"Bungle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanted us both to win! What does Muriel know about a decent game of hockey, or how to conduct a society, or run a school magazine? It's idiotic that she should be chosen. Neither she nor Iva nor Nesta has ever been at a big school. A precious bungle they'll make of their meetings. I know you'll be there—but you're so gentle you'll never stand up against them, and they'll have everything their own silly way. 'The Moorings' won't be very much changed if it's just to be run upon the same old lines. I shan't bother to ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... going to say something! After professing to snub Mr. Farmerson, you permit him to snub YOU, in my presence, and then accept his invitation to take a glass of champagne with you, and you don't limit yourself to one glass. You then offer this vulgar man, who made a bungle of repairing our scraper, a seat in our cab on the way home. I say nothing about his tearing my dress in getting in the cab, nor of treading on Mrs. James's expensive fan, which you knocked out ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... who had the reputation of being one of the most tactful of men-of- the-world, took a step which hinted that the Royal House, as often before, meant to come to the rescue of the country which loved it however the politicians might bungle: Hogarth was invited to accept ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in Wonder to wait on treason and on murder; And whatsoever cunning fiend it was That wrought upon thee so preposterously Hath got the voice in hell for excellence; And other devils that suggest by treasons Do botch and bungle up damnation With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd From glist'ring semblances of piety. But he that temper'd thee bade thee stand up, Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason, Unless to dub thee with the name ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... side and enjoy the backing of the bourgeois establishment, its organizations and its facilities. Since their object is defense, they have no constructive program. Instead they stumble, fumble and bungle as their system flounders into ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Moses!" howled Duncan. "Ye can trust the Scotch to bungle things a'thegither. McLean was only meanin' to show ye all confidence and honor. He's gone and set a high price for some dirty whelp to ruin ye. I was just tryin' to show ye how he felt toward ye, and I've gone an' give ye that ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I said, "but you will have to be very careful and not overdo the matter, for she isn't the kind that is easily fooled. She's had to keep her eyes and wits sharpened, else she wouldn't be on a newspaper, so I want you to be very careful and not bungle. Make a neat job ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... ye bungle?" she chuckled, leaning over and looking furtively up and down the room, as if afraid of being caught talking to me. I blushed in confusion that was half fright, and she raised a ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... distinctly the handiwork of the Diamond Coterie, and I saw another thing; it was the first piece of work I had known them to bungle. And they had bungled ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a girl loves a man she ought to be willing to trust him over a dreadful bungle until he could straighten things out and make good ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... enough in most places for three boats to row abreast. I expect I will take to boating furiously: I have been down the river three or four times already with some other freshmen, and it is glorious exercise; that I can see, though we bungle and cut crabs ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and all war supplies. They knew that they had invented some wonderful guns which were large enough to batter down the strongest forts in the world. They did not have very much respect for the ability of the Russian generals. They had watched them bungle badly in the Japanese war, ten years before. If once France were brought to her knees, they did not fear Russia. Then after France and Russia had been beaten, there would be plenty of time, later on, to settle with ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... That would be the end of you, for those police would bungle everything. You need clever fellows with you if you go to ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... can predict just what another person will do. However, I feel sure you can trust O'Connel. I never knew him to bungle anything yet." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... best previous effort, there was little or no chance that anything I might say would avail to placate either magnate or to abate either's hostility toward me. And I knew that, in my dazed condition, the chances were that I would bungle ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... botchery^; bad job, sad work. sprat sent out to catch a whale, much ado about nothing, wild- goose chase. bungler &c 701; fool &c 501. V. be unskillful &c adj.; not see an inch beyond one's nose; blunder, bungle, boggle, fumble, botch, bitch, flounder, stumble, trip; hobble &c 275; put one's foot in it; make a mess of, make hash of, make sad work of; overshoot the mark. play tricks with, play Puck, mismanage, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... be an agile chap, who is especially quick both at decisions and throwing. Even though he snatch up the ball, and thus make a fine stop, if his judgment is poor or his throwing arm lame, he can often bungle his work, and prove of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... doctrine explained I'd venture to give you my views; but in this vital matter I shall leave you in God's hands, 'being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.' I once set about reforming you myself, and you know what a bungle I made of it. Now I believe the Lord has taken you in hand, and I shall not presume to meddle. Bow with me in prayer that he may speedily bring you into his marvellous light and knowledge." And the good man knelt and spread his hands toward heaven, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... step there; but it was just like me to bungle," continued Gaston. "I knew that the Jew, Henriques, often had transactions with the Marquis de Fleury. I took the diamonds to another Jew from whom I concealed my name, and suggested his taking them to Henriques, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... makes you so white and queer?" his mother asked, trying to pull on her stockings, and in her trepidation jamming her toes into the heel, and drawing her shoe over the bungle thus made at the bottom ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... we will begin with this one," said his father, pointing to a red-and-white heifer. "She is better-natured than the others, and, as I dare say your fingers will bungle a little at first, that is ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... We need not bungle over the word "normal," in any attempt to meet the academic objection that it implies conformity to type. In this connection, the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears no glasses; and if a few happy people still exist here ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... Bos'n turns up right in your own town, right acrost the road from you! By the big dipper! it's enough to make a feller believe that the Almighty does take a hand in straightenin' out such things, when us humans bungle 'em—it is so! ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... way of diversion, to lift the cat up by her tail. "I'm going to holler awful, and make you sit up and tell me about that little boy that ate the giant, and Cinderella,—how she lived in the stove-pipe,—and that man that builded his house out of a bungle of straws: and—well, there's some more, but I don't remember ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and forbid him to refer to the matter again or even send him away altogether. And he felt he was not strong enough to risk that. No, he must know where he stood first. He must understand his position, so as not to bungle the thing. Hilliard was right. They must find out what the syndicate was doing. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... stage, the work of his deadly foe, conducted by Mozart himself!' 'You must certainly go,' he said, 'if it is only to be able to say in Vienna whether I had a hair clipped from Absalom's head. I wish he were here himself! The jealous old sheep should see that I do not need to bungle another person's composition in order to show ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... just man'. But that was written in Palestine, where rain is a rare blessing; there and then in the cold evening they would have done better to have warmed the righteous. There is no controlling them; they mean well, but they bungle terribly. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... Gloster still — I'm going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will. Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you, If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do. They'll try to prove me crazy, and, if you bungle, they can; And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't he a man?) There's some waste money on marbles, the same as M'Cullough tried — Marbles and mausoleums — but I call that sinful pride. There's some ship bodies for burial — we've carried ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Mr. Conant to Millbank and then the boy took the car to the blacksmith shop to have a small part repaired. The blacksmith made a bungle of it and wasted all the forenoon before he finally took Bub's advice about shaping it and the new rod was attached and ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... then, as I turned the garment That no rent should be left behind, My eye caught an odd little bungle Of ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... heart to refuse it, the poor drunken wretch having a wife and ten children; he withdraws the job from sober, plainly competent, and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of work too; discourages Sparrowbill; teaches him that he too may as well drink and loiter and bungle; that this is not a scene for merit and demerit at all, but for dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cobbling of every description;—clearly tending to the ruin of poor Sparrowbill! What harm had Sparrowbill done me that I should so help to ruin him? And I couldn't save the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... In the first place she'll be sorry for you, because you will make such a bungle of it. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... that they were needed, that the country responded. Day by day the newspapers made the best of bad news from the front, and day by day did the readers thereof conclude that England was doing well, and they "supposed that she would bungle through." No man of prophetic foresight had yet risen to say "This is a life and death struggle for us; we need every man in the country, and every shilling to win the war." The common talk was that we had stepped in to keep our treaty with France and to assist poor Belgium, whose neutrality ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... convey the same ideas through the medium of Spanish, Lawrence made such a bungle of it that Manuela, instead of expressing sympathy, began to struggle so obviously with her feelings that the poor Englishman gave up the attempt, and good-naturedly joined his companion in a little burst of laughter. ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand. "I'm getting old too," I said. "And I'm useless at everything. I only make a bungle of everything I try. But I'll be your true friend to the end ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... Our most familiar inferences are all made before we learn the use of general propositions; and a person of untutored sagacity will skillfully apply his acquired experience to adjacent cases, though he would bungle grievously in fixing the limits of the appropriate general theorem. But though he may conclude rightly, he never, properly speaking, knows whether he has done so or not; he has not tested his reasoning. Now, this is precisely what ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... cried, "What do you call this? What work is this, Frederick? Has a journeyman been preparing these staves for his 'mastership,' or a stupid apprentice who only put his nose into the workshop three days ago? Pull yourself together, lad: what devil has entered into you that you are making a bungle of things like this? My good oak wood,—and this your masterpiece! Oh! you awkward, imprudent boy!" Overmastered by the torture and agony which raged within him, Frederick was unable to contain himself any longer; so, throwing the adze from ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... burst out. "Look at him! When the leader broke I thought he was lost. I'm sick yet. Didn't you almost bungle that?" ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... have summoned Montignac by a single stroke, and despatched him in the doorway. But now that my own position was easier, I saw that such a manoeuvre, first contemplated when only a desperate stroke seemed possible, was full of danger to mademoiselle. I might bungle it, whereupon Montignac would certainly attempt one blow against her, though it were his last. I must, therefore, use the governor to release her from her perilous situation; but first I must use him for another purpose, which the presence of the keen-witted Montignac ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Louisbourg the year before, and who was to do well at Quebec the year after. But, of course, he was not a member of the Bigot gang. So he was set aside in favour of a parasite, who made a hopeless bungle ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... appear in society. The diplomatic impolitely dub them fools. Be they that or no, they augment the number of those mediocrities beneath the yoke of which France is bowed down. They are always there, always ready to bungle public or private concerns with the dull trowel of their mediocrity, bragging of their impotence, which they count for conduct and integrity. This sort of social prizemen infests the administration, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... of Fardale. Hans Dunnerwust returned with a stock of tales of astounding adventures, which he managed to bungle badly in the telling. And now I suppose Barney Mulloy will take his turn. Between them they will make you out one of the most remarkable heroes of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... young, however, managed to bungle his pounce for the fraction of a second, and that is long enough for most of the wild-folk. Came a mad fluttering, a beating of wings, a quick mix-up, and, before he knew, that cat found himself frantically chasing that thrush across the orchard, striking wildly always at a thrush that ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... to the hall, where he fitted me with greatcoat and hat. Then, having trundled me to the front gate, he picked me up—luckily I have always been a small spare man—and deposited me in the car. I am always nervous of anyone but Marigold trying to carry me. They seem to stagger and fumble and bungle. Marigold's arms close round me like an iron clamp and they lift me with the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... at all, court scientifically. Bungle whatever else you will, but do no bungle courtship. A failure in this may mean more than a loss of wealth or public honors; it may mean ruin, or a life often worse than death. The world is full ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... you're going to defend yourself, isn't it?" and she almost laughed. "You're going to surprise them at the trial? You won't tell what your thoughts are to anyone, for fear they shall make a bungle of it? Half these barristers, I'm told, are very muddle-headed, and make all sorts of foolish admissions; and you're going to defend yourself in ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... general. 'Don't talk to me of fuses; I'm too old for that rubbish! Isn't it enough for you to bungle your work, but you must tell me a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... admitted to myself the true state of my mind. I felt sure Florence was innocent, but I knew appearances were strongly against her, and I feared I should bungle the case because of the very intensity of my desire not to. And I thought that Fleming Stone, in spite of evidence, would be able to prove what I felt was the truth, that Florence was guiltless of all knowledge of or ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... now take that flask from Mr. Andersen's hands, and see what we can draw out of that. This, you know, is a liquid which we have just made up from copper and nitric acid, whilst our other experiments were in hand; and though I am making this experiment very hastily, and may bungle a little, yet I prefer to let you see what I do rather ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to botch and bungle even damnation.' ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... way and saying, "Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap you are!" But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. "Would any one believe this?" says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. "I am so out of sorts that I bungle at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... yet," announced Phil after a bit, rising to his feet; while a look of growing concern began to come upon his face. "I was silly to let him take the risk. Ought to have known Larry would bungle it, if there was half a chance. And now, Tony, what had we better do, follow his tracks, or head straight in the direction that shot ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... far as to say that we human beings have misapplied the laws of life in such a way as to kill those who are dear to us; rather, I think, we have never learned those laws except in their merest rudiments. We are not yet prepared to do more than bungle the good things offered us on earth, and more or less misuse them. We misuse them ourselves; we teach others to misuse them; we create systems of which the pressure is so terrible that under it the weak can do nothing but die. We give them ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... long green he's after. I wonder who told him about the two thousand." He scratched his head in sudden perplexity. "I wonder what's got into Dick Cronk. He's too blamed good, all of a sudden. That brother of his might try the job, but—no, he'd bungle it. Besides, he'd probably stick a knife into Davy if the kid made a motion." He began chewing a fresh cigar; his pop-eyes were leveled with unseeing fierceness at a certain patch in the "main top"; his brain was seeing nothing ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... week had so managed to bungle the slinging in of a small torpedo-boat on the "Vortigern", that the boat had broken the crutches in which she rested, and was herself being repaired in the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... I said, before I had a chance to bungle it worse, "quite willing to exchange information on your people for the same about my own. However, I doubt that your people will find this planet congenial to an invader who ignores the natives ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... must act, and speedily too, or the resultant mischief cannot be undone. I appeal to you because you are a woman, and we men are prone to bungle ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Marquis is sceptical. I'll admit that I'm pitiably foolish, but I don't want Mrs. Durrand to know how I've bungled her matter until the bungle ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... fingers too canny to bungle, With footsteps too cunning to swerve, They swing through the heights of the jungle, These stalwarts of infinite nerve; Blithe sailors who heed not the breezes Which play round their riggings and spars, Lithe gymnasts who live on trapezes And ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... as if you could! What a bungle it would be. Why, I never saw you with a piece of work in your hand in my life. I dare say you could ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Billy Bungle (that was his name) was not by any means an idiot. He knew perfectly well that two and two made four, and yet, such a queer chap as he was, he would take any amount of pains to make ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for a sick man's dream. I have discovered also that if she's choosing you, as I believe she is, she's choosing wisely between us, and that's why I'll not have your life risked by keeping you aboard whilst the message goes by another who might bungle it. And now perhaps ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... going to up and see her, without it's hurting the will. Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you, If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do. They'll try to prove me a loony, and, if you bungle, they can; And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't he a man?) There's some waste money on marbles, the same as McCullough tried— Marbles and mausoleums—but I call that sinful pride. There's some ship bodies for ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... terrified men carried off the first brigade along with it in hopeless rout. Ramses and Menna were left with only a few picked chariots of the household troops, and the whole Hittite army was coming on. But though King Ramses had made a terrible bungle of his generalship, he was at least a brave man. Leaping into his chariot, and calling to the handful of faithful soldiers to follow him, he bade Menna lash his horses and charge the advancing Hittites. Menna was ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... must be plainly visible; that the visitor must see and be scornfully amused by it. Yet, with really extraordinary cordiality, he was holding out his right hand in salutation. Here again my awkwardness made me bungle. What he meant by his gesture I could not think. Some amusing trick, perhaps. It did not occur to me in that moment of self-abasement that he wished to shake an ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... murder: made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and women have often recovered. In Jasper's opium vision and reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over. Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault. He was apt to have a seizure after opium, in moments of excitement, and HE HAD BEEN AT THE OPIUM DEN THROUGH THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 23, for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on December 24, the day of the crime. ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... to, but I know every idea I have would desert me directly I faced an audience. I'm all right with a definite part that I've got into my head, but I can't make up as I go along, and it's no use asking me. I'd only bungle and stammer, and make an utter goose of myself, and spoil the whole thing. Hallo! There's the supper bell. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... indeed, had climbed the altitudes of life; the cracksman still stumbled in the valleys. If he had a ready cunning in the planning of an enterprise, he must needs bungle at the execution; and had he not been associated with George Smith, a king of scoundrels, there would be few exploits to record. And yet for the craft of housebreaker he had one solid advantage: he knew the locks and bolts of Edinburgh as he knew his primer—for had he not fashioned ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the blue kerchief at her neck for a tourniquet and had checked the hemorrhage, he was still patiently awaiting a better opportunity to employ his knife. It would not do to bungle the affair. And he thought he knew how it could be properly done—if he could get her head in the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... somehow to have missed a trail that was to have cut the distance greatly. Billy clung breathlessly to his cramped position and waited. He hoped they wouldn't get out and try to find the way, for then some of them might see him, and he was so stiff he was sure he would bungle getting out of the way. But after a breathless moment the car started on more slowly, and finally turned down a steep rough place, scarcely a trail, into the deeper woods. For a long time they went along, slower ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... wise father knows his own son. And he is not wise, you know. Are you, most reverend? No, faith, or you would never have begot me. No, faith, nor enlist me to do murder neither. For I do but bungle it, you see. And make a fool of my Lord Sunderland, God ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... chopper. "The conditions say with steel," he said; "only with steel, and I should bungle with a knife. You must look the other way. Now help me with ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the glade Where our prey lay sleeping, Unafraid, In some Eastern jungle? Better so. I am sure the snarling Beasts could never bungle Life as men do, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... as I have remarked," said the monk, "I could not order my speech to propose anything of this kind to a young maid; I should so bungle that I might spoil all. You ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... drilling the men to do it well. I like to use a piece of string, marked with knots, by which I can measure the exact places in which the tent-pegs should be struck, for the eye is a deceitful guide in estimating squareness. (See "Squaring.") It is wonderful how men will bungle with a tent, when they are not properly drilled ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... rural, saw the head of a horse top the rise. In the saddle sat Ramon, hatless, his black hair flung back from his forehead, a gun in his hand. Waring drew a deep breath. Would Ramon bungle it by calling out, or would he have nerve enough to make an end of it on ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... other, lest we bungle. As the plan was mine, I take the choice of parts. There is a stain upon my conscience, M'sieu." McElroy spoke simply from his heart, as was his wont. "Throughout this long journey it has lain heavy. Though I hold against you one ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... remains, you see; the evil is as great as ever, greater, indeed. But this is not all. Look at the warp which the plate has got near the opposite edge. Where it was flat before it is now curved. A pretty bungle we have made of it! Instead of curing the original defect, we have produced a second. Had we asked an artisan practised in 'planishing,' as it is called, he would have told us that no good was to be done, but only mischief, by hitting down on the projecting part. He would ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; "but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is beneath contempt. I know of cases—but I will not detain you with them now. They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective should be a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of human nature. In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find motives, to construct them and put them into play, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Morris. "Indeed, I don't know that I had better dwell on that hypothesis at all; it's all very well to talk of facing the worst; but in a case of this kind a man's first duty is to his own nerve. Is there any answer to No. 3? Is there any possible good side to such a beastly bungle? There must be, of course, or where would be the use of this double-entry business? And—by George, I have it!" he exclaimed; "it's exactly the same as the last!" And he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that," he said firmly, "we're going to move. I'll have enough to buy a young bungle-house up on the hill, even if I don't get anything from Archer. And then I'm going to make up to you for ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... said Peace thoughtfully; "'cause when folks are watching and I want to be 'specially sweet and nice and helpful, I just make a dreadful bungle of it, and everyone laughs. It's the things we do without thinking that make folks happiest. That is what Saint Elspeth used to tell me. Some way I could understand her better than Miss Edith, I guess; but maybe it was 'cause I knew her better. When do you s'pose we can go to ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... that an affianced lover could be expected to like. You must introduce me to Douglas Dale as your cousin, and by the name of Carton. It is sufficiently like my real name to prevent the servants knowing my name is changed, since they always bungle over the 'Carrington.' As Victor Carrington, Dale might refuse to know me, and certainly would not form any intimacy with me, and that he should form an intimacy with me is essential ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a horse without a bit; This backs the sluggish ass, or bullock slow; These mounted on the croup of centaur sit: Those perched on eagle, crane, or estridge, go. Some male, some female, some hermaphrodit, These drain the cup and those the bungle blow. One bore a corded ladder, one a book; One a dull file, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto |
