"Blunted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relief, at least to her mother's mind, when young Mrs. Harcourt returned, and without a word took up the reins again. No one disputed her claims. Now and then there would be a lazy protest from Audrey—a concealed sarcasm that fell blunted beneath the calm amiability of the elder sister. Geraldine was always perfectly good-tempered; the sense of propriety that guided all her actions never permitted her to grow hot in argument; and when a person ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to hear him; nay, his persuasiveness even astonished us. We fancied we were standing before a rhetorical sophist, who for jest and practice knew how to give a fair appearance to the strangest things. Unfortunately this first impression became blunted but too soon; for at the end of every discourse, manage the thing as I would, the man came back again to the same theme. He was not to be held fast to older events, although they interested him,—although ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... woman herself shared in the wild merriment of the little ones! I have always wondered 15 at the ease with which the poor forget their wretchedness. Accustomed to live in the present, they use every pleasure as soon as it offers itself. But the rich, blunted by luxury, gain happiness less easily. They must have all things in harmony before they consent to be ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... The rice and other plants which they raise in these gardens are produced by the dry method of cultivation. In hunting birds they employ chiefly bows and arrows, but sometimes also snares. The arrows with which they shoot the birds of paradise are blunted so as not to injure the splendid plumage of the birds. Turtle-shells, feathers of the birds of paradise, and trepang are among the principal articles which they barter with traders for cotton-goods, knives, swords, axes, beads and so forth. They display some skill and taste ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through the bewildering and bewitching mists of imagination. It was naked sensuality that he appeared to worship, and he always sinned with his eyes open. Yet his moral sense, though blunted, was never obliterated; and many traits of generosity and good feeling mingled with his excesses. Choosing satire as the field of his Muse, was partly the cause and partly the effect of an imperfect morale. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... The supper, at the close of the day was a brief function, but brutal as it was brief. It was something of a shock, the first night we were in camp, but at the close of my first day's work I found myself on a level with the grossest. The finer instincts were blunted or gone and I was in the clutch of a hunger like that of the jungle, where might and cunning rule. At a signal from the cook, we rushed in, crushed by main force into a seat, seized whatever was nearest and began. Scarcely a word was spoken—heads down, hands and jaws at top speed. The disgusting ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would—Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. I told ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... little Connie who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... protector or problem, who turned to them now and then her oddly blunted, oddly resolute young profile, had tawny hair, and a sun-browned skin. She wore a little white silk frock with flat bows of dull blue upon it. Her evening cloak was bordered with swansdown. Two black bows, one at the crown of her head and one at the nape of her neck, secured the thick plaits of her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Indians increased when they found that the door was closed. They attacked it with their tomahawks; but their weapons were blunted against the hard oak, clamped with iron as it was. By Tim's advice we still reserved our fire, as our stock of ammunition was small, and we might ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... by a wood fire. Before it stood a pipkin, in which something was evidently kept warm. An eight-legged oak table in the middle of the room was laid for a meal. This woman of eighty, in a large mob cap, under which she wore a little cap to keep the other clean, retained faculties but little blunted. She was gazing into the flames, with her hands upon her knees, quietly re- enacting in her brain certain of the long chain of episodes, pathetic, tragical, and humorous, which had constituted the parish history for the last sixty ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the ceaseless requirements of the whole race are to be satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no time for education, for learning, for contemplation; but by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism between muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so much exhausting bodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awkward, and consequently incapable of grasping any other than quite simple situations. At least nine-tenths of the human race falls under this category. But still ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... court and town had injured those high principles which all the Esmonds are known to be born with; that Mr. Will's words were not altogether to be trusted; that a loose life and pecuniary difficulties had made him mercenary, blunted his honour, perhaps even impaired the high chivalrous courage "which we Esmonds, cousin," the little lady said, tossing her head, "which we Esmonds must always possess—leastways, you and me, and my lord, and my cousin Harry have it, I know!" says the Countess. "Oh, cousin George! and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two years before the boy got any chance to "py" her for her kindness, and when the chance did come, he would have given his sturdy young life to avert it. By this time, much mixing with Canadians had blunted his London street-bred accent. To be sure he occasionally slipped an "h," or inserted one where it should not be, but he was fast swinging into line with the great young country he now called "home." He could eat Indian corn and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... "Jinn" spirit or energy of a man, which here corresponds with the Heb. "Aub"; so in the Hamasah the poet says, "My Jinn have not fled; my life is not blunted; my birds never drooped for fear," where, say commentators, the Arabs compare an energetic man with a Jinni or Shaytan. So the Prophet declared of Omar, "I never saw such an 'Abkari amongst men," 'Abkar, in Yamamah, like Yabrin and Wabar ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... elevate it. The same old element of poverty, misery, disease, crime, and insanity marches on, hand in hand with the college and the church, as it formerly went hand in hand with the hunting and warring barbarians of the forest. And the dull, blunted conscience of the time, lulled by the softly solemn platitudes of the pulpit and the soulless system of education, rebels not against the old social order. In full view of the past twenty-five centuries, may we not exclaim with ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... placeman, man of mark and note, Worthy of honor from a feeble pen Blunted in service of all true, good men, You serve the Lord—in courses, table d'hote: Au, naturel, as well as a la Nick— "Eat and be thankful, though ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the ox has pushed a man, by pushing has made known his vice, and he has not blunted his horn, has not shut up his ox, and that ox has gored a man of gentle birth and caused him to die, he shall pay ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon
... all sense of morality. It doesn't in the least matter what the art is. The effect is always the same. That's the reason I've made up my mind not to allow my daughter to learn drawing. I won't have her moral sense blunted while she's young. I don't deny that pictures and books and music are great things in their way, but a simple sense of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, are much more important. I'm sure you agree with me ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... glow'd, But that was in her earlier maidenhood, With such a fervent flame of human love, Which being rudely blunted glanced and shot Only to holy things; to prayer and praise She gave herself, to fast ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... all the revenues of the empire were anticipated; and the finances fell into inextricable confusion.—M.] Experience has shown, that the success of an invader most commonly depends on the vigor and celerity of his operations. The strength and sharpness of the first impression are blunted by delay; the health and spirit of the troops insensibly languish in a distant climate; the naval and military force, a mighty effort which perhaps can never be repeated, is silently consumed; and every hour that is wasted in negotiation, accustoms the enemy to contemplate and examine those ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... moderation be observed, lest, by excessive facility, ecclesiastical discipline be enervated." Imposture became more cautious, threats less frequent and less terrible; the teeth of persecution were somewhat blunted; miracles grew rarer; the insufferable glare of purgatory and hell faded, and the open traffic in forgiveness of sins, or the compounding for deficiencies, diminished. But among the more ignorant ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... apathetic dullards or jealous narrow-hearts or malignant egotists. In spite of you they created their immortal works, against you they directed their attacks, and thanks to you they died so prematurely, their tasks only half accomplished, blunted and dulled and shattered in the battle. Who can tell to what these heroic men were destined to attain if only that true German spirit had gathered them together within the protecting walls of a powerful institution?—that spirit which, without the help of some such institution, drags out ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the ethics of the Decalogue; they are specific applications of the rules of conduct which have governed enlightened and honorable men in all ages and in all walks of life. It is only when the moral sense is blunted or temptation presents itself in some new and unrecognized form that it is difficult to draw the line between right and wrong. I am aware that a delicate sense of honor often comes between a man and his opportunities of profit, and that a fine sensitiveness is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... or more years old is known as wether. The ends of the fiber from such sheep are thick and blunted, on account of having been previously cut. It is necessary to be able to tell at once a hog fleece from a wether, and this can be done in two ways: by examining the ends of the fiber to see if they are pointed; or by pulling a staple out of the fleece. If it ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... than in others—a fact that is probably explained by a tendency to over-distention of the bladder which alcoholic liquors bring about. The liquor imbibed increases the amount of urine, and the state of blunted consciousness makes the call to empty the bladder less appreciated. The intoxicated person is also liable to falls, and is not so likely to protect himself in falling as a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... "How could I have supposed that she could manage my mother?" He got up and paced the room. "Is that what mother felt? Yet they were such good friends. I suspected nothing then. How is it that mother's instinct is always more delicate? have I blunted mine?" ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the earl were engaged in those martial sports which, falling elsewhere in disuse, the Last of the Barons kinglily maintained. There, boys of fourteen, on their small horses, ran against each other with blunted lances. There, those of more advanced adolescence, each following the other in a circle, rode at the ring; sometimes (at the word of command from an old knight who had fought at Agincourt, and was the preceptor in these valiant ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will find it queer, take my word for it." This was earnestly uttered; and I felt at the same time a bony finger laid on my arm, that cut it sharply like a blunted knife. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... here out in the open with weapons, Nothing then would avail thee thy bow and thy thick shot of arrows. Now thou plumest thee vainly because of a graze of my footsole; Reck I as were that stroke from a woman or some pettish infant. Aye flies blunted the dart of the man that's emasculate, noughtworth! Otherwise hits, forth flying from me, and but strikes it the slightest, My keen shaft, and it numbers a man of the dead fallen straightway. Torn, troth, then ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fact that you know the name refers to you, not some one else, shows that that blunted memory of yours has begun to function in some degree. Now think. What do you ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... had been a little deadened by too much familiarity with the lot of the feeble. To one who considered life and humanity in any other than their familiar and vulgar aspects, he would have presented a touching picture of a noble nature, enduring with pride, blunted by habit; while to him, who regards the accidental dispositions of society as paramount laws, he might have presented the image of dogged turbulence and discontent, healthfully repressed by the hand of power. A heavy sigh struggled from the chest of the old man, and, stroking down the few hairs which ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Smoking induces dryness of the mucous membrane of the mouth and consequent thirst. The partially paralyzed nerve terminals want something more stimulating than water to afford relief. Furthermore, blunted appetite induces deficient nutrition, and consequently there is a call for some "pick-me-up;" hence we find that the use of tobacco tends to the habitual use of alcoholic beverages, and there are very few habitual users of alcohol who ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... sought to avert a crisis which could only be postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation of wealth, and more and more callous to all considerations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Hear, hear ye rocks! that Balder Ventures to hope!—stern fate is now contented! Blunted is Surtur's spear, and Nanna wavers! Oh virtue! which, when blood rag'd high didst triumph, How sure, how nobly thou reward'st thy lover! Ye rocks which so lately gave ear to my groans, Now hear of my hope and my gladness the tones, And reply ye proud woods that no longer seem drear; In vain ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... formerly a man of a sordid worldly disposition and hard unyielding temper, on whom the mild Christian persuasions of Dr. Beaumont had occasionally made good impressions, though these were as often blunted by the power of long indulged habits. But when such a man was roused from his stupor by the cauteries of Calvinism, despair was more likely to take possession of his mind than the pious energy and humble hopes which follow ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... intellectual constitution. At the end of this bloody drama, the mind, bewildered by the late dreadful scenes, was unable to feel those sweet and peaceable emotions, in which it had formerly delighted; as the palate, having long been at rest, and now become blunted, must require high-seasoned dishes, to excite an appetite. The reign of the Directory, therefore is that of Romances a la Radcliffe, as well as of Sauces a la Provencale. Fortunately, the eighth of Brumaire pulled down the five ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... case the criminal is not only unjustly dealt with, for both the moral and civil laws are violated, but a great sin is committed against society, the moral sensibilities are blunted and the crime intended to be suppressed is given ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... sight and hearing were somewhat blunted by age, and he was proceeding very slowly; for his horse was old and feeble, like his owner. He was suddenly disturbed by loud hurrahs from behind, and by a furious pelting of balls of snow and ice upon ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... if you like, clean away all the cement along the edges of the leads; but it is quite easy to be too precise and neat in the matter and make the work look hard. If you do it, a blunted ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But he ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... influence of the Gospel upon their lives. Perhaps only those who have come in contact with these people for the sole purpose of helping them to manhood and womanhood, can comprehend the tremendous incubus of bad habits, stunted growth, blunted susceptibilities, with which they struggle. It is painful to note the limitations of those even who have had the best advantages. Yet they are ever reaching upward, and the struggle is bringing out noble qualities of character, showing the possibilities ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... fumbler.... We took to bows next, twelve arrows each. At full speed he put two bolts in the target, and I twelve, all in the white ring.... Then spear against cimeter. I offered him choice, and he took the spear. In the first career, the blunted head of his weapon fell to the ground shorn off close behind the ferrule. The spectators cheered and laughed, and growing angry, Orchan shouted it was an accident, and challenged me to combat. I accepted, but His Majesty interposed—we might conclude with the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... in an age where so much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth of verbose ornamentation, is so easily imposed upon the public under the name of poetry, that so much really good poetry should be forgotten and unread. One is often provoked to regret that the scalping knife has become blunted in the hands of the "buff and blue," and that the race of useful parodists should seem to have expired with the wits of "Fraser." As a poet Griffin is comparatively little known; and yet, to make a seeming paradox, few poets have been ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... contempt of her husband's origin. (He had been a weaver's son from Falkirk, who either had won his way to the Marischal College of Aberdeen by strength of will and in defiance of natural dullness, or else had started with wits but blunted them in carving his way thither.) She rarely set foot beyond the manse garden, the most of her time being spent in a roomy garret under the slates, where she spun a fine yarn and worked it into thread of the kind which is yet known as "Balgarnock thread," and was invented ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... writer to conditions of diameter which are augmentations of force. The Ciceronian period, which hardly sufficed for Verres, would be blunted on Caligula. The less spread of sail in the phrase, the more intensity in the blow. Tacitus thinks with ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and monotony. I was not born for that. I must have a being who can lead me from sorrows—yes, even from my graver studies; one with whom I can joke and play, and carry on light and happy conversations, that the sharpness of sorrow may be blunted and the heat of anger made mild. Give me a wife, dear Friedrich, and you know what kind of one I want. She must be young, pretty, well educated, serene, tender, patient. Money enough give her, but not too much. For riches I do not ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... purpose. The wine made her rosy and pretty, and it also made her forget her poses and affectations. She was more charming to him than ever before, partly because of the change in her, and partly because his own critical faculties were blunted by alcohol. He was almost in love with her and he felt sure that he was about to win her. But presently she began wheedling him in the old vein. She wanted him to take her to the dance ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... can render me oblivious to my present affliction. They may make dull the agony I now feel, and perchance I will then wear as bright a smile as I did in years ago, but the remembrance of my wife and child will never be blunted; no, nor shall a shade cross over my heart, and dim the affection I had for them, while living, and for their memory now that they ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... before they could command the approaches, and when so advanced they would be exposed without shelter of any kind to the fire of the covering troops. The salient was so prominent and jutted out so far from the general line of hills, and was besides shaped so like a blunted redan, that its front face was secure from flanking fire. In fact there was plenty of dead ground in its approaches, and, moreover, dongas—which are the same as nullahs in India or gullies in Australia—ran ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Acre looks like a blunted arrow-head jutting out from a point in the Syrian coast. Napoleon could only attack, so to speak, the neck of the arrow, which was protected by a ditch and a weak wall, and flanked by towers; ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... atonement. All ordinary process, and every usual mode of execution, was thought too tardy to avenge the death of a Jacobin proconsul. The judges of the revolutionary commission were worn out with fatigue—the arm of the executioner was weary—the very steel of the guillotine was blunted. Collot D'Herbois devised a more summary mode of slaughter. A number of from two to three hundred victims at once were dragged from prison to the place de Baotteaux, one of the largest squares in Lyons, and there subjected to a ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... to think, a sad, heart-rending sight, pitiful evidence of the degrading influence of war. During the first year of the struggle there was not a man in the British army who would have pushed a woman aside to ransack the sacred corners of her chamber. But war's brutal influence in time blunted the finer instincts. How could it be otherwise? The longer a struggle is protracted the fiercer and more bestial it will become, until at last familiarity with the final arbitration of the beast deadens the better influences of human reasoning. As one saw ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... danger, Ned was resting again in his own berth, and Jack was dining with the rest in the cabin as if nothing whatever had occurred; the yacht many miles now from the island, which stood in the evening light like a blunted cone of perfect regularity resting upon ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... be seen to consist of a simple loop of wire fixed in a handle to be held in the left hand, and a certain number of rings secured by wires which pass through holes in the bar and are kept there by their blunted ends. The wires work freely in the bar, but cannot come apart from it, nor can the wires be removed from the rings. The general puzzle is to detach the loop completely from all the rings, and then to put them all ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... of the general public, I have no doubt that the feeling of shame and sympathy, are blunted by these repeated military calamities, and by ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling with frosty brightness—impressions I would not exchange for art understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the greatest work of art in the world—so strangely am I blunted." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... holiday barring out of the pedant Reflection—those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world—to sit instead at one of our modern plays—to have his coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals—dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be—and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved without the spectators' risk, and fortunes given away that cost ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... have proposed to reopen the case of the Mitylenians, and who are thus causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it. I wonder also who will be the man who will maintain the contrary, and will pretend to show ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... as only one hundred copies were printed, I hope it will rather excite than gratify curiosity on the subject of Lord Fountainhall. I expected to see you before I should have thought of publishing the Letter on the Revolution, and hoped to whet your almost blunted purpose about doing that and some other things yourself. I think a selection from the Decisions just on the contrary principle which was naturally enough adopted by the former publishers, rejected[12] the law that is and retaining ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... sixty-seven cents, Casey,' he says to me, 'if the checks is all in, which I trust they air!'" Casey got out his plug of chewing tobacco and pried off a blunted corner. "An' hell Bill! I had that much in the bank when I started," ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... father, but the man to whom she had given her heart, the man who should have been standing beside her now, shielding her with his strong arms, comforting her with words of pity and love. The double blow had fallen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the pain of it had been dulled and blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and no farther;" and this limitation saved ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... difference merely the difference between a pocket in a toga and one in the trousers? But a nerve from the moral sense does, nevertheless, spread into papilloe over the surface of the tighter pocket, not entirely blunted by yellow potations; so that the human as well as financial advantage of Jamaica emancipation is perceived. Should we expect this from the nation which undertook the destruction of the Danish fleet before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... a fortunate discovery. Jack went down on his knees, and with the edge of the axe began carefully to force out the nails. But as they were firmly fixed in, and the operation blunted our axe, we carried the oar up with us to the place where we had left the rest of our things, intending to burn the wood away from the iron at a more ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... require a touch of frost to perfect them, and we all need the discipline of a Father's hand. The sorrows that come to us all are far more easily borne when we think that Christ bore them all before us. It is but a blunted sword which sorrow wields against any of us; it was blunted on His armour. It is but a spent ball that strikes us; its force was exhausted upon Him. Sorrow, if we keep close to Him, may become solemn joy, and knit us more thoroughly to Himself. Ah, brother! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Sanskrit MSS. also are so easily obtained from India, that much might be done in England, or in France, or in Germany—much that would be of interest not only to Oriental scholars, but to all philosophers whose powers of independent appreciation are not entirely blunted by their study of Plato and Aristotle, of Berkeley, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... gilded life, but not remorse or shame. And when she dies by her own hand, it is not in madness, but to escape humiliation. Suicide was one of the worst features of Pagan antiquity. It was a base and cowardly reluctance to meet the evils of life, as much as indifference to the future and a blunted moral sense. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... then, as she lay fast asleep, she deliberately pounded in her skull and breast-bone, and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It did produce a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant was issued for her arrest, but, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served. Thus did Mrs. Hicks not only escape condign punishment, but even the pain and mortification ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... reproved on the other by breaking their fast, they experience grave remorse of conscience; and, with consciences agitated and torn with drinking the sweet beverage, they sin. Under the guidance of these skilful theologians, the remorse aroused by natural and Divine light being blunted, Christians drink joyfully. For all agree that he will break his fast who eats any portion of chocolate, which, dissolved and well mixed with warm water, is not prejudicial to keeping a fast. This is a sufficiently marvellous presupposition. ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... seven pounds; or a third less than the skeleton of an individual of the same size, recently stripped of the muscular flesh. The conformation of the skull has some slight resemblance to that of the white race of the ancient Egyptians; and the incisive teeth of the Guanches are blunted, like those of the mummies found on the banks of the Nile. But this form of teeth is the result of art; and on examining more carefully the physiognomy of the ancient Canarians, Blumenbach and other able ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... resolution, and said, with a semblance of composure: Fair one, thou dost thyself no injustice in comparing thyself alone to a thousand queens: for thou art a very incarnation of all the bewildering fascination of thy sex. And yet, potent as they are, thy charms are wasted, and resemble blunted arrows when directed against me. For as I have already told thee, I am pledged to another, and proof against thy spell, as doubtless was thy old ascetic against ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... impressions. Our sailors wished to return to the shore for the purpose of seizing the fugitives, to sell them secretly at Carthagena. In countries where slavery exists the mind is familiarized with suffering and that instinct of pity which characterizes and enobles our nature is blunted. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... orange-yellow and do not lack prettiness when examined under the lens. They are blunted cones, ranged side by side on their round base and adorned with finely-scored longitudinal ridges. They are collected in slabs, sometimes on the upper surface, when the leaf that serves as a support is spread wide, sometimes on the lower surface when the leaf is pressed to the next ones. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... drawer, and then, with a little flourish as to his own deserts in the matter of the guardianship of the money—a flourish neither unnatural nor unkindly—handed over to the lad both the letter and a cheque on a London bank, took his receipt, talked a little, but with a blunted memory, about the lad's father, gave him a little general business advice, asked whether his sister was still alive, and bade him good morning. Both were satisfied, and the young man left the office with the cheque lying ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not fidget about me very much," he said to himself, as he thought of his companions. Then, utterly tired out, and with his perceptions somewhat blunted by fatigue, he gave his friends the credit of thinking that he would be able to take care ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... like a bird with spread wings above dark seas seeking the golden clime it needs and instinctively knows of. But she did not repine. And she was able to fill her life, to be strongly interested in people and in events. She mellowed with her great sorrow instead of becoming blunted by it or withering under it. And so she drew people to her, and was drawn, in ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... feet devolv'd I cast me, praying him for pity's sake That he would open to me: but first fell Thrice on my bosom prostrate. Seven times The letter, that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead with the blunted point Of his drawn sword inscrib'd. And "Look," he cried, "When enter'd, that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... be inferred from this that our hero's character had grown so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher had no great sum been required, or had he not been called upon to touch the fund which he had decided should ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... economizing of the family means, the supplying of the family wants. But the factory takes her from all these duties. Homes become no longer homes. Children grow up uneducated and neglected. The finer affections become blunted. Woman is no more the gentle wife, companion, and friend of man, but his fellow-labourer and fellow-drudge. She is exposed to influences which too often efface that modesty of thought and conduct which is one of the best safeguards of virtue. Without judgment or sound principles ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... seemed so endless and so immense, that some of the time we felt like two needles in a haymow, a haymow made up of a vision of loveliness, and the two little needles feelin' fairly tuckered out, and blunted, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... depression occasioned by the evaporation of the fluid constituents; and a time comes when these sides are so depressed that a section of the pseudochrysalis through a plane perpendicular to its axis would be represented by a curvilinear triangle with blunted corners and inwardly convex sides. This is the appearance displayed by the pseudochrysalis during the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... lady mild and merciful there is nothing to fear. Evidently she has settled matters once and for all in the Warigesui. But at the tenement—there it is another affair. This Cho[u]bei will fortify himself against the shock. A drink; then another, and still more. The scoldings will fall on a blunted mind wandering in some dreamland. Time will soothe her rage. To-morrow Cho[u]bei wakes, to find the storm has passed and Taki his obedient serving wench." Near the Adzumabashi, following his prescription ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... By now the huge axes have hacked small the shield of the king; by now the long swords clash, and the battle-axe clatters its blows upon the shoulders of men, and cleaves their breasts. Why are your hearts afraid? Why is your sword faint and blunted? The gate is cleared of our people, and is filled with the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... returned, and furious at the escape of their victim, burned his dwelling to the ground. Drentell never forgot his ignominious repulse nor the wound he received at the hands of Haim Kusel. His own offence counted as naught, so blunted was his moral sense. To inflict misery upon a Jew was at all times considered meritorious, but for a Jew to so far forget himself as to assault an officer of the Czar, was a crime for which the whole race would one day be ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Rose know what that meant? Could they form an indignant, affronted guess? "Father said," Dora quoted, "that if Colonel Russell, an honourable gentleman and gallant officer, had not lived in the old days and had his feelings blunted to the situation, he would never have consented to such an arrangement for his daughter. But he had seen his sisters come out to India for the well-understood purpose of getting married to any eligible man in want of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... "get at the bottom of the matter" that will act as a check upon the demands of social life and of individual impatience which rush us to conclusions. In most men, as earlier noted, the sharp edge of curiosity becomes easily blunted. They are content, outside their own immediate personal interests, "to take things for granted." They glide over the surfaces of events, they cease to query the authenticity of facts, or to examine their relevance and their significance, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... his pick in his hands the following day, but placed it again in its corner, slowly, after a moment's examination of its blunted steel. ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... creek. While we were packing up, and during the time we were travelling, the rain came down sufficiently heavily to wet us all thoroughly. We got to the side of a stony hill, put up our tents and tarpaulins, and then enjoyed the rain exceedingly, except that our senses of enjoyment were somewhat blunted, for all of us had been attacked with ophthalmia for several days previously. Livingstone remarks in one of his works that, in Africa, attacks of ophthalmia generally precede rain. The rain fell occasionally throughout the remainder of the day and during the night. "All night long, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... where the secrets of all hearts are known. She was not insane, Tom; but from the time that she supposed that her son had been gibbeted, there was something like insanity about her: the blow had oppressed her brain—it had stupefied her, and blunted her moral sense of right and wrong. She told me, after you had communicated to her that her son was in the hospital, and had died penitent, that she felt as if a heavy weight had been taken off her mind; that she had been rid of an oppression which ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... See here, Mr. President, this is how the matter stands. They imagine they can ruin England with their submarines—they 're probably wrong, but that's their notion—but if they give way to America this illegitimate weapon is blunted and they lose the war. Sooner than suffer that catastrophe they will defy America. And they don't believe as yet that America means what she says and is determined to fight rather than suffer these outrages to continue. The Germans will try to throw dust ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... the "Rovers" band, which was composed of the original Bunkers, with others whom Tim had collected together, his conscience proved less troublesome. The first wrong step taken, the second follows with less compunction, and so on, till the moral sense is completely blunted. ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... cry: "Remember of what race you come and do nothing contrary to your honour." There were many strict rules to be observed; for instance, it was forbidden to strike your adversary with the point, although it was usually blunted (but not in this tournament of Bayard's). It was forbidden to attack the horse of your opponent, and this we can quite understand, for in those days, when a knight wore complete and heavy armour, if his horse were killed he was absolutely at the ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... dust and never rises to higher thoughts or nobler aims. Men could, if they would, distinguish the worthy from the unworthy, just as with a healthy palate they can tell good food from bad. But men's moral discernment has been blunted by a life of sensuality and sin, just as the physical palate loses its power of tasting when in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden pain; but the soldier's senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of an adventurer's life, and he was not on the alert for shades ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... there was slight inducement for going ashore, oppressed as I was with the ever-present incubus of dread. At intervals this feeling became less acute, but only to return, strengthened by its short absences. After a time my danger sense became blunted. The nervous system became torpid under continuous stress, and refused to pass on the sensations with sufficient intensity to the brain; or the weary brain was asleep at its post and did not heed the warnings. I could ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... baking, rushed from tent to wood-pile, his sleeves turned back from his white, muscular arms. He lived more intensely than any other member of the sylvan household. His blue eyes shone, and his face was vivid as he talked to her. He was a common man, blunted in the finer nature by a life of hardship, yet his shrewd spirit seized on much that less facile people like Puttany learned slowly or not ...
— The Cursed Patois - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... points of the brief to Mason and Smith, and yet the glory of the case has rested with Mr. Webster and always will. He gained by his frank honesty and did not lose a whit. But in his latter days, when his sense of justice had grown somewhat blunted and his nature was perverted by the unmeasured adulation of the little immediate circle which then hung about him, he ceased to admit his obligations as in his earlier and better years. From no one did Mr. Webster receive so much hearty and generous advice and assistance ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... possession of myself. The trial of fortitude through which I had already passed seemed to have blunted my customary sense of feeling. I approached the disclosure which I was now bound to make with steady resolution, resigned to the worst that could happen when the ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... a high color and an easy smile, but he had, so to speak, degenerated since he came to Canada. Festing remembered his keenness and careless good-humor when he began to farm, but disappointment had blunted the first, though his carelessness remained. He had been fastidious, but one now got a hint of a coarse streak and there was something about his face that indicated dissipation. Yet Festing admitted that he ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... means of urging on an animal than by making this most disgraceful of all noises, one would forgive its existence. But it is quite the contrary: this cursed cracking of whips is not only unnecessary but even useless. The effect that it is intended to have on the horse mentally becomes quite blunted and ineffective; since the constant abuse of it has accustomed the horse to the crack, he does not quicken his pace for it. This is especially noticeable in the unceasing crack of the whip which comes from an empty vehicle as it is ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... had the misfortune to be retained by a man whose cause he did not champion. He had become a terror to society and a walking menace to the social circle in which he revolved. His death was a necessity, and, except here and there a friend of blunted moral instincts, there will be found but few to mourn his death or criticise the manner of his taking off. To say that Marshal Neagle should have acted in any other manner than he did means that he was to have left ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... pay for it; but by-and-by things began to grow vicey-varsy. If the work was done for Tom, 't was undone for the other lads; if his buckets were filled, theirs were upset; if his tools were sharpened, theirs were blunted and spoiled; if his horses were clean as daisies, theirs were splashed with muck, and so on; day in and day out, 't was the same. And the lads saw Yallery Brown flitting about o' nights, and they saw the things working without hands o' days, and they saw that Tom's work was done for him, ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... secret (which I could not tell before), To lacerate poor PETER GRAY vindictively you swore; I told you if you used that blunted axe you'd rue the day, And so you will, young GILBERT, ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... patrimony meant independence, safety from perfunctory and uncongenial contacts at home, and more positively all those purtenances of the gentlewoman that she required. But, unlike the merely thrifty Italianates, she never became blunted by our incessant tea giving and receiving. With familiarity, the ineffable sweetness of the country penetrated her with ever-new impressions. She loved the overlapping blue hills that stretched away endlessly from the rim of her valley, and the scarred crag ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... however, on the two or three occasions when Sainton invited me to dine with Berlioz. I was now brought face to face with this strangely gifted person, tormented and even blunted in some respects as he then was. When I saw him, a man considerably my senior, coming here merely in the hope of earning a few guineas, I could deem myself perfectly happy, and almost floating on air, by contrast; for my own coming had been brought about rather by a desire for ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... infectious a fear with them, that the whole body of troops was seized by it and fled.' Colonel Digby followed, with all the horse at his disposal, 'till,' says Clarendon complacently, 'their swords were blunted with slaughter.' Perhaps the Royalists were more anxious to impress a salutary warning against the sin of rebellion than to kill the fugitives, for Clarendon finishes the account by saying that the rebels 'were scattered and dispersed all over the country, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... very easy to feel the difference, if not to see it, between cut and pressed glass. The latter always has these blunted angles to the facets, and has a certain vagueness and want of purpose about it; then it is not so heavy or so sparkling; there is a certain exhilaration in the gleam of cut glass that fits it for purposes to which the other would be entirely unsuited. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... not their joys alone thus coarsely flow: Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low; For, as refinement stops, from sire to son Unaltered, unimproved, the manners run, 230 And love's and friendship's finely-pointed dart Fall blunted from each indurated heart. Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast May sit, like falcons, cow'ring on the nest; But all the gentler morals, such as play 235 Thro' life's more cultured walks, and charm the way, These, far dispersed, on timorous pinions ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... not an honest Frenchman but spits upon my name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, Jehane! as a man already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France they thirst to murder me, and England has no further need of Montbrison, her blunted and her ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... dinner was excellent, and both travellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not being dissipating in London all the time—or, indeed, any great part of the time of his absence from Fellside; but ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted the vision ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... letter that 'never did the full realization of what I am, come so plainly before me, as when this villian so cooly told me of his plans. I drove him from my presence as I would a dog.' This shows that Molly's race pride is not entirely blunted by dissipation and unholy living. I counsel you all ere you depart, to remember that we are at the mercy of the whites, and each one of us should do all in our power to show our men the wisdom of coolness. By this, with God's help, we may be able to avert the evil ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... as a fillip to your already blunted purpose," said the lawyer with a curious smile. "Odd, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine |
