"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that night. She tossed in a restless agony of remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated. They were unlucky—the Monroes. They never could do ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... already worked upon Sir Edward's mind about his Minister to Mexico as far as I could. Now that the other matter is settled and while Carden is behaving, I go at it. Two years ago Mr. Knox made a bad blunder in protesting against Carden's "anti-Americanism" in Cuba. Mr. Knox sent Mr. Reid no definite facts nor even accusations to base a protest on. The result was a failure—a bad failure. I have again asked Mr. Bryan for all the definite reports he has heard about Carden. That man, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... said, "you are so surrounded by true affection that I never thought how my thoughtless use of that familiar phrase might be construed; but you must thank me for my little blunder, because it has served to show you what friends your noble ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... life. I can see that you are naturally consecrated to it. My son is a good steady fellow, but he lacks the divine gift. I am getting old. We need new fire, new brains, in the conduct of this business. I ask you to forgive the unlucky blunder we made lately, and devote ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... is a clever woman in spite her blunder about you; and had I dealt with her only I should have thought that she might have expressed herself as she did, and still have had the paper in her own keeping. I could not read her mind as I could read his. Women will lie ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the house. Yes, it is handsome, grand. Youth and age together did not make any blunder of it. There is the tower, that was to be his study and library and place of resort generally. What crude dreams he had in those days! Science and poesy, art and history, were all a sad jumble in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to falsify Phillis's story that Saniel insisted on going to see Nougarede. What good would it do? That would be a blunder which sooner or later would show itself, and in that case would turn against him. He would have liked, with the authority of a physician, to explain that this testimony of a paralytic could have no more importance than that of a ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... only proper way to settle such a question was by a court-martial. As the corps passed from my command the next morning, and had been under by orders only a few days, I have never made any effort to fix, even in my own mind, the responsibility for that blunder. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... into your mind above everything else, my friend. And try to grasp the fact, also, that the system we are now trying to change was a natural outgrowth of other conditions. It was not a wicked invention, nor was it a foolish blunder. It was a necessary and a right step in human evolution. But now it has in turn become unsuitable to the needs of the people and it must give place to something else. When a man suffers from such a disease as appendicitis, he does not ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... that boy yet? There's no counting on what he'll do next. I don't know how he'll ever get through the world, I'm sure, but I'll look after him while he's here at least. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this Christmas blunder. What an awful mess this place is in! But, Hannah, did you ever in the world see anything so delightful as that little Tommy Smithson stuffing himself with plum cake, not to mention Teddy Grant? It did me good ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... like Pius VII, or had he possessed the large scholarly qualities of Leo XIII, now reigning, the vast scandal of the Galileo case would never have burdened the Church: instead of devising endless quibbles and special pleadings to escape responsibility for this colossal blunder, its defenders could have claimed forever for the Church the glory of fearlessly initiating a ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... most interesting idea is suggested by the blunder of somebody over another puzzle. A boy was given a puzzle to solve by a friend, but he misunderstood what he had to do, and set about attempting what most likely everybody would have told him was impossible. But he was a boy with a ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... and scientific policy of producing, through wholesale reforms and improvements, more efficient and profitable laborers. They fail to see that the strength of the enemy will lie henceforth more frequently in deception than in repression. But even this is not their most fatal blunder. In attacking individualistic and reactionary rather than collectivistic and progressive capitalism, these Socialists are not only wasting their energies by assaulting a moribund power, but are training their forces to use weapons and to practice evolutions that will soon be obsolete and ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... practically not to be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder. ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... of fool who is afraid to trust his senses.... As for my making it hard for you to approach the subject, as you say, it is true. It was simply moral cowardice. I understood that you wished to clear the matter up; and I was revolted at the notion of my injurious blunder being discussed. I tried to show you by my actions that it was as if it had never been. I hoped you would pardon me without any words. I can't forgive myself, and I never shall. And yet if you could know—' He stopped short, and then ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... things. If some important affair occurs, people try then to think, but to very little purpose; because, not having exercised their powers on small things, their powers lack the development necessary for great ones. Hence, thoughtless people, when forced to act in an affair of importance, blunder through it with no more chance of doing as they should than one would have of hitting a small or distant mark at a shooting-match, if previous practice had not given the power of hitting objects ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... with him without instinctively realizing that he was a much maligned person. No wonder that this impression was spread widely not only through the whole navy but also throughout the whole mercantile marine. What a blunder the whole ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... of humour with yourself for a blunder that might happen to any man—it was as much my good luck as a good hand would have been, and so fortune ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... perception, much force of character; and Franceska's, scarcely yet formed, showed that she was affectionate, romantic, and, of all things in the world, fond of horses and of boating. Emilia's was held as a great blunder, for she was said to have an eye devoted to temporal advantages, also volatile, yet of great determination, triumphing over every obstacle, and in much ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... represented as initiated into the highest mysteries of Freemasonry. This is of course not explained by Lessing's commentators, who give no clue to his identity.[489] It is evident that Lessing committed an enormous blunder in thus letting so important a cat out of the bag, for after the publication of the first three dialogues and whilst the last two were circulating privately in manuscript amongst the Freemasons, an order from the Duke of Brunswick forbade their publication ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... a dryness in the tone of this reply which warned Barrant that he had made a blunder in allowing his irritation to get the better of him. But his private opinion was that the letter was the outcome of some secret of the dead man's which he had imparted to his lawyer. He changed his mood with supple swiftness, in order to extract ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... her, groping for the meaning she was hiding behind her quiet manner. But her question struck fire from the flint of his resolution. "That power matter is a principle, and I am not wrong in it. As to the means I used last night, it was brass and blunder and I'm ashamed of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... has all been a strange blunder, but it is perfectly clear how it happened. That man Beaton evidently had never seen Frederick Cavendish. He was simply informed that he would leave New York on that train. He met this Cavendish on board, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... very few illustrations for Dickens; and the amusing blunder which he perpetrated in "The Battle of Life," in allowing the lady to elope with the wrong man, and the "horror and agony" of the author in consequence thereof, have been set forth in Forster's "Life." The mistake was ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... punishment for a grave offence against custom: violence is rare, and when resorted to is intended (except in [96] some extraordinary cases presently to be noticed) as a mere correction, the punishment of a blunder. In certain rough communities, blunders endangering life are immediately punished by physical chastisement,—not in anger, but on traditional principle. Once I witnessed at a fishing-settlement, a ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... feeling was their province; he denied that they should affect thought or dominate action. In others they were his opportunity, in himself a luxury that had never been dangerous, or an ailment that was troublesome but never fatal. He was hard on a blunder; as a necessary presupposition to effective negotiation or business he recognised a binding code of honour; he has frequently told me he did not understand the theological conception of sin. He had eaten of our salt ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... obliged the prebends to make certain declarations, which were fraudulent and misleading, so that it was difficult not to blunder in the replies, which were directed by Father Verart, the mainspring of all these plots. They made the prebends take an oath; the latter consented to this, and submitted to everything, in order to extricate themselves from so much annoyance and to be free ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... "An honest blunder is one thing; but pre-meditated meanness is quite another, Cameron. However, I appreciate your generosity. It is like you—on the same scale with the rest of your nature." Then to shift a subject that was embarrassing he remarked: "As for these young rascals ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... himself. He had been too near to Dumont, had been merged in Dumont's big personality. Whatever he did well seemed to Dumont merely the direct reflection of his own abilities; whatever he did ill seemed far more stupid than a similar blunder made by a less intimate subordinate—what excuse for Culver's going wrong with the guiding hand of the Great ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... that she still bent over the lock, motionless, saw in hand. In the instant she made a mental review of her proceedings and satisfied herself that she had been guilty of no professional blunder. The inopportune appearance of Mr. Cragg must be attributed to a blind chance—to fate. So the first wave of humiliation that swept over her receded as she gathered her wits to combat this ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... cried her mother, in the impotence and self despite of a mortifying blunder; "I'll raise ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... a pause, "I have been accustomed to think both celibacy and marriage good in their way. In the Church of Rome great good, I see, comes of celibacy; but depend on it, my dear Reding, you are making a great blunder if you are for introducing celibacy into ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... these three, faith, hope, love.' When Paul takes three nouns and couples them with a verb in the singular, he is not making a slip of the pen, or committing a grammatical blunder which a child could correct. But there is a great truth in that piece of apparent grammatical irregularity; for the faith, the hope, and the love, for which he can only afford a singular verb, are thereby declared to be in their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... an unpardonable blunder," he replied. "What? Give you a letter of introduction? and when the police come, I suppose, I must forget the circumstance? No, indeed. Talk of it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fact that there was no danger for the passengers, whatever there might be for the vessel, and assuring him that I could save both him and myself without difficulty[1] (though he can't swim), as the water, though deep, was not very rough,—the wind not blowing right on shore (it was a blunder of the Greeks who missed stays),—the Doctor exclaimed, 'Save him, indeed! by G—d! save me rather—I'll be first if I can'—a piece of egotism which he pronounced with such emphatic simplicity as to set all who had leisure ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... exclaimed in a low voice, "my blunder you know, but you do not know how much I am to blame. If you only knew what ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... father had given him a fortnight in Paris on his way to Germany, as the reward of acquiescence. That (from Herr Harrison's point of view) was a disastrous blunder. How could the dear old Pater be expected to know that Paris is, spiritually speaking, no sort of way even to South Germany? He should have gone to Brussels, if he was ever, spiritually speaking, to get ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... akin to romance in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft might have ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... fault? Tis not my arrogance, But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee. What right hadst Thou to make these people free And let all nature prompt them to advance?— Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me, Instead of Wisdom, to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... My blunder was this, I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment. The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... of the grisly story. Mr. Kitson will advise you as to what steps you may take to free yourself. It was a most horrible blunder, and it was all the more tragic because you were the victim, you of all ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... repented afterwards," he said, "but at the moment, I could not but think of you; how you suit it out here." Now she coloured and drew back. Then she heard close by her: "You must not be angry, it always happens that when we wish to repair a blunder, we ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey that ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... much mischief; but thee'll find it isn't best to grieve over these mistakes. Why, my dear little Susan, I have lived eight years to thy one, and if I should sit down now and drop a tear for every blunder I have made, I don't know but I could almost make a fountain of myself, like that woman thee tells about in ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... him," Henley said, reluctantly. "I didn't make a point of looking him up. He ran about searching for me. I've washed my hands of that—that matter, Dixie. I ain't no hand at match-making, nohow. It ain't my turn. I get all mixed up, and blunder at it. I'll never set myself up to pick out a—a suitable mate for any woman again. There ain't none in existence—there ain't none half good enough for you, nohow. It makes me sick to—to think about a fellow like—well, no better in many ways than this here Long is—having the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... you will help me out," she said to John as he bowed and seated himself. "'Some one has blundered,' and here is a whole bottle of champagne which must be drunk to save it. Are you prepared to help turn my, or somebody's, blunder into hospitality?" ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... blunder of my copyist evidently has more interest for you than it has for me. I will send my private secretary to you and let him discuss the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... then left it pallid. The shadow of her sorrow had been forgotten during the strenuous moments she had gone through; the tactless remark brought it back upon her with cruel emphasis. She turned aside and slipped through the door at the back of the hut while the doctor, oblivious to his blunder, went out ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... moment, and then decided to speak frankly. "Yes," he said, "your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... ministers and reside in Boston, were confused in this comment. The one, who had recently been South, but who did not preach the sermon, was read a severe lecture, because after partaking of the hospitality of the Southern people, he had spoken in so severe terms of them. It was an amusing blunder, but illustrates the fact that more and more even the Southern editor is coming to feel the importance of Northern criticism. It is a very hopeful sign. It is sometimes said that time will settle these monstrous inequalities that prevail in the South, but time ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... Now what a Blunder would be committed in the Education of such a Family, if, with this different Turn of Mind in the Children, there should be no difference made in the Management of them, or their Disposal in the World. If all should be put ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... 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 ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... furiously, and Ruth, turning to him, saw it. She flushed too, fearing to have made she knew not what blunder, but she went on seriously, not pausing ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... they 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, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... is typical of many Californian towns. It was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy pools ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was smitten into the head of Coleman's servant to turn into the most inefficient dragoman, probably in the entire East. Coleman discerned it immediately, before any blunder could tell him. He at first thought that it was the voices of the guns which had made a chilly inside for the man, but when he reflected upon the incompetency, or childish courier's falsity, at Patras and his discernible lack of sense from Agrinion onward, he felt that the fault was elemental ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... attorney-general intended to do, and that those who did know are the ablest and most reliable men in the country. It is therefore utterly out of the question to assume that any one among them, any man of their intelligence and standing, could have made such a blunder. Really, my dear sir, if you will pardon my saying so, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... On the day following that of your departure from Windermere, I was duly inducted by Cleon into my new duties. They are few in number, and by no means difficult. So far I have contrived to get through them without any desperate blunder. Another thing I have done of which you will be pleased to hear: I have contrived to ingratiate myself with the mulatto, and am in high favour with him. You were right in your remarks; he is worth cultivation, in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... these letters, Stephen, the concentrated venom of years of brooding. My heart is black with rebellion against my lot and against the lot of woman. I have been given life and a fine position in the world, I made one fatal blunder in marrying to make these things secure, and now I can do nothing with it all and I have nothing to do with it. It astounds me to think of the size of our establishments, Stephen, of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great countries pay tribute ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... quite red. He felt that he had just committed a blunder. He had imagined that this was not my first meeting with the young girl, and here he gave me a certainty, when as yet I only dared dream of a hope. He held his tongue now; it was I who spoke ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... ascribing my success in my various missions to the possession of peculiar qualities. No such thing: I owe everything to the simple habit of always waiting till it is my turn to speak. And believe me, that he who plays before his turn at whist, commits as great a blunder as he who speaks before his turn during ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... on the Bosporus, when we made that trip to the Black Sea in the Maud," added the lady, who seemed to be pleased because she had caught the captain in a blunder. ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... over many instances of similar misunderstanding of Benvenuto's easily intelligible though inelegant Latin, to a blunder which would be extraordinary in any other book, by which our translator has ruined a most characteristic story in the comment on the 112th verse of Canto XIV. of the "Purgatory." We must give ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... were easily found. It was unwise to give opera on an ambitious scale after the amusement season had worn itself out; it was nothing less than foolish to do so with an ill-equipped company, in a house that had lost its fashionable prestige and at prices so large that a fatal blunder had to be confessed by their reduction at the end of a week. Two seasons later, the opera was announced by the Metropolitan director, Mr. Stanton, but was not given, for reasons already mentioned. How it entered the fashionable home of opera we ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... almost sick with expectation. As soon as the fly had stopped at the little gate she heard his voice, and heard at once that it was quick, joyful, and telling much of inward satisfaction. He had a good-natured word for Janet, and called Thomas an old blunder-head in a manner that ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... I have altered to Martin, as you prescribed; the blunder was my own, as well as a more considerable one, that of Lord Sandwich's death—which was occasioned by my supposing, at first, that the translation of Barba was made by the second Earl, whose death I had marked in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... because Wellington, finding his position could be bettered by retirement and concentration, decided upon withdrawal. But Ney could have been the victor in every sense, in spite of his indifferent tactics, if it had not been for the same blunder that the ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... down will come the whole machine of state, or, to say the least, it will get so much awry as never to work as well as at first; and therefore we will have none of it. If, on the other hand, one of our agents makes a blunder and falls, why, he will only break his own neck. He will, moreover, fall in the midst of us, and, should he escape with life, we can either catch him and throw him back again, or we can send a better hand up in his place, to serve out the rest of his time. They also maintain that one beam, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... present fact, and one's morality consists in sheer revolt all along the line. The whole matter is in confusion. You have to accept Mrs. Walker's and Mrs. Gordon's view of the case, plainly and simply, or you get off into a sort of morass and blunder into quicksands." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... 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 cases, when we were very hungry, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... blunder like that again, and you'll be sorry for it," he bullied, shaking an angry fist at Phil, who turned a pair of ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... came out. We walked on and on along the lonely road, walked slow, and scarcely spoke. For my resolution was taken. Elinor should not be bound by any promises or confessions. Only, just as we were stepping over the door-sill, I heard a little sigh, and these few words would blunder out, "When I come back from the West, I shall—want to tell—" But there I left off, and didn't go into the house, but walked about the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone responsible for that blunder. Dupre and his comrades have, it seems, thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen—if, indeed, they are still living, which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant, I was at Bizerta when the Lutin sank. A man doesn't want to remember ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Reuben and what led to it, that she had grit, and that the mistake was excusable, and that a girl as pretty as she was didn't want to be as fly as Mr. Reuben had said. Her father had told her that he was proud of her, and he had not been so rude as to laugh at her blunder. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the protection of lower ground, which there led up to the works. This called forth such violent protest and condemnation from Colonel Carle, that the result was a serious mutiny in the One Hundred and Ninetieth. Both officers and men felt that it was a blunder and an outrage to be thus needlessly exposed; and when Carle cursed them as cowards, they resented it. Confusion followed. The officers, almost to a man, refused to obey orders, or do any thing, until the insult should be retracted. The men were becoming dangerous. Carle rode up to Adjutant ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... lad," he murmured as his nimble fingers grew busy, "ye've been drinkin' again! Nay, don't deny it! A' see ye comin' out of Hennessy's the forenoon. An' ye've a wife an' six children, the shame on ye to treat a puir woman so! Another blunder like this an' ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... account, and told them of the impropriety of laughing at me. One of the children immediately replied, "Please, sir, do you know what we were laughing at?" I replied in the negative. "Then, sir," says the boy, "I will tell you. Please, sir, you have made a blunder." I, thinking I had not, proceeded to defend myself, when the children replied, "Please, sir, you convict yourself." I replied, "How so?" "Why," says the children, "you said a right-angled triangle had one right angle, and that all its angles are acute. If it has one right angle, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... fooled, let them go to the devil their own way, not laying the blame of their own folly on others! But having got you—would I ever have let you go for any power under Heaven? Why (as soon as you were free) did I marry you? I knew that, politically, it was a blunder: that over there it would go against us— prove the case. Half Ireland cared nothing for the verdict of an English jury. But when we married, they had to believe it then.... Well, I wanted them to believe it. I know my love would have waited, had I asked her. And it wasn't—it wasn't ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... the South. Mediation, in whatever form or under whatever name it is to be offered, is universally taken to imply some movement in behalf of the Confederates. So completely, indeed, are the belligerents themselves impressed with this idea, that the South casts it in our teeth as a scandal and a blunder that no European arbitration has been yet interposed; while the President of the Northern States actually proclaims a day of thanksgiving for the deliverance of the country from 'foreign intervention,' which he identifies with nothing less than ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... their own; to be on their guard; to have a reputation to maintain; to conceal the "dram of folly;" to be, to that extent, artificial in their relations with men. They dare not betray the "laughable blunder," which, said Charles Lamb, is the test your neighbour giveth you "that he will ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... 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. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... There is one blunder, as Kathleen, the daughter of the Earl of Elsmore, is referred to as Lady Kathleen. Her father would have had to be a Duke or a Marquess for that address to be correct. Her actual title does not sound so good, so perhaps Perkins can be forgiven for this solecism. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... regularly come upon the tables of men of wealth, would have been just as nutritious, just as wholesome, and in every way just as good, save in the gratification to pride and palate. He was committing an immense economic blunder. Like thousands of others, he did so in the belief that it was wise ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... at the north end of the line, giving a hoot each time the mask was placed upon anyone. Great care was taken that the mask should be so arranged upon the face that the eyes might look directly through the eyeholes, for should any blunder occur the sight of at least one eye would be lost. It is scarcely on before it is removed. After the masks had been placed on all the faces it was laid beside Hasjelti's. The man personating Hasjelti sprinkled his mask and then Hostjoboard's with pollen, ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... also for the fact that, systematic and logical thinker as he was, he perpetrates what might appear at first sight as a logical blunder. Instead of first proving the existence of God and then discussing his nature and attributes, as Saadia, Bahya, Ibn Daud and others did before him, he treats exhaustively of the divine attributes in the first book, whereas the proof of the existence of God ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... blunder he will make if he does!" she said. "It will show, as Mr. Simlins says—that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... blunder and bitterness comes wisdom. Men are taught through reaction, and all experience that does not kill ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... could have been mistaken about seeing and hearing the two bank thieves? Jimmie had something of a vivid imagination; but then Jack had never known him to make a blunder of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... the railroad proceeds with systematic accuracy. There is no chance for the most careless person to commit a blunder, or make a mistake. At the proper time the conductor marches every body into their places and locks them in, gives the word, "All right," and away we go. Somebody has remarked, very characteristically, that ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in coupling the sound of the vowel u with the colour green instead of with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste Ingenu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is dedicated to Mallarme, "Pere et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des poissons," and other works are to follow:—the six tomes of "Legendes de Reves ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers to keep down his foes. This is his primary, essential, fatal blunder; for unless the gods eat of Freia's apples every day they must wither and their powers decay. But Wotan means to cheat the giants, and Loge, the deceitful god of fire, who is ultimately to destroy the whole of the present regime, has been sent ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... most terrible blow the established church had ever received in France. Never had a more disastrous blunder been committed by the Guises, than when they stirred Henry to imprison and try, and Francis to execute, the most virtuous member of the Parisian senate. Such strength of principle in the midst of affliction, such fortitude upon the brink of death, had never been seen before. The witnesses ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... alone of Versions; in Irenaeus and Origen (who contradict themselves), and in the Latin Fathers. All the Greek authorities, with the few exceptions just recorded, of which A and D are the only consistent witnesses, unite in condemning the evident blunder[16]. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... having to clamber over the heaps of duffle that took up so much room aboard, the scouts saw that it was no false alarm. A number of men were hurrying toward them, splashing through water that was in places almost knee deep, even when they took the upper levels. Should they make a blunder, and stray off the ridges, it was likely they would speedily have ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... who are living their lives as we are living ours, in the shimmer of a globule in space, it is not enough that we should lift our faces to the sky and blunder and guess at a God there, because there is so much room between the stars, and murmur faintly, "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned." By the infinite bones of our bodies, by the seeds of the million years that flow in our veins, material things are spiritually discerned. There is not ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... "in taking you for my confidante in my ambitious projects, I have committed a blunder and an impertinence, which a slight contempt from you has mildly punished. But speaking seriously, Madame, I thank you with all my heart. I feared to find in you a powerful enemy, and I find in you a strong neutral, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a blunder," whispered Storms, when the captain stepped beside him. "Those wretches mean mischief, and it is coming within ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... self-confession in art that there is no idealism there. How the Kaiser could go out day after day and confront these low conceptions of patriotism and of Germany, and not order them to be swept away, explains in great part how it was Germany made such a blunder as to go to war the way she did. One advantage of a revolution in Germany might be to sweep away these sad ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... such accidents truly, and serious things be they to encounter," answered Spike, hemming a little to clear his throat, as was much his practice whenever the widow ran into any unusually extravagant blunder; "yes, serious things to encounter. But the land-fall that I mean is a different sort of thing; being, as you well know, what we say when we come in sight of land, a'ter a v'y'ge; or, meaning the land ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mrs. Veal was there. 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 were sure, if she had, she would ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... gravely, yet very coldly, "perhaps it would be as well for you to know that you made quite a blunder yesterday, when you said I told you wrong; I hadn't the slightest notion of telling you, right or wrong. But I know how you came to think so. I was looking out a word in Mr. Burrows' dictionary, and stood just behind you, when ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... not see how a soldier can avoid exposing himself occasionally to the risk of being shot, sabred, or bayoneted. What blunder of mine ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of the discussion of the miraculous element in the Bible.—Evaporation of the former evidential value of miracles.—Further insistence on this value a logical blunder.—The transfer of miracles from the artillery to the baggage of the Church.—Probability of a further reduction of the list of miracles.—Also of a further transfer of events reputed miraculous to ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to explain," he said. "And, first of all, permit me to apologize to you, Major Brown, for a most abominable and unpardonable blunder, which has caused you menace and inconvenience, in which, if you will allow me to say so, you have behaved with astonishing courage and dignity. Of course you need not trouble about the bill. We will stand the loss." And, tearing the paper across, he flung the halves ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... did so, for the next moment the punt swerved violently, to blunder quickly down stream as it felt the strength of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... bit on" like other people, and having tried all the turf-prophets in turn, with unsatisfactory results, I was delighted to hear from a friend that "a new DANIEL had come to judgment" in the person of a tipster on Punch, who was "wonderful good"—(it was just the time when she did blunder on to a winner)—and I made up my mind to follow the new Prophet DANIEL; but, by Jove! it resulted in a loss, and DANIEL landed me among the lions in no time! These are not jokes, but sober facts—I plunged heavily on all the "Selections," and am now in the pleasant position ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... Our guide went first with great deliberation and groping his way with a stick, and after an ineffectual attempt to scale the rock above, F. and I also unwillingly followed his example. The water was piercingly cold as it swept against us, and the pain was so great that we were glad to blunder over as quickly as possible, without taking very much trouble about picking our steps. After passing this in safety we came suddenly upon a band of hill-men with their loads, from Thibet; they were the first natives we had encountered, and wild and weird-looking savages ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... not read them. If we feel ourselves weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops. If we had to choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny, and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great soldiers—we should be happier without them. If we ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... lemon and white,—something terribly ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a good ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... myself," said the Superintendent, with a slight smile. "Owing to the inexcusable blunder, I'm afraid something about what it contains may leak out prematurely. Those pests, the reporters, are everywhere; you can't ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... snubbed me, and would not eat with me, and on Monday a Walee (saint) picked out tit-bits for me with his own fingers, and went with me inside the tomb. The Patriarch has made a blunder with his progress. He has come ostentatiously as the protege and pronem of the Pasha, and he has 'eaten' and beaten the fellaheen. The Copts of Luxor have had to pay fifty pounds for the honour of his presence, besides no end of sheep, poultry, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... break like that," said Billy, "that upsets him. It takes a smart fellow to be a rogue, and Pete isn't quite smart enough. Another time when he tried to get back on Jack he made some such blunder as this, and gave ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... was so anxious to do what was right, and so ready to believe that every one knew better than himself, that he never ventured to admit to himself that he might be all the while on a hopelessly wrong tack. It did not occur to him that there might be a blunder anywhere, much less did it occur to him to try and find out where the blunder was. Nevertheless he became daily more full of malaise, and daily, only he knew it not, more ripe for an explosion should ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the South began on the President a bitter, malignant and unceasing vilification for this, his first fatal and inexcusable blunder! ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Leave behind sectarian lurches; Jump on board the car of Freedom, Ere it be too late to need them. Sound the alarm! Pulpits thunder! Ere too late you see your blunder! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... longer necessary for abolitionists to contend against the blunder of pro-slavery,—that the colored people are inferior to the whites; for these people are practically demonstrating its falseness. They have men enough in action now, to maintain the anti-slavery enterprise, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... not a blunder of Shakespeare's, but a mistake of Johnson's, who considers the passage alluded to in a more literal sense than the author intended it. Sir Proteus, it is true, had seen Silvia for a few moments; but though he could form from thence some idea of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Tortoise-Shell (LANE) would have made an excellent short story, but to pursue its farcical developments through three hundred pages requires a considerable amount of perseverance. The scene of Mr. PETER BLUNDER'S book is laid in tropical Jallagar, where the British Resident was keener on cats than on his duties. A male tortoise-shell was what he fanatically and almost ferociously desired, and to obtain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... insinuations exposed him to a severe reply. Mr. Pitt standing up again, said, "He would not undertake to determine whether youth could be justly imputed to any man as a reproach; but he affirmed that the wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of repeated errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults; much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... chuckle which preceded an invitation to inspect some candidate's egregious blunder; Irving would read and smile quietly, unaware that Barclay was watching him and wondering how appreciative he might ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... improves our position. Conde feels secure now; he dreaded only the passage of the Loire. Guise made a huge blunder which, in the future, will cost ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... either to accuse themselves or throw the blame on others, and the choice was quickly made. The disaster was attributed to all those who had foreseen the defeat and tried to prevent it. Every retreat of the army, every diplomatic blunder found an excuse in the machinations of the pacifists, and these unpopular gentry to whom no one listened were invested by their opponents with the formidable power of organising defeat. In order that none should be ignorant of this, a writing was hung about their necks with the word "Defeatist," ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... was a strange blunder to be made so near the time, about so remarkable a person, unless he concluded that whoever displeased Henry VIII. was of ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... like the Grange, its chief work is education. It brings mind in contact with mind; it gives chance for discussion and interchange of ideas; it trains in power of expression; it teaches the virtue of co-operation. Farmers blunder when they fail to encourage organization. Sometimes, out of foolish notions of independence, they neglect to unite their forces. They are utterly blind to their best interests when they do so. They should encourage organization if for no other reason than for the splendid ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... wrong; they will be eager to go on—first to recover the loss on that article of account, and next to show their enemies, and in particular such of them as are their friends, that they didn't blunder. You will go to them to-morrow and ask if they can allow you a commission for bringing them an Australian settler on whose ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... returned Prince Marvel, laughing at his friend's eager face. "It appears the path we chose winds around in a circle, and so has brought us back to our starting-point. So we must make the best of a bad blunder and spend another night with our ugly friend ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... is therefore our duty—not because it is ours, and therefore, under the Constitution of the United States, her right and her fate. The admission of that ill-omened and unfounded claim would be, at the bar of politics, a colossal blunder; at the bar ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... all around, beyond the tent and in the far distance there was a provocative alluring darkness: if she only could get away, only could reach the shelter of that remote and sombre distance, she would hide, and wait, not blunder again, oh no! she would be prudent and wary, if only she could ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Preston and Taylor, at midnight, in a snow storm, and on a night so dark that it would have been impossible to keep together, to be sure of the way, or to distinguish friend from foe, to do a thing which he hesitated to do in the daytime and with his entire force, would have been a more serious blunder than either. Of course, if Preston had started, it would have been with the determination to succeed or lose his life in the adventure. That was his reputation and his character as a soldier. But the services and ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... 