"Bungler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A bungler even in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are afraid— States to be curbed, and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or Congress to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... veins,—the slow victory is begun. What mattered all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the serpent,—his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome the viand,—that master of the science of murder needs not the means of the bungler! Then, keen and strong from the creeping lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of revenge. Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to defy all detection, work but slowly ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shot," one of the men said. "The sentry who was here was a bungler with a bow. None whom we know but Tregoz could have made sure of that mark, bright as the night is. Well it was, Lord, that you were not ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate his mistress's maidenly reserve. "I stole it from her. The hand is a reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... now had taken place but a week before, Ranjoor Singh would have found himself in a fine fix, for all except I would have there and then denounced him for a bungler, or a knave. But now the other daffadars who clustered around him and me said one to the other, "Let us see what our sahib makes of it!" The men sent word to know what was being revealed through two long hours of talk, and Chatar ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... achievement; and if it stands a little lower than the "Matthew," if the "Matthew" is mightier, more impressive, more overwhelming in its great tenderness, this is not because the Bach who wrote in 1722-23 was a bungler or an incomplete artist, but because the Bach who wrote in 1729 was inspired by a loftier idea than had come to the Bach of 1723. It was only necessary to compare the impression one received when the "John" Passion was sung by the Bach Choir in 1896 with that received ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... good farmer has the feel and the habit of good work. The really successful man in any calling or profession is he who does his work conscientiously and as well as he can. The sloven becomes the bungler, and the bungler is on the high road to failure. It is always a pleasant thing to see a man do his work well and artistically. It is the habit, the policy, the attitude of thus doing that tell in the long run. ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place, had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the point ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... sober, industrious, miserably smiling over the miserable issue of his own unmanliness. - Paul - a German - cook and steward - a glutton of work - a splendid fellow; drawbacks, three: (1) no cook; (2) an inveterate bungler; a man with twenty thumbs, continually falling in the dishes, throwing out the dinner, preserving the garbage; (3) a dr-, well, don't let us say that - but we daren't let him go to town, and he - poor, good soul - is afraid to be let go. - Lafaele (Raphael), a strong, dull, deprecatory ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of us has the privilege of bettering out condition if we have the brain and the industry to do it. Energy and intelligence come to the front, and have the right to be there. A skillful workman gets double the pay of a bungler, and deserves it. Of course there will always be rich and poor, and sick and sound, and I don't see how that can be changed. But no door is shut against ability, black or white. Before the year 2400 we shall have a chrome-yellow president and a black-and-tan secretary of the treasury. But, seriously, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... course that the affection should be returned without any ulterior thought. He responded gladly to Jacqueline's advances; he thought her charming, and amused himself thoroughly with her: and he thought so well of her that he was not far from thinking Olivier rather a bungler not to be able to be happy with her ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M. Astigmatism The Coal Picker Storm-Racked Convalescence Patience Apology A Petition A Blockhead Stupidity Irony Happiness The Last Quarter of the Moon A Tale of Starvation The Foreigner Absence A Gift The Bungler Fool's Money Bags Miscast I Miscast II Anticipation Vintage The Tree of Scarlet Berries Obligation The Taxi The Giver of Stars The Temple Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success In Answer to ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... the top of it and turn the edges over, see?" he added, doing it himself, "and it's watertight. I can make a watertight stopple for a bottle with a long strip of paper, but you got to know how to wind it," he added, with clumsy disregard of his companion's mood. Tom was a hopeless bungler in some ways. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... the nature of this Being himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not sin; but if we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who fondles a kitten ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... that Arabs of doubtful character have driven a splendid trade in Moabite antiquities ever since the discovery of the Moabite stone. On the other hand, the forger, if forgery there be, is assuredly no clumsy and ignorant bungler, as the makers of the Moabite pottery were confidently alleged to be by those who disputed its genuineness. It is, of course, part of his craft, and not, perhaps, much more than the 'prentice part, to give to the sheepskins on which the text is inscribed an appearance of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... and Guilt (for Guilt, howe'er The face of Courage it may wear, 490 Is still a coward at the heart) At fear-created phantoms start. The priest—that very word implies That he's both innocent and wise— Yet fears to travel in the dark, Unless escorted by his clerk. But let not every bungler deem Too lightly of so deep a scheme; For reputation of the art, Each ghost must act a proper part, 500 Observe Decorum's needful grace, And keep the laws of Time and Place; Must change, with happy variation, His manners with his situation; What ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... working-party there. The next time they all three met, Bill Todhunter told them that all was ready if they were. He said that he had left a few birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear some nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be frightened, and "blow" about the switch. But he said that any night when the others were ready to make the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the next Wednesday, and, if ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... can clear the hold of a ship that is already half full of water," said Nighthead, casting another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder "the sooner it is done the better; for the whole cunning of something more than a bungler in the same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... But instead, his friend Eliphaz hectors his pain by saying, in stately fashion, "Thy words have upholden him that was failing, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees; but now it has come upon thee, and thou faintest." Shame, Eliphaz! What a bungler! A child had known better. What ails you? Do you not know this man needs tenderness, and not lectures and disquisitions in moralities? Can you not see his heart is breaking, and his eyes turn to you as if he were ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... scarcely groaned. Old Spender, the Duke's marshal, hath as sure a trick of tying and as good judgment in arranging a drop as hath Dun of Tyburn. Be of good heart, therefore, for you shall not fall into the hands of a bungler.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... know if the best among them have suffered anything from the lack of the human lapidary's skill. He often, at the best, is a mere bungler, and while he makes sure to bring out the brilliancy, laps off other finer qualities the lack of which no spark or brilliancy can compensate," I replied, by no means convinced, and thinking all the time of Mrs. Le Grande who had certainly received plenty of polishing ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... moved," said he. "Am I such a farcical bungler, Watson, that I should erect an obvious dummy, and expect that some of the sharpest men in Europe would be deceived by it? We have been in this room two hours, and Mrs. Hudson has made some change in that figure eight times, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pole, but another boy got hold of it—rather a bungler he seemed; so Ernest left him to puff and blow by himself in his vain efforts at getting up, and went on to one of the swinging ropes. He seized it well above his head, and pressing his knees and feet against it, steadily drew himself up, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you are not ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the rocks, and passing through dense patches of timber, he kept on the alert for signs of game. Now, Bluff did not make any pretence at being a skilful sportsman. In fact, until a year or so back he had been the bungler of the party when it came to a knowledge of woodcraft; but since then he had studied up on various subjects, and was now anxious to air ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... that in writing upon a subject which has been described by Thucydides with inimitable grace, clearness, and pathos, I have no ambition to imitate Timaeus, who, when writing his history, hoped to surpass Thucydides himself in eloquence, and to show that Philistius was but an ignorant bungler, and so plunges into an account of the speeches and battles of his heroes, proving himself ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... manipulation, indeed, but all the more tempting to wrestle with and overcome. A drama with soliloquies and asides is like a picture with inscribed labels issuing from the mouths of the figures. In that way, any bungler can reveal what is passing in the minds of his personages. But the glorious problem of the modern playwright is to make his characters reveal the inmost workings of their souls without saying or doing anything that they would not say or do in ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the onset; Prosper rocketed into him; horse and man went over in a heap. "Bungler," cried Prosper, and went on. The other two faced him together standing. Prosper drove in between them, and had one of them off at the cost of a snapt spear. He turned on the other with his ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... see, you are a letter'd man; How monstrous were it if your skill'd design Were ruined by a bungler's hand like mine! [Retires ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... share. Education must (3) also give the individual training in technique, or the skill required in his different activities; not to do this is at best but to leave him a well-informed and well-intentioned bungler, falling ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... the child of his enemy, through the child to revenge himself. Kill it?—no! he is no short-sighted bungler; he has refinement, foresight, understanding. She is but an infant,—open and impressible, warm and sanguine! He isolates her from sight and reach. He pries into her nature with keenest delicacy,—no leaf is ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... his eyes on the yellow head, this unfortunate bungler, who had been in love with Norah since he had worn knickerbockers, and Norah held her own head higher in the air. And she let Mr. Williamson, the new book-keeper at Conner's (he who would have mortgaged two farms for her), take her to the ice-cream table, leaving the bungling lover (christened ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... began to realize that he had no talent for concealment; that he was a sad bungler in the management of any business which was not open and above-board. This impertinent, disagreeable little coxcomb of a New Yorker, without a warning sound to announce his coming, had suddenly stepped ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... companies were entraining, and a hum of voices rose as the non-commissioned officers drove the men like sheep, with their rifles held crosswise, now and then pounding some bungler in the ribs ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... "Oh, what a bungler I am!" she exclaimed with half-amused regret. "The truth is, I am so glad, and when I am very happy I always ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... word was used of a coarse workman, or a bungler, in any mechanical trade. So the Cobbler's answer does not give the information required, though it contains ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... if Perry were the guilty man. He would work with that idea always in mind. In the meantime he would go with Braceway as long as the Braceway theories seemed to have any foundation at all. He did not want to run the risk of being shown up as a bungler. He was anxious to be "in on" ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... laughed Mr. Conne. "I like the way you say it when you're mad. So that's why you didn't get off the ship in time last night, eh?" he added, with a touch of severity. "Watch slow! Bah! You're a bungler, Doc! First you let your watch get you into a tight place, then you ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... how you meant to set about it!" sighed John. "But you know, Morris, you always were such a bungler." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubtless yours," said Claparon, holding himself very straight and looking at Birotteau; "hey! you are not a bungler. None of the roses you distil can be compared with her; and perhaps it is because ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... young woman she seems," he admitted. "I fear that I should only be a bungler in your profession, Mr. Quest, but if there is anything I can do to help you to discover her whereabouts, you can count upon me. Personally, I am convinced that Craig will return to me with some plausible explanation as to what has happened. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... file of carriages. I witnessed this heartrending spectacle; I saw the ominous procession. In the midst of all the tumult, clamour, and singing, interrupted by frequent discharges of musketry, which the hand of a monster or a bungler might so easily render fatal, I saw the Queen preserving most courageous tranquillity of soul, and an air of nobleness and inexpressible dignity, and my eyes were suffused with tears of admiration and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words—nay, as well as if he could read the very hearts of them. He turned to Nick Leary. Nick had already bandaged his face with a piece ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... civilians, who confidently and contemptuously declared him to be a bungler; a patient, hard-working bungler. These were the men who saw few of his successes, and always contrived to smell out his failures. These people were those who had no understanding of the difficulties of ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... want you each to take a copy of the rules of 'The Rainbow League' and to read them quietly over at home. Then any girl who likes to join can put her name down. All the Sixth want to become members, and I hope lots of others will too. That's all I have to say. I'm afraid I'm rather a bungler, but you'll understand everything if you read the papers. I'm going ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately stated. A suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes the artist from the bungler—the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or "in ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... is a bungler. Leave it to me. I will find Lagardere for you and deal with him as he deserves before an ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I'll not let thee go. I'm but a rude bungler in these women-ways, and I've said or done somewhat that wounds thee sorely, and I'll not let thee go till 't is all outsaid and I have once more cleared myself of at ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the Eagle-hunter, The valiant fate-confronter, The soldier brave, and blunter Of speech than BISMARCK's self? This bungler all-disgracing, This braggart all-debasing. This spurious sportsman, chasing No ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... few sheaves do not make a harvest. I am a stupid bungler, spoiling canvas and wasting paint, or else you are as obtuse as the critics who may one day hover hungrily over it. Try the aid of one more clew, and if you fail to catch my purpose, I will dash my brush all loaded with ochre, right into those mystic, prescient eyes, and blur ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... then must be nimbly, cleanly, and swiftly done, and conueyed so as the eyes of the beholders may not discerne or perceaue the tricke, for if you be a bungler, you both shame your selfe, and make the Art you goe about to be perceaued and knowne, and so bring ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... Philosophy. I think it lost time to attend lectures on this branch. He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... flower-making; she even cost a good deal for her keep. At Madame Fauconnier's Gervaise was beginning to be looked down upon. She was no longer so expert. She bungled her work to such an extent that the mistress had reduced her wages to two francs a day, the price paid to the clumsiest bungler. But she was still proud, reminding everyone of her former status as boss of her own shop. When Madame Fauconnier hired Madame Putois, Gervaise was so annoyed at having to work beside her former employee that she stayed ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... The bungler was condemned to grace the wheel, On which the dullest fibers learn to feel, His limbs secundum artem to be broke Amid ten thousand people, perhaps, or more; Whenever Monsieur Ketch applied a stroke, The culprit, like a bullock made ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... say what kernel lies within its shell; It shall contain a man, a woman, a child, A dozen men and women if I will. So far the gods and I run neck and neck, Nay, so far I can beat them at their trade; I am no bungler—all the men I make Are straight limbed fellows, each magnificent In the perfection of his manly grace; I make no crook-backs; all my men are gods, My women, goddesses, in outward form. But there's my ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... and, looking down the room, I was aware that my store was exhausted, and as yet two-thirds of the children had received no gift. I turned—all in a cold shiver—to retrace my steps and pick up the toys at the blind children's feet, and as I did so, felt myself a bungler past pardon. But in the act of turning, I cast a look back at the stage: and there stood Mr Felix, nodding approval and beckoning. So, as in a dream, I went back, 'Capital!' was his only comment. Taking my bag, he passed his ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... him understand it; let him attend to his own duties, and I think, from all reports, he will have his hands more than full then. Mr. Sutherland," he continued, addressing the attorney, "there's no knowing what that beastly bungler who calls himself a detective will do next; this thing is likely to be out in the morning papers with the boy's name mixed up in it, and it must be stopped right here. His name must be kept out of this at any price, and you probably can reach the New York ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... that tinker, Dobson? I would not trust such a bungler to shoe a goat. No, no; none but uncle Tom Thumper ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... her clutches. Clem was proving disloyal, had grown secretive. Mrs. Peckover did not look for any direct profit worth speaking of from the marriage she had brought about, but she did desire the joy of continuing to plot against Joseph with his wife. Moreover, she knew that Clem was a bungler, altogether lacking in astuteness, and her soul was pained by the thought of chances being missed. Her encounter with the lodger had wrought her up to the point at which she could discuss matters with Clem ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... "And I should be glad if you would release him. He is a traitor to his country and something of a bungler, but I can ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... to his weakness the boy now showed an increasing terror of his father. He shrank from the hard words or the uplifted hand with an evident fear, which only strengthened Mr Darvell's anger, for it mortified him still more to find his lad a coward as well as a bungler ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... wished to shriek to him that he was a fool and a bungler; that throats were not to be cut in that fashion, with hackings and sawing at the gullet. Knew the clumsy fumbler nothing of big blood-vessels?... ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... to," said the Sieur de Corasse; "you are but a bungler. You promised to show yourself to me ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... that he could not work after the drawings made by my own hand?" asked Kaunitz, with a firey glance of anger in his eyes. "Because he is an ass does the churl dare to criticise my drawings? Let him bring the body of the coach to the palace, and I will show him that he is a bungler and knows nothing of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... change of front in respect to Roxbury Medcroft before the breakfast was over. It may have been due to the spell of her eyes or to the call of her voice, but it remains an unchallenged fact that he no longer thought of Medcroft as a stupid bungler; instead, he had come to regard him as a good and irreproachable Samaritan. All of which goes to prove that a divinity shapes our ends, rough hew them ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... beings, who search the criminal's stomach, that is his heart, and who find out the deep hidden sin; hence the people shout, "If they are wizards, let it kill them; if they are innocent, let it go forth!" Moreover, the detected murderer is considered a bungler who has fallen into the pit dug for his brother. Doubtless many innocent lives have been lost by this superstition. But there is reason in the order, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," without having recourse to the supernaturalisms ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to all men and proves Palus a consummate artist as a gladiator. Not only would the populace howl a bungler or coward off the sand, they know every shade of excellence; only a superlatively perfect swordsman could kindle their enthusiasm and keep it at white heat year ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... bungler and the whole matter must be set right without delay. This was rather a large task, but the Professor went at it in a large way. He did it in the approved German manner. Germany would be forever disgraced if any philosopher ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the hymen ruthlessly, he would hurt the woman cruelly, probably cause her to bleed freely from the wounded parts, and shock her seriously! All of which would be a score against the husband, would brand him as a brute, or a bungler, and so tend to make his "sun-aimed ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... cloak-operators were artists. I certainly was not one of them. I admired their work and envied them, but I lacked the artistic patience and the dexterity essential to workmanship of a high order. Much to my chagrin, I was a born bungler. But then I possessed physical strength, nervous vitality, method, and inventiveness—all the elements that ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... think I will take no notice of it; it is against something written very lately; and indeed I know not what to say, nor do I care; and so you are a saucy rogue for losing your money to-day at Stoyte's; to let that bungler beat you, my Stella, are not you ashamed? well, I forgive you this once, never do so again; no, noooo. Kiss and be friends, sirrah.—Come, let me go sleep, I go earlier to bed than formerly; and have not been out so late these two months; but ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... had been all day! There was nothing like travelling together to make people intimate. It was clear that she understood his intentions very well: indeed, how could she help it? He had always said that a fellow had shown himself a bungler at lovemaking if he were not practically assured of the result before he came to the point of the declaration. The sensation of leaving everything else so rapidly behind that people have when sitting on the rear platform of a train of cars makes them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the fewest have the key. And then how your Blockhead (Dummkopf) studies not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with your Bungler (Pfuscher): such I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous reptile.' Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts himself, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... can wear at night. His legs, where he feels the cold most, are wrapped in an ancient coat made by a small tailor of Tours, who to his disgust used to alter his father's garments to fit him, and was a dreadful bungler; but the upper half of his body is only protected by the roof and a flannel waistcoat from the frost, and he needs a shawl badly. He also hopes for a Dantesque cap, the kind his mother always makes for him; and this pattern of cap from the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... learn to form correct and swift judgments on every faculty of life as it comes before us, we merely stumble from error to error. No cut-and-dried maxim ever yet was fit to guide men through their mysterious existence; the formalist always ends by becoming a bungler, and the most highly-developed man, if he is content to be no more than a thinking-machine, is harmful to himself and harmful to the community which has the ill-luck to harbour him. If we take cases from history, we ought to find it easy enough to distinguish ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... empty flattery. I want to find out from you if my boy has such genuine talent that you can make a really good musician of him." "Naturally, I was called on to play," says Moscheles, in his "Autobiography," "and I was bungler enough to do it with some conceit. My mother having decked me out in my Sunday best, I played my best piece, Beethoven's 'Sonata Pathetique.' But what was my astonishment on finding that I was neither interrupted by bravos ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... of them as chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, he can hardly be accused of undue optimism. Speaking as one of his readers, I found no difficulty at all in being patient. I have always had a weakness for official detectives, and have resented the term "Scotland Yard bungler" almost as if it were a personal affront; and now I feel that my resentment is justified. Scotland Yard does not bungle; and the advice I shall give for the future to any eager-eyed, enthusiastic young murderer ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... bump of respect—never had!" and he began to give a half humorous account of the troubles and storms of Hester's bringing up. "I often ask myself whether we haven't all—whether I, in particular, haven't been a first-class bungler and blundered all through with regard to Hester. Did we choose the wrong governesses? They seemed most estimable people. Did we thwart her unnecessarily? I can't remember a time when she ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... painters. "He likes to think himself a great artist—one of the foremost of our time. It is said that he caused the life of the great architect, Apollodorus—who carried out such noble works for Trajan—to be extinguished—and why? because formerly that illustrious man had treated the imperial bungler as a mere dabbler, and would not accept his plan for the temple ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... poor and lean, (No bungler e'er was half so mean) Went to a foreign place, and there Began his med'cines to prepare: But one of more especial note He call'd his sovereign antidote; And by his technical bombast Contrived to raise a name at last. It happen'd that ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... among the artistic confraternity, who were wont to meet in the shop of Baccio d'Agnolo; and it may have been in one of these discussions that "Michelangelo declared to Perugino that his art was absurd and antiquated." "Goffo nell' arte"—a bungler in his art—that is the precise phrase quoted by Vasari, and which so rankled in the breast of the elder man that, "Pietro being unable to support such an insult, they both carried their plaint before the magistracy ...
— Perugino • Selwyn Brinton
... emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit of nuances give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... so that the walls reechoed. "The bungler, the greenhorn!" he exclaimed out loud, as so often in such self-communings. "He did not know how to make a good use of his opportunities. Or the Marchesa was hanging round his neck all the time. Or perhaps he took her as a next-best, when Marcolina, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... discovered in his room. More quick work! The amateur's method had been very simple. He knew that the loan had been made and the bonds sent to the bank. So he forged a check, certified it himself, and collected the securities. Of course, he was a bungler and took ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... not suffice to class him with the classical authors, but at most with the classical improvisers and virtuosos of style, who, however, in regard to power of expression and the whole planning and framing of the work, reveal the awkward hand and the embarrassed eye of the bungler. We therefore put the question, whether Strauss really possesses the artistic strength necessary for the purpose of presenting us with a thing that is ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... your virtue make, Is in your power; you need but stoop and take. Your beauteous images must be allow'd By all, but some vile poets of the crowd. 50 But how should any sign-post dauber know The worth of Titian or of Angelo? Hard features every bungler can command; To draw true beauty shows ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... at first sight, to bring into a sermon all the Circles of the Globe and all the frightful terms of Astronomy; but I will assure you, Sir, it is to be done! because it has been. But not by every bungler and ordinary text-divider; but by a man ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... a deep sigh, "I reckon I'm just a bungler. Everything I do seems wrong. I'm afraid,"—and here she grew dreamy,—"I'm afraid I'm like the poor poplars. I see over the dunes. I see too much, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... succeed," said Jean after a while. "The possibility of their trying rather worried me. The Hoggins type is such a bungler that it was almost certain they ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... of the false and contemptible social pride and exclusiveness of Stanhope's relations, which Mrs. Bartlett Glow represented as implacable while she condemned it as absurd. There was not a word of opposition to the union of Irene and Stanhope: Penelope was not such a bungler as to make that mistake. It was not her cue to definitely suggest a sacrifice for the welfare of her cousin. If she let Irene perceive that she admired the courage in her that could face all these adverse social conditions that were conjured up before ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on a classical subject, deserves especial notice. It is a thorough criticism of all the dramas of Euripides, in which he takes a view of the dramatist exactly the reverse of that maintained by Walter Savage Landor—asserting that he was a bungler in the tragic art, and far too much addicted to foisting his stupid moralisings into his plays. Another article in the Westminster, on the Prussian Constitution, is worthy of remark for its thoroughness. The whole machinery of the Prussian bureaucracy is explained ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a character so rare as hardly to be matched in the whole of space and time for her cleverness and her candour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of the account, as that one element in her common to a very host of others. For the Creator was not such a bungler as to confine all feminine beauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, since almost every woman in the world, no matter what her face be like, shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shape essential to her sex, which is far the most important thing of all, being ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... shaking his fingers loose impatiently. "Care? Yes, this I care, bungler: I care because of all three of thee, thou alone wert covetous enough to obey my conditions. With thee alive, there was hope of thy friends' speedy death. With thee dead, which of the others will wipe his fellow from his path for me? Why, think ye, did I fawn on John Pearse? But to arouse in thee ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... England. If that were correct, they must get near enough to attack us with assegais. They are more dangerous so. I remembered what an old Boer had said to me at Buluwayo: "The Zulu with his assegai is an enemy to be feared; with a gun, he is a bungler." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... enough. Sticks and grains of rice make it plain that the caddis worm is not the bungler that one would expect from the monstrous buildings in the pond. Those Cyclopean piles, those mad conglomerations, are the inevitable results of chance finds, which are used for the best because there is no ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... you, and about your age. He conspired, but the thing failed. What would you have? Everybody may be deceived. They built him a beautiful black scaffold; they allowed him to turn toward the window where his mistress was; they cut the neck of his shirt with scissors, but the executioner was a bungler, accustomed to hang, and not to decapitate, so that he was obliged to strike three or four times to cut the head off, and at last he only managed by the aid of a knife which he drew from his girdle, and with which he chopped so well that he got the neck in half. Bravo! you are brave!" continued ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... prodigious yawn. "The Lord be thanked!" he said, addressing the air. "That's done! And it is time to see to the dressing of that sore upon Prince Rupert's shoulder; and I remember Haines said that one of the hounds had been gored by Carrington's bull. Haines can't dress a wound. Haines is a bungler. But, by the Lord Harry! Richard Verney is as good a veterinary as ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the detective. "My self-respect returns; I am not a bungler. In the morning I shall be on the ground, to wash my face, and chop your wood; which reminds me, your servants, they must not see me here. I must depart as ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... formalized by a trivial or merely conventional treatment.[1] In these really domestic scenes, where the painter sought unreproved his models in simple nature, and trusted for his effect to what was holiest and most immutable in our common humanity, he must have been a bungler indeed if he did not succeed in touching some responsive chord of sympathy in the bosom of the observer. This is, perhaps, the secret of the universal, and, in general, deserved popularity of these ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... which, on these tablets alone, the words have been separated from each other. The governors and officials must not be classified as educated or uneducated on the evidence of their letters; all alike employed professional scribes, of whom one might be skilful and the next a bungler whose communications must be guessed at rather than read. Occasionally a Babylonian word is followed by the corresponding Canaanite word, also in cuneiform, but marked as a translation. Like the Egyptian kings, so the Asiatic sovereigns had ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... The other one too came not twenty minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina's confessor after Abbe Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes, a handsome man he is, but a fine bungler all the same, a perfect killjoy with all the crafty hindrances which he brought into that divorce affair. I wish you had been here to see what a big sign of the cross he made after he had knelt down. He didn't cry, he didn't: he seemed to be saying that as things ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Plymouth last year, with her masts rolling about until her shrouds were like iron bars on one side and hanging in festoons upon the other? The meanest sloop that ever sailed out of France would have overmatched her, and then it would be on me, and not on this Devonport bungler, that a court-martial would ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that," answered he. "I fancy I am not so great a bungler as to overshoot my purposes and baffle my own designs; and, woman," said he, raising his arm threateningly above her head, "I caution you to beware. I believe you have already let drop some unguarded words; else why is your mistress so averse to this engagement, as I have learned ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Indians gained time to rally, Celeste would suffer the consequences; they could kill her or escape with her. If you wish to gain an Indian's respect you must make a neat job of shooting him down. He never forgives a bungler. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... aware that his official career and perhaps his life hung in the balance. To fail of arresting the desperado was to brand himself a bungler and to expose himself to the contempt of other sure-shot ruffians. However, having faced death many times in the desert and on the range, he advanced steadily, apparently undisturbed by the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Pleasure than meer Confusion. To be ever harping on one String, though it be touch'd by the most Masterly Hand, will give little more Entertainment to the Ear, than the most confused and discordant variety of Sounds mingled by the Hand of a meer Bungler. To have the Eye for ever fix'd on one beautiful Object, would be apt to abate the Satisfaction, at least in our present State. Variety relieves and refreshes. It is so in the natural World. Hills and Valleys, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... his peculations remained undiscovered. Why should they not be? He plumed himself on the skill with which he managed to rob his employer. He was no vulgar bungler to break into the store, or enter into an alliance with burglars. Not he! The property he took was carried off openly before Mr. Hartley's very eyes, and he knew nothing of it. He did not even suspect that he was being robbed. ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... communications corrupt good manners! You are a mere bungler in delicate matters, Evje. You made a bad ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... hiring a burglar for you. He lost his head when he ran away with another person's motor-car and had to hand the marked bill to a country justice. He showed bad judgment when he tried to fool me with a fancy lie. But you are the real bungler, Senhor Alcatrante. Any capable diplomat ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... waters; wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, Quantum mutatus ab illo! Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... he did find him, to his great joy. From that time his pride disappeared, and whenever any one called him "Professor" he would exclaim: "Ah, what folly that is! There are gentlemen in Venice and professors in Padua, but I am a bungler." ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... it. I drove gayly along the road, enjoying the stare of hostlers and stable-boys as I managed my horses knowingly down the steep street of Hempstead; when, just at the skirts of the village, one of the traces of my leader came loose. I pulled up; and as the animal was restive and my servant a bungler, I called for assistance to the robustious master of a snug ale-house, who stood at his door with a tankard in his hand. He came readily to assist me, followed by his wife, with her bosom half open, a child in her arms, and two more at ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... difference, however. He had pledged himself to wait until she did care. Therefore he sedulously maintained his mask. Miss Hargrove should be made to believe that she had added much to the pleasure of the excursion, and there he would stop. And Burt on his mettle was no bungler. The test would come in ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... galleries, comparatively few people will ever see them. But if you are an artist in conversation, everyone who comes in contact with you will see your life-picture, which you have been painting ever since you began to talk. Everyone knows whether you are an artist or a bungler. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... boots for the right foot, one after another, turned back the uppers, and held heels and soles in a straight line before his eyes. "A bungler has had these in hand," he growled, and then he set to work on the casing for the wooden leg. "Well, did the layer of felt answer?" Larsen suffered from cold in his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Tavannes laughed. "Bungler!" he cried. "Were you in my troop I would dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But you weary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?" And he lifted a pistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the one he had discharged or another, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... prelude—amusement, sport to kill the time with. I never lived till I knew her, till I loved her—entirely and only loved her. People have often said of me, not to my face, but behind my back, that in most things I was but a botcher and a bungler. It may be so; for I had not then found in what I could show myself a master. I should like to see the man who outdoes me in the talent of love. A miserable life it is, full of anguish and tears; but ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... little to tell of his own escape. There were so many more important arrests to be made that the overworked police of Monsieur de Maupas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler whom Colville ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... theories be true, the boast of the Atheist, that God is wasteful and a bungler, in that he wastefully scatters his sunlight, and sun-heat, in all directions into space, is set at naught. Nature has been misinterpreted. No sunlight nor sun-heat is disclosed, except in the direction ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... me great pleasure, and his wife's even still greater; but, after all, the merit is in my subject—in the man, not in me. He must be a sad bungler who would spoil such ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... ends. Vice heard his fame, she read his bill; Convinced of his inferior skill, She sought his booth, and from the crowd Defied the man of art aloud: 'Is this, then, he so famed for sleight? Can this slow bungler cheat your sight! 10 Dares he with me dispute the prize? I leave it to impartial eyes.' Provoked, the juggler cried, ''tis done. In science I submit to none.' Thus said, the cups and balls he played; By turns, this here, that there, conveyed. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once. Hoary Time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce. But I will not fear to match them—no, by God, I will not fear, I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... her." "Do you want it?" "Yes." "Feel my cock." Kitty grasped it eagerly, we got on to the bed, Pol watched now the graceful manipulation, insertion, and wriggles of pleasure of her friend, for Kitty was fast learning fucking, though quite innocent of the art of frigging. I never knew such a bungler as she was at her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... swore loudly and came charging forward in a belated hope of saving his beloved pipe from destruction. The purchase of that meerschaum had been a joy to Milo. Its coloring had been a long and careful process. And now, this bungler had ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... it with a heavy foot, and by this time was in a rage with both him and myself, but I always was a bungler, and, having adopted this means in a hurry, I could at the time see no other easy way out. Timothy's hold on life, as you may have apprehended, was ever of the slightest, and I suppose I always knew that he must soon revert to the obscure. He could never have penetrated into the open. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... to New Edition The Confessions of a Duffer A Border Boyhood Loch Awe Loch-Fishing Loch Leven The Bloody Doctor The Lady or the Salmon? A Tweedside Sketch The Double Alibi The Complete Bungler ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine—a bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of the patient's shirts, and ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Bleek: in all respects he has opened himself more to me in the last few weeks, and I like him. But the man who now writes the survey of foreign literature in the "Westminster Review" might have just read my book: this he cannot have done, or else he is a thorough bungler; for he (1) understands me only as representing the personal God (apparently the one in the clouds, as you once expressed it, a-straddle, riding) and leaving out everything besides; (2) that the last twenty-seven chapters of the book of Isaiah are not, as ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Christian, released him from his dilemma, and opened the door of the house to him, out of respect to the wine, which is lord of this country. The good man then went and got into the bed of the maid-servant, who was a young and pretty wench. The old bungler, bemuddled with wine, went ploughing in the wrong land, fancying all the time it was his wife by his side, and thanking her for the youth and freshness she still retained. On hearing her husband, the wife ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Geoffrey Hudson sprang from the stool on which he sat en Signor, at the risk of breaking both his guitar and his neck, exclaiming, "That he would rather prepare breakfast every morning betwixt this and the day of judgment, than commit a task of such consequence to an inexperienced bungler like his companion." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... for"—with a glance at the senseless disfigured form upon the couch; "but an easy thing—a mere bagatelle to a man such as you—a skillful chemist, a practiced handler of chemicals. Monsieur, you will do what yonder bungler failed to do—you will, if you please, combine ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... feeble Cupids you can draw up against them: your thick foggy air breeds love too dull and heavy for noble flights, nor can I stoop to them. The Flemish boy wants arrows keen enough for hearts like mine, and is a bungler in his art, too lazy and remiss, rather a heavy Bacchus than a Cupid, a bottle sends him to his bed of moss, where he sleeps hard, and never dreams ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Dixon! How we shall kiss each other!' said Frederick. 'She used to kiss me, and then look in my face to be sure I was the right person, and then set to again! But, Margaret, what a bungler you are! I never saw such a little awkward, good-for-nothing pair of hands. Run away, and wash them, ready to cut bread-and-butter for me, and leave the fire. I'll manage it. Lighting fires is ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that the coup was not premeditated. But why, why, had he let her escape so easily? If only he had been a little quicker about following her, and had not wasted time looking for Higgs! She had had time to get clear away; and he, bungler that he was, had thought it of little consequence, and had afterwards stood poring over a catalogue in the hall, having decided that her morals were no business of his. Ass that he ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes, with crown and sceptre, just as our Queen has been painted by—but comparisons are odious. Here stands this majestic woman in her every-day working-dress of black satin, LOOKING YOUR HAT OFF, as it were. Another portrait of the same personage ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him I am only a bungler. He aims with the rifle as no one else does. Not only when he's lucky or in the vein; no! he levels, and the bull's-eye is pierced. I have learned from him. He were indeed a blockhead, who could serve under him and learn nothing!—But, sirs, let us ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Jesus Christ. We must therefore lay aside all iniquity, and superfluity of naughtiness, and do as persons professing godliness, as professing a profession, that Christ is the priest of, yea the high-priest of 1 Thess. 2:30; Heb. 3:3. It is a reproach to any man to be but a bungler at his profession, to be but a sloven in his profession. And it is the honour of a man to be excellent in the managing of his profession. Christians should be excellent in the management of their profession, and should make that which is good in itself, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "You bungler," he cried, and his voice rang through the long quiet corridor. "You do not know what this means. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... as "playing upon this pipe," for which Hamlet gives Guildenstern such lucid directions. But this intelligent Me, who steps forward as the senior partner in our dual personality, turns out to be a terrible bungler. He misses those glancing hits which the hard-featured young professional person calls "carroms," and insists on pocketing his own ball instead of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shall have to lie from morn to night; and you will be a bungler at that, saving your presence. If there's a servant left in the house who knows, I'd give that servant a present, and part with her before Mrs. Little sets her foot in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... day has most utterly outgrown their critical training? And that lazy wholesale disapprobation of living writers, so common and convenient, what does it do but injure all reverence for parents and teachers, when the young find out that the poet, who, as they were told, was a bungler and a charlatan, somehow continues to touch the purest and noblest nerves of their souls, and that the author who was said to be dangerous and unchristian, somehow makes them more dutiful, more earnest, more industrious, more loving to the poor? I speak of actual cases. Would to God they ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... always a bungler at all kinds of sport that required either patience or adroitness, and had not angled above half an hour before I had completely 'satisfied the sentiment,' and convinced myself of the truth of Izaak Walton's opinion, ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... he murmured to himself, as he walked down the street, with an occasional nervous glance to the right and left. "I thought I had done my work effectually: I did not know I was such a bungler. Does he guess who attacked him, I wonder? I suppose not, or I should have heard of the matter before now. Fortunate that I took the precaution of drugging him first. What an escape! And he has got hold of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not let thee go. I'm but a rude bungler in these women-ways, and I've said or done somewhat that wounds thee sorely, and I'll not let thee go till 't is all outsaid and I have once more cleared myself of at least willful offense ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... calmness, I should assuredly have broken out and told this dapper little demagogue my opinion of him. But this is glorious! What news I shall have to give the girls in the morning! If I cannot ensure Marie's freedom now I should be a bungler indeed. Had I had the planning of the events of this evening they could not have turned ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... he had caught. All known methods to catch or kill the animal were resorted to, but with the cunning that its prehistoric ancestors had handed down to it, it avoided every pitfall. The fox is a poor bungler compared with the wolverine. The result of all this was that Richard Gray had no fur in the spring with which to pay his debt ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing manner at that humble follower of the great investigator; but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height of a Scotland Yard bungler. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse |
