"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every precaution, it is currently whispered in the streets to-day that Virginia has seceded from the Union; and that the act is to be submitted to the people for ratification a month hence. This is perhaps a blunder. If the Southern States are to adhere to the old distinct sovereignty doctrine, God help them one and all to achieve their independence of the United States. Many are inclined to think the safest plan would be to obliterate State lines, and merge ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... at a wrong time suggests the possibility that the owner might blunder similarly in his personal appearing. The neglect to send a card at a proper time is equivalent to a personal neglect. The man who comes himself and hands you his card also is apt to have too many elbows at a dinner, too many feet at a ball. He has about him a suggestion of awkward superfluousness ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... territory fully revealed itself. Peremptory orders were sent to the Canton authorities from Pekin to expel the foreigners at all costs. The government of India was responsible for what was a distinct blunder in our political relations with China. In 1808, when alarm at Napoleon's schemes was at its height, it sent Admiral Drury and a considerable naval force to occupy Macao. The Chinese at once protested, withheld supplies, refused to hold any intercourse with that commander, and threatened ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry; and sent her word, that she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name, or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood, and went herself to Captain Watson's though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said, they wondered at her asking, for that she had not been in town; they ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... said Mr. Knight, a thought, however, just occurring to his mind, that he had two or three times allowed her to replace a man on her religiously assuring him that such a move was an absolute blunder. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... a thoughtful mood in his walk, and being more accustomed to riding than walking, in his absence of mind he made the blunder. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... into the true state of the case, and I felt much easier on the subject. That Marble ever intended to serve under the British flag, I had not supposed for a moment; but I was not sure that regret for the blunder he had already made, might not lead him into some new mistake of equally serious import, under the impression that he was correcting the evil. As for Neb, I knew he would never desert me; and I had not, from the first, felt any other concern ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... The blunder of writing predicate for predict has become so widely diffused that it bids fair to render one of the most useful terms in the scientific vocabulary of Logic unintelligible. The mathematical and logical term "to eliminate" ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... furious. The stranger had uttered words of apology, but his tone had been insolent, and his apology was more offensive than his original blunder. Had it not been for Ben's reluctance to make a disturbance, he would have struck the offender in the mouth. If he had had a pistol, he could have shot him; his great uncle Ralph, for instance, would not have ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... stamps that have an interesting history of their own. They mark some official experiment, some curious blunder or accident, some little conceit, some historical event, or some crude and ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No stabbing! ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... waiting which promised more money. But emulation counts for something, even in the thief-catching field; and since two members of his own staff had fired and missed their mark in St. Louis, there was a blunder ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... aristocratic re-action in England England's democratic tendencies Idleness of young aristocrats Death of Protection Revolutions leading to masquerades Tory reforms Imperial marriage New Reform Bill a blunder ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the oven, and let your cakes and pastry burn. Try not to mind the banter of your relations and friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. A cake which has caught in baking, or a pudding with the sugar left out, will probably afford them an inexhaustible subject of mirth. Make up your mind, however, not to be discouraged by any of these things. Practice will give nimbleness to ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... said too much, he ceased speaking abruptly, and then, after the fashion of one unskilled in tricks of speech, proceeded to remedy one blunder ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... for instance, who, having made Pendennis an early confidant in his amour, gave him the whole story? Clive, Pendennis writes expressly, is travelling abroad with his wife. Who is that wife? By a most monstrous blunder, Mr. Pendennis killed Lord Farintosh's mother at one page and brought her to life again at another; but Rosey, who is so lately consigned to Kensal Green, it is not surely with her that Clive is travelling, for then Mrs. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... However, the blunder blind passion had led her into was partially repaired by Miss Rolleston herself. When she heard, next day, where Seaton was gone, she lifted up her hands in amazement. "What could papa be thinking of to send our benefactor to a hospital?" And, after meditating awhile, she ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... air as he stepped by her reaching out for butcher-knife and roast. "So you are dad's kind, are you? Hitting the booze every show you get. The Lord deliver me from his chief blunder. Meaning a man." ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... he prayed to have it again ('twas but a small request, mark ye me), and having a strong faith, he did not throw the hatchet after the helve, as some spirits of contradiction say by way of scandalous blunder, but the helve after the hatchet, as you all properly have it. Presently two great miracles were seen: up springs the hatchet from the bottom of the water, and fixes itself to its old acquaintance the helve. Now had he wished to coach it to heaven in a fiery chariot like Elias, to multiply in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in Oldham's imitation, many prosaick verses and bad rhymes, and his poem sets out with a strange inadvertent blunder: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... perhaps no class of puzzle over which people so frequently blunder as that which involves what is called the theory of probabilities. I will give two simple examples of the sort of puzzle I mean. They are really quite easy, and yet many persons are tripped up by them. A friend recently produced five pennies ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... that this passage-way was known, and was used; that he was at the mercy of his captor; and that Russell had made a great blunder in hiding his package in such a place. But why had his visitor failed to discover the package? Perhaps because she came in the dark. That would account for it. She could not have seen it; she passed by it thus, both while ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... making him incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some blunder more or less appalling. ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... went Tom Morse looked hard as pig iron. He did not want to blunder, so he said nothing. But the girl would have been amazed if she could have read his thoughts. She seemed to him a rare flower that has blossomed in ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in error when they consider that the name of Baron Fairfax ought not to be retained in the Peerage. The able heraldic editors of the Peerages are likely to be better versed in such matters than to have perpetrated and perpetuated so frequently the blunder; or what is to be said of Sir Bernard Burke's elevation to be a king of arms? Not to omit the instance of the Earl of Athlone, who, though a natural-born subject of a foreign realm, in 1795 took his seat in the House of Lords in Ireland (a case which H. G. wants ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... have made an unpardonable blunder. I don't deserve the divine blessings through Romesh; I am ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... cruelty and perfidy but of his dullness. The King had everything to hope from Egmont and nothing to fear. Granvelle knew the man well, and, almost to the last, could not believe in the possibility of so unparalleled a blunder as that which was to make a victim, a martyr, and a popular idol of a personage brave indeed, but incredibly vacillating and inordinately vain, who, by a little management, might have been converted into a most useful instrument ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct it. His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at it and wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped, and he must make a little struggle ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... were broken off, and war was finally declared, Germany was already the unavowed protectress of Russia. And when people point, as they frequently do, to the war as the greatest blunder ever committed by the Wilhelmstrasse since the Fatherland became one and indivisible, I feel unable to see with them eye to eye. Seemingly it was indeed an egregious mistake, but so obvious were the probable consequences which made it appear so that ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... necessity. Mere handicraft, however skilled, could not secure the requisite precision of workmanship; nor could the parts be turned out in sufficient quantity to meet any large demand. It was therefore requisite to devise machine-tools which should not blunder, nor turn out imperfect work;—machines, in short, which should be in a great measure independent of the want of dexterity of individual workmen, but which should unerringly labour in their prescribed track, and do the work ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... but pardonable blunder," said Mr. Witham, "that I died, and reached the Paradise of Poets. I had, indeed, published volumes of verse, but with the most blameless motives. Other poets were continually sending me theirs, and, as I could not admire them, and did ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the story must have left in the mind of Vergil himself. It is surely needless to assume that the first of poetic artists has forgotten the very rudiments of his art in placing at the opening of his song a figure which strips all interest from his hero. Nor is it needful to believe that such a blunder has been unconscious, and that Vergil has had to learn the true effect of his episode on the general texture of his poem from the reader of to-day. The poet who paints for us the character of Dido must have felt, ere he could have painted it, that charm which has ever since ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... youngster,—and that, let me tell you, young friends, was some time ago,—they used to say that swallows lived in the mud all winter, as the eels do. The books made no such stupid blunder; only the ignorant people, such as never seem to use their eyes or their reason. It was one of the popular errors of the time. Silly as the notion seems, it has been held by ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... healthy, was born wealthy, and throughout the whole of his long life, continuing to be wealthy and healthy, he never committed a single sin, never fell into a single error, never once made a slip or a blunder. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... no: I can't part with you tonight, no, not for an instant. I have many lessons to give you. How are we to learn our parts for to-morrow, if we don't rehearse them beforehand? Do you not know that a single blunder may turn what I hope will be a farce into a tragedy? Go home!—pooh! pooh! why, man, I have not seen my wife, nor put my house to rights, and if you do but listen to me I tell you again and again that not a hair of our heads ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the most cruel vexations, till a remedy could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring; yet his resentment so seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... can't be sure where he is going to get his catch, so he picks out the place, or run-way, where the game has been in the habit of coming. He hides his traps about that place, and trusts to luck that the animal will blunder into one ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... madman or clear off his vertigo of death, suggested to him the idea of throwing himself from the highest peak of the Mont Blanc... That indeed! that would be worth doing, up there! A fine end among the elements... But here, at the bottom of a cave... Ah! vai, what a blunder!.. And he put such tone into his words, brusque and yet persuasive, such conviction, that the Swede allowed himself to be conquered, and there they were, at last, one by one, at the top of that ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... all other means of redeeming his folly in not learning Carmencita's full name and address before he left her. Was a man's whole life to be changed, to be made or unmade, by whimsical chance or by stupid blunder? In the gray dawn of a new day he reached his home and went to bed for ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... very gravely, and yet not unkindly: "You are not the first one of your age who has been on the verge of an irreparable blunder. Thank God it is not too late for you to retreat! Do not let this word jar upon you, for it often requires much higher courage and manhood to retreat than to advance. To do the latter in this case would be as foolhardy as it would ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... my skin," he answered, without reflecting. And then made haste to cover the blunder. "I have an ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... you look at it that way, of course you'll be suspicious. But I don't believe anything of the sort. It was just a blunder of someone who didn't know how, trying to ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... did not know what cuttings were, and did not want to commit himself or make a blunder. But, later on, in the evening, he whispered to the ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... in the MS., but apparently a copyist's error for Leatum, the form given in later pages; apparently a phonetic blunder for Liao-tung, the name of the province where the contest between Russia and Japan is now centered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... knew him at once, the rogue! from having read of him; he was the yellow-breasted chat. It was well, indeed, that I happened to be looking at that very spot, and that I was quick in my observation; for in a moment he saw the blunder he had made, and slipped back down the stem, too late for his secret—I had him down in black ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... by the Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told why this man, who was not good enough to practise by their sanction, was good enough to lay down the laws for the residue of the medical world. They heaped blunder upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the wealth of invective characteristic of the learned controversy of the age. Cardan was deeply humbled and annoyed. "For my opponents, seizing the opportunity, took occasion to assail me through the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hear my voice speaking down by the sea, being thyself in the forest upon the mountain? surely thou liest, seeing that the murmur of the waves would make that impossible." This angered the old dragon, and seeking to get out of the blunder she fell still deeper into it, for she said, "I saw thee move thy lips, and from that I knew that thou didst call upon thy paramour the devil!" for my child straightway replied, "Oh, thou ungodly woman! thou saidst thou wert in the forest when ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... speed with the ships to Santiago, where the new fleet was fitting out. On appearing before Velasquez, he had no thanks for all the trouble he had been at, and was even abused for not having made a settlement, though he had acted exactly according to his instructions. This was a capital blunder in Velasquez, as he seemed resolved to find a person fitted both for making discoveries and of betraying him by setting up for himself. One would have imagined that a man of so much good sense as Velasquez certainly had, would have had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... decided inclination for Stratton's society, and when he came to know her better he found her frank, breezy, and delightfully companionable. He knew perfectly well that unless he wanted to take a chance of making some tremendous blunder he ought to avoid any prolonged conversation with the lady. But she was so charming that every now and then he flung prudence to the winds—and usually ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Not at all," said the judge. "That was a blunder, indeed. I merely told him I wanted to see you. I wanted to see if you could throw any light on the robbing of ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... against his brother for his share in the fracas of a few nights before, since, when once his furious gusts of temper had passed, he was no malevolently minded man. Indeed he was glad that Foy had come back safe from his dangerous adventure, only he wished that he would not blunder into the bedroom and interrupt his delightful occupation of listening, while the beautiful Elsa read him romance ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Persia, China, as well as among the Slavs, Scandinavians, etc. If Sophocles did introduce this notion into his tragedy (and there is no reason for doubting it except the unwarranted assumption that he was too great a genius to make such a blunder), he did it in a bungling way, for inasmuch as Antigone's brother is dead she cannot benefit her family by favoring him at the expense of her betrothed; and moreover, her act of sacrificing herself in order to secure the rest of a dear ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... not the clear-cut blunder of which I spoke. The real blunder is this. Mr. Wells deserves a tiara of crowns and a garland of medals for all kinds of reasons. But if I were restricted, on grounds of public economy, to giving Mr. Wells only one medal ob cives servatos, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... forth with it upon a wrathful visit to the erring Shears, when a breathless messenger from him arrived with another parcel, and a note of explanation and apology, to the effect that by some unfortunate blunder the wrong suit had been sent home, and Mr Shears would feel greatly obliged if we would ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... sometimes took a wagon and made a week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back, I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many other things. Unless in wholly exceptional ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held them back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... under the leadership of Calhoun, came presently to regard the Missouri arrangement as a capital blunder on its part, and from the standpoint of that section this conclusion seems strictly logical. For the location of a slave line upon the Louisiana territory operated in fact as a decided check to the expansion of slavery as a social rival and a political power at one and the same time, ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Howarth et ther's bahn ta be sum play-acters at t'Fleece Inn Garritt, and ther bahn ta act 'Catherine fra t'Padding Can, er Who's ta tak t'screws;' ta be follered bi 'Alpaca, er t'smashing up o' t'engines.'" But Billy's blunder was perhaps for the best; for, seeing that this was about the time when hand woolcombing was on the decline, and engines were being brought out, the people had an idea that the announcement had some startling reference to their trade. Myself, I could not help but laugh ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... veins; so the Prussians were there at last; they had sat and waited two days for them to come up, and then had turned and fled. The most ignorant among the men had felt their cheeks tingle for very shame as, in their dull way, they recognized the idiocy that had prompted that enormous blunder, that imbecile delay, that trap into which they had walked blindfolded; the light cavalry of the IVth army feinting in front of Bordas' brigade and halting and neutralizing, one by one, the several corps of the army of Chalons, solely to give the Crown Prince time to hasten up with the IIId ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... cover up ignorance, and "the constant trembling lest some blunder should expose one's emptiness," are pitiable. Short cuts and abridged methods are the demand of the hour. But the way to shorten the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve power. You can't stop to forage your provender as the army advances; if you do the enemy will ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Every war is a blunder; every battle a blot of shame upon human nature; and the greatest wisdom a successful belligerent can shew, even when he has been forced into the fray by his beaten antagonist, is to get out of it as fast as he can. But some wars are viewed, not as they ought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... home! No-body home! Had to spill the beans, you simps! Nobody home a-tall! Had to shoot a man—got us all in wrong, you simps! Nobody home!" He waggled his head and flapped his hands in drunken self-righteousness, because he had not possessed a gun and therefore could not have committed the blunder ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... murmured, looking at the distant hills. 'There seems to be a fate in all this; I get out of the frying-pan into the fire. What a recompense to you for your goodness! The fact is, I was out of health and out of spirits, so I- -but no more of that. Now instantly to repair this tremendous blunder that we have ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... the colossal blunder of the Lusitania, there existed in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Foreign Office, for it was they ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... magnificent talents, both of them, but men of small wisdom, who did more harm than good to themselves and to others! It is a lamentable existence which wears itself out in maintaining a first antagonism, or a first blunder. The greater a man's intellectual power, the more dangerous is it for him to make a false start and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... elsewhere, I catch him peeping furtively at me as if he were frightened out of his life I should ferret out some secret. It would be deplorable if now that we have got so near the end of the Compact, we should be held up by some idiotic blunder—some nonsensical love affair of his. I wonder whether it's Rosenberg or some other girl. Will ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... advantages were with their opponents. A Union victory was so much achieved toward final and complete success; a Confederate victory only operated to postpone the subjugation of the Rebels for a few days, or perhaps weeks. We could afford to blunder, while they could not; and the prospect of the gallows made the brains of Davis and Lee uncommonly clear, and caused them to plan skilfully and to strike boldly, in order that they might get out and keep out of the road that leads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... wanted to watch him all the time, which distracted me, I suppose, for once I called General Phillips "Mister!" It so happened, too, that just that instant there was not a sound in the room, so everyone heard the blunder. General Phillips straightened back in his chair, and his little son gave a smothered giggle—for which he should have been sent to bed at once. But that was not all! That soldier, who had been so dignified and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... he lowered it towards his head cast a last look down the room, and—there stood Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each was gone. The girl at the desk ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... for myself at present,' he said; 'I get on her nerves. She was in love with that black-haired, enfant du siecle,—or rather, she prefers to assume that she was—and I haven't given her time to forget him. A serious blunder, and I deserve to suffer for it. Very well, then, I retire, and I ask you and Helen to keep watch. Don't let her go. Make yourselves nice to her; and, in fact, spoil me a little now I am on the high road to forty, as you used to spoil ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... right," Celestina declared, making haste to repair her blunder. "I've plenty of time to lay it myself. 'Twas only that when I saw you settin' up before it I thought mebbe you'd built it ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... holding to her for an instant. But Mary—If a curtain had been let down before me, pictured with the future as it has since developed, I could not have seen more plainly what her position would be, if attention were once directed towards her. So, in the vain endeavor to cover up my blunder, I began to lie. Forced to admit that a shadow of disagreement had been lately visible between Mr. Leavenworth and one of his nieces, I threw the burden of it upon Eleanore, as the one best able to bear it. The consequences were more serious ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... would even have extended his sympathy, except that his first efforts in this direction had not been received in the spirit he thought they should have been. If Buckner's statement was correct, there had been a cruel blunder on the part of Eleanor's counsel; yet unless he was certain of his ground, Gorham could not comprehend his daring to place himself in so dangerous a position. Already the machinery was in motion to settle this point, but so far the telegrams from the Colorado lawyers ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... just Everybride and Everygroom. Their hearts sang and the manse was more gorgeous than any mansion on earth, and all the world was good and sweet, and they couldn't possibly ever make any kind of a mistake or blunder, for love was guiding them,—and ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... answered; "if you don't mind, I'll sit here a while longer and think things over, Lester. Perhaps I'll blunder on ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... kinsmanship, camaraderie, and patronage. He is no longer either a county magistrate or an honorary citizen. He has done with all those qualities which make up a man's social amiability. Here Vertessy is only a soldier, a rigorous, inexorable commandant, who never overlooks a blunder, and never ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... dramatist tries to make him talk turgidly, about seeking for "an archangel with purple wings" who shall be worthy of his lady. But a lad in love would never talk in this mock heroic style; there is no period at which the young male is more sensitive and serious and afraid of looking a fool. This is a blunder; but there is another much bigger and blacker. It is completely and disastrously false to the whole nature of falling in love to make the young Eugene complain of the cruelty which makes Candida defile her fair hands with domestic duties. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... powerful speech at a special session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He had endeavored to maintain ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... Civil War a tactical blunder of another kind, due to the impetuosity of the commander of the Independent Cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia, prevented the Southern commander from obtaining a great strategical advantage ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... embassy to him. And even Cicero at first consented to it, and allowed himself to be nominated with Servilius and three other senators, all of consular rank, but on more mature reflection he was convinced that he had been guilty of a blunder, and that the object of Antonius and his friends was only to gain time for Ventidius to join him with his three legions. Accordingly, at the next meeting of the senate, he delivered the following speech, retracting his former sanction of the proposed embassy. And he spoke so strongly ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable errour, which Goldsmith has faithfully transferred into his book. It is wonderful that Buffon, who lived so much in the country, at his noble seat, should have fallen into such a blunder. I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer. BOSWELL. Goldsmith says:—'At three years old the cow sheds its horns and new ones arise in their place, which continue as long as it lives.' Animated Nature, iii. 12. This statement remains in the second edition. Johnson said that the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... conduct of the victor toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... deception upon her. She had a clear idea of how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march boldly upon Orleans by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that order to her generals. They said to themselves, "The idea is insane—it is blunder No. 1; it is what might have been expected of this child who is ignorant of war." They privately sent the word to the Bastard of Orleans. He also recognized the insanity of it—at least he thought he did—and privately ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... M. Zola left Paris, and throughout his sojourn in London and its immediate neighbourhood, there was little if any skill shown in the matter of keeping his movements secret. In point of fact, blunder upon blunder was committed. A first mistake was made in going to an hotel like the Grosvenor; a second in openly promenading some of the most frequented of the London streets; and a third in declining to make the slightest ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... instinct[4101]; thus preserving and humoring it; find room for it and its usefulness; let it have full play; getting all the service it is capable of rendering, and especially not twist or release it.—In this respect, any blunder might prove disastrous; and in every statute for each society, for each of the human vessels which gather together and serve as a retinue of individual vessels, there are two capital errors. On the one hand, if the statute, in fact and practically, is or becomes too grossly unjust, if ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... city Nasirabad, as the Trigonometrical Survey maps do, there is no excuse whatever for this, which is a mere blunder—not the only one, unfortunately—and attributes to the city the name of a small ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he did, this was inevitable. Weber had bought Steinberger with hard cash; that was matter of history. The present government he did not even require to buy, having founded it by his intrigues, and introduced the premier to Samoa through the doors of his own office. And the effect of the initial blunder was kept alive by the chatter of the clerks in bar-rooms, boasting themselves of the new government and prophesying annihilation to all rivals. The time of raising a tax is the harvest of the merchants; it is the time when copra will be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pursuing the Russian; why he could not be killed in Siberia; why he must not be killed or arrested if seen now, until he, Hanada, said the word. He had not told why he thought that the Secret Service men had committed a blunder in offering a reward for ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... time; for already a law had been enacted to this effect, that if a tribune could not find time for executing in his tribunate what he had promised, the people might give the office to him again in preference to anyone else. This has been pronounced to be a blunder on Appian's part, but without adequate reason. It was in fact the natural and inevitable law which Caius would insist on first, and he would plead for it precisely on the grounds which Appian states. It is also clear that such a law once passed made virtual ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... is the reclining form, that the pianist thinks her father must be sleeping. Turning on the music-stool to get a view of his countenance, and to satisfy herself as to his state, she makes a false note, when, quick as the blunder, the brown wig turns upon the pillow—the furrowed face is presented to her observation, and an electric brightness fills the big black eyes, as the veteran, with deep rolling tones, reproves her carelessness:—"What are you doing?—what are you doing? I had ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... to the frontier—in fact, we had no certain news until three days ago, when we heard of the battle, his death, and the embarkation of the army, and its sailing for England. The last was a terrible blunder." ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... fleet only numbered about eighty sail, including a squadron which had been recalled from the Mediterranean. The "Generals-at-Sea," as they were called, were Monk and Rupert. They began by committing the great blunder of dividing their force. Rupert was detached with twenty ships to keep watch over de Beaufort, a diversion which had serious consequences for the English. The Dutch fleet, consisting of seventy-two men-of-war with twelve frigates, was the most powerful ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... anon." So the Chaplain came in. Now the servants say he is my sweetheart, Because he's always in my chamber, and I always take his part. So, as the devil would have it, before I was aware, out I blunder'd, "Parson" said I, "can you cast a nativity, when a body's plunder'd?" (Now you must know, he hates to be called Parson, like the devil!) "Truly," says he, "Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil; If your money be gone, as a learned Divine says,[12] d'ye see, You are no text ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing with a mob,—"First fire grape-shot into them; after that, over their heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have been a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican Party. Instead of keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at issue, namely, the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when displeased with the result of an election, the bare question of Secession, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... constitution, and almost everything else Roman; it calls for special knowledge as well as a sufficient training in Roman institutions generally. Each of these Roman subjects is like a language with a delicate accidence, which is always presenting the unwary with pitfalls into which they are sure to blunder unless they have a thorough mastery of it. I could mention a book full of valuable thoughts about the relation to Paganism of the early Christian Church, by a scholar at once learned and sympathetic;[4] who when he happens to deal for a moment with ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... in Fred's eyes, which were steadily fixed on her, that he was, on that point, of his mother's opinion. She went on, however, still pretending to blunder. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... it was necessary for Peggy to begin at the beginning, and in the course of twenty minutes or so, the good man began to understand. As the extent of his blunder gradually dawned upon him, he threw back his head and broke into a hearty guffaw whose enjoyment was contagious. Peggy joined him, and then there was an exultant note in her laughter. Observation had taught her that when a man is laughing, it is ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... their appearance before the walls, Champagny was unwilling to grant them admittance. The addle-brained Oberstein had confessed to him the enormous blunder which he had committed in his midnight treaty, and at the same time ingenuously confessed his intention of sending it to the winds. The enemy had extorted from his dulness or his drunkenness a promise, which his mature and sober ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... make fun of him as you will, he was a scout. He was at once the littlest scout and the biggest scout that ever scouting had known. He boasted and bungled, but out of his bungling came triumph. He fell, oh such falls as he fell! But he always landed right side up. He could save the world with a blunder. And ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... rifle fire, but by the time they had gained this useless and undefended village, hundreds of their number lay wounded and dying in the snow. The carnage and slaughter this day in the enemy's ranks was terrific, resulting from a most stupid military blunder, but it atoned slightly for our losses previous thereto. The valley below us was dotted with pile after pile of enemy dead, the carnage here being almost equal to the terrific fighting later at Vistavka. When he discovered ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... in my opinion can be more unbecoming: for just as if one who professed to teach grammar should speak with impropriety, or a master of music sing out of tune, such conduct has the worst appearance in these men, because they blunder in the very particular with which they profess that they are well acquainted. So a philosopher who errs in the conduct of his life is the more infamous because he is erring in the very thing which he pretends to teach, and, while he lays down rules to regulate ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... where all his passions, ambitions and sentiments are at white heat, will readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle prick him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds, and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... allowed to penetrate, in which I had been guarded from all pain, shielded from all anxiety, kept, innocent on all questions of sex, was no preparation for married existence, and left me defenceless to face a rude awakening. Looking back on it all, I deliberately say that no more fatal blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first time away from all the old associations, the old helps, the old refuge on the mother's breast. That "perfect innocence" ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the reader to fall into the same blunder, with regard to the worthy "Maurice," as my friend Charles O'Malley has done. It is only fair to state that the doctor in the following tale was hoaxing the "dragoon." A braver and a better fellow than Quill never existed, equally beloved by his brother officers, as delighted in for his convivial ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... blame for it, Allan. I thought Mary loved you when you came home this summer; to-night I am sure she loves you. You must have made some great blunder or she would have ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... have made another blunder about Lady Westmoreland and my sister. It is not the Duke of Wellington's money, in particular, that she objects to receiving; she does not intend to sing in private for money at all, anywhere, or on any occasion; which I am very glad of, as, if she did, I think ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Let us suppose his idea was all nonsense; yet your immediate object was to put it out of his head." She suddenly added, "I think your last question was a diplomatic blunder, Mr. Beaumaroy. You must have known what I meant. What was the good of ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... compass of a day's march, but they had seen enough in their two weeks' comradeship to give them confidence in the young officer they never felt for their own and only "Grumbly," who, with all his experience, would often blunder, and Grumbly's blunders told on his troop, otherwise they might not ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... trying to recall exactly what had happened. There was a slight scratch on his hand, and when he automatically touched it with his lips, it made them burn. The lit lamps in the Gray's Inn Road seemed to him a little unsteady, and the passers-by showed a disposition to blunder ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... should march so slowly. The whole thing has been a hideous blunder, and the idea of encumbering a force of four thousand men with something like thirty thousand camp followers, and with a train of no less than nineteen thousand bullocks, to say nothing of other draught animals, is the most preposterous thing I ever heard of. In fact, the whole ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air; once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise, was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting in suspense, and he would hear. . . . What ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... all events, it argues very much indeed in a writer's favour, that the "layman" has managed to write the simplest sentence about a specialty, without some more or less serious blunder. ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... had made a very ridiculous blunder in a French translation that morning. Such a thing was unusual for him, and was such a comical one that it set the others of the class in a roar of laughter. Drake was so extravagantly affected by Alf's blunder that Mr Clare had to stop his laughter, which was half genuine and half ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... to have been reared in a brothel kept by her mother, is prepossessing in appearance. On entering K.'s service S. was continually negligent and careless. This so provoked K. that on one occasion he struck her. She showed great pleasure and confessed that her blunder had been deliberately intended to arouse him to physical violence. At her suggestion K. ultimately consented to thrash her. This operation took place in K.'s office, S. stripping for the purpose, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... strolled past the inn. Filled with amazement, I rose quickly, and went into the street. The door of the astrologer's house was shut; in truth it had not been opened, yet here were my mysterious strangers several yards in front of me! Rubbing my eyes, I wondered if I had made a second blunder! But that was impossible, and the idea not worth considering. While I stood thus, dazed and half-stupefied by the strangeness of the affair, the men had ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... subject was "expressly pretermitted" in the June Platform! Mr. Watkins was in such a hurry to join the Forney, Pierce, and Catholic Democracy, that he did not stop to examine even the Platform which most disgusted him! But this is not the worst blunder which he committed in that speech. He turned to the new Platform, and asked, with an ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... period by period, and scene by scene, his kaleidoscopic past career, his first fatal blunder as a Grand Trunk telegraph operator, when one slip of the wrist brought a gravel train head-on into an Odd Fellows' Excursion special, his summary dismissal from the railroad, and his unhappy flight to New York, his passionate ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Pyecroft quickly, easily, to forestall any blunder by the hapless Matilda—and deftly interposing himself between Jack and Mrs. De ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... "Adonais," begins, "As long as skies are blue," where also there would be a double gain by writing "So long as skies are blue." On page 242 of the first volume of De Quincey's "Literary Remains" occurs this sentence; "Even by as philosophic a politician as Edmund Burke," in which the critical blunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse for the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, like all good rules, from principle) which determines the use of this small particle ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert |
