"Confound" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leader, after a short and doubtful pause, as he peered out in the darkness at the dimly-seen boat—"why, aint the fellow still moving ahead? He is, confound him: fire!" ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... "Confound the money!" ejaculated the old man; "at least, too much of it," he added, correcting himself. "This baby's hand has unlocked more treasures for me than all the Bank of England could count ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... consciousness; but analysis cannot comprise the whole of the logical process. Before there can be analysis there must be something to be analyzed; before steps can be retraced, they must be taken. We must not confound a condition with a Law—the one is a conception antecedent to all action, a genus to which the particular activity may be referred; the other is coincident with action. The one is the medium of the other. We may illustrate this idea by science itself, ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... his newspaper with much crackling and widely opened arms. "Don't sit so near it. In my young days, the children were never allowed to come any nearer the fireplace than the outside of the hearth-rug." Then he began to read again, muttering, "Confound that reporter!" ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... not merry, merry be, With a company of jolly boys; May he be plagued with a scolding wife, To confound him with ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... drawn astray by my senses, still"—still he was a paragon of virtue, subject to rather new definition. We can appreciate the author of the New Heloisa; we can appreciate the author of Emilius; but this strained attempt to confound those two very different persons by combining tearful erotics with high ethics, is an exhibition of self-delusion that the most patient analyst of human nature might well find hard to suffer. "The duty of privation exalted my soul. The glory of all the virtues adorned the idol of my heart ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, "between dog and wolf," when the mind is disposed to marvels. I thought of my stalking on the morrow, and was miserably conscious that I would miss my stag. Those airy forms would get in the way. Confound Leithen and his yarns! ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... 'Confound him!' muttered Vandeloup, angrily, as he alighted at the station and paid the cabman, 'he's more trouble than Bebe was; she did take the hint and go, but this man, my faith!' shrugging his shoulders, 'he's the devil ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... angrily; but the next second prudential considerations checked him. He looked uneasily at Anne, as she walked steadily on, glancing neither to the right nor to the left. Had she heard Corcoran's unmistakable offer and his own too plain acceptance of it? Confound Corcoran! If he couldn't put his meaning into less dangerous phrases he'd get into trouble some of these long-come-shorts. And confound redheaded school-ma'ams with a habit of popping out of beechwoods where they had no business to be. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Watts laughed. "Confound you! That's what comes of letting even such a stupid old beggar as you learn to read one's thoughts. It's mighty ungrateful of you to use them against me. Yes. I did ask to have you included in the party. But you ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... he is hunted like a partridge on the mountains. May God deliver him, and confound his enemies!—Zoons, Mark Everard, I can fool it no longer. Do you not remember, that at the Lincoln's-Inn gambols—though you did not mingle much in them, I think—I used always to play as well as any of them when it came to the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... remember. I tried it. But I find it necessary, for my work, to be in New York. The newspapers—confound 'em!—won't move into the woods. But, after all, place is indifferent. See ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Humphry) the light of reason, is no more in comparison to the light I mean, than a farthing candle to the sun at noon' — 'Very true (said uncle), the one will serve to shew you your way, and the other to dazzle and confound your weak brain. Heark ye, Clinker, you are either an hypocritical knave, or a wrong-headed enthusiast; and in either case, unfit for my service. If you are a quack in sanctity and devotion, you will ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... By a far worse; or if she love, withheld By parents; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet already link'd, and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the Treasury, things would go on better, the Duke taking a secretaryship of State. This would do very well in the House of Commons, but very ill in the Cabinet. He is for getting Mr. Stanley, and suggests (or Rosslyn did, or both, for having talked to both on the same subject I may confound them) that Lord F. Leveson should be made a peer. I think that a good idea. He is of no use in the Commons, and his peerage would open a place which ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... the wall stepped up to him. It was Mr. Carton, a barrister, who had sat throughout the trial with his whole attention seemingly concentrated upon the ceiling of the court. Everybody had been struck with the extraordinary resemblance, cleverly used by the defending counsel to confound a witness, between Mr. Carton and Mr. Darnay. Mr. Carton was shabbily dressed, and did not appear ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... is evident that to explain induction as the colligation of facts by means of appropriate conceptions, that is, conceptions which will really express them, is to confound mere description of the observed facts with inference from those facts, and ascribe to the latter what is a ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... when the inspection did not prove satisfactory, the staring ended in a trumpet and a charge, but this did not often happen. When it did we had to use our rifles. Nor were elephants the only wild beasts in the great Elgumi forest. All sorts of large game abounded, including lions — confound them! I have always hated the sight of a lion since one bit my leg and lamed me for life. As a consequence, another thing that abounded was the dreadful tsetse fly, whose bite is death to domestic animals. Donkeys have, together with men, hitherto been supposed ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... acquire the language about him; a positive antagonism to his surrounding possessed him, beyond reason. He thought—how different Mariana is from all this, and was annoyed again at her serious bearing. Then he was surprised by his presence there at all; confound the girl, why didn't she play with her own kind! Yet only the other day the glimpse she had given him of her natural associates had filled him with dread. His mind, striving to encompass the problem of Mariana's existence, failed to overcome the walls built about him by time, by habit. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... before seeing Chamberlain, I saw James, who went to Lord Granville and fully stated my views, reporting to me afterwards that Lord Granville seemed inclined to come round a little. James added of Harcourt: "Confound that Home Secretary! How discreet he is even before kissing hands! I shall live at the Home Office." I went to Euston to meet Chamberlain. We were fully agreed in our line, and he remained at my house the next morning, when I was sent for by Mr. Gladstone through Lord ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... "Oh, confound it, Pollie, you are always flying out at me! I dare say she's a good girl—she looks it, but if you want me to say that she's good-looking, I can't be such a hypocrite even ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... on my trousers and jersey, washed my face and jumped on board Delila. But it was too late, for when I arrived at my hole it was already occupied! Such a thing had never happened to me in three years, and it made me feel as if I were being robbed under my own eyes. I said to myself: 'Confound it all! confound it!' And then my wife began to nag at me. 'Eh! what about your Casque a meche? Get along, you drunkard! Are you satisfied, you great fool?' I could say nothing, because it was all true, but I landed all the same near the spot and tried ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... this patriarch has been violently controverted. His country; the age in which he lived; the author of the book that bears his name; have all been fruitful themes of discord, and, as if to confound confusion, these disputants are interrupted by others, who would maintain that no such person ever existed; that the whole tale is a poetic ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... general parts of objects are preserved large at first, they will always admit of further enrichments of a small kind, but then they must be so small as not to confound the general masses or quantities; thus, you see, variety is a check upon itself when overdone, which of course begets what is called a petit taste and a ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... now sad king, Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound, Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground; Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering; Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound; His senses droop, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the convent and its delightful garden, I set out for the holy places around it, a pilgrimage which I had deferred making immediately on my first arrival, which is the usual practice, that the Arabs might not confound me with the common run of visitors, to whom they shew no great respect. The Djebalye enjoy the exclusive right of being guides to the holy places; my suite therefore consisted of two of them loaded with provisions, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... thoughtfully upon his hand. "I wouldn't have believed that I could have done this," he muttered. "If he had knuckled to me one iota I would have shown him the door; if he hadn't been so crippled—if he hadn't been so downright honest and brave—confound it! he almost made me feel both like killing him and taking him by the hand. Oh, Herbert, my poor, lost boy, I don't wonder that you and so many fine fellows had to die before such ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... singularity— Not vainer than a goat need be— Lay on a thymy bank, and viewed Himself reflected in the flood. "Confound my beard!" he thought, and said; "How badly it becomes my head; Upon my honour! women might Take me to be some crazy wight." He sought the barber of the place,— A monkey 'twas, of Moorish race, Who shaved mankind, drew teeth, and bled. A pole ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... [arose and] fled and stood among the tombs.[FN44] The thieves came up to the place and finding Er Razi bound by the feet and by him near seventy sticks, marvelled at this with an exceeding wonderment and said, 'God confound thee! This was sure an infidel, a man of many crimes; for, behold, the earth hath rejected him from her womb, and by my life, he is yet fresh! This is his first night [in the tomb] and the angels were tormenting him but now; so whosoever of you hath a sin upon his conscience, let him beat ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... into Louisiana. Its original meaning was a native born of foreign parents; but universal use has made it to mean, in Louisiana, nothing more than simply "native;" and it is applied indiscriminately to everything native to the State—as Creole cane, Creole horse, Creole negro, or creole cow. Many confound its meaning with that of quadroon, and suppose it implies one of mixed blood, or one with whose blood mingles that of the African—than which no meaning is more foreign to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... over his mouth, Barberry!" cried the burly man, as he struggled to regain his feet. "Confound you, boy, I'll teach you to ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... said the postmaster. "True enough, it is a 5. Confound my absent-mindedness in not puttin' down a 1." It may here be said, that similar instances of mental aberration were discovered in Mr. Persimmon's accounts toward the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... encouragement of navigation. They may prefer a system which would give unlimited scope to all nations to be the carriers as well as the purchasers of their commodities. Pennsylvania may not choose to confound her interests in a connection so adverse to her policy. As she must at all events be a frontier, she may deem it most consistent with her safety to have her exposed side turned towards the weaker power of the Southern, rather than towards the stronger power of the Northern, Confederacy. ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... made its appearance very variously, and was modified by temporary or local circumstances, whereof non-medical contemporaries but imperfectly noted the essential particulars, accustomed as they were to confound their observation of natural events with their notions of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was John Henderson's regard for truth, that he considered it a crime, of no ordinary magnitude, to confound in any one, even for a moment, the perceptions of right and wrong; of truth and falsehood; he therefore never argued in defence of a position which his understanding did not cordially approve, unless, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of merchandize and manufactures which the shopkeepers expose on every hand; and he is apt, by unwary bursts of admiration, to excite the merriment and contempt of those who mistake the use of their eyes for effects of their understanding, and confound ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... with eerie misgiving; "I wonder if it can be that somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an unholy brew to confound me! I don't believe in such power; and yet—what if they should ha' been doing it!" Even he could not admit that the perpetrator, if any, might be Farfrae. These isolated hours of superstition came to Henchard in time of moody depression, when all his practical ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... morning, and I sent for you immediately! Let us read it again—we'll make another attempt to decipher this incomprehensible name. Confound the fellow! why couldn't he write so that some one besides himself could read it! We must stumble through it," said he, as he again began the letter ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Many persons confound reputation with Character, and believe themselves to be striving for the reality of the one, when the fantasy of the other alone stimulates their desires. Reputation is the opinion entertained of us by our fellow- beings, while Character ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... discovers itself to the understanding only. This species of devotion, so worthy of the Supreme Being, but so little suitable to human frailty, was observed to occasion great disturbances in the breast, and in many respects to confound all rational principles of conduct and behavior. The mind, straining for these extraordinary raptures, reaching them by short glances, sinking again under its own weakness, rejecting all exterior aid of pomp and ceremony, was so occupied in this inward life, that It fled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... they weren't! Just because their dear mothers expressed a wish for them to marry, you, and those two little old maids out there, got to sentimentalizing over it until the poor children were hypnotized. Why, confound it, I call them lucky to have escaped! I wonder, by the way," he added thoughtfully, "if this Doctor What's-his-name talks English, or the jargon in which that clipping is printed! He'll have a stupid time here in Hillsdale, that's all ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... give, So long my honour, name, and praise shall live! 170 What Time would spare, from Steel receives its date, And monuments, like men, submit to fate! Steel could the labour of the Gods destroy, And strike to dust th' imperial tow'rs of Troy; Steel could the works of mortal pride confound, 175 And hew triumphal arches to the ground. What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel, The ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... "Oh, confound those little beasts of yours;" exclaimed Ned, "a little exercise won't hurt them, but to think of three hours in a place like this! and say, don't you know how to spell ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Confound it, if you're so set on it, I'll marry you! Say yes, and let John the Baptist here give us his blessing. Speak up. Is it a ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... you say at once to the baron's friends that we will leave for Belgium to-morrow. It is not unusual, and I have a right to choose. You must insist. Porthos is wild for a fight, and—confound it, don't look so anxious. This affair has hurried things a little; I wanted more practice. I should be a fool to say I am a match for Porthos, but he is very big. If I can tire him, or get a scratch such as stops these affairs—somehow ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... way to recover your father's favour? Why, Sir Sampson will be irreconcilable. If your younger brother should come from sea, he'd never look upon you again. You're undone, sir; you're ruined; you won't have a friend left in the world if you turn poet. Ah, pox confound that Will's coffee-house: it has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak lottery. Nothing thrives that belongs to't. The man of the house would have been an alderman by this time, with half the trade, if he had set up in the city. ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... and tails on to the rope behind. "Well, dammit!" says the mate, "if I ever see the likes o' that! Jacobs, get a tarbucket and dip his fists in it; larn him what his hands was made for! I never could bear to see a fellow ashore with his flippers shoed like his feet; but at sea, confound me, it would make a man green-sick over again!" If you'd only seen how Master Collins looked when shoved his missy fingers into the tar, and chucked the gloves o' board! The next moment he ups fists and made slap at me, when in goes the brush ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... "'Confound the dockerments! I don't want to bother myself with them. Mind your eye next time; cover when you see the signal,' says the Britisher, whom Pluck had got nicely ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... lost. It may have been; but such are not the secrets of its preservation in times of science and progression, when the spirit of inquiry has established itself among all classes, and nothing is taken for granted, as it used to be. A few persons here and there, who confound a small superstitious reaction in England with the reverse of the fact all over the rest of Europe, may persuade themselves, if they please, that the world has not advanced in knowledge for the last three centuries, and so get up and cry aloud to us out of obsolete horn-books; but the community ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... old man. He took Agamemnon's right hand in his own and said, "Son of Atreus, I take it Achilles is glad now that he sees the Achaeans routed and slain, for he is utterly without remorse—may he come to a bad end and heaven confound him. As for yourself, the blessed gods are not yet so bitterly angry with you but that the princes and counsellors of the Trojans shall again raise the dust upon the plain, and you shall see them flying from the ships and tents ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... fragments of crockery set in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him at his peculiar trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. 'He knows the place by heart,' muttered Silas, 'and don't need to turn his lantern on, confound him!' But he did turn it on, almost in that same instant, and flashed its light upon the first of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... I was choking in my heart, and was longing to confound all these with contrary maxims. For I have been called among the deep thinkers the "worse cause" on this very account, that I first contrived how to speak against both law and justice; and this art is worth more than ten thousand staters, that one should choose the ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... before him violently with his fist. 'Confound my reputation!' said he. 'No reputation that I have will be satisfaction to my brewer for the seventy pounds I owe him. Reputation won't pass for the current coin of this here realm; and let me tell you, that if it ain't backed by some of it, it ain't a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... chivalrous generosity, he ceased not to exalt himself on the ruined reputation of his late commander? Even as Ajax prayed for light, the people cried aloud for one week of fair weather: no more was wanted to crush and utterly confound the hopes of Rebels, Copperheads, and perfidious Albion. Every illustrated journal was crowded with portraits, of Fighting Joe and his famous white charger; it was said, that horse and rider could never show themselves without ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in which I passed the morning to strike awe into the soul of that vicious brute, to confound his feeble intellect, and to render ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Confound your affairs!" ejaculated Tom, petulantly. "I can't stop to-night to talk about them. I came after the girl, and I must have ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... all on their feet again. Confound that fellow! It was bad luck his suddenly looking up and finding us sitting here staring at him. We've got ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... her she must have been dreaming," retorted Miss Blake. "People who wake all of a sudden often confound dreams ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... antagonism between religion and science, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious—fabricated, on the one hand, by shortsighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally shortsighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... contra Gentiles de S. Babyla, and hom. de S. Babyla, t. 2, ed. Ben. p. 531. He wrote the first discourse against the Gentiles, expressly to confound them by the miracles of this saint. He spoke the second five years after, in 3871 on St. Babylas's feast, before a numerous auditory, and mentions Flavian, the bishop of Antioch, and others, who were to speak after him on the same subject. The miracles were recent, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Accustomed, in their limited calculations, to identify the resources, offered by the funds belonging to this class of establishments, with the very existence of the colony, the needy merchants easily confound their personal with the general interest; and few stop to consider that the identical means of carrying on trade, without any capital of their own, although they have accidentally enriched a small number of persons, eventually have absorbed the principal profits, and possibly been the chief cause ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... too; dear, dear, the man was quite out of his mind. It must be true what they were saying in Starawie['s], that Becker had become Mrs. Tiralla's lover. Confound it! "May I offer you my arm, Mr. Tiralla?" he said, going close up to ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... in her Sunday muslin with the violet sprig, and her black silk jacket with the bugles, and her arm was round Joe Wheeler's neck—confound him!—and his arms were round her waist, both of them. They didn't see me, and I stood for a minute and looked at them, and but for what I'd swore to Amelia I believe I should have taken Wheeler by the throat ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... Curse and confound it, wherefore the pity? Our youth is a perfect ass, an infernal young fish, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of 'em. He's the worst, though. What business did he have settlin' down on us here in Banbridge, I'd like to know? If he'd got to steal to feather his nest, why didn't he go to some other place, confound him?" The milkman's ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Confound it," Zetterberg snapped. "I thought we'd gone into this yesterday. In spite of the complaints that come into this office in regard to your cavalier tactics in carrying out your assignments, you and your team are ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "Why, confound the boy!" ejaculated Mr. Rogers. "What ever bee has stung him?" And gripping me by the shoulder as I heaved at the boat, he swung me round to face him. "Look here, young Harry Brooks! Do you happen to be sickening for something, that you talk like a gutter-snipe to a gentleman old enough ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... could they do, envigorating them with the supernatural Powers, which, as Seraphs and Angels, they now possess and might exert, they would be able even to fright mankind from the face of the Earth, and to destroy and confound God's Creation; nay, even as they are, were not their power limited, they might destroy the Creation it self, reverse and over-turn nature, and put the World into a general conflagration: But were those immortal Spirits embodied, tho' they were not permitted to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... help seeing the humor," confessed Dow, blandly. "The other, boys would be grinding the same grist if they had control of the machinery. It's only what I myself used to do." Then his face became grave. "But, confound it! in these days there seems to be an element that can't take a joke in politics. There's trouble in ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... character and savor which once I liked so much to discern and reveal. I believe, however, that I could make a very pretty portrait of your daughter. Is it because she resembles you so much that I confound you both in my ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... months Jane concentrated all her passion on her little son. The Brodricks, who had never been surprised at anything, owned that this was certainly not what they had expected. Jane seemed created to confound their judgments and overthrow their expectations. Neither Frances Heron nor Sophy Levine was ever possessed by the ecstasy and martyrdom of motherhood. They confessed as much. Frances looked at Sophy and said, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... him that he learnt geometry from Messer Paolo; and although Filippo had no learning, he reasoned so well in every matter with his instinct, sharpened by practice and experience, that he would many times confound him. And so he went on to give attention to the study of the Christian Scriptures, never failing to be present at the disputations and preachings of learned persons, from which he gained so much advantage, by reason ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... "Confound everybody!" he exclaimed at length, in utter disgust. "What on earth do I care for the contemptible puppy, that I should waste thought on him. What possessed the fellow to come whining around me to-night, and set me in a whirl of disagreeable thought? I ought to have knocked him down for his insufferable ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... coming down that way. The band dispersed, and hid themselves, in hopes that they might plunder The unsuspecting wayfarers. Alas! now came the blunder: Old JOHN he wouldn't hide himself, but coolly walked about Advancing to the footlights, he looked around—but hark! a shout:— "Confound you! Dash my—! Just come off! Hi, you! Who are you? JOHN!" "Not if I knowsh it, jolly old pal! I've only just come on!" Thus saying, he lumbered round the stage. The Prompter's heart had sunk: No doubt about the matter—Burleybumbo's man is drunk! "Come off! Come off!" ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... said the chevalier, quickly; "it was not I who opened your eyes, it was De Guiche. Do not confound us, I beg." And he began to laugh in so harsh a manner that it sounded like ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ends. Some extend the term occultism to cover mysticism and the spiritual life generally, but that is not a legitimate use of either word. Occultism seeks to get; mysticism to give. The one is audacious and seclusive, the other humble and open; and if we are not to end in blunderland we must not confound the two (Mysticism, by E. Underhill, part ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... their hearts should be softened, and our own hearts softened also. National success was all that a patriotic poet could desire, and therefore in our national hymn have we gone on imploring the Lord to arise and scatter our enemies; to confound their politics, whether they be good or ill; and to expose their knavish tricks—such knavish tricks being taken for granted. And then, with a steady confidence, we used to declare how certain we were that we should achieve all that was desirable, not exactly ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... at any rate, the failings of his written sentiments, for he cannot find in his heart to represent either man or woman as at once good and wise. Does he not too much confound benevolence with weakness ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... said Carroll. "That's what I meant. Confound the boy, why didn't he stay in his law courts! ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... "Confound it!" thought he,—"a mishap at the start! I'm afraid the omen isn't a good one. However, I must kill time some way. I can't lay up here, like a ship in ordinary; better be shaken by storms or covered with barnacles at sea than be housed up, worm-eaten or crumbled into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Acacia Road of some other suburb, wisely deciding that they will be better away from their people. But they met each other in the same way as Tom and Muriel are meeting; He has seen Her in Her own home, in His home, at the tennis club, surrounded by the young bounders (confound them!) of Turret Court and the Wilderness; She has heard of him falling off his bicycle or quarrelling with his father. Bless you, they know all about each other; they are going to ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... up in the world from the manner in which they have been communicated to each of us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing out of the boundless ocean of language and thought in little rills, which convey them to the heart and brain of each individual. But neither must we confound the theories or aspects of morality with the origin of our moral ideas. These are not the roots or 'origines' of morals, but the latest efforts of reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we ...
— Philebus • Plato
... haven't you my word that I will not shoot unless ye try to come out? And I know you wouldn't use her for a shield. Besides, I have a bull's-eye lantern with me. From the luxurious seat behind this rock I could spot ye in a second. Confound you, man, you ought to thank me for being so considerate as not to flash it on you before. I ask ye now, isn't that proof that I'm a gentleman and not a bounder? Having said as much, I now propose arbitration. What have ye to offer in the ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... it is all I have to say." He laughed shortly. "But I am going to lay myself out to confound Mr. Bullard within the year, and I will do it. Now tell me this, Doris; are you and I to continue ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... and we have no experience in fungi of anything like a Cladonia, however much it may resemble a Torrubia or Clavaria. We have Pezizae with a subiculum in the section Tapesia, but the veriest tyro would not confound them with species of Parmelia. It is true that a great number of lichens, at first sight, and casually, resemble species of the Hysteriacei, but it is no less strange than true, that lichenologists and mycologists know their own sufficiently ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... questions in public, before an audience ready at every turn to misquote and misinterpret his slightest utterance; and that is what they did. They came to him, not with the desire to know the truth, but to confound him, cast him down and destroy his prestige with the people. To every question he gave an answer having in it spiritual truth, but bearing the unmistakable stamp of rare ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... fearing that he was staying too long, "you and Jennie are ready, so let's go. Confound it! we must have a light for a few minutes; I know where there's ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... at two in the morning, when he had knocked down with a single blow of his fist, having passed his thumb through the ring of his keys, a terrible street rough. I listened, smiling ironically, and thinking to confound him; but remembering how respectable a virtue is which is hidden even under an absurdity, I struck him amicably on the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... way, good people,—Zeus confound you, brute of a Spartan, your big sandals crush my toes again! Can I never get near enough to place my ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... "Confound business! I tell you they're coming; I heard them. I haven't any more time to waste talking, either. I've got to get ready. Meet ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... individuals whose pure morality, quiet habits, affluence, and talents, fit them to be the leaders of the surrounding population; their love of their country is sincere, and they are prepared to make the greatest sacrifices to its welfare, but they confound the abuses of civilisation with its benefits, and the idea of evil is inseparable in their minds ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... attempt;" and he tried to pass the dog, but it whined piteously, and Gluck stopped again. "Poor beastie," said Gluck, "it'll be dead when I come down again, if I don't help it." Then he looked closer and closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully, that he could not stand it. "Confound the king and his gold too," said Gluck; and he opened the flask, and poured all the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... a good-natured mood. I assure you I found the fact disagreeable when it was thrust on me—all the more, or perhaps all the less, because I believed then that your heart was pledged to the duchess. But now, confound you! you turn out to be in love in the right ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... state of mind inculcated by the Gospel is resignation to the disposal of God's providence—"Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord"—not an eagerness to see a temporal manifestation which shall confound the enemies of God and give exaltation to the saints; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual communion with his nature, not to fix the date when He shall appear in the sky. Dr. Cumming's delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Herr Peter, I'll wager that your wife will confound the two words to-day, and think you have sorely transgressed against the 'ought.' These are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from the dead, was Solomon a notable type in his family, and among his servants and officers, who kept such exactness in the famous order in which he had placed all about him, that it did amaze and confound beholders. For "when the queen of Sheba had seen the wisdom of Solomon, and the house that he had built, and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel; his cup-bearers ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sands as these my hands can hold Are but my handful of so many sands; Then all the world—and call it but a power— Easily ta'en up, and {269} quickly thrown away; But if I stand to count them sand by sand The number would confound my memory And make a thousand millions of a task Which briefly is no more indeed than one. These quartered squadrons and these regiments Before, behind us, and on either hand, Are but a power: When we name a ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with that guff!" he drawled. "What hurry there be is my hurry, you blamed idiot! And my reasons are my own, confound you! I've set my mind on having that affair come off to-morrow, gol durn it, and I'm going to have a parson if I have to dangle down to the Junction on that old machine of ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... their meaning. We must take especial care, when we are in search of the meaning of a text, not to be led away by our reason in so far as it is founded on principles of natural knowledge (to say nothing of prejudices): in order not to confound the meaning of a passage with its truth, we must examine it solely by means of the signification of the words, or by a reason ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... attention of my enemies and preventing me, for that reason, from collecting proofs which I need in order to confound them." ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... but it followed the plain indications written on every particle of matter. What we call brute matter is whatever is means only, not showing any individuality, or end within itself. A handful of earth is definable only by its chemical or physical properties, which do not distinguish it, but confound it with other things. By itself it is only so much phosphate or silicate, and can come to be something only in a foreign organism, a plant or an animal. In form is seen the dawning of individuality, and just as the thing rises in the scale the principle of form becomes dominant. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... understand the cause," he replied, "but confound me if I can attempt to divine the means he took ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... "Confound it, will you be silent?" howled Bordenave, raging up and down in his chair. "I can't hear a word. Go outside if you want to talk; WE are at work. Barillot, if there's any more talking I ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... never confound this species with the meadow mushroom, for the spores of that are always purple-brown, while a spore-print of this will always reveal white spores. I have seen a slight tint of pink in the gills of the A. phalloides ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... to give us. Therefore, Masters of the Bread, give us to eat, and we will betray the people to you, for we must live. We will plead for you in the courts against the widow and the fatherless. We will speak and write in your praise, and with cunning words confound those who speak against you and your power and state. And nothing that you require of us shall seem too much. But because we sell not only our bodies, but our souls also, give us more bread than these laborers receive, who sell ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... first few furlongs, till the ditches, till the firwood, quagmires are all done, could Ziethen, now on the open ground, fairly hew in; "take whole battalions prisoners;" drive the crowd in an altogether stormy manner; and wholly confound ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... to prosper and defend her Maiestie, to breake the purposes of malicious enemies, of forsworne traytors, and of iniust practises and inuasions. She hath euer beene honoured of the worthiest kings, serued by faithfull subiects, and shall by the fauour of God, resist, repell, and confound all whatsoeuer attempts against her sacred person or kingdome. In the meane time let the Spaniard and traytour vaunt of their successe, and wee her true and obedient vassals guided by the shining light of her virtues, shall alwayes loue her, serue her, and obey her ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Carlyle's strong rough grasp relaxed its hold of this truth; and howsoever in later works, in what are intended as biographical illustrations of it, he may seem to confuse mere strength and energy with righteousness of will, and thence to confound outward and visible success with vital achievement, that strength and energy are always in his eyes, fighting or enduring against some phase of the many- ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... knock me down," Val reflected, "or the situation will really become strained; but he won't—that's not his way." What was his way? The worst of it was that Val was not at all sure what way Hyde would take, nor whether he would consent to go alone. A handsome man, confound him, and a picked specimen of his type: one of those high-geared and smoothly running physical machines that are all grace in a lady's drawingroom and all steel under their skins. What a contrast between him and poor ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... to question him: and here Gerard our grey retainer,—as he says, Fed with our food, from sire to son, an age,— Has told a story—I am to believe! That Mildred... oh, no, no! both tales are true, Her pure cheek's story and the forester's! Would she, or could she, err—much less, confound All guilts of treachery, of craft, of... Heaven Keep me within its hand!—I will sit here Until thought settle and I see my course. Avert, oh God, only this woe from me! [As he sinks his head between his arms on the table, GUENDOLEN'S voice is heard ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... think, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier," I reflected, "that you ever talked to the Germans except with bombs. They probably got you, poor chap, and you're lying buried somewhere while the gossips make a holiday of the fact that you don't come home. Confound 'current rumors' anyhow, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... measured by the success with which they are able to find general rules, applicable to a variety of cases that seemed to have nothing in common, and to discover important distinctions between subjects which the vulgar are apt to confound. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... differences rather than resemblances, or resemblances rather than differences, in the attachment to antiquity or novelty, in the partiality to minute or comprehensive investigations." "The Idols of the Market-Place" have reference to the tendency to confound words with things, which has ever marked controversialists in their learned disputations. In what he here says about the necessity for accurate definitions, he reminds us of Socrates rather than a modern scientist; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... they were Catholics, but he had refused to listen to them. Let us, however, hasten to assure the reader that this mistake caused no further annoyance to the marshal, except that he received a paternal remonstrance from the Bishop of Nimes, begging him in future not to confound the sheep with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "James Bowdoin, confound you!" answered that peppery person, and swung his fist right and left with such vigor that Huxford went down on one side, and another deputy on the other. Then Harley hurried the old gentleman through the breach into the ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... "Confound it!" I exclaimed, "isn't that like the old man—dragging me off this story before it's half finished in order to get another. I'll have to go. I'll get ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... began by telling me he was sorry for me, confound him! I could have made him sorrier for himself! He was sorry for me, but what could he do? London was a large place, and 'we Londoners' were busy men. I told him so were some of us in the iron-trade, but not too busy to keep an eye on boys who were friends of our boys. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... remembered what he had heard the trolls—the people of the Underworld—say, though he had not understood their meaning. 'The stainless knight,' they said, 'shall gain from evil greater strength, and with it he may confound all evil.' ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... he comes to afford the most incontestable proofs of his love and devotion to his country? Where—where is the villain who dares affix so foul a stigma to the name of Gomez Arias? Where is he?—let him appear, that I may confound and chastise the miscreant;" then looking round with haughtiness, he added, "who dares ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of animals, their colors, their ornaments, their distribution, their migrations, all have a significance that science may interpret for us if it can, but it is the business of every observer to report truthfully what he sees, and not to confound his ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... very jinerous gentleman about choosing the psalms and hymns o' Sundays. 'Confound ye,' says he, 'blare and scrape what ye ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... Confound it all, you have wrecked my peace of mind! I knew it all before. But I'm selfish, like almost everybody else. I kept away where I couldn't hear about these things. Now, if I sleep soundly to-night I'll be ashamed to look up at my ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... offered to be averred, and on the lives of the informers. What we should say, or rather what we should not say, lords of the senate, if this be true, our gods and goddesses confound us if we know! Only we must think, we have placed our benefits ill; and conclude, that in our choice, either we were wanting to the gods, or the gods to us." [The Senators ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... women, and why have so large a proportion of its exponents belonged to the so-called weaker sex? Because the intuitional and spiritual senses of women are keener than those of men, and mental healing is not the result of profound reasoning. It is the seeming "weak things of the world which confound the strong." Men are largely immersed in intellectual and formulated systems, and when the time was ripe for new light and attainment in spiritual evolution to dawn upon humanity, it might have been expected that its first delicate rays would ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... and the Moorish King knew him when he saw him coming; Turn this way Bucar, cried the Campeador, you who came from beyond sea, to see the Cid with the long beard. We must greet each other and cut out a friendship! God confound such friendship, cried King Bucar, and turned his bridle, and began to fly towards the sea, and the Cid after him, having great desire to reach him. But King Bucar had a good horse and a fresh, and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... "Love and Pain," and it is unnecessary to enter into further details here. The heroine of Kleist's Penthesilea remarks: "Kissing (Kuesse) rhymes with biting (Bisse), and one who loves with the whole heart may easily confound the two." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death. While we changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,—which was the pleasantest variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we went ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... "Confound it, Mallett, there seems no end of mischief from your visit here. In the first place, you were nearly knocked over yourself, and now there is this man lying insensible. So for goodness' sake get off to your room again, and lie down and ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... To puzzle or confound. I have queered the old full bottom; i.e. I have puzzled the judge. To queer one's ogles among bruisers; to darken one's ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... "Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit for it is not out yet, why should ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus |
