"Blow off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at a speed of six knots only, to give our stokers a chance to get their boilers into the best possible trim and to raise a good head of steam for the final rush, and as soon as our safety valves began to blow off, we increased the number of our revolutions until, when we arrived within four miles of the harbour's mouth, we were racing in, as though for a wager. At this point the destroyers stopped their engines and lay-to. They had done the first ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... Every one in the island knows that you can't sail a vessel like Code Schofield can, and that you are afraid to carry sail. To-day proved it. Anybody with half an eye could see that that stays'l was cut with a knife and didn't blow off. All these things being so, what made you so sure that you would win that ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a great protection against both cold and dust. Unhappily, most people who have no machines of their own, when invited to ride, have nothing fit to wear; they dress too thinly, wear hats that blow off, and they altogether are, and look, quite unhappy—to the great discomfort of those with them. It is not a bad plan to have available one or two good warm coats for the benefit of guests, and always carry water-proof coats and lap-covers. In emergency, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... pronounced and sometimes spelled "sou'wester," is a hat made from yellow oilskin, waterproof, and it can be tied on under the chin so it won't blow off. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... were allowed off the platform, so I asked another prisoner to let his hat blow off and then look round for a guard while he was down after it. He did this, but owing to the darkness under the platform he couldn't see anything, and he was just coming up when the gleam of a bayonet caught his eye; and here was our missing-link—with his back up against a pillar at the very spot ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... a brilliant day To chase these lurid, murky clouds away! Arise, sweet soul, thy sorrows cast away, Blow off thy cares, like ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... the peasant. "How could it be otherwise with such a wind as this,—a wind that would blow off the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... into neither of these two classes, except perhaps in the irresponsibility of its author. It is compounded of gossip,—the flying gossip or dust of Peking. Take it lightly; blow off such dust as may happen to stick to you. For authentic information turn to the heavy volumes written by the acknowledged students of ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... said Hazon, breaking into this train of thought, which, all unconsciously, had entailed a long gap of silence. "I don't in the least mind smoke, although I can't blow off a cloud myself just now—at least I have no inclination that way," he added, reaching for a bottle of white powder which stood upon a box by the bedside, and mixing himself ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... this until he had seen everything cleared up and heard "All fast the dory," from the waist. Then he looked up and took note of sky and wind. "Don't feel any too good. Maybe 'twill blow off, but we might's well run in. We'll have to wait for our other seine anyway and Wesley will be sure to put into the Breakwater for news on his way down, especially if ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... They are very filthy in their habits, and my informant said that if one of them should venture out into the rain, grass would grow on her neck and arms. The men, unhappy martyrs! are compelled to be a little more cleanly, from their custom of hunting and fishing, for the wind will blow off some of the dirt, and the water washes ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to allow Count Simon time to cool before meeting him, but this summons was imperative, and, besides, he knew the danger of failing to provide a safety-valve in the shape of a listener, before the Count could blow off the first ebullitions of rage over Mdlle. Selpdorf's untoward speech. If pent up within his own breast, there was no knowing in how disastrous a manner Sagan's ill-humour might explode. Defeat meant much ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... to the superior evaporative power of Welsh coal, it is slow burning and much more easily controlled, especially on the comparatively short grates of these modern boilers, the quick-burning Yorkshire coal causing the safety valves to frequently blow off when working near the load pressure unless great care ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... guarded most carefully and advised to "get busy" early in life at something worth while. Many a bright fellow brimming with excess power has gone as a lamb to the slaughter into the maelstrom of vice because of being held back from legitimate occupation. He just had to blow off steam so he did it in a gin mill rather than ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... oak leaves as they blow off from the trees on the strawberry beds, are they just as good to protect them as straw would be—when there are ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... seeing white men with rifles had fled with the utmost precipitation, without even discharging a poisoned arrow. To make their flight more rapid the white men had fired their rifles in the air; and one in grabbing his gun from his boy had managed to discharge it in such a manner as to blow off the sight of his neighbour's rifle. Finding that danger was at an end for the time being, I begged them to remain as they were, ready to receive an attack, while I returned with my boys to Gordon, and got the stragglers together, after which ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... I hauled up along the south coast, and as soon as we had brought the wind to blow off the land, it came upon us in such heavy squalls as obliged us to double-reef our top-sails. It afterwards fell, by little and little, and at noon ended in a calm. At this time Cape St John bore N. 20 deg. E., distant three and a half leagues; Cape St Bartholomew, or the S.W. point of Staten ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... me! I have had to blow off my indignation incidentally now and then lest worse might befall me, but as to serious political controversy, I have other fish to fry. Such influence as I possess may be most usefully employed in promoting various educational movements now afoot, and I do not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... am I," replied Mab, as she tied her cap strings under her chin, so it would not blow away—I mean so the cap would not blow away, not Mab's chin; for that was made fast to her face, you see, and couldn't blow off, no matter how much wind ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... limit, and he reached it. Your mouths are your own, and you can blow off to suit your fancy, but if any one thinks I'm a tame coyote to be poked with a stick—!" He broke off, stooped over, and helped the man before him to his feet. The arm had been strained, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... a bit like a regular Fourth without the salutes three times during the day. They are afraid the old cannon will kick, and blow off some other fellow's arm, as it did last year," added Elly Dickens, the beau of the party, as he pulled down his neat wristbands, hoping Maud admired the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Anchovy sauce, made with some of the Oyster Liquor, and let them drip into the same dish where the Anchovy sauce is; when they be enough, bread them with the crust of a roul grated on them, and when they be brown, draw them off, then take the sauce wherewith you basted your Oysters, and blow off the fat, then put the same to the Oysters, wring in it the juyce of a Lemon, so ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... the Injuns meant it. Do you reckon I treated that dog any worse than the Shawnees treated my father and mother and little sister ten years ago? If you don't 'low that, just keep shet. When a Injun sends you a flag o' truce you want to tie your scalp down, or it'll blow off." ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... whenas you firs' see Marse Wes in his anger. Zenas an' me, we's use to it. Marse Wes dataway; som'n go wrong he fly off de handle. Zenas ain't mislay no pitchfo'k—I seed Marse Wes mahse'f wid dat pitchfo'k dis mawnin'. But eve'y once in a while he git a temper fit an' blow off he mouf like dat. Sometimes he strike some-buddy—but he doan often strike Zenas. Sometimes he git mad at oner de hosses an' frail it proper. Dat high temper run in de Dean fambly, chile. Dey gits mad, an' dey flies off, an' you just ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... things about yourself like that to me," pleaded Rose Mary, quickly raising her head and smiling through her tears at him. "Go on and tell me what you did find out there in the pasture; don't blow off any more of ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "Oh, blow off your steam, quietly, and then become reasonable," yawned Fred Radwin. "First thing you know, you'll really make an enemy of me, and then the trick will be done, Rhinds. For you need me. Just now, you need me worse than you ever ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... growing in Hadria to test her powers of attraction to the utmost, so as to discover exactly their range and calibre. She felt rather as a boy might feel who had come upon a cask of gunpowder, and longed to set a match to it, just to see exactly how high it would blow off the roof. She had kept the growing instincts at bay, being determined that nothing avoidable should come between her and her purpose. And then—well considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women—if one might judge from their ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... heavier, and with preference attached to bed and table. But last night I broke a bottle on the head of an extortioner, and my mind is very much exalted over it. I feel myself capable of dissipating the phantoms which are haunting you, and to blow off all that mist. For after all, sir, these Sylphs are ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... boys! give me one who knows how to be naughty in the right place; I wouldn't give sixpence for a good boy; I never was one myself, and have no faith in them. Give me the lad who has more steam up than he knows what to do with, and must needs blow off a little in larks. When once he settles down on the rail, it'll send him along as steady as a luggage train. Did you never hear a locomotive puffing and roaring before it gets under way? well, that's what your boy is doing. Look at him now, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... gone away one day, and advantage was taken of it to have a little carouse in which most of the men took a part; and when the steam rose the stoker popped his bit of iron on the lever and all was quiet for a time, when another noisy safety-valve began to blow off, and on went another bit of iron that stopped the noise, and during all this time the fires of seven or eight boilers were burning fiercely, and the stoker should have checked his fires instead of what ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... cook to fry a steak for him—a turtle steak it was too, not beef at all—and the fat caught or something. Young da Costa himself was telling me of it here in this room. 'Mr. Schomberg'—says he-'if I had let a cylinder cover blow off through the skylight by my negligence Captain Falk couldn't have been more savage. He frightened the cook so that he won't put anything on the fire for me now.' Poor da Costa had tears in his eyes. Only try to put yourself in his ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... is a standing joke in one province of a man who as an agitator used to rave at "the British flag as a bloody rag." The police were never quite sure whether to arrest him for treason or let him blow off steam and exhaust. They wisely chose the latter course. Prosperity came to the town. The man sold his small bit of real estate for something under a hundred thousand. He didn't stay to divide his unearned increment among his fellow agitators. He ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... launch would give one final shriek of a whistle that would nearly burst the boiler, and she would reverse her engines, and blow off steam, and swing round and get aground; everyone on board of it would rush to the bow and yell at us, and the people on the bank would stand and shout to us, and all the other passing boats would stop and join in, till the whole river for miles up and down was in a state ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... my dear Parent, is just a blow off. I have been needlessly starved, and fagged to death and exasperated. We have moved five-and-twenty miles across country—in fifty-seven hours. And without food for about eighteen hours. I have been with my Captain, who has been billeting us here in Cheasingholt. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... accounts with you the very moment that Abercromby has reported back from Calcutta. I think I will just have a good old-fashioned talk with Ram Lal Singh. I need his evidence to hoodwink this old cask of grog, Abercromby. I must blow off' his vanity in ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... "Back to the chateau? I think not. Now, then, right about face—march! Aye, toward the frontier; and if I have to go on alone, so much the worse for you. I've knocked in one man's head; if necessary, I'll blow off the top of yours. You know the way back to Bleiberg, I don't; that is why I want your ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... occasional popping of a cork succeeded by the gurgling of the generous wine as it flowed into the tall rummers; and every now and then a loud and rattling eructation from Tom Draw, who, as he said, could never half enjoy a meal if he could not stop now and then to blow off steam. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... as I have said, complained of his father to me, and his only other friends were, like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical tendencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any act of insubordination to parents—good young men, in fact—and one cannot blow off steam ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... dear sir," replied Mazanoff ironically. "When you have found a place in which to build them that we cannot blow off the face of the earth before you get one finished. Meanwhile, let me beg of you to keep your temper, and to remember that there is a lady present. That girl standing yonder by the gun was once stripped and flogged by Russians calling themselves men and soldiers. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... title of Careless, because she minds no one thing that she ought. If she goes out to walk, she is sure to lose one of her gloves, or lets her bonnet blow off into the mud, or steps into the middle of some filthy puddle, because she is staring about and not minding which way she goes. At home, when she should go to work, her needle-book, or her thimble, or her scissors cannot be found; though ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow off—smears like black fat!" ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... or Lucre tempt Straight riders from the course, So long as with each drink we pour Black brewage of Remorse, So long as those unloaded guns We keep beside the bed, Blow off, by obvious accident, The lucky owner's head, If you love me as I love you What can Life kill or ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... on' em over the head, and knockin' on 'em round? It's ridiculous,' says I, 'and don't do no sort o' good. Why, I don't see no harm in their cryin',' says I; 'it's natur,' says I, 'and if natur can't blow off one way, it will another. Besides, Tom,' says I, 'it jest spiles your gals; they get sickly, and down in the mouth; and sometimes they gets ugly,—particular yallow gals do,—and it's the devil and all gettin' ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the yard, past a guardian who looked as if a bottle of beer would buy him, and a breath strong enough to blow off the froth would blow ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... in building, or a squirrel's hole was discovered, the finder tacked his name on the tree and thereby confirmed his ownership, as he did if he placed a box in which a nest was built. The ticket must not blow off, and the right at first lasted only one season. In the rabbit-land every trap that was set preempted ground for a fixed number of yards about it. Some grasping boys soon made many traps and set them all over a valuable district, so that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... while ago. The stars are bright, the night is silent, the country quiet—as quiet as peace itself. Millions of men are in camp and on warships. Will they all have to fight and many of them die—to untangle this network of treaties and affiances and to blow off huge debts with gunpowder so that the world may ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Boggs struck at Dick Dare, but that youth was on his guard, and he warded the blow off, and striking out himself, landed a blow on Zeke's jaw, downing him as neatly as had been the case ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... know if that's your beastly sarcasm, Babe,' said Vaughan, 'but, speaking for self and partner, I don't know how we should get on if we didn't blow off ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Shut it down and you'll make it a thousand times worse. No, sir. Let 'em shout. Let 'em blow off any old steam they need. Just sit tight. If it's the usual hot air there's nothing much coming of it up here on Labrador. There's this to remember. We're a thousand miles of hell's own winter, and a pretty tough sea, from the politicians ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Luncheon Father got so Steamy that he had to blow off. So he opened up on Son and practically wiped him off the Map. He sure ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... have been about a week and a minute after Lulu had been frightened by that big dog, that Alice was going to the store for her mother. The store was kept by Mr. Drake, who had a little round door knob on the top of his head, so his hat wouldn't blow off ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... me come on dat house? Not at all, for de boss he say, "Phil-o-rum, it's long tam we don't see our fren', can't get heem chance ev'ry day, Please stop on canoe so she won't blow off, w'ile we pass on de house an' see Dem frien' we was lef' an' de girl we spark, ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... Little went well with him in his student course. He had a menial position, a savage brute for a tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. But he was not without his consolations; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult, could blow off excitement through his flute. The popular picture of him in these days is of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton |