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 ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... catch him in a trap! He's too old a fox for that.' I'm telling you, sir, what Johnson told me. 'He looked close down at the shawls, as if he were short-sighted, though he could see as far as any man. "I beg your pardon, ladies," said he, "you're right. I am quite wrong. What a stupid blunder to make! And yet they did deceive me. Here, Johnson, take these shawls away. How could you be so stupid? I will fetch the thing you want myself, ladies." So I went with him. He chose out three or four shawls, of the nicest patterns, from the very same ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... stated."—I consulted the Shakspere of Malone, and verified my recollections, when the query of "Mr. JEBB" appeared—but forbore to notice its misconceptions. Besides, one C., after an interval of two months, merely asserted that it was not a blunder of Malone; the other C. furnished, ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... don't mean that we should repeat the blunder of last night. You may be sure he won't keep it in his cabin ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... goodness, yet we are to affirm that the notion of God slaying Job's children (or anybody's children, so far as that runs), or blotting out his prosperity, is obnoxious to reason and to heart. This drama perpetrates no such blunder. Satan sent these disasters; for with him is evil purpose. The very nobility of Job stings him to enmity and madness; for iniquity is his delight, and ruin his vocation and pleasure. A power without man working evil is consonant with history and experience, and to suppose ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... Cloaths. Once coming in a little the worse for Wine (to which he was addicted) he endeavour'd to lampoon me by means of an Impromptu in verse, writ on the Surface of the Table; but lacking the Aid he usually had in his Composition, he made a bad grammatical Blunder. I told him, he shou'd not try to pasquinade the Source of his Poesy. At another Time Bozzy (as we us'd to call him) complain'd of my Harshness toward new Writers in the Articles I prepar'd for The Monthly Review. He said, I push'd every Aspirant off the Slopes of Parnassus. "Sir," ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the things they are interested in. Of course the little ones cannot spell on their fingers; but I manage to read their lips. If I do not succeed they resort to dumb show. Sometimes I make a mistake and do the wrong thing. A burst of childish laughter greets my blunder, and the pantomime begins all over again. I often tell them stories or teach them a game, and the winged hours depart and leave us ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... well for you to cheer up," Skippy thought to himself. It hurt, there was no turning from it. It did hurt. What a blunder he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... and it was touching to see how Sylvia treated him. She had, it appeared, conceived the idea that the calamity must be due to some blunder on his part, and then she had reflected that he was young, and that chance had thrown upon him a responsibility for which he had not bargained. He must be reproaching himself bitterly, so she had to persuade him that it was really not so bad as ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... dreadfully ashamed to make you the victim of my blunder," answered Miss Ellison penitently; and a little silence ensued. Then as if she had suddenly been able to alienate the case, and see it apart from herself in its unmanageable absurdity, she broke into a confiding laugh, very like ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Light Brigade!' Was there a man dismay'd? Not though the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... skimming the prefaces and introductions of works for mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor of his orchestra for the piece just before the overture; the musician was too good a courtier to tell him that it was only the tuning ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as of some consternation in the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking abruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation at the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later, when I had perceived my blunder. ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... Post has made another blunder. Lord Abinger, it seems, is too Conservative to resign. After all the editorial boasting about "exclusive information," "official intelligence," &c. it is very evident that the "Morning Twaddler" must not be looked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Mr. Pierce undertook to explain matters. Minor presumed that the artilleryman had made an actual blunder and was only enabled to correct it by a countermarch, and so rode back to his position in front of the centre of the reforming line, convinced that at last he ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... these countries, were as a drop in the bucket to the unenlightened many; and although no doubt there were numbers of the former who were well—meaning men, yet they were one and all guilty of that prime political blunder, in common with our Whig friends at home, of expecting a set of semi—barbarians to see the beauty of, and to conform to, their newfangled codes of free institutions, for which they were as ready as I am to die at this present moment. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... cannot desire a life filled only with the objects which they set before him. Nor is the modern moralist, or as he prefers to style himself, "immoralist," Nietzsche, [Footnote: A sketch of Nietzsche's doctrine is given later, see chapter xxix.] guilty of less gross a blunder. He rails at morality as commonly understood, calling it "the morality of the herd," and he recommends isolation, the repression of sympathy, and a contempt for one's fellows. To be sure, the "herd" ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton |
