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More "Blunderer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... So saying, the well-meaning blunderer released her victim, with the view of allowing Nelly a chance to express her gratitude, and, for the first time, caught sight ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... friends as well as their foes." It is obvious to every comprehension, that a night action must preclude all manoeuvring, and prevent the greater skill of the tactician from having any advantage over the blunderer who turns his ships into mere batteries. The only officer who coincided with Jervis was Admiral Barrington, who gave as an additional and a just argument for the attack by day, that it would give an opportunity of ascertaining ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... "you're a fool. You may be worse. I believe you are. But one thing's certain—you're a fool. Even in wickedness you're a blunderer." ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... gravely—"that he was thankful to find that the disturbance of the night before had no worse result." He pulled the tail of Clive's coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. "The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy," he said, "and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doubly-formative influence, or influence of continuation, should be seriously considered as regards all Rommany words which resemble in sound others of the same meaning, either in Hindustani or in English. It should also be observed that the Gipsy, while he is to the last degree inaccurate and a blunderer as regards English words (a fact pointed out long ago by the Rev. Mr Crabb), has, however, retained with great persistence hundreds of Hindu terms. Not being very familiar with peasant English, I have ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... only response. Then the discomfited experimenter told herself that she was a blunderer. How could the poor fellow be expected to know what she meant? Why had she not asked the service from him? She would ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... least shall not mention it to a soul. Your words have positively made me blush, you may believe me. I cannot tell you too often how miserably weak I feel as a musician. I know, in the depth of my heart, that I am an absolute blunderer. You ought to watch me when I am at it; now thinking "it must do after all," then going to the piano to puzzle out some wretched rubbish, and giving it up again in a state of idiocy. Oh, how I feel then! how ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... muddle-headed blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this trick. When ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... calls Dr. Latham's English Language "unquestionably the most valuable work on English philology and grammar—which has yet appeared," (p. xxx., note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second edition of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... was gaining control of himself; the shock, the readjustment, had been so sudden that sensation returned slowly—"to think, dear blunderer, of your coming among us all, striking your blow, and then rushing to your In-Place! But love is mightier than ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... seemed to have got just where he intended, making no effort to seat himself. Skinny Thompson, his hand on his gun, seemed paralyzed; his mouth was open to frame a reply that never was uttered and he stared through narrowed eyelids at the blunderer. The sole movement in the room was the slow rising of Hopalong and the markedly innocent shuffling of the cards by Elkins, who appeared to be entirely ignorant of the weight and effect of his words. He dropped the pack for the cut and then looked up and around as if surprised by the silence ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... no blunderer, monsieur," she said gravely; "and if you are a giant, you are one of the good kind who use their strength and their courage in rescuing distressed damsels. I hope they will not all requite you as badly as ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... general imbecility. All this is developed at enormous length, and it ends in a general massacre, Louise's uncle being killed in a duel which Daniel ought to have fought (he is no coward, but a hopeless blunderer), the girl herself dying of aneurism, and Daniel putting an end to himself in her grave, much more messily and to quite infinitely less tragic effect than Romeo. There is one scene in which he is represented as gathering all his enemies together (including ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Tuscarora, if the Mingoes didn't know that they are near soldiers; but soldiers commonly think more of their dinner at a halt than of their wisdom and danger. No, no; let the boy pile on his logs, and smoke them well too; it will all be laid to the stupidity of some Scotch or Irish blunderer, who is thinking more of his oatmeal or his potatoes than of Indian sarcumventions or ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... practice. Fables simply give us the "rules of the road," and these rules contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... exclaimed Cleek, agitated in spite of himself. "Then the blunderer shot the child instead ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... makes men wretched; And happiness is still the lot of fools. Why should a wise man wish to think, when thought Still hurts his pride; in spite of all his art, Malicious fortune, by a lucky train Of accidents, shall still defeat his schemes, And set the greatest blunderer above him. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... be in earnest? Your father, himself, told me, that I . . . well, yes . . . in portrait-painting, he too thinks I am no blunderer. Where do the Netherlanders go to learn anything new? To Italy, always to Italy! What do they create in Flanders? Portraits, portraits, nothing more. Moor is great, very great in this department, but I take ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... off her rival, and I send away the interfering sister; and all she has to do is to snap up the young man, while her mother and that illustrious cook of yours stand by and clap their hands. But I do not give you much credit. You are merely an inconsiderate blunderer, to say no more. You did not plan anything; I did that, and when my plans don't work one way, they do in another. This one was like a boomerang that did not hit what it was aimed at, but came banging and clattering back all the same. And now I will remark that I have ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... girl and an attractive one. Just now she is in a mood to turn to us, to you. But, for Heaven's sake, be careful! She is delicate and sensitive and requires managing. She likes you. If only you weren't such a blunderer!" ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... immortal bard of Avon down to the writers of the present day, neither play nor farce has ever been presented to Englishmen, in which, when an irishman is introduced, he is not drawn as a broad, grotesque blunderer, every sentence he speaks involving a bull, and every act the result of headlong folly, or cool but unstudied effrontery. I do not remember an instance in which he acts upon the stage any other part than that of the buffoon of the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... begged him to send them to France by the first opportunity. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit, might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue in favour of the exiled family of the Bourbons." Thus the paternal ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... like to put it so, it was kindness and generosity and universal compassion that ruined him; but it would be nearer the truth to call him a fool and a simpleton and a blunderer; he did not realize that his proteges were carrion crows and wolves; vultures were feeding on his unfortunate liver, and he took them for friends and good comrades, showing a fine appetite just to please him. So they gnawed his bones perfectly clean, sucked out with great precision any marrow ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... shoe-merchant, benevolently engaged in religious rescue-work, came across Thompson, and, struck by the incongruity of his gentle speech, induced him to accept employment in his shop. But one cannot allow business to suffer on account of an inveterate blunderer, even though the blunderer wear wings and has endeared himself to the family. Mr. McMaster, kindly Anglican lay-missionary, who deserves grateful remembrance for recognizing and temporarily helping merit under the most deceptive disguise, was obliged much ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... blunderer. He was little versed in the manners and tones of that high society in which, somehow, he still seemed and intruder. But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never would have been admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic France. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... deepened. He might insinuate, but a barefaced putting into words outraged his feelings. His eyes sent out flashes of lightning at the innocent little blunderer, but Marie's eyes shone; her face was one beam ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... seriously considered as regards all Rommany words which resemble in sound others of the same meaning, either in Hindustani or in English. It should also be observed that the Gipsy, while he is to the last degree inaccurate and a blunderer as regards English words (a fact pointed out long ago by the Rev. Mr Crabb), has, however, retained with great persistence hundreds of Hindu terms. Not being very familiar with peasant English, I have generally found Gipsies more intelligible ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... I was generally a blunderer; yet something warned me that my answer would displease her. I could, however, see no way of avoiding it, and when I said as unconcernedly as I could, "Yes, and talked to her about Canada!" Alice for no particular reason stooped and dropped a thread into the fire. Then ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... investigate it further, she reproved the cat, and returned to the room, and groped her way straight to the bed in which her husband lay asleep; but not finding the cradle there, quoth she to herself:—Alas! blunderer that I am, what was I about? God's faith! I was going straight to the guests' bed; and proceeding a little further, she found the cradle, and laid herself down by Adriano in the bed that was beside it, taking Adriano for her ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of himself; the shock, the readjustment, had been so sudden that sensation returned slowly—"to think, dear blunderer, of your coming among us all, striking your blow, and then rushing to your In-Place! But love is mightier than thou; mightier than ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... seen waving a farewell to him from the pier. Instead of that, they were busy telling over his blunders. He had served French instead of German champagne at a banquet for Prince Henry, and he had allowed the Kaiser's yacht to be christened in French champagne. How could such a blunderer satisfy the diplomatic requirements of the vain and petty Kaiser? And yet! Holleben was utterly devoted and willing to grovel in the mud. He even suggested to President Roosevelt that at the State Banquet at the White ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... But when relations have been definitely and permanently smoothed over between the United States and Mexico, it won't so much matter except for March himself. In any case, I shan't let the cat out of the bag. I'm not such a blunderer! But I tell you frankly, I can influence others to keep the secret after the time limit's up—or I can refrain from using influence. Which shall it be? Is it peace or ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dear, foolish blunderer to dream you could fright me with tales of hardship, or dangers, or solitude when you were by, to think I must break my heart for home and England when you are both to me. England or home without you were a desert; with you the desert shall be my England, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... hoped great things for you, and it is wormwood and gall to his proud spirit to see you struggling along in cheap lodgings. We can't wonder if he explodes occasionally. It's wonderful that he is as civil to me as he is; he has put me down as a hopeless blunderer!" ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in the most concentrated form. He could not be moved from his base; he was self-centred, immovable. "If you try to wheedle out of him his plans for a campaign, he stolidly smokes; if you call him an imbecile and a blunderer, he blandly lights another cigar; if you praise him as the greatest general living, he placidly returns the puff from his regalia; and if you tell him he should run for the presidency, it does not disturb the equanimity with which he inhales and exhales the unsubstantial vapor which typifies the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... great deal of pains with that part of her subject, for she was determined to do justice to it. She was aware that it was open to her to take the ordinary practical view of Rickman as a culpable blunderer, who, by holding his tongue when he should have spoken, had involved her in the loss of much valuable property. To an ordinary practical woman the fact that this blunder had entailed such serious consequences to herself would have made any other theory impossible. But Lucia was not a woman ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... for he calls Dr. Latham's English Language "unquestionably the most valuable work on English philology and grammar—which has yet appeared," (p. xxx., note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second edition of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... occasion to wonder where the Boss would banish Bernard Graves should he chance to win; but even idle speculation on such a possibility was so distasteful to the company that the blunderer only retrieved his mistake by ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... with an active interest that hovered between jeering and applause, his neighbours followed him up and down the dam. As I might not go on, I wandered up and down the bank too, and occasionally joined in a murmured cheer when he deftly evaded some intentional blunderer, or cut a figure at the request of his particular friends. I got tired at last, and went down to the pond, where I ploughed about for a time on my skates in solitude, for the pond was empty. Then I ran up to the house to see if Jem had come back, but he had not, and ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... if you wouldn't mind telling me, what you detect of the blunderer in him. I am quite ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... in war and peace divine, Had best be jealous who should keep its shrine: The sacred functions of the temple-ward Were ill conferred on an inferior bard. A blunderer was Choerilus; and yet This blunderer was Alexander's pet, And for the ill-stamped lines that left his mint Received good money with the royal print. Ink spoils what touches it: indifferent lays Blot out the exploits they pretend to praise. Yet ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... returned—"your own Virginians among others" (I bowed); "but he was a blunderer, as were you also, monsieur, or you had not sent him plans of our forts and letters of such candour. They have gone to France, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... And you had him in your power—to play with as you would. And you struck him! Oh, Ducaine, you are very, very young. I am your friend, boy, or rather I would be if you would let me. But I am afraid that you are a blunderer." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have done with it? If your servant makes twenty blunders a day, do not regard them as twenty separate facts at which to get angry twenty several times: regard them just as twenty proofs of the one fact that your servant is a blunderer; and be angry just once, and no more. Or if some one you know gives twenty indications in a day that he or she (let us say she) is of a petted temper, regard these merely as twenty proofs of one lamentable fact, and not as twenty different facts to be separately lamented. You accept ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... "He fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands." Integrity in purpose and discretion in action are the two qualities here emphasized. The former without the latter makes the impracticable blunderer; the latter without the former makes the time-serving schemer; the two together make the wise ruler of men. Unless I greatly err, we shall see these two qualities strikingly illustrated in the story of that Episcopate of which I am now to ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... the well-meaning blunderer released her victim, with the view of allowing Nelly a chance to express her gratitude, and, for the first time, ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge, which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a traveled man to be able to display. But what is the manner of his ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... settled thing that the organist of San Roman—that squint-eye, who is always slandering other organists—that great blunderer, who seems more like a butcher than a master of sol fa—is going to play this Christmas Eve in Maese Perez's old place. Of course, you know, for everybody knows it, and it is a public matter in all Seville, that no one dared to try it. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... spoke now and then of the possible cause of the disaster: whereof Dixon, as they passed him, had bluntly declined to say a word till his task was done. George, with the characteristic contempt of intelligence for the blunderer, threw out a few caustic remarks as to the obstinate disobedience or carelessness of a certain type of miner—disobedience which, in his own experience even, had already led to a score of fatal accidents. Burrows, irritated apparently by his tone, took ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nerve-centres intact. Deprived of sensibility by the poison, they have lost the power of provoking muscular contractions; but who can say that, numbed as they are, they no longer serve to maintain a faint vitality? The flame is extinguished, but there is still a glowing speck upon the wick. I, a rough blunderer, do more than blow out the lamp: I throw away the wick and all is over. The grub would do the same if it bit straight into the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the face of the lady whom he loved best filled Esmond's heart with a soft of rage of pity, and the young blunderer sank down on his knees and besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a speech, he, who caused her malady; and Dr. Tusher told him that he was a bear indeed, and a bear he would remain, after ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... seem to see the man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind. "I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And then, doomed blunderer, she ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the verge of perdition. He would meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all posts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor. Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whether they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have one of the earliest jest-books that has been saved from the wreck of time. It is a curious proof of the fallen state of learning; the Sophists had long since made themselves ridiculous; books alone will not make a man of sense; and in the jokes of Hierocles the blunderer is always called a ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... "if ye forgive this blunderer, what care I? Make we direct for Holywood; there lieth your good guardian and my better friend, Lord Foxham. There shall we be wed; and whether poor or wealthy, famous or unknown, what matters it? This day, dear love, I won my spurs; I was commended by great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way; and it is very certain that the employer will get rid of such a blunderer as soon as ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Nan blushed in sympathy for her confusion, and Chrissie from sheer rage and irritation, and longing to take the big, blind blunderer by the shoulder and administer a good shaking. Only Lilias remained cool and self-possessed, and came to the rescue with a change of subject, for which her sisters blessed her in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... achievements, and the name of my house here in Bournemouth is stolen from one of the sea-towers of the Hebrides which are our pyramids and monuments. I was never at Cambridge, again; but neglected a considerable succession of classes at Edinburgh. But to correct that friendly blunderer were to write an autobiography. - And so now, with many thanks, believe ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discharge the unfortunate Rabbies he has seized upon and lugged into court as reluctant witnesses of the truth of Christianity, as their further attendance can be no longer necessary: and I would leave him to consider whether the liberal appellation of "dogmatical blunderer," which he has bestowed upon me, p. 114 of his work, relative to my arguments upon this prophecy, may not better apply ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... pleasant blunderer is said to have declared Moore's Life of Sheridan to be the best piece of Autobiography he had ever read; and with little more propriety can the concluding volume of Vidocq's Memoirs be said to belong to that species of literature ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... sort. Before we can half understand the vast purification that has been wrought, we must study the history of the reign from 1765 to 1784, and then we may feel happy as we compare our gentle, beneficent Sovereign with the unscrupulous blunderer who fought the Colonists and all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Esmond's heart always created a sort of rage of pity, and seeing them on the face of the lady whom he loved best, the young blunderer sank down on his knees, and besought her to pardon him, saying that he was a fool and an idiot, that he was a brute to make such a speech, he who had caused her malady, and Doctor Tusher told him that a bear he was indeed, and a bear he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... error, however gross, on any subject, were made in his presence, he never took willing notice of it; or if circumstances obliged him to touch upon it, it was always done with a politeness and tact that afforded the blunderer the means of retreat. If some gross historical error, for instance, happened to be committed in a conversation with himself (and then only), he would set the mistake right, as a matter of conscience, but he would do so by saying there was a great similarity between the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... away feeling that he was a blunderer. The fact was that he was a neophyte and, it was true, did not possess the qualities which make a successful lobbyist. Mr. Stamps had wheedled or forced his way into the great man's apartment and had ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... character? Yes, if one changes one's body. It is possible for a man born blunderer, unbending and violent, being stricken with apoplexy in his old age, to become a foolish, tearful child, timid and peaceable. His body is no longer the same. But as long as his nerves, his blood and his marrow are in the same state, his ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... any living human being—is to blunder. I defy competition. There are champion tight-rope dancers, billiard players, opera singers, swindlers, base-ballists, candidates for the Presidency. I am the champion blunderer. You remember the man who asked of another, "Who is that coarse, homely creature across the room?" and received for answer, "That creature is my wife!" Well, I ought to have been that man, although in that case I did not happen to be. My compliments always ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... the least, and where man has full sway, he is as much a tyrant to-day as he was five hundred years ago. Nations have been emancipated, but the kingdom of which the small boy is a subject remains what it always was. Nature, who is a well-meaning blunderer, has tried to set things right, first by planting some natural affection for his small boy into the stony heart of the parent, and, second, by making the small boy himself an optimist. Happily, there is always a silver lining to the cloud that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... with. Your grandfather had a business worth not much, but it was a business, and the fundamental thing is to have machinery to work with when you start life. I had that. My father was narrow, contracted and a blunderer, but he made good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his subtle smiles—those peculiar smiles of the Oriental which make the keenest-witted man of the West feel that he is little better than a blunderer. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Turgenev, the great novelists of the world, according to my own standards, have either ignored technique or have failed to understand it. What an error to suppose that the finest foreign novels show a better sense of form than the finest English novels! Balzac was a prodigious blunderer. He could not even manage a sentence, not to speak of the general form of a book. And as for a greater than Balzac—Stendhal—his scorn of technique was notorious. Stendhal was capable of writing, in a masterpiece: "By the way I ought to have told you earlier that the ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... happening to stand next to the queen, catched up one of the dead children, and perceiving it was a boy, ran down to the [4] king and wished him joy of the birth of a son and heir. The king, who had now recovered his sweet temper, called him a fool and blunderer, upon which Mr. Phelim O'Torture, a zealous courtier, started up with great presence of mind and accused the earl of Bullaboo of high treason, for having asserted that his late majesty had had any other heir than their present ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... Confronted him with self-comparisons] [Theobald interpreted "him" as Cawdor; Johnson, in 1745, accused Shakespeare of forgetfulness on the basis of Theobald's error; and Warburton here speaks of "blunder upon blunder."] The second blunderer was the present editor. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... not hard to see. At a better moment than this blunderer had chosen, some one was to provoke the actor to an assault which the twins would make their pretext for a combined attack on that political "suspect" and common pest, using the canes as canes until Hugh should ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... is 'danger nigh'—because we are pleased with the beautiful foam, need we steer straight for the breakers? Not every tempting morsel is the enemy's bait, though we should be careful how we nibble;—he is no blunderer (a proof positive that he is not Irish), never leaves his trap sprung—and we ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fine frigid mansion—the proper view of it is from the court within—is one of the masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior age. That had been a part of Gaston's plan—he was a blunderer born, and this precious project was worthy of him. This execution of it would surely have been one of the great misdeeds of history. Partially performed, the misdeed is not altogether to be regretted; for as one stands in the court of the castle and lets one's ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... is (as I have said) for describing this lady, arises out of her relation to the tragic events which followed. She, by her criminal levity, was the cause of all. And I must here warn the moralizing blunderer of two errors that he is too likely to make: 1st, That he is invited to read some extract from a licentious amour, as if for its own interest; 2d, Or on account of Donna Catalina's memoirs, with a view to relieve their too ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Happily for the blunderer, Mrs. Jabe's rage was so unbridled that she really tried to hit the object of it. Therefore, she missed. The pot went crashing through the leg of a table and shivered to atoms against the log wall, contributing its full share to the discouraging mess on the floor. But, as it whirled ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Wanley, and were given to the printer by Lord Chief-Justice Parker. But these types were very indifferently cut. Wanley himself said 'when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... bungler; blunderer, blunderhead^; marplot, fumbler, lubber, duffer, dauber, stick; bad hand, poor hand, poor shot; butterfingers^. no conjurer, flat, muff, slow coach, looby^, lubber, swab; clod, yokel, awkward squad, blanc-bec; galoot^. land lubber; fresh water sailor, fair ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... action and how magnanimous in after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he had been credited (to his ingenuous delight) by reviewers of "The Greater Glory" with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's nature, I have never met a more dunder-headed blunderer in his dealings with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on Liosha's part, but seems to have ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... landed their entire expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How do I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... importance in the strengthening of the clue from those that are merely superfluous. All these, besides other qualities, are necessary for the successful penetration of criminal mysteries; hence it is that the average amateur, who takes up the hobby without any natural instinct, is invariably a blunderer. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... devotional instinct implanted in the heart of the entire human race has its correlative that the longing for immortal life which burns in the breast of man was not a brutal mistake, else concede Nature a poor blunderer and all this prattle anent ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... subject to cross- examination by two acute students. Bernie does not cross-examine much; but if anyone gets discomfited, he laughs a sort of little silver-whistle giggle, which is trying to the unhappy blunderer.' ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard, the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that barn ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... not. I'm an awful blunderer,' Dick said, adding, mentally, 'and liar, too, though I didn't say anybody would be happy to see them. Poor Billy, he is well enough, and so is Ann Eliza, if she wouldn't pile that red hair so high on the top of her head and wear ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... his ear. The thing was clearing somewhat in Crowley's direction; the blunderer had not lied on one point at least—the point that Mern found most blindly puzzling. What in the mischief had happened to the nature of Lida Kennard, as Mern knew ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... her check and paid it, and tipped the waiter and rose. She smiled wretchedly at him as he rose with her. She left the dining-car, and he sat down and cursed himself for a brute and a blunderer. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... you muddle-headed blunderer!" he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. "Take these cuffs off! You'll lose your job for this trick. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... explain. The inner history of this scene is not a tragedy, but a farce. For two weeks or more Coronado had been watching his uncle day and night, and at last had found in his trunk a paper of powder which he suspected to be arsenic. A blunderer would have destroyed or hidden it, thereby warning Garcia that he was being looked after, and causing him to be more careful about his hiding places. Coronado emptied the paper, snapped off every grain of the powder with his finger, wiped it clean with his handkerchief, and refilled it with another ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... of the general soul. Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?— The outward reason has the world in store, Regenerates passion with the stress of want, Regenerates knowledge with discovery, Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, Widens dependence, knits the social whole ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... out. She's really lots of fun now. But I had an awful time with her for a while," and she related the story of Helen's winter of discontent. "I suppose that was my fault too," she finished. "I seem to be a regular blunderer." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... pure essence, and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open road to connubial ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... is quite right. To speak plainly, I wish he had given us both a sound cudgelling. What was the good of showing yourself, and, like a Blunderer, coming and giving the lie to all ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass—so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... they are near soldiers; but soldiers commonly think more of their dinner at a halt than of their wisdom and danger. No, no; let the boy pile on his logs, and smoke them well too; it will all be laid to the stupidity of some Scotch or Irish blunderer, who is thinking more of his oatmeal or his potatoes than of Indian ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... pause. "Yes," said the prisoner, moodily. "I'm sitting here because one of us blundered." He cursed the blunderer. "Lighting his fool fire queered the whole deal," he added. As he again heavily cursed the blunderer, the others murmured to each other various I told ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... certainly very kind, now that your anger has had time to cool during these ten years, to accord to me the merit of being possibly sincere. Now I was more Christian in my conclusions; I set you down as an honest blunderer. That I have had occasion since to change my opinion is nothing to the purpose but it would be pleasanter for both of us if apologies could restore our friend, ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... manage to hit upon something which is rather comic. Thus an ignorant reader coming upon a reference to an angle of forty-five degrees was puzzled, and astonished his hearers by giving it out as angel of forty-five degrees. This blunderer, however, was outdone by the speaker who described a distinguished personage "as a very indefatgable young man,'' adding, "but even he must succmb'' (suck ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... master of the house. At his desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, "Fix the furnace so you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's sake take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your nice brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime, and those fiends ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... said gravely—"that he was thankful to find that the disturbance of the night before had no worse result." He pulled the tail of Clive's coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. "The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy," he said, "and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. Wine has given you a ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors—then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great Circe of art—the great transformer of mind into sensuality—no fondness for it, no ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... enough to wait until Wherry departed. What a pity you were so delayed! Caution, my dear Kronberg, if I may fall into epigram, is frequently and paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... of the blunderer. It would put an end forever to his high plan, now boiling more strongly than ever before, in the back of his racked brain: to meet and some day put down the beast ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... sword sat laurel victory. Smooth success was strewn before his feet. The blundering and bewildered Cope actually allowed Charles and his army to get past him. Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth. From Perth the young prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... ultimately meet in the main stream. What an idea, Raphael, I form of the Great Artist, who, differently travestied in a thousand copies, still retains identical features in all this diversity, from which even the depreciating hand of a blunderer cannot remove admiration. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... response. Then the discomfited experimenter told herself that she was a blunderer. How could the poor fellow be expected to know what she meant? Why had she not asked the service from him? She ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... common tact and delicacy of feeling he had sometimes suspected he possessed in rare, exalted moments, were now shown vain ideas born from his own conceit; and the event had proved him no more subtle, clever, or far-seeing than other men. Indeed, he rated himself as an abject blunderer and thought he saw how a great overwhelming fear, at the bottom of his worship of Chris, had been the only true note in all that past war of emotions. But he had refused to listen and pushed forward; and now he stood thus. Looking back in the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Prussians into Mainz. It only remained for Great Britain to attempt to keep the French out of Holland. The defence of the Dutch, after everything south of the river Waal had been lost, Pitt determined to entrust to abler hands than those of the Duke of York; but the presence of one high-born blunderer more or less made little difference in a series of operations conceived in indifference and perversity. Clerfayt would not, or could not, obey the Emperor's orders and succour his ally. City after city in Holland welcomed the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in some unaccountable way, seemed less attractive to him, the songs of the birds, who were all awake, fell on inattentive ears; he was haunted by her face and voice, and he was, moreover, a little out of humor with himself for having been such a blunderer as to give her offense and thus leave an unfavorable ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... not be impossible, without either using or threatening violence, to make so weak a man uneasy about his personal safety. He would soon be eager to fly. All facilities for flight must then be placed within his reach; and care must be taken that he should not again be stopped by any officious blunderer. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
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