the case, unknown to Avice, Bertha was generally watching her features, and trying to read their meaning. At length, one evening after a long silence, she suddenly broke the stillness with a blunt question. ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... buttons, buckles and trimmings, etc. Likewise his bridle and bit; his spurs were works of loving art from the hands of the village metal-worker, and likewise heavily plated with silver. The rowels were huge but blunt-pointed, and had little metal bells attached. His boots cost him near a month's pay, always made to careful order, with enormously high and narrow heels, as high as any fashionable woman's; his feet were generally ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... leaflets; in front rounded, or truncate, or retuse, or sometimes 3-toothed, flat at the margin; rachis dilated; fruit-bearing pedicels solitary; capsules 3 to 4-celled; valves cymbeo-semiorbicular, all around broadly winged; the wing rounded-blunt on both extremities; dissepiments persistent with the columella. On the ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... explainable; the exasperating coolness of the man, as much as anything. This morning the boys were teasing Muffin Fan [a small mulatto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three times a week,—at the peril of her life!] and Jemmy Blunt of Company K—you know him—was rather rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been reading under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked over to where the boys were skylarking, and with the smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted Jemmy ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... face at the hut window was white, and her wool dress white, too. She came down and they rowed out into the fog, in an upward circle because of the stream. Fanny could just see her companion's little blunt boots, the stretched laces across her instep, and above, her pretty face and slant eyes. Hurriedly, in the boat she pulled off the thick stockings, rolled them up, and drew on the silk. A chill struck her feet. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... meet Captain Carg, who would prefer, I am sure, to discuss so delicate a matter as my arrest with a man. Not that he is ungallant, but with a man such as Mr. Merrick he would be more at his ease. Carg is a sailor, rather blunt and rugged, both in speech and demeanor, but wholly devoted to me because I am at present the Jones ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... placing it on the worm-eaten table, which with the stool and the goat-skin bed formed the entire furniture of the cell. Danglars asked for a knife and fork. "Here, excellency," said Peppino, offering him a little blunt knife and a boxwood fork. Danglars took the knife in one hand and the fork in the other, and was about to cut up the fowl. "Pardon me, excellency," said Peppino, placing his hand on the banker's shoulder; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... If I am blunt of speech, I beg your forgiveness. I bring to you a letter from the citizen Lamachus, which I shall read, if it be ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Custom and habit probably blunt one's sensibilities in time, but this constant annoyance by peddlers detracts much from the pleasure of any stroll through Cairo streets. To the new arrival everything is novel and attractive. The main avenues are wide, well ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... community life, we Red Crossers. We had plain blunt food, American canned mostly, supplemented with the fare that could be eked out of Albania, and cooked by an Albanese who could not be taught that we Americans were not Esquimos and did not like food swimming in fat. However, it tasted good to famished Red Crossers, and I ate three meals a ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... and held my tongue. Silence costs nothing. But Mr. Higginson's political opinions, I felt sure, were of that simple communistic sort which the law in its blunt way calls fraudulent. They consisted in a belief that all was his which he could lay his ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... kind had ceased to alarm Cytherea. Miss Aldclyffe's blunt mood was not her worst. Cytherea thought of another man, whose name, in spite of resolves, tears, renunciations and injured pride, lingered in her ears like an old familiar strain. That man was qualified for a stewardship under ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... which Mr. George thus threw the responsibility upon Rollo seemed sometimes to be a little blunt. One would suppose, in some of these cases, from the way in which he spoke and acted, that he did not care at all what became of Rollo, so coolly and with such an air of unconcern did he leave him to his own resources. In fact, Rollo was ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... home and love she had shared, than to the Langtons, with whom she shared nothing but a name; and on her impatience of even an hour's delay, because the squire's sudden death had made a deep impression on her mind. All this, translated into Harry's blunt and simple speech, was intelligible enough to Mr. Hardwicke. The girlish whim that all should be done on her birthday made him smile, but the remembrance of Godfrey Thorne was present in his mind as in hers. He did not attach much importance to the whole affair, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... on Fred in the beginning twice a day, morning and evening, but cut the visits short for the same reason that Monty did not go at all: when the fever is on him Fred's feelings toward his own sex are simply blunt bellicose. When they put another patient in the spare bed in his room we copied Monty, arguing that one male at a time for him to quarrel with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... little Asticot," he said, "and I was wrong. My perception is growing blunt. I regarded our friend as having fallen out of the War Office box of tin soldiers. Your vision has been keener. Breed counts for much; but for it to have full value there must be the life as well. All the same, the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... monstrous solemnity of youth, and took stock of my equipment as if I were casting up an account. Many a time in those days I studied my appearance in the glass like a foolish maid. I was not well featured, having a freckled, square face, a biggish head, a blunt nose, grey, colourless eyes, and a sandy thatch of hair, I had great square shoulders, but my arms were too short for my stature, and—from an accident in my nursing days—of indifferent strength. All this stood on the debit side of my account. On the credit side I set down ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... when professing to accord with Blunt's Lunar Chart, is entirely at variance with that or any other lunar chart, and even grossly at variance with itself. The points of the compass, too, are in inextricable confusion; the writer appearing to be ignorant ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... last rim formed a golden sickle behind a blunt shoulder of rock; while over the eastward levels the topaz-yellow of an Indian dawn rushed at one stride to the zenith of heaven. In the clear light the girl's beauty took on a new distinctness, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... circle in the center of which is "It" blindfolded, holding in his hand a blunt stick about 12 or 15 inches long. Those in the circle dance around two or three times, so that the blindfolded player may not know their position. At the command "Stand," given by the one blindfolded, all must ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... fearfully perplexing. I remember formerly thinking that all lateral flexures probably occurred deep beneath the surface, and have been brought into view by an enormous superincumbent mass having been denuded. If a large and deep box were filled with layers of damp paper or clay, and a blunt wedge was slowly driven up from beneath, would not the layers above it and on both sides become greatly convoluted, whilst those towards the top would be only slightly arched? When I spoke of the Andes being comparatively recent, I suppose that I referred to the absence of the older formations. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Andrea del Sarto Robert Browning My Last Duchess Robert Browning Adam, Lilith, and Eve Robert Browning The Lost Mistress Robert Browning Friend and Lover Mary Ainge de Vere Lost Love Andrew Lang Vobiscum est Iope Thomas Campion Four Winds Sara Teasdale To Marion Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Crowned Amy Lowell Hebe James Russell Lowell "Justine, You Love me Not" John Godfrey Saxe Snowdrop William Wetmore Story When the Sultan Goes to Ispahan Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Shadow Dance Louise Chandler Moulton "Along the Field as we Came by" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... of piety, so far from poisoning the springs of human joy, so far from imbittering the cordials of our cup, will refine every enjoyment and purify every pleasure. It will blunt the keen edge of sorrow, and smooth the asperities of adversity. It will bring down heaven to earth, and render death itself a desirable passage to everlasting life. Let us accustom ourselves to contemplate the most eminent examples of this spirit, that, by daily imitating them, we may, through ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... startlingly close. Besides this, the finances of the country were so hopelessly involved, as the consequence of the late civil wars, that this lavish expenditure was particularly ill-timed. If old Gaspard de Tavannes was as blunt as his son represents him to have been, he gave Charles some good, but, like most good, unheeded advice. "Sire," said he, a propos of the extravagance of the court at Guise's marriage in 1570, "you should ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... nest in the hemlock, beyond the beaver pond. When I saw him plainly he was just crossing the oval frame through which I looked. He had gripped the frog across the middle in his long beak, much as one would hold it with a pair of blunt shears, swelling it out at either side, like a string tied tight about a pillow. The head and short arms were forced up at one side, the limp legs dangled down on the other, looking for all the world like a stuffed rag doll that Quoskh was carrying ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Missouf was brought before him. Thou wilt doubtless be pleased to hear that the prince thought me beautiful; but thou wilt be sorry to be informed that he designed me for his seraglio. He told me, with a blunt and resolute air, that as soon as he had finished a military expedition, which he was just going to undertake, he would come to me. Judge how great must have been my grief. My ties with Moabdar were already dissolved; I might have been the wife of Zadig; and I was fallen into ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... insists that I am the dramatist in real life," said he. "Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder—what can one make of such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories—are these not the pride and the justification of our life's work? At the present ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... themselves one to another as they crossed and passed one another in that afternoon's promenade. There was no falling into one another's arms in bursts of mutual sympathy. There was no forced gaiety and indifference, as though one would say "I don't think much of the place after all." No. With blunt English pride, each boy bridled up a bit as a stranger drew near, and looked straight in front of him, till ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... It's all wrong at his age," said Mr. Upton. He had his notions of life and its temptations, and he was blunt enough with his elder sons, yet it was not without some hesitation that he added: "You don't think there's any question of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... man and roused him, and plied him with sips from a dipper of the unhallowed white corn whisky of a mountain still-house. And as he worked over him he told off the tally of the last four years: of the uneven, unmerciful war, ticking off on his blunt finger ends the grim totals of this one ambushed and that one killed in the open, overpowered and beaten under by weight of odds. He told such details as he knew of the theft of the young wife and the young ones, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... you could well afford to stand us drinks,' was Chalks's cheerful commentary. 'We ain't much on book-learning, this side the river, Mr. Blake. We're plain blunt men, that ain't ashamed of manual labour—horny-handed sons of toil, in short. But we're proud to meet a cultivated gentleman like yourself, all the same, and can ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... what Mac's like? With that square-cut jaw and sawed-off nose, everything about him goin' like this"—the Boy described a few quick blunt angles in the air—"well, sir, he's the livin' image of a monkey-wrench. I'm comin' to think he's as much like it inside as he is out. He can screw up for a prayer-meetin', or he can screw down for business—when he's a mind, but, as Jimmie over there ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... a persistent talker in a silent company. The old ship looked much too big for her narrow grave at the foot of the green cliff, in which her anchor was deeply sunk and half overgrown with thistles. Her blunt bow and the ragged stump of the figure-head rose, dark and high, above the wet beach where Captain John sat with his absorbed listener. There were rifts about her rail where the red sunset looked through. Her naked sides, that for years had been moistened only by the perennial rains ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... of Spenser's most knightly actions), and of Prince Arthur with Leicester, and sometimes more or less problematical, as that of Artegall with Lord Grey, of Timias the Squire with Raleigh, and so forth. To those who are perplexed by these double meanings the best remark is Hazlitt's blunt one that "the allegory won't bite them." In other words, it is always perfectly possible to enjoy the poem without troubling oneself about the allegory at all, except in its broad ethical features, which are quite unmistakable. On the other hand, I am inclined to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... more than a paraphrase of Pope's epistles, or, yet less than a paraphrase, a mere translation of poetry into prose. This is, surely, to attack difficulty with very disproportionate abilities, to cut the Gordian knot with very blunt instruments. When we are told of the insufficiency of former solutions, why is one of the latest, which no man can have forgotten, given us again? I am told, that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; what can it be, then, but the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan. Even if he had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a club of Jacobins, this peculiarity of his head would in itself have made him terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was surmounted by a fine forehead, so projecting, however, that it overhung the rest of the features. The ears, well detached from the head, had the sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals, which are ever on the qui-vive. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... man you want. About the castle down-by his Grace has a corps of all kinds that you might pick from nine times out of ten without striking an honest man. Some of them are cadets of his own family, always blunt opponents of mine and of our cause here and elsewhere; some are incomers, as we call them; a few of them from clans apparently friendly to us when in other quarters, but traitors and renegades at the heart; some are spies by habit and repute. There's not a ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the Amphisbaenae, a genus allied to the slow-worm of Europe. Several species occur at Para. Those brought to me were generally not much more than a foot in length. They are of cylindrical shape, having, properly speaking, no neck, and the blunt tail which is only about an inch in length, is of the same shape as the head. This peculiar form, added to their habit of wriggling backwards as well as forwards, has given rise to the fable that they have two heads, one at each extremity. They ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... are not often those which most readily strike our blunt senses. We see the shell first. To the undeveloped mind the material is all there is. But looking deeper into life there comes an awakening to the fact and the significance of the spiritual, the feeling that the reason, the ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... moment he had scaled the valley-rim, and came out upon the huge plain where it was rumored the little three-toed horses roamed. And he had seen them, he had seen them! He pursued, armed only with blunt shaft and a few of the throw-stones such as Otah used; but he was less swift than the tiny horses, and his throw-stones fell wide, and it was rumored that here roamed the long-tusked shaggy ones that were larger than the very caves ... trembling, Gral had retraced ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... and my ears were more sensible than ever. Though the windows at the front and sides were still closed, I could distinctly hear each stroke of the murderous knife, as it entered its victim. It was not a blunt sound as of a weapon that meets with positive resistance, but a hissing noise, as if the household implement, made to part the bread of peace, performed unwillingly its task of treachery. This moment was the unhappiest of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... the same frantic way. Time will blunt his grief; but it will bring him I fear no other or better comfort. He hopes for oblivion of his loss; but that can never be. He may cease to grieve as he grieves now; but he can never cease to remember. ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... her with a smile. He liked Ethel West. She was blunt, without being tactless, and her conversation was sometimes piquant. Moreover, he remembered that Ethel ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... mortgage last winter.... You see, Henry, he'd figured out what he was going to do with you, and it would have been this same thing even if he'd lived. He picked out what he thought would do you the most good—get you in touch with different people—break down some of your (excuse me for being blunt) class prejudice—teach you how many dimes there are in a dollar. And for that reason he expressly stipulated that you've got to keep your own books. That'll give you more of a respect for money than anything else ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... reckonings, if we would form a just estimate of our character, we must make an allowance for the effects of selfishness. It is also another effect of the corruption of human nature, to cloud our moral sight, and blunt our moral sensibility. Something must therefore be allowed for this effect likewise. Doubtless, the perfect purity of the Supreme Being makes him see in us stains, far more in number and deeper in dye; than we ourselves can ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... nominally ruled over by Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de Burgh John Hannasyde Coombe-Crombie, twelfth Earl of Dreever ("Spennie" to his relatives and intimates), a light-haired young gentleman of twenty-four, but in reality the possession of his uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Julia Blunt. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... tablets.—Ver. 521. Before the tablet was written upon, the wax was 'vacua,' empty; or, as we say of writing-paper, 'clean.' There was a blunt end to the upper part of the 'stylus,' or iron pen, with which the wax was smoothed down when ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... lost before they are aware of it. Let them beware how they take the first step. It is by degrees that men become intemperate. No man ever became so all at once—it is an impossibility in the nature of things. It requires time to harden the heart, to do away shame, to blunt the moral principle, to deaden the intellectual faculties, and temper the body. The intemperance of the day is the natural and legitimate consequence of the customs of society—of genteel and respectable society. It is the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... sides of mountains lie slanting downwards, and one or two or more of the external strata not reaching to the summit when the mountain was raised up, the second or third stratum or a more inferior one is there exposed to day; this may be well represented by forceably thrusting a blunt instrument through several sheets of paper, a bur will stand up with the lowermost sheet standing highest in the center of it. On this uppermost stratum, which is colder as it is more elevated, the dews are condensed in large quantities; and sliding down pass under ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between eighteen and fifty, and killed ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... of sympathy would be graceful here, yet he divined that it must be very discreetly, almost delicately, worded. He could easily be too blunt. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... touch she worked feverishly, partly with the liquid ink eradicator, but mostly with the spun-glass eraser. First she rubbed out the cents after the written figure "Twenty-five." Carefully with a blunt instrument she smoothed down the roughened surface of the paper so that the ink would not run in the fibers and blot. Over and over she practised writing the "Thousand" in a hand like that on the check. She already had the capital "T" in "Twenty" as a guide. During the night in practising ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... the boys could see, was just like a steam launch in shape, only much lighter in weight. It had a sharp bow, and a blunt stern. From the stern there extended a large propeller, the blades being made from sheets ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... dreadful hints Of One whose sole decree Governed the views of various prints Not to be named by me; He disapproved of paper rings; In language almost rudely blunt he Dilated on the puppet-strings Pulled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... hungry person. The narwhales vary in size, ranging sometimes, I am told, to fourteen feet; the horns, of which I saw a great many at Whale-Fish Isles, were from three feet to seven feet in length. The use of this horn is a matter of controversy amongst the fishermen: it is almost too blunt for offence, and its point, for about four inches, is always found well polished, whilst the remainder of it is usually covered with slime and greenish sea-weed. Some maintain that it roots up food from the bottom of the sea with this horn; others, that it probes ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... very little of either,' was the blunt reply. 'There's no more comparison between them than between settling in Normandy and in ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... disguise what she thought. Urging question after question, with ardour irresistible, Basil learnt all she had been told by Marcian concerning Heliodora, and, having learnt it, confessed the whole truth in utter frankness, in the plain, blunt words dictated by his loathing of the Greek woman with whom he had once played at love. And, as she listened, Veranilda's heart grew light; for the time before her meeting with Basil seemed very far away, and the tremulous passion in his voice assured her of all she cared to know, that ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... so. Let a man have one of these blades, with a hand to wield it and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. He need not fear its holding, if he can but tell how to lay on. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh and bones, and soul and spirit, and all (Eph. 6:12-17; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... use—an ice-chest and an alcohol stove for cooking. The storage lockers and water tanks had a capacity of a week's supply of stores for four persons. It was a government boat, and was in good repute as a racer in and about Manila, in spite of its blunt bow ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... But, when Anderson took hold of him and placed the wounded finger on a block, and Dad faced him with the hammer and a blunt, rusty ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... of society depends upon getting out of men and women an increasing amount of the powers with which they are born and which bad surroundings at the start blunt or stupefy. This is what all systems of education try to do, but the result of all systems of education depends upon the material that comes to the educator. Opening the mind of the child, that is the delicate task the state asks of the mother, and ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Pinac and Mirabel ("the wild goose"), of stout blunt temper; in love with Rosalu'ra, a daughter of Nantolet.—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Wild ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... verdict of murder was that of two surgeons. They found that the body had been severely bruised, on the chest, by kicks, blows of a blunt weapon, or by men's knees. A sword-thrust had been dealt, but had slipped on a rib; Godfrey's own sword had then been passed through the left pap, and out at the back. There was said to be no trace of the shedding of fresh living blood ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... at her escort. "But even if I were, Mr. Pounce, I am in London, not in the dark ages, and as sure of respect here, at the doors of a theatre, as I am in my own drawing-room. I believe, by the way," she added lightly, not liking to hurt him by too blunt a snub, "I believe this is the only big city in Europe of which so much can be said; and English women may thank themselves for it. We demand not protection, but respect. Here is the carriage. Good night!" She stepped in as she spoke, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of a double duty, the one to yourself, the other to the deceased, I present the same to your most favourable allowance, offering my utmost self now and ever to be ready at your worship's disposing. EDWARD BLUNT. ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... not mean to say that people must be actually drunk before danger is to be apprehended from them. Indeed, a very slight degree of inebriety is dangerous, as it always tends to blunt the perception, and to make a person careless and indifferent. I may also add, that no inconsiderable number of fires are occasioned by the thoughtless practice of throwing spirits into the fire. The dresses of females taking fire adds very much to the list of lives ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... eighteenth century tradition of plainness is the most prominent characteristic of Hazlitt's prose. But his plainness is not precisely of the blunt type associated with Swift and Arbuthnot. It is modified by the Gallic tone of easy familiarity, by the ideal deemed appropriate for dignified converse among educated people of the world. His periods are of the simplest construction and they are ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... away by a blow, probably given with a spade or some blunt instrument. His hand, all muddy and bloodstained, still held ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... hard the rock of Sardonix; The steel but grinds, it breaks not, nor grows blunt; Then seeing that he cannot break his sword, Thus to himself he mourns for Durendal: "O good my sword, how bright and pure! Against The sun what flashing light thy blade reflects! When Carle passed through the valley of Moriane, The God of Heaven ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... like a flash of lightning, blasting and shattering in an instant a prejudice or hypocrisy which was strong enough to resist all the arguments of reason and all the appeals of humanity. "White Lies" is full of examples of his power, and of the peculiarities of his power. Blunt and bold and arrogant as his earnestness often appears, it is capable of the most winning gentleness, the most delicate grace, and the most searching pathos. The delineation of the female characters in this novel is especially admirable. Josephine and Laure are exquisite creations, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss";—or once more, whether the crowded canvas injures the unity of the design, be these as they may, "Romola" strikes one as great in spots and as conveying a noble though somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet. That is the blunt truth about it, major work as it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal it in all English literature. It falls distinctly behind both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Esmond." It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, to be impressed by: but not quite ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Henry is always blunt. He has a way of getting right at the heart of things with everyone except Bolum. For Isaac, he regards circumlocution as necessary, taking the ground that with him the quantity and not the quality of the words counts. So when he had silenced the company, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... fruit of my body as atonement for my soul?—It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what Jehovah requireth of thee. Nay, it is to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God." Although the blunt statement of the contrast between cultus and religion is peculiarly prophetic, Micah can still take his stand upon this, "It hath been told thee, O man, what Jehovah requires." It is no new matter, but ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Here it is tragedy, in France it in comedy; here it is a solemnity, there it is monkey-shines; here the duellist risks his life, there he does not even risk his shirt. Here he fights with pistol or sabre, in France with a hairpin—a blunt one. Here the desperately wounded man tries to walk to the hospital; there they paint the scratch so that they can find it again, lay the sufferer on a stretcher, and conduct him off the field ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... has gracefully left the performance of this simple act to his own discretion. Yes, it is in this fine instance of steady principle that we see a discrimination of politeness exquisitely ingenious and beautiful. The English have the reputation of being a blunt, downright people; and their practice of shutting the door after them makes it certain they are so. When they draw to the door, turn the handle, and hear the latch click, they as good as say: 'There, the door is shut; the thing is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... several layers of cells, cut off from its outer face, a peculiarity which we shall find is characteristic of the roots of all the higher plants, and, indeed, this is the first root of the young fern. Of the other two growing points, the one next the leaf grows slowly, forming a blunt cone (st.), and is the apex of the stem. The other (f) has no definite form, and serves merely as an organ of absorption, by means of which nourishment is supplied to the embryo from the prothallium; it is known ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... fame. From this point of view history records the Jew as a shining example. The Negro, constitutionally buoyant, should be energetic and hopeful, for "there is a destiny that shapes our ends," blunt them however much by "damning with faint praise" or apology for oppression from whilom friends. In the darkest hour of slavery and ignorance came freedom and education. When lynchings became prevalent, lynching of whites made it unpopular; when disfranchisement ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... to say, however," he went on, "that the skull was fractured in several places, as by blows of some blunt instrument; and that instrument itself—a pick-handle, still stained with blood— lay ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... there came a brief, blunt note from Amelia Ellen: "Dear Mis Raclift Ef yore a trainurse why don't yo cum an' take car o' my Mis Brownleigh She aint long fer heer an she's wearyin to see yo She as gotta hev one, a trainurse I mean ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks which have passed through Mr. Brunel's mill in the dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation Of a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... able to see any great deal of difference in the two methods, except as to appearance, therefore I would advise the lawn-owner to try both methods and adopt the one that pleases him most. If a rake is used, let it be one with blunt teeth that will not tear the sward. There is such a rake on the market, its teeth being made of bent wire. On no account use a sharp-toothed iron rake. That is ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... and help me do my duty." And all the coldness melted out of Phebe's manner as she hugged her little mistress close, feeling the comfort of sympathy even through the blunt ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... instantly answer you, "Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... because you think it will help you to make money and to do what you want. You are just like MacDougall, except that he uses money and you use words. A poor man can only choose his masters, and for my part I have more use for money than for words." So saying, the blunt old savage walked to the other end of his store and began showing a Mexican woman ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately. If they reach the point, they either crush it, or lean all round, more on the false than on ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... garage clothes when working; and in tight pants, tight coat, silk shirt, long-visored green cap when at leisure. A rather pallid skin due to the nature of his work. Large deft hands, a good deal like the hands of a surgeon, square, blunt-fingered, spatulate. Indeed, as you saw him at work, a wire-netted electric bulb held in one hand, the other plunged deep into the vitals of the car on which he was engaged, you thought of a surgeon performing a major operation. He wore one of those round skullcaps characteristic ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... vegetation creeps over the wildest ruin. The roughest edges are smoothed by time. Vitality asserts itself; other interests have a right to be entertained and are entertained. The recuperative powers come into play, and the pang departs and poignancy is softened. The cutting edge gets blunt on even poisoned spears by the gracious influences of time. The nightly guest, Sorrow, slips away, and ere we know, another sits in her place. Some of us try to fight against that merciful process and seem to think that it is a merit to continue, by half artificial means, the first moment ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... signal from the women, their confederates. In going over, his head was quite seriously hurt. At first it was thought that he had struck the edge of the boat in falling, but the doctor says it was a blow from some blunt instrument with a rounded end—some manner ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... somewhat blunt for a lover; but, being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death. So this odd match was quickly agreed on ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... land which not only the Pilgrim Fathers but the Pilgrim Mothers had settled, and subdued, and freed for them, were still ready to disfranchise most of the daughters of those mothers, on the ground that they had not "sense enough to vote." I thanked them for their blunt truthfulness, so much better than the flattery ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... she supposed until the day of eternity should perhaps set it free, with no hope of any bright dream of life such as girls have, could she turn from even a school boy's love without a passing tenderness, such as she would never have felt if she had not come away from it all? Told in Mary Ann's blunt way, with her crude attempts at pathos, it reached her as it could not otherwise. With her own new view of life she could sympathize better with another's disappointments. Perhaps her own loneliness gave her pity for another. Whatever it was, Marcia's heart suddenly turned ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to which a young man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad passions, and drown their sense of fairness. When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... "It was blunt and rusty—a mere toy knife—not at all the sort of weapon a man would make use of who designed to commit a deliberate murder. The crime, if there WAS a crime (which we do not admit), must ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... inscription intimating that whosoever remained there should join in his labours. "We are afraid," said some visitors to Baxter, "that we break in upon your time." "To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt divine. Time was the estate out of which these great workers, and all other workers, formed that rich treasury of thoughts and deeds which they ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude. Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all that, and it was not very likely she would take up with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... blocks certain categories of material deemed by the library board as unsuitable for use in their facilities. Indeed, 7% of American public libraries use blocking software for adults. Although such programs are somewhat effective in blocking large quantities of pornography, they are blunt instruments that not only "underblock," i.e., fail to block access to substantial amounts of content that the library boards wish to exclude, but also, central to this litigation, "overblock," i.e., block access to large quantities ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... different nature, with which Sir Terence must proceed to deal at once; but their gravity was completely outweighed in the adjutant's mind by this deplorable affair of Lieutenant Butler's. Without wishing to convey an impression that the blunt and downright O'Moy was gifted with any undue measure of shrewdness, it must nevertheless be said that he was quick to perceive what fresh thorns the occurrence was likely to throw in a path that was already thorny enough in all conscience, what ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... twice Penelope had caught a glimpse of that hot-headed temper which lay hidden beneath Roger's somewhat blunt exterior. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in her odd, free, rather blunt and yet kindly way, "you are a very good doctor, I dare say, but you're not much of a nurse. Now I am—and I'll find her something to eat,—you needn't ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... at once took possession of her. Suddenly entering the library she requested Edith to at once attend her in her boudoir. On arriving there the enraged woman gave way to her passion of jealousy. In blunt words she taunted the girl with attempting to steal the affections of her husband, and closed her bitter comments with the threat that "the woman who tried to win my husband from me would never accomplish her purpose. I ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... up this catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike, shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian mackerel furnished with two anal fins; black-tinted rudderfish that you catch ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to-day," was the civil excuse I was preparing. Never was expectation more beside the mark. My "guess" was altogether wrong. "What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?" was the gentleman's blunt salutation. "What have you to propose, sir?" was my reply. "I am the superintendent," he said, "of a German Sunday-school in the upper part of the city, and I should like you to come and address the children this afternoon." I promised to go, and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies |
